Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Last month, for the  Foodie Reads Challenge , I posted about Everything We Keep . I liked it so much, I dove into the sequel. Sadly, I wasn't as enamored with Everything We Left Behind  by Kerry Lonsdale* .  But, still, I'm sharing b ecause there were a few passages that had me longing for a steak! On the Page If you haven't read  Everything We Keep , the plot of this book won't make much sense. And, if you have read Everything We Keep , this book won't make much sense in that I almost doubted it was written by the same author. Really. It was that different. On the other hand, maybe this was a wildly successful book. Everything We Left Behind  is the story of the aftermath when James comes out of his fugue state; he is also the narrator whereas the first novel was narrated by Aimee. I could put myself in her shoes easily. My major hang-ups: James was tempermental and adolescent and finds consolation in the arms of his dead wife's sister. Sorr...

This round Simona, at Briciole , selected Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens by Andrew Beahrs   for our February-March  Cook the Books   project. I thoroughly enjoyed this book which was rooted in the past - with the food history - and the present - with the writer's own kitchen trials. If you like reading about food, give this tome a try. I really had no clue that Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens was such a champion of American foods; while others were lauding the sophistication of European cuisines, he longed for some down-home cookin'. Here is Twain’s “little bill of fare,” in full, from A Tramp Abroad, 1880. About eighty different American foods that he wanted as soon as he repatriated... Radishes. Baked apples with cream. Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Porter-house steak. Fried chicken, Southern style. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken...