Culinary Adventures with Camilla

After I sent the photo below to R at school, when he came home for Easter, he asked for an encore croquembouche. Done! But first: Why Croquembouche? Well, because we were assigned Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot  by Rebecca Rosenberg in one of my online book groups Lit Happen. Thanks to Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for the impetus to pick up the book; I have been meaning to read it, but this was just the shove I needed! And, serendipitously, we had just had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on our twenty-second wedding anniversary. Champagne Widows In  Champagne Widows Rosenberg interwines history and imagination to tell the tale of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot who builds a winemaking empire despite the on-going Napoleonic wars. Barbe-Nicole inherits Le Nez, literally 'the nose', which gives her an uncanny sense of smell. In addition to everything that we can smell, she can smell emotions and intentions; and she can smell the nuances in the grapes that a...

   This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of author Peter Zheutlin and publisher Pegasus books. I received a complimentary copy for the purpose of review, through The Book Club Cookbook's Galley Match program,  but all opinions are honest and they are my own.  No additional compensation for this post was provided; this page may contain affiliate links. Late last year, I received an email from a contact in the book world, asking me to give an opinion on the cover art for her husband's upcoming historical fiction. There were two mock-ups and I only knew this about the book: "A reimagination of the author’s great grandaunt’s ‘round the world bicycle trip in 1894-5. She was a married Jewish mother of three small children who set out to settle a wager about whether a woman could accomplish such a feat, beginning penniless, and returning home having earned $5,000 en route."  She asked, "Which cover would you choose and why?" I offered that I would chose ...

This shelter-in-place order has my reading patterns swinging from one extreme to the other. On one hand, early on, I couldn't focus on finishing a book. For the entire first month of staying at home, I barely read more than five pages in a sitting. Then, after the first month, I started feeling a little more normal and started going through the book pile on my nightstand. With our libraries being closed, buying physical books from Amazon was getting ridiculously pricey. So, I bit the bullet and ordered a device on which I could read ebooks.  I finished the first book in just two days and have been steadily reading since I got it. One thing: Jake loves that I can read in bed without having a light on. So, I guess the e-reader was a good investment. In preparation for my June French exploration of pages and pours, I read The Paris Architect  by Charles Belfoure.* On the Page We meet Lucien Bernard who is a French architect living in Nazi-occupied Paris. And, from ...

This has been on my bookshelf for years. And since we've been sheltered in place, I have had a tough time finding a book that grabbed me or, at least, held my interest long enough for me to finish it! This book - The Atomic City Girls  by Janet Beard* - was the first book I've finished in weeks! That's a rarity for me. I can usually breeze through a book or two every week. But these are not normal times, I suppose. On the Page Historical fiction is usually my genre of choice though WWII hasn't been my era of choice. Though I have certainly read more in that epoch in recent months such as  The Winemaker's Wife   and At the Wolf's Table ; and I do have Hannah's War  on my nightstand as well. This is a novel - set in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - about the "girls" who are unwittingly helping in the calibration and production of the atomic bomb. They are technically women, but just barely eighteen years old; and they are unwittingly helping becau...

I have long been a fan of Isabel Allende since I read The House of the Spirits when I was in high school. But her recent works weren't on my radar until one of my best friends suggest The Japanese Lover*  for our Lit Happens book group. On the Page This is a beautifully written story of love. Love attained. Love lost. And everything in between. Since historical fiction is always my genre of choice, I devoured this book. At the center of the tapestry is Alma Belasco, a wealthy widow who has recently taken up residence at Lark House, a retirement home of sorts, and Irina Bazili, a employee at Lark House who takes care of Alma. And, though those are the two main threads, there are dozens of interwoven stories with characters from both those women's lives. We learn that Alma was a Polish Jew whose parents sent her to live with American relatives, the Belascos, in San Francisco. It's revealed that Irina, whose identity was carefully crafted to hide her from her past,...