Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Friday evening. End of a busy week during the craziest time of the school year. How do you pull together an event for Food Revolution Day? You organize a potluck picnic.  Thankfully several families I know with children were game. My request: pick a color and bring an ingredient for rainbow wraps. Here's some of what we ended up with... Red: cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted peppers, salsa, strawberries, rhubarb Orange: cherry tomatoes, roasted pepper, mashed sweet potatoes, salad with mango and nasturtium Yellow: yellow summer squash, Yukon gold potato salad Green: spinach, basil, marinated artichokes, green olives, pesto, kale-wakame salad, kale salad Blue: pickled blueberries Purple: purple cabbage, kalamata olives, grapes What fun! Though I did feel a bit like I was preaching to the choir. All of these kiddos already eat real food. One funny story: one dad at the potluck told a friend's son that there would be no des...

A Food52 Potluck  on the Monterey Peninsula Story and Photos by Camilla M. Mann The etymology of ‘potluck’ falls into two camps. One camp clings to the literal compound – pot + luck – and credits its first use to Thomas Nash, a 16 th  century British writer, to mean food cooked for an unexpected or uninvited guest, as in the guest gets “the luck of the pot” or whatever the cook has on hand. Another camp claims that it’s the misspelling of the Native Americans’ potlatch. Potlatch from the Chinook, means "to give away" or "a gift;” traditional potlatch ceremonies, in the Pacific Northwest, involved the redistribution of wealth within a community and were accompanied by singing, dancing, and bartering, as well as feasting. The only thing a potluck and a potlatch have in common: it’s a meal with no particular menu. Each participant brings dishes to share with others. When I agreed to host a potluck, during the month of December, for the publishers of  Food52 ...

As the part of my  Food52  potluck fennel pollen trifecta, I stuck fairly close to the recipe that was posted by  Cara Frank :  Carrot Top Farro Soup , but swapped out the farro for barley, added some sambuca, and left out the garlic. I still hear Maria's voice in my head in my head: Non cucinare con la cipolla e l'aglio insieme. (Don't cook with onions and garlic together.) Maria is the Italian woman who taught me to cook in Rome. I almost never break her rule. 1 bunch carrots, with tops 2 C barley 12 C organic chicken broth 1 parmesan rind 5 ribs celery, chopped 1 onion, thinly sliced olive oil 1 fennel bulb, trimmed and diced 1cup   1 T   fennel pollen* 1/2 C fennel fronds, roughly chopped 3 T sambuca *Cara's original recipe called for 1 C of fennel pollen. That's almost $50 worth of fennel pollen. I suspect that she meant 1 C fennel fronds; I only had about 1/2 C, so I added in sambuca for more licorice-y goodness. ...

When I saw the post to host a Food52 Potluck during the month of December , I was excited. I love bringing people together around a central food them. But...during December?!? I should have had my head examined. Not only is our December as hectic as everyone else's, but add to that the annual Holiday Fund Drive for the non-profit that I chair, Nutcracker performances to see, Dylan's birthday, and the birthdays of four of our close friends - two of whom whose birthday cakes I always create. Needless to say, December is more than a little full. But I had committed, so I tried to squeeze it in somehow, piggybacking onto a dessert holiday party that a friend was already hosting. That didn't work. I thought of doing it at our family Christmas potluck. Then...serendipity: my mom heard about my scheduling dilemma and asked, "Can I do it?" Ummmmm...okay. My mom always hosts a Christmas party at her house for her friends - from ballroom dancing, from her ukulele cl...

One of the great things about being a food writer: learning more about artisan foodsmiths. Today I received a package from Rancho Gordo Beans , one of the sponsors for all the Food52 potlucks coming up next month . Rancho Gordo Beans grows heirloom beans in Napa. Heirloom varieties tend to have lower yields than other beans, but the payoff is in the flavor and texture. Most Rancho Gordo beans are new world crops, meaning they are indigenous to the Americas.  Originally from Colombia, these beans - Cargamanto - have been bred around the world and have become Madeira, Borlotti, Tongues of Fire, Wren's Egg and many more. While I packaged up most of these for the potluck giveaways, I kept a pound for myself to try this recipe... Pasta e Fagioli adapted from the Food Network recipe olive oil 5  cloves garlic, smashed red pepper flakes, to taste 1 T chopped fresh rosemary 1/4 C cubed pancetta 5 canned whole San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand 1 C dried cranb...

Every year, for the past five years, we've headed to the not-too-distant wilderness for an annual Halloween camping trip. Sugar-Nazi that I am - notice the witch costume which isn't too far from the truth most days of the year! - this camping trip is a way to ensure that my kids get to enjoy Halloween festivities such as trick-or-treating (just the sites for the families who have joined us) but we aren't bombarded with a bunch of stuff we aren't going to eat. We have a pumpkin carving contest, we potluck, we trick-or-treat, we camp, and we have a blast. We all bring appetizers, whatever we want to toss on the grill, and shared potluck dishes for an evening feast. I won't tip my witch's hat before the trip, but I'm excited about the dishes I've picked as my contributions this year. Last year I brought a pumpkin soup, some pumpkin-shaped cheese balls, and pumpkin-ginger truffles . But my favorite dish was a Pumpkin Pâté. Pumpkin Pâté 2 C pumpkin puree...