Culinary Adventures with Camilla

  This month,  David from  Cooking Chat   picked the topic of Celebrating BIPOC Winemakers & Winery Owners for our February Wine Pairing Weekend blogging group. I'll be honest: when Nicole of  Somm's Table  picked the same theme last February, I had  no  idea what that even meant. BIPOC. The acronym BIPOC refers to "black, indigenous, and people of color."  After last year's event - and all of the other wine finds from my wine writing colleagues - I was inspired to track down several of these bottles for myself. You can read David's invitation  here   for this year's event and if you are reading this soon enough, feel free to join our live Twitter chat on Saturday, February 12th at 8am Pacific. Follow the hashtag #WinePW and be sure to add that to anything you tweet so we can see it. In the meantime, all of these posts should be live by chat time. Here's what the bloggers are sharing...  Wendy from A Day in the Life on the ...

Denise and Angie suggested American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland by Marie Mutsuki Mockett* for our Lit Happens book group. It seemed very timely in this topsy turvey world as Mockett pursues her roots and asks questions about faith, farming, and identity. While this is not a cook-from-the-book group, I am almost always inspired into the kitchen in whatever I'm reading or watching. This was no exception. On the Page American Harvest  is one of the books that I took out to the back patio one weekend. And between cooking and serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner to my hungry family, I dug into this book for several hours at a stretch. By the time the next meal came around, I had more discussion prompts for my teens and my husband. And because I spend a lot of time reading, thinking, writing about, and discussing our food system, my trio didn't even bat an eyelash. They just, gamely, answered my questions. In American Harvest , Mockett docume...

Today is our final January post in our year-long project that I'm calling the Kitchen Matrix Project, after Mark Bittman's  Kitchen Matrix  cookbook. You can read about it:  here . I'm very excited about the dishes and the bloggers who are joining me. Next month, Wendy at A Day in the Life in the Farm picked the recipes. I can't wait to follow along with her choices. This week, I picked 'Clafoutis + 3 Ways' for the group which means we could make Cherry-Pistachio Clafoutis, Peach Clafoutis with Star Anise, or Mango Coconut Clafoutis...along with any variations or adaptations that we needed or wanted. But, first, I'm going to be a little bit of a stickler on terminology. You wouldn't expect anything else from me, right?  Clafoutis comes from the Limousin region of France and is traditionally made with black cherries; all other variations - made with plums, prunes, apples, cranberries, blackberries, peaches, and mango - are called flaugn...

Here we are at March's #thebookclubcookbookCC event. It's hard to believe that we only have four more months in this year-long journey to explore - and cook from -  The Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors  by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp.* Judy, Vicki, and their publisher,  Tarcher-Penguin ,  have provided the hosting bloggers with copies of the book plus copies to giveaway each month of the project. Woohoo. Incredibly generous. This month Emily at  Life on Food  has selected  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  by Betty Smith.** Click to read  Emily's invitation . She shared the recipe for Chocolate Russe, but invited us to find inspiration in any of the pages. On the Page... A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is another classic that I can't believe I've never read - until now! Thanks, Emily, for picking it. If someone were to claim this is an autobiogr...

Weekends in a French Kitchen (click to read about the project:  here ) launched this month.  And if you're game, I'm including affiliate links to the cookbooks at the bottom of the post. Yesterday I posted from Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan's cookbook. Today I'm sharing a dish from Mimi Thorisson's  A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse. Special thanks to the project organizers: Alice of  A Mama, Baby and Sharpei in the Kitchen , Christy of  Confessions of a Culinary Diva , Tammy of  Telling Stories from Chez Nous , and Emily of  Blue Bungalow . What a fun, fun project they have designed. Join us. This week's selection from Mimi Thorisson's  A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse  is Clafoutis. You'll find this recipe on page 135 of the  A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse ...we will not be posting the actual recipes on our blogs. Clafoutis and My Thoughts... B...

Inspired by products from three of our #TripleSBites sponsors -    Intensity Academy ,  NOT Ketchup ,  and  Gourmet Garden Herbs & Spices  - I decided to make a cherry-kissed dish. Cherries are purported aphrodisiacas; they  are said to stimulate pheromone production. Additionally, they provide potassium which is required for sexual hormone production. And there are abundant antioxidants in cherries that help keep your skin youthful and your energy level high. Olive Oil-Poached Salmon  with Chai-Chili Pickled Cherry Salsa Ingredients  makes 4 servings 4 salmon filets olive oil balsamic vinegar freshly ground salt freshly ground pepper pickled cherry salsa (recipe below) Chai-Chili Pickled Cherry Salsa 1 C pickled cherries (click for  Chai Sweet Chili Pickled Cherries ) 1/2 C roasted corn kernels, cut from cob 1 T cilantro (I used lightly dried cilantro from  Gourmet Garden Herbs & Spices...

Last autumn I was introduced - through a fellow food blogger (thank you, Heather of girlichef !) - to Not Ketchup * when Erika agreed to sponsor an online blogging event. Erika had so much fun with us last year that she agreed to sponsor another event for me this year. So, y ou'll see more Not Ketchup posts when we launch our #TripleSBites event next Monday. I will admit that my stomach used to turn at the word 'ketchup.' I envisioned the bright red goo squeezed out of foil packets from when my grandfather used to take us to his favorite fast food restaurant. Yuck. I avoided ketchup for decades. Then I became part of the mom-crowd and saw ketchup everywhere we ate. Not only did I see it, but I joined the ranks of ketchup-eaters along with my then-toddlers. Still we were careful about which brands we purchased, avoiding any with high fructose corn syrup. Eventually, when my boys were old enough,  we made our own ketchup . Still, all the ketchups were tomato b...