Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Welcome to the  Foodie Extravaganza !  v. January 2017 = Our Very Own Virtual Popcorn Stand Foodie Extravaganza is where we celebrate obscure food holidays or cook and bake together with the same ingredient or theme each month. This month we celebrate National Popcorn Day (which is January 19th) by serving up popcorn as creatively as we can. I'm hosting and here's the challenge I shared with the crew... "National Popcorn Day is celebrated annually January 19th. It can be sweet, savory, buttered, plain, and even shaped into balls. “Corn,” the word, in England, simply referred to grain. With maize being the prominent grain the Americas, “corn” really did refer to corn! As early as the 1700s, popcorn was used in headdresses worn during Aztec ceremonies honoring Tlaloc, their god of maize and fertility. Early Spanish explorers were fascinated by the corn that, when heated, burst into a little white flower. Today, Americans consume 13 billion quarts...

Earlier this week I headed over to our local library where they have a Teen Chef program. My task: stay within a $25 budget (or donate materials) and create a healthy snack that teens could make while watching a movie...without a stove or microwave. Oh, and "sometimes they just drop in, so there's no real presentation time." Challenge accepted. I've always wanted to host a popcorn bar. Done! I did create some flyers with a little bit of history and information. One of the teens asked, "Do I have to take a flyer or can I just have the popcorn?" Take the flyer. This is a library. You need to read! You might learn something. (Yes, I really did say that...in case you're wondering.) What makes popcorn “pop”? The secret is in the kernel. Popcorn comes from a particular kind of maize that produces small kernels with a hard outer shell. These kernels are inedible as is. To get to the soft, edible part, you have to heat the kernel to the po...

 As we launch into cooking our way through Jackie Alpers' Sprinkles! Recipes and Ideas for Rainbowlicious Desserts , I thought we'd start with something a little less sugary. Or so I thought. At least it has a savory base: popcorn. Here's our Hollywood Stars Party Popcorn, slightly adapted from Sprinkles! As Reluctant Kitchen Elf is our resident popcorn maker, I put him to work. He popped us two bowls' full of corn. One bowl was for the recipe; the other bowl was for if the recipe wasn't a hit. Thank goodness for Bowl B. While the popcorn popped, Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf looked at all of the sprinkles we'd gotten on sale this evening. Cupcake gems in gold and silver, rainbow stars, dots, and more. Honestly, I didn't pay that much attention to them. But he carefully compared the photo in the cookbook to our options and selected three different jars. 5 C popped corn 1/2 C white chocolate chips 1 T butter silver cupcake gems rainbow star quin...

You know your kids are foodies-in-training when you hear them swapping popcorn recipes with their buddies. So, Nonna lent us her air-popper and Riley went to town. Family Friday Movie Night just got a lot more delicious. Step One : Measure out the kernels, as directed by your machine... Step Two : Wait and watch... Step Three : Toss with melted butter. Riley went with a traditional popcorn tonight. Plain ol' butter. His friend said we should try worcestershire sauce plus onion powder. But we didn't have either of those. Next time. Do you have a Friday night movie tradition in your household? What did you watch tonight?! We rented Oz the Great and Powerful .

This is week two of the brand-new Food Matters Project , the brainchild of Sarah of 20somethingcupcakes and Kate from Cookie + Kate . When I read the mission - cooking through The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman who espouses eating more plants, fewer animal products and processed foods, and the positive impact of those choices on us and our planet - I was in. Each week we will all - here's the ' we ', just over a dozen fellow foodie bloggers - cook the same recipe, posting our interpretations and adaptations. This week we were assigned Mark's Seasoned Popcorn Recipe. [Recipe is below.*] Click here for the line-up of recipes. Given that I don't own a microwave, I went with option number one and used olive oil at a lower temperature. It reminded me of those "magical foil" popcorn poppers from when we were kids - okay, maybe from when I was a kid as I know there are bloggers in their 20s on here! - Jiffy Pop, or something like that. With each po...