Friday Favorites from Simply Delicious, Half Baked Harvest, Fox and Briar and More

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Good morning! How was your week, I hope it was great. Do you have any plans for the weekend? My sister and brother-in-law arrived yesterday to spend the weekend with us and we are headed off on an adventure today with my mother-in-law. Whatever your plans I hope that you have a wonderful weekend.

Food

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It is almost cool enough for a big steaming bowl of soup and this Potato Leek Soup from Simply Delicious looks perfect.

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This Cauliflower Mash with Meatballs and Gravy looks like a big bowl of comfort.

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Doesn’t this Autumn Apple Harvest Granola from Half Baked Harvest look delicious? I would eat this as a snack instead of for breakfast.

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I could eat this whole tray of Soft Beer Pretzels and Cheese Dip from Fox and Briar. I think they would make a great game day snack.

Bake Pumpkin Donuts

I have never made pumpkin donuts but this Baked Pumpkin Donut Recipe from Baker by Nature. 

Interesting Articles

Oprah’s Book Club is Coming to Apple TV and is kicking off with The Water Dancer.  

This Website Turns Your Pets Photos into a Bespoke Painting.

Learn from the Best, Zoe Bakes and Joy the Baker are joining forces to teach a workshop on Puff Pastry! If you live in New Orleans click here for information.

 5 Reasons My 90 Year Old Grandmother Smiled on Her Deathbed.

8 Things to do on Sunday Night That Will Help You Have A Better Week

25 Famous Women on Becoming Famous Later in Life

The Words People Can’t Spell

Hacking Instagram in the Name of Classic Literature

Books

Rules for Visiting

At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she’s turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm’s length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own?

RULES FOR VISITING is a woman’s exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way—afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends’ perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones. 

Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story—and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.

Table Comes First by Adam Gopnik

Never before have we cared so much about food. It preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, and even our moralizing—“You still eat meat?” With our top chefs as deities and finest restaurants as places of pilgrimage, we have made food the stuff of secular seeking and transcendence, finding heaven in a mouthful. But have we come any closer to discovering the true meaning of food in our lives?

With inimitable charm and learning, Adam Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of that meaning as he charts America’s recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic, compulsive gastronomes. It is a journey that begins in eighteenth-century France—the birthplace of our modern tastes (and, by no coincidence, of the restaurant)—and carries us to the kitchens of the White House, the molecular meccas of Barcelona, and beyond. To understand why so many of us apparently live to eat, Gopnik delves into the most burning questions of our time, including: Should a Manhattanite bother to find chicken killed in the Bronx? Is a great vintage really any better than a good bottle of wine? And: Why does dessert matter so much?

Throughout, he reminds us of a time-honored truth often lost amid our newfound gastronomic pieties and certitudes: What goes on the table has never mattered as much to our lives as what goes on around the table—the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart; conversation across the simplest or grandest board. This, ultimately, is who we are.

Following in the footsteps of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Adam Gopnik gently satirizes the entire human comedy of the comestible as he surveys the wide world of taste that we have lately made our home. The Table Comes First is the delightful beginning of a new conversation about the way we eat now.

Downton Abbey Cookbook

The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook presents over 100 recipes that showcase the cookery and customs of the Crawley household—from upstairs dinner party centerpieces to downstairs puddings and pies—and bring an authentic slice of Downton Abbey to modern kitchens and Downton fans. 

Whether adapted from original recipes of the period, replicated as seen or alluded to on screen, or typical of the time, all the recipes reflect the influences found on the Downton Abbey tables. Food historian Annie Gray gives a rich and fascinating insight into the background of the dishes that were popular between 1912 and 1926, when Downton Abbey is set —a period of tremendous change and conflict, as well as culinary development.

With a foreword by Gareth Neame, executive producer and co-creator of Downton Abbey, and featuring over 100 stunning color photographs, The Downton Abbey Cookbook also includes a special section on hosting Downton-themed dinner parties and presents stills from across the TV series as well as the latest film. Notes on the etiquette and customs of the times, quotes from the characters, and descriptions of the scenes in which the foods appear provide vivid context for the dishes.

The recipes are grouped by occasion, which include breakfast; luncheons and suppers; afternoon tea and garden parties; picnics, shoots and race meets; festivities; upstairs dinner; downstairs dinner; downstairs supper and tea; and the still room.

Finds 

Blue shirt with plaid accents. 

Cashmere Wrap Sweater

Snowmen Plates

Snowman Towels

That’s it for this week. I hope that you found something you enjoyed, as always I hope that you share your favorite recipes, books, and more with us. 

Have a great day.