Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Happy New Year to you from the crew at Wine Pairing Weekend. #WinePW happens on the second Saturday of the each month. And for the month of January, David of Cooking Chat - and the originator of #WinePW - invited us to kick off the new year with a new wine. You can read David's invitation:  here . Feel free to join the conversation on Saturday, January 14th on Twitter with the hashtag #WinePW. We start chatting at 11am ET. And if you'd like to see all the past and future topics, click here . It's hard to believe we're going on three years with this group. New Wines & The Crew David clarified: "What do we mean by “new wine”? Simply looking for wine that is new to you, whether that be a wine region you haven’t explored, or maybe it is a new grape varietal. Or maybe it’s a type of wine you haven’t tried much. You get to figure what trying new wine means to you." What fun! I had a couple of options from new-to-me varietals to new-to-me wine regions....

Remember that we kicked off Fish Friday Foodies last month. We're a group of seafood-loving bloggers, coordinated by Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm . In the interest of eating healthier in 2016, we'll be sharing fish and seafood recipes on the third Friday of the month. Would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies?  We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month.  To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517@gmail.com. Visit our  Facebook page   and  Pinterest page  for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas. This month, Stacy of  Food Lust People Love  is hosting. And theme she picked for chilly February is seafood stews and soups of the world. Think bouillabaisse, bourride, cioppino, caldo de mariscos, courtbouillon, chowder, bisque, Mae-un tang, Shui Zhu Yu, Tom Yum, and more. Stacy urged us: Let's take a world tour together one comforting hot bowl at a time!  I ...

I know, I know...it's not Friday anymore. I missed the boat on posting about my edible flower pick this month. Last month. So, here we are. Just two days late. I had read about the Lavender Festival in Carmel Valley and dragged the family over there. There wasn't much in the way of lavender, sadly. I mean, they had lavender soaps, massage oil, and even tea. But I had been hoping for some lavender foods for culinary inspiration. No such luck. Here's a round up of a few of my recipes, using this aromatic flower. I make these for a quick appetizer. Rub,wait, grill. Doesn't get much easier that that. Lavender-Lamb Lollipops In our tabletop travel to Croatia, Riley made a chicken dish with lavender and prunes. Croatian Chicken with Lavender And for your sweet tooth... Lavender Truffles Enjoy! And if you have any great lavender recipes to share, let me know. You can email me at constantmotioncamilla [at] gmail [dot] com.

Our Cooking Around the World Adventure continues...to Croatia which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known as Yugoslavia after 1929. And it remained part of Yugoslavia until the bloody, high-intensity civil war in 1991 when Croatia severed its ties and declared its independence. Some interesting numbers about this Mediterranean-climated country: it has almost 6000 km of coastline and its islands make up more than three times the area of its mainland. With that in mind, we traveled to one of the Croatian islands via tabletop when Riley made a dish that originated on the island of Hvar. I found Hvar called 'the island of lavender and sunshine' or 'the crown jewel of the Dalmatian coast.' It sounds deliciously relaxing with its vibrant patches of lavender and rosemary carpeting the hillsides. So, while I toyed with making a Croatian paprikash, the Chicken in Lavender and...

I'm sure that the word "maraschino" evokes images of unnaturally-colored red orbs of syrupy sweetness drowned in a pool of ginger ale or something equally sweet. At least that's what it did for me. I was transported to glasses of Shirley Temples at family weddings and celebrations. And I was more than happy to disabuse myself of that tonight. Maraschino (marr-ə-SKEE-noh) is a bittersweet, clear liqueur flavored with Marasca cherries, which are originally from Dalmatia (Croatia). Today, most marascas grow around Torreglia, near Padua in Northern Italy, where the liqueur is distilled. The liqueur's distinctive flavor comes from the Marasca cherries and the crushed cherry pits; honey is also part of the ancient recipe. The distillate matures for at least two years in ash vats since that wood does not lend its color to the liqueur, and, then, it's diluted and sugared. It is typically bottled in a straw-coated bottle. For the cake, I started with ...

I had received a bunch of lavender from a friend awhile back, hung them to dry, and emailed her today to find out if they were organic so I could use them in this recipe. B: Gotcha!  Friend's garden and she tells me no pesticides. :) C: Thank you! Riley's making a Croatian recipe that calls for chicken, lavender, and prunes. Go figure. B: That sounds.....unique.  Let me know how it is! C: 'Unique' that's code for 'OMG, I can't believe anyone would eat that!' ;) I tried to dissuade him from using the prunes, subbing dried cherries or something like that instead. You know what my 10-year-old said? "Mom, I LIKE prunes." Okay. I didn't realize that anyone actually liked prunes. B: That's hilarious.  It will probably be delicious! Well, it was delicious. Interestingly enough, the prunes didn't taste like prunes. They had a shitake mushroom-like texture and weren't sweet at all. Here's how we did it.... First Riley p...