Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Twenty-one years of cheesecakes. If you have been following my blog for awhile, you probably know that I didn't have traditional wedding cake. Instead I opted to have a local-to-me baker make seven different cheesecakes for our reception. So, I've been celebrating our anniversary each year with cheesecake. This year was no different. But this might be the first year that I was able to find a photo of our cheesecake table.   And photos of us cutting the cakes. We look like babies!  This cheesecake is a little like marriage: there are some compromises. My husband likes  Plain and White Cheesecake . I like to shake things up, as evidenced by my  Matcha-Yuzu Cheesecake with a Meyer Lemon Gelée   or my  Lemongrass-Ginger Cheesecake.  But, I've figured out that I can make a fairly plain cheesecake that makes him happy - such as my  Honey-Lemon Cheesecake  - and I can add something zingy that makes me happy. See! Compromise. That give and take is th...

This month our group's founder - Heather of of  All Roads Lead to the Kitchen  - is hosting the Food'n'Flix bloggers as we watch  Chocolat  to celebrate the group's 10th anniversary. You can read her invitation  here . If you don't have a DVD copy of it lying around, Amazon has it available for streaming. And for my online Lit Happens book group, Heather is also leading our discussion as we read the book by Joanne Harris* that inspired the movie! So, if you watch and read, we'd all love to hear a comparison. As for me, I (re)watched the movie this past weekend and started the book this week. A Decade of Food'N'Flix Ten years of Food'N'Flix? Wow. I looked back to see when I joined. It definitely wasn't in 2010, but I think I was participating fairly regularly by 2012. This is a fun, inspiring group and I enjoy that it gets to me watch movie that I might not select on my own. Here's a smattering of my posts throughout the yea...

On Wednesday, Jake and I were celebrating two decades of marriage. And while we normally wouldn't have gone out for dinner anyway, I wanted to make a special dessert as we sheltered in place for our 20th wedding anniversary. I don't know about where you live, but people have been making a run on flour and eggs here on California's central coast. Seriously. I keep asking myself, "Did people decide they were going to teach themselves how to bake during this ordeal, or what?!?" Thankfully, Pia gave me a bag of flour and Lin gave me eggs. That's the perfect anniversary presents for a sheltered-in-place baker by the way! So, I started looking at cake recipes and was intrigued by the London Fog cake recipes I stumbled across. Basicially that's an Earl Grey chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. It sounded divine. But I decided to use the Celebration Tea I had on the shelf from The Republic of Tea  instead of Earl Grey. And I added brewed tea to m...

Years ago, a friend asked if I had ever been to  Café Maddalena in Dunsmuir. Nope. I filed it away as a 'must try' if we ever came close. And, last night, we were only six miles away; well, truth be told, I booked our hotel for this leg of the trip based on going to this restaurant! When we rolled into town, I called, made a reservation for dinner, loaded up the boys back up in the car, and headed out in the pouring rain. I'm so glad we did...you know it's going to be good when they have a display of Edible s at the front door!! I always love seeing the waitstaff's dubiousness about two kids in their restaurant dissolve as soon as my boys open their mouths. "Mom, they have tripe! I have to try the tripe," gushed R, when he saw the Special board. Back, when he was in 5th grade, and they were studying the human body, his teacher - our beloved Mr. Spedding! - brought a cleaned cow's stomach, and they cooked and ate tripe. It's been o...