Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Here we are at the first event of 2021 for our Soup Saturday Swappers group. Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  started this event and, every month, I get a new array of soup recipes to put in my to-try pile. To kick of the 2021 series of Soup Saturday Swappers, Karen of  Karen's Kitchen Stories  asked us to share recipes for our favorite childhood soup. Here's the line-up of recipes from the #SoupSwappers... Alphabet Soup  from Karen's Kitchen Stories Chicken Soup with Danish Flour Dumplings from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking Clean the Refrigerator Soup AKA Garbage Soup from A Day in the Life on the Farm Mom's Quick Alphabet Soup from Sneha's Recipe Potato and Spinach Soup from Magical Ingredients Ramen Afternoons: From Powdered Broth to Simmered Trotters from Culinary Adventures with Camilla Rotisserie Chicken Alphabet Soup from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice Tomato Clam Chowder from Making Miracles Vegeta...

Foodie Extravaganza is where we celebrate obscure food holidays or cook and bake together with the same ingredient or theme each month. Posting day for #FoodieExtravaganza is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook page  Foodie Extravaganza . We would love to have you! If you're a spectator looking for delicious tid-bits check out our  Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board ! This month - February - we're celebrating National Potato Lovers' Day with Anne from Simple and Savory leading the charge. The potato was first cultivated in South America and they were purple, like the ones in the bowl above! And, when you cooked them, they retained a deep blue color. I love them! But, today, I'm just using the golden hued Yukon Gold potatoes. Before I get to that, though, here's the rest of the potato patch... Air Fried Potato Chips  by A Day in the Life on ...

  This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf Mt. Brave Wines, one of the  #MerlotMe   event sponsors. Complimentary wine was provided for this post and this page may contain affiliate links. However, all opinions expressed here are my own. The month of October always means lots and lots of Merlots as I make my way through the generous samples sent by participating wineries for #MerlotMe. So, here at Casa Mann, we're kicking off October 2018 with - as a I joked with my husband and our friend who joined us for dinner - "peasant food and pricey wine!" Thank you, Mt. Brave.* In My Glass   A century and a half ago, a German Presbyterian pastor named Peter Veeder regularly traversed the creeks and canyons of his, now, eponymous mountain in Napa Valley that reaches upwards of half a mile. And in 2007, winemaker Chris Carpenter began letting the mountain express itself in each vintage. Originally from Chicago, Carpenter is a founder of the Napa V...

I have read a lot about ramen because we adore it. Not the instant ramen that comes in styrofoam cups (actually, do they even still sell those?!?) or the ones that have a powdered mix to make the broth by just adding boiling water. I'm talking about actual ramen. Real ramen.   We love going to ramen noodle houses where the broth has been simmering for days and most of the patrons do not speak English. One of our favorite ramen spots is in Palo Alto. The Bay Area is not too far, but it's not close enough to run up for a quick lunch. So, I was determined to learn to make my own. And what makes amazing ramen, in my book, is delicious broth. I am not a stranger to making homemade broths and stocks, especially during the Fall and Winter. But I haven't ever made an authentic broth for homemade ramen. I read about Tonkotsu broth, made with just pork and water. But the version that intrigued me the most was one that included pig trotters, chicken paws (why do they ...

When I was preparing for our annual family camping trip last month, I started asking friends for book recommendations because between the hikes, the canoe rides, and family meals, I tend to spend several hours of the day in my hammock! And someone recommended  Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.* So, I bought a copy. On the Page I really enjoyed this book - so much so that I slowed my pace of reading towards the end because I didn't want it to end. There were so many threads of stories from a fishing village in Korea to Japan and to America and back to Tokyo. However, I also found the story incredibly tragic. Pachinko is a sprawling saga that spans almost eight decades. It begins with Sunja, a teenager, who runs a boarding house with her widowed mother. She meets a fish broker who seduces her, gets her pregnant, and, then, tells her that he has a family in Japan. Her reputation is preserved when a missionary staying in the boarding house offers to marry her and raise the ch...

Today we are heading into the third month of the Kitchen Matrix Project, after Mark Bittman's  Kitchen Matrix  cookbook. You can read about it:  here . This month, I picked the recipes for the month am I'm very excited about the dishes and the bloggers who are joining me. This week, I picked 'Quick Stocks + 9 Ways' for the group. If you don't have the cookbook, Bittman's quick stock recipes are available online at the New York Times: here . An InLinkz Link-up Don't get me wrong, I still love the three-day stock I make with beef bones for my homemade pho, but I am thrilled to have an option that can add depth to a dish in the length of time it takes to bring a pot to boil and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Bittman's guidelines say to use a pound of fresh mushrooms and a few dried ones. I used fresh shiitakes, dried candy caps, and added onions and carrots. This was quick and delicious. And, I chopped up the mushrooms, etc. and folded...

When a friend of mine from elementary school asked if anyone were willing to make her a batch of magical mineral broth, I thought to myself, "Now that sounds like a culinary adventure!" But I had no idea what she meant. A quick internet search gave me this from Rebecca Katz,  Magic Mineral Broth™ ; this one is a slight variation of the same recipe   Magic Mineral Broth 2.0  ; and this one, from Joy the Baker, added chicken: here . So, I decided to give it a go. And one of our mutual friends, who owns Serendipity Farms in Carmel Valley, gave me a bunch of veggies to  add to the pot. But, I didn't end up with the ingredients listed in the recipes, so I decided to wing it, using vegetables from Jamie as well as ones I had in the bin from my CSA. One note: it's crucial that everything you use is organic! You don't want to spend all the time and money on vegetables to make a broth laden with pesticides. That would defeat the purpose of creating thi...