Culinary Adventures with Camilla

  So, welcome to the June #SoupSwappers event. Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  started this group and I'm always grateful to have a few more recipes to try. This month, Wendy is hosting and we are sharing soups that start with leftovers. Here's the line-up of deliciousness... Palatable Pastime shares  Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup  Sneha’s Recipe shares  Keto Almond Biscuit With Keto Chicken Pot Pie Soup   A Day in the Life on the Farm shares  Leftover Steak Teriyaki Soup   Culinary Adventures with Camilla shares  Mac’N’Cheese Minestrone   Karen’s Kitchen Stories shares  Pappa al Pomodoro (Tomato and Bread Soup) Mac’N’Cheese Minestrone On the day that titles were due - thankfully Wendy sent me a message while we were hiking - I thought about what I had in the fridge and settled on making minestrone with leftover mac'n'cheese. The night before I had taught R how to make homemade cheese sauce for pasta. Easy peasy! Mi...

Okay, I'll be honest: I shuddered a little when I saw the theme for this month's #WinePW event. Comfort food?!? I make uncomfortable food. And I'm perfectly fine with that statement. Let me explain. And, if you're interested in the post where I came to this conclusion, click here . But, in recent years, I've been faced with comfort food events and I've adapted, though I do still like to host dinners that make my guests squirm. Just a little. The Comforting Pairings Cindy of   Grape Experiences  shared  Wine and Comfort Food: Adler Fels Chardonnay and My (New)Favorite Grilled Cheese Sandwich Camilla of  Culinary Adventures with Camilla  posted her  Kick Ass Mac’N' Cheese and Kung Fu Girl Columbia Valley Riesling Lori of  Dracaena Wines  wrote about  Comfort Food with a Side of Wine Jill of  l’Occasion  is  Cookingat Home: Affordable Bordeaux & Homemade Pasta Jade of  Tasting Pour  contributed ...

The Secret Recipe Club has started a new - fifth Monday - event that blurs the lines between the groups. You can be assigned to any other participating blogger in groups A through D. Naturally, I jumped right in. Our theme this month: Tailgate Eats. I was assigned to Burnt Apple , a blog written by Traci. This is a totally new-to-me blog. Woohoo. I chuckled aloud at her story about why 'burnt' is part of her blog name. She shares: "Twelve years ago, my husband threw one of my muffin creations at the wall of our apartment and made it go right through the wall. ...I couldn’t cook to save my life. I hated cooking and we ate out at least three days a week." I love that she is an admitted master recipe manipulator, making recipes healthier and still great-tasting. That is an art! I feel I should admit that I don't tailgate. I'm not a big sports fan. But I can always get behind any gathering that involves food. So, I imagined what I would want to eat h...

I have alluded to this dairy-free gluten-free experiment that my husband is conducting - and I will go into it in more depth soon - but this week, I made a dairy free gluten-free mac'n'cheese that received all thumbs up from my boys. So I decided to share the recipe immediately. The key to this success: dairy-free cheese that actually melts. Don't laugh. The first few dairy-free cheeses that I brought home from the case at Whole Foods didn't melt. They shredded easily enough, but they never lost their shape. Ever. And, to be completely frank, they tasted strange. Dismayed, I emailed a blogging friend of mine who writes The Not So Cheesy Kitchen . "Bea," I wrote, "help!" She suggested Daiya's Cheddar-Style Shreds . While I typically never buy pre-shredded cheese, I trusted her expertise and went for it. I laughed at the package. "Melts and Stretches" bragged the label. Okay. And...it did. The Daiya shreds melted just like actua...

Everyone has a 9-11 story. Just as, depending on your age, everyone remembers where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated or where they were when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. As I wrote, everyone has a 9-11 story. Here's mine. I wrote most of this on the 10th anniversary of that life-changing day. But - at the bottom - I get to the food part, the reason I'm posting this on this blog today. Flight 77 made an indelible mark on my life. When Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, claiming nearly 200 lives, including the life of Suzanne Calley, I lost a great friend and mentor. I watched her husband, Frank Jensen, grieve. I watched my husband grieve. And I grieved myself. Jake and I were in Cabo San Lucas with friends for a week-long vacation when we began to see news footage of the Twin Towers in New York burning. Because we were in Mexico, all of the reporting was in Spanish. Later we discovered an English-speaking channel. An...