Culinary Adventures with Camilla

After last month's assignment of Friendsgiving  - that I couldn't get through - I was not excited about the pick for this month's Food'n'Flix . Holiday movies can either go very wrong or very right for me. But after I read Eliot's Eats' invitation for The Family Stone  -  and after my kids made me watch Home Alone and Home Alone 2 -  I eagerly started streaming this month's Food'N'Flix pick online.  You still have half a month to join the fun, if you're inclined. Spoiler alert: this landed in the 'love' holiday movie category for me. I will happily add this to my annual watch list! On the Screen The Family Stone  invites you in to the eponymous family's holiday gathering. Adult children Amy (Rachel McAdams), Everett (Dermot Mulroney), Ben (Luke Wilson), Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser), and Thad (Tyrone Giordano) come home to celebrate Christmas with their parents Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson). Okay, with that line-u...

This month the  Food'N'Flix  bloggers are watching  Friendsgiving . Our group's founder - Heather of All Roads Lead to the Kitchen - is on the roster for hosting, but I haven't seen her official invitation. And I'll just start with this: I couldn't get through this movie. I didn't watch more than about fifteen minutes before I turned it off and moved on to something else. It's just not my cup of tea.  I found it painfully unfunny with a dragging pace and one uncomfortable moment after another. As I said, I didn't make it through, but it did inspire me to make mote pillo , an Ecuadorian breakfast dish that Jeff makes for Molly. I had never heard of this dish, but it looked filling and delicious. It was! I researched and discovered that this is a traditional  hominy dish from the highlands region of Ecuador with the entire province of Azuay claiming it as their specialty. It is traditionally served with slices of queso fresco and black coffee. I serv...

This month I am hosting the Food'N'Flix group and I invited them to watch Only You . You can read my invitation here . Here's what the bloggers shared... Pasta Debra of Eliot's Eats offered a Roman Pasta and Only You , sharing, "This was a new film for me, even though it would have been a film the girlfriends and I would have sought out in 1994.   I loved the vintage wedding photos during the opening.  That set up the plot well.   This is the October film so the Ouija board, candles  and fortune tellers help set a seasonal vibe." Her Bucatini all’Amatriciana looked amazing and was something that I made often when I lived in Rome.  Pizza Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm made White Clam Pizza . Her synopsis of the movie reminded me of how much travel has changed since 9-11: "What ensues is a fun escapade through airports, onto planes and into Italy.  You could tell that this film was definitely pre 9-11.  There were no security stops and...

This month, October 2021, I am hosting  Food'N'Flix , the movie-watching, food-making group rallied by Heather of  All Roads Lead to the Kitchen . So to kick off the last quarter of the year, I chose  Only You* . I guess I should specify that I am referring to the 1994  Only You... not the 2018 one that I didn't know existed anyway. I know this is not a festive, Halloween flick that includes witches or monsters, but it is one of my favorite rom-coms and my family and I were just talking about the Marisa Tomei-Robert Downey, Jr. connection. The boys only know those actors as Aunt May and Tony Stark from the Marvel movies...but I told them that that pairing goes waaaayyy back. So, we popped it in. And, then, Jake said I should host it for Food'N'Flix. Done. This movie begins in Pittsburgh and then the characters traipse throughout Italy from Venice to Rome and down the Amalfi Coast. After watching it again there's not a ton of food. I mean, you see them at several...

  This month the Food'N'Flix bloggers are watching Words on Bathroom Walls . Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm is hosting. You can read her invitation  here . And I highly recommend this movie. It was completely new to me. On the Screen from imdb I already mentioned that I had never heard of this movie. So, I sat down to watch it when I saw Wendy's invitation. Then I recommended it to my older son who is still home as he prepares to leave for college. Then I watched it with my husband because I was curious about his thoughts. Everyone thought it was well-done with an important message about mental health. Adam Petrazelli is a teenager who is diagnosed with a schizophrenia. He narrates, "Paranoid schizophrenia. Never goes away. Never normal. The end." He also jokes that he's part of an elite club, namely the 'treatment resistant.' He is an accomplished cook and aspiring chef; and he has been accepted to culinary school but he needs his high scho...

This month Elizabeth at Literature and Limes is hosting the Food'N'Flix group as we watch Moonrise Kingdom .* You can read her invitation here . I had never heard of the movie, but was eager to jump in. I picked up the DVD at the library and we all nestled in to watch. Then we realized that it was directed by Wes Anderson and promptly went on a deep dive down the Wes Anderson rabbit hole. After Moonrise Kingdom , we pulled out Fantastic Mr. Fox , we streamed  Isle of Dogs , and we also sat down to watch The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Rushmore  which were all available at the library. So, after our Wes Anderson exploration, I can say that his movies are eccentric, distinctive, and each frame could be printed and hung up in an artsy coffeehouse. The pacing and dialogue is understated and the soundtracks are ethereal. This is a sweet coming-of-age story where Sam and Suzy run away from home on their tiny island off the coast of New England. They had been pl...

When I saw the July Food'N'Flix invitation from Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures , I hesitated. JAWS.*  Really? Okay. Unfortunately, it wasn't available at our library until August 2nd...and this was the July assignment. So, I ordered it on Amazon and streamed it one evening last week.  Food'N'Flix is a monthly online event when we are assigned a movie and, hopefully, are moved into the kitchen to make something inspired by the movie. I had no idea how much fun we would have with this movie given that, well, the only food I anticipated seeing were the people who were victims of the man-eating shark! You can read Amy's invitation - and see her amazing shark cake - here . On the Screen from imdb.com I am pretty sure that I watched this movie one summer when my older cousins were trying to scare us. But that was in the early 80s, I think, and I don't remember much about it at all. And I certainly didn't remember that it was a 4th of July movie. I mean, ...

I was shocked to discover that I have never blogged my berry pie recipe. Shocked! Because it's something that I make every summer...and multiple times throughout the summer. And I was even more surprised to discover that summer berries weren't yet at the markets in beautiful, overflowing containers. There were some, but they were ridiculously pricey. Frozen berries to the rescue; they work just as well.   I had some fun with natural food dyes and cranked out a JAWS-inspired design. My best friend's older son said, "Aunt Cam, that shark needs braces." True enough. Ingredients makes one 9-inch pie Crust 2 cups flour + more for rolling 1/2 cup organic powdered sugar 3/4 cup butter 2 Tablespoons vodka 2 Tablespoons cold water Also needed: parchment paper; rolling pin; pie pan; food dye, if making a colored design Filling 2 pounds frozen berries (I used a mixture of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries) 3/4 cup organic granulated sugar freshly squeezed lemon juic...

  This month, June 2021, I am hosting  Food'N'Flix , the movie-watching, food-making group rallied by Heather of  All Roads Lead to the Kitchen . So to kick off the summer months, I chose  The Pickle Recipe* . Pickles are a great way to preserve summer's produce and I, for one, can never have enough pickle recipes. The movie is available on Amazon prime for free. So, I hope everyone can access it. Or crash a friend's house who has Prime over the next few weeks. The movie's worth it! Foods and Family The Pickle Recipe is a heartwarming family comedy where the recipe is really just a metaphor for life: People in our lives are the ingredients that make us who we are.  This is particularly poignant for me as we just spent the weekend with Jake's family to celebrate his grandmother's life. Far removed from his immediate and extended family, those influences aren't always apparent. But this trip, the boys commented about how "Daddy and Uncle Isaac have t...

  Today, I am sharing a recipe inspired by the movie Bottle Shock because  this month's  Food'N'Flix  is being hosted by Debra at  Eliot's Eats .  And her choice - and our assignment this month is -  Bottle Shock.  Read her announcement:  here . I have seen several movies about California wines and they have been hit and miss for me. I don't know if I'm more critical of how movie makers portray my home state, but I'm about fifty-fifty on whether or not I enjoy a movie about wines set here. For example, I despised  Sideways  and found  Wine Country  surprisingly serious (read my post  A Surprisingly Somber Chick Flick + a Quintessential NapaValley Floor Cab ); but I adored  A Walk In the Clouds  and made  Charred Grapes on a Cloud  for a #FoodNFlix post several years back. And  Bottle Shock  falls into the 'love' category.  I watched Bottle Shock  when it first came out in 2008 a...