Friday Favorites from Carlsbad Cravings, Sugar & Soul, Wild, Wild, Whisk, Drizzle & Dip and More

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Good morning to you! I hope that you had a wonderful, 4th of July celebration. Mine was great, we hosted a BBQ, ate a lot, laughed a lot and enjoyed the fireworks as well. Today we are headed to the beach. 

I hope that you enjoy my favorite finds from this week. 

Favorite Food

Image Drizzle & Dip

I can’t wait to make this Tequila, Lime and Honey Chicken from Drizzle & Dip.

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This Spicy Frito Corn Saladwould be great for a weekend celebration. 

Image Carlsbad Cravings

As would this Avocado Corn Salsa from Carlsbad Cravings. 

Image Wild Wild Whisk

Instead of traditional strawberry shortcake why not make Fresh Peach Shortcakes from Wild, Wild, Whisk.

Sangria Slushie from Sugar & Soul

Favorite Articles

You are Doing Something Important When You Do Nothing At All

The Power of One Push up

Why is blue cheese blue?

Book lovers you will love this list of Books for the Ages.

Favorite Books

These are the books I am reading this week. 

Rembrant’s Shadow

Sylvie Rosenberg escaped the holocaust—but can she escape the past?

Angela Martino is haunted by events from her childhood and struggles to resolve her guilt.

Can these two women from different generations reconcile their own turmoil—or pay the price of an even greater loss?

October 20, 1942. Benjamin Katz and his frightened family stand at the train station in occupied Holland, unsure if they would be taken to their freedom—or the death camp. Sylvie, his granddaughter, who was six years old at the time, would later recall the madness as they wondered if their desperate last minute escape would work. When the German officer received the order to allow the escape he said, “I would have much rather been given the order to kill all of you.”

Their entire art collection had long made them a prime target of Adolf Hitler and his greedy henchmen. Now they had one big trade—a Rembrandt in exchange for twenty-five lives.

Based on a true story, Rembrandt’s Shadow is the story of two women from different generations—each with their own distinct horrific memories—who find themselves at odds when forced to confront the here and now.

The Lost Letter

Austria, 1938. Kristoff is a young apprentice to a master Jewish stamp engraver. When his teacher disappears during Kristallnacht, Kristoff is forced to engrave stamps for the Germans, and simultaneously works alongside Elena, his beloved teacher’s fiery daughter, and with the Austrian resistance to send underground messages and forge papers. As he falls for Elena amidst the brutal chaos of war, Kristoff must find a way to save her, and himself.

Los Angeles, 1989. Katie Nelson is going through a divorce and while cleaning out her house and life in the aftermath, she comes across the stamp collection of her father, who recently went into a nursing home. When an appraiser, Benjamin, discovers an unusual World War II-era Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter as he goes through her dad’s collection, Katie and Benjamin are sent on a journey together that will uncover a story of passion and tragedy spanning decades and continents, behind the just fallen Berlin Wall.

A romantic, poignant and addictive novel, The Lost Letter shows the lasting power of love.

The Sworn Virgin

Dukes’s gripping historical novel tells the tale of a desperate Albanian woman who will do whatever it takes to keep her independence and seize control of her future…even if it means swearing to remain a virgin for her entire life.

When eighteen-year-old Eleanora’s father is shot dead on the cobblestone streets of 1910 Albania, Eleanora must abandon her dream of studying art in Italy as she struggles to survive in a remote mountain village with her stepmother Meria.

Nearing starvation, Meria secretly sells Eleanora into marriage with the cruel heir of a powerful clan. Intent on keeping her freedom, Eleanora takes an oath to remain a virgin for the rest of her life—a tradition that gives her the right to live as a man: she is now head of her household and can work for a living as well as carry a gun. Eleanora can also participate in the vengeful blood feuds that consume the mountain tribes, but she may not be killed—unless she forsakes her vow, which she has no intention of ever doing.

But when an injured stranger stumbles into her life, Eleanora nurses him back to health, saving his life—yet risking her own as she falls in love with him…

The Firth Avenue Artists Society

The Bronx, 1891. Virginia Loftin, the boldest of four artistic sisters in a family living in genteel poverty, knows what she wants most: to become a celebrated novelist despite her gender, and to marry Charlie, the boy next door and her first love.

When Charlie proposes instead to a woman from a wealthy family, Ginny is devastated; shutting out her family, she holes up and turns their story into fiction, obsessively rewriting a better ending. Though she works with newfound intensity, literary success eludes her—until she attends a salon hosted in her brother’s writer friend John Hopper’s Fifth Avenue mansion. Among painters, musicians, actors, and writers, Ginny returns to herself, even blooming under the handsome, enigmatic John’s increasingly romantic attentions.

Just as she and her siblings have become swept up in the society, though, Charlie throws himself back into her path, and Ginny learns that the salon’s bright lights may be obscuring some dark shadows. Torn between two worlds that aren’t quite as she’d imagined them, Ginny will realize how high the stakes are for her family, her writing, and her chance at love.

Home Safe

In this novel, beloved bestselling author Elizabeth Berg weaves a beautifully written and richly resonant story of a mother and daughter in emotional transit. Helen Ames–recently widowed, coping with loss and grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her–is beginning to depend far too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Tessa, and is meddling in her life, offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice. Helen’s problems are compounded by her shocking discovery that her mild-mannered and loyal husband was apparently leading a double life. The Ameses had painstakingly saved for a happy retirement, but that money disappeared in several large withdrawals made by Helen’s husband before he died. In order to support herself and garner a measure of much needed independence, Helen takes an unusual job that ends up offering far more than she had anticipated. And then a phone call from a stranger sets Helen on a surprising path of discovery that causes both mother and daughter to reassess what they thought they knew about each other, themselves, and what really makes a home and a family.

Favorite Finds

I love this seersucker dress from J-Crew.

And this jumpsuit.

Cute t-shirt.

That’s it for this week, I hope that you share your recipes, books, podcasts and more. Have a great weekend and be safe.