Culinary Adventures with Camilla

This month I am hosting the #MoviesandMunchies group as we watch  Letters to Juliet . You can read my invitation  here   which includes a brief plot summary. It's really not that much more complicated than that, but it is enjoyable. At least I found it enjoyable! You can read the Risotto all'Amarone that I have already shared this month. Stay tuned for more. I always find movies set in Italy a culinary inspiration. from imdb.com There is a scene in the kitchen of Victor's soon-to-open restaurant when he gushes that he has reinvented the noodle. He keep breaking off pieces and making Sophie taste his "inventions." Ha. The ridiculousness of a person reinventing the noodle stuck with me. I mean, I have a hard time believing that Italian nonne haven't made every possible iteration of a noodle. So, I am just going to share my favorite standard: hand-rolled noodles. I do switch it up by the kind of salt that I use, but why change something that is already fabulous...

  This is the summer of homemade cooking adventures. Well, homemade cooking adventures are  pretty typical of our household. But this summer I am being more deliberate about what I am cooking with R and D. I decided that I wanted to make homemade pasta with them this week. Here's how the conversation went... C: This is a skill you should have, boysies. D: Seriously, Mom. We can buy a bag of pasta at Trader Joe's for a dollar. C: Well, you should make it at least once. R: Exactly once. They were still good sports, rolled up their sleeves, and washed their hands. A quick note: I initially called this 'penne' but my friend who is from Italy and owns a local Italian restaurant saw my photos and said it was 'garganelli.'  I pulled our my encyclopaedia of pasta and learned the differences between penne and garganelli. While both are tube-shaped with diagonal ends, penne is extruded and garganelli is rolled; that difference results in no seam for the former and a...

Limoncello is one of those sips that instantly transports you back to where you first tasted it. In my case: sitting on the beach on the Amalfi coast with Jake during a three week trip to Italy just before we got pregnant with R. It reminds me of sunshine, sand, and a carefree time in our lives. Each time I make it, it's a delicious remembrance that one of these days we'll be kidfree and carefree again. Sooner than we think, actually. Well, maybe not the carefree part - that's a luxury of the young and  naïve - but both of our boys will be launched at the end of the summer. And I will certainly lift a glass in celebration that we did it: We raised two boys who have grown up to be good young men who will make the world a better place! But this is about limoncello... This particular batch was inspired by a lemon event at a local organic farm where we tasted three kinds of limoncello - one regular, one limoncello cream, and one with lavender. I picked a ton of lemons at the fa...

 This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of authors  Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen  and publisher St. Martin's Press.  I received a complimentary book for the purpose of review, but all opinions are honest and they are my own. No additional compensation for this post was provided; this page may contain affiliate links. This week I am excited to be taking part in a virtual book release party for  You Are Not Alone  by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen* hosted by The Book Club Cookbook. The hardcover book was released last year, but it coming out in paperback this week. I received an advance copy to enjoy and be inspired into the kitchen to create a dish. You can see  the party page ! You may also search for the hashtag #YouAreNotAloneParty on social media to find the posts. But to make it easy, I'm also linking to my fellow bloggers'; I will add their direct posts once everyone is live. Please take a look... The  #YouAr...

Near the beginning of our shelter-in-place orders, a friend posed the question on social media: "So, vanilla is the new toilet paper?!? Why is this flying off the shelves AND ridiculously overpriced?" I decided to make my own since I had a bunch of vanilla beans from a previous project or event. And when it was finished, I delivered a bottle to my friend. Homemade vanilla extract only requires two ingredients: vanilla beans and vodka. Oh, and a lot of patience. This batch infused for four months, but the longer you let it steep, the better. I did a batch previously that sat for eight months. I have read that you can begin to use it after as little as 8 weeks, but it didn't have that deep mahogany color that I like nor the heady scent of vanilla. Ingredients makes approximately 750 ml, but the rule of thumb is 5 to 6 vanilla beans per 250 ml vodka. So adjust as needed. 15 to 18 vanilla beans 750 ml vodka jar with a tight seal Procedure Using a sharp pari...

One of my online reading groups was talking about favorite Christmas books and I mentioned Holidays on Ice  by David Sedaris*. I had read it years ago and remember really enjoying it. So, I put in the request at the library and was excited to go pick it up. On the Page Holidays on Ice is a short compilation of holiday-centric stories. I don't know if my sense of humor has changed (as in diminished to the point of non-existence) or if I just have less patience as a reader. But I couldn't even get through it this time...and it's a fairly thin book. "Santaland Diaries" is the first story in the collection and I did enjoy that again; but after that, each piece grew progressively darker and less funny in my opinion. Before Sedaris became a humorist, he spent two seasons working in a department store as one of Santa's elves. He was known as 'Crumpet'. Sedaris has a way with words, to be sure. Case in point... "I have spent the last sev...