Culinary Adventures with Camilla

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Nuts.com.  Complimentary product was provided for this post and this page may contain affiliate links.  However, all opinions expressed here are my own. I found myself reading, taking notes, but not heading to the kitchen to post any inspired recipes for the entire final quarter of 2021. But I'm catching up now. So, let's start with  Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America  by Amy Butcher. On the Page In this poignant, heart-wrenching memoir, essayist Amy Butcher narrates her unlikely adventure on the loneliest road in America with this country's lone female ice trucker. The late Joy 'Mothertrucker' Wiebe was effervescent and inspiring. Through Butcher's recounting, we see her exploration and conversations with Joy about issues including Indigenous rights, religious beliefs, hypocrisy, and even environmental challenges. I read this book in just two sittings. A word of warning: if you are tri...

Years ago - wow! almost a decade ago now - some of my best friends and I went to an event at a local wine tasting room to celebrate my 39th birthday.  We met the Queen of Quince, Barbara Ghazarian, feasted on some Armenian food, learned to roll Yalanchi Sarma , stuffed grapped leaves, and we picked up signed and personalized copies of her cookbooks.  "Happy quincing," she wrote. It was a great way to ring in my 39th year. And, whenever I see quince in the markets, I usually shriek in glee and scoop up as many as I can without looking like a fruit hoarders. Okay, sometimes I don't care about looking like a fruit hoarder and just buy it all and set to quincing, yes, it's a verb: to quince! Barbara Ghazarian writes in Simply Quince* , "the old-fashioned, long simmer method on the stove top is the only process that develops the characteristic caramel color and full-bodied flavor of the fruit." I have found that to be the case, so almost all of my quince experien...