Friday Favorites from The Foodess, The Cozy Kitchen and More

Good morning! How is your week? How is your stress level with the pandemic? Are you taking precautions? Frankly, I am thankful that my husbands’ company has restricted all travel and that my nieces’ university has closed for a few weeks; I am a worrier and I do not want to have to worry about them. There is so much uncertainty and I think until we know more we need to be extra cautious. Be vigilant about washing your hands, stay home if you don’t feel well, don’t go into large groups, sanitize your phone, door knobs, steering wheel, etc. And last but not least, don’t panic. 

Here are my finds for the week, I hope that you find something you like. 

Food 

Smash Burger from The Cozy Kitchen

The Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich from Mon Petit Four

Creamy One Pot Pasta from The Foodess

Italian Chopped Salad from Cookie & Kate

Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie fromThe Surban Soapbox

No Bake Chocolate Refrigerator Cake from Sugar Salt Magic

Articles 

The Best Lodges in Our National Parks

Childhood Toy and Games Can Help You De-stress

10 Things Successful Women Do Differently

The World’s Oldest Department Store

The Musee d’ Orsay Announces a Massive Expansion

Survival of the Friendliest: How Our Close Friendships Help Us Thrive

Why SOAP is the Best Defense of Covid19

How One Precocious Dealer Allegedly Swindled the Art Market’s Savviest Players Out of Millions

BOOKS

The Remember Balloons

What’s Happening to Grandpa meets Up in this tender, sensitive picture book that gently explains the memory loss associated with aging and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

James’s Grandpa has the best balloons because he has the best memories. He has balloons showing Dad when he was young and Grandma when they were married. Grandpa has balloons about camping and Aunt Nelle’s poor cow. Grandpa also has a silver balloon filled with the memory of a fishing trip he and James took together.

But when Grandpa’s balloons begin to float away, James is heartbroken. No matter how hard he runs, James can’t catch them. One day, Grandpa lets go of the silver balloon—and he doesn’t even notice!

Grandpa no longer has balloons of his own. But James has many more than before. It’s up to him to share those balloons, one by one.

Dinner in French

Just as Julia Child brought French cooking to twentieth-century America, so now Melissa Clark brings French cooking into the twenty-first century. She first fell in love with France and French food as a child; her parents spent their August vacations traversing the country in search of the best meals with Melissa and her sister in tow. Near to her heart, France is where Melissa’s family learned to cook and eat. And as her own culinary identity blossomed, so too did her understanding of why French food is beloved by Americans. 

Now, as one of the nation’s favorite cookbook authors and food writers, Melissa updates classic French techniques and dishes to reflect how we cook, shop, and eat today. With recipes such as Salade Nicoise with Haricot Vert, Cornmeal and Harissa Soufflé, Scalloped Potato Gratin, Lamb Shank Cassoulet, Ratatouille Sheet-Pan Chicken, Campari Olive Oil Cake, and Apricot Tarte Tatin (to name a few), Dinner in French will quickly become a go-to resource and endure as an indispensable classic.

The Only Story

One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, nineteen-year-old Paul comes home from university and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. There he’s partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who’s forty-eight, confident, witty, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is a warm companion, her bond with Paul immediate. And soon, inevitably, they are lovers. 

Basking in the glow of one another, they set up house together in London. Decades later, Paul looks back at how they fell in love and how—gradually, relentlessly—everything fell apart. As he turns over his only story in his mind, examining it from different vantage points, he finds himself confronted with the contradictions and slips of his own memory—and the ways in which our narratives and our lives shape one another. Poignant, vivid and profound, The Only Story is a searing novel of memory, devotion, and how first love fixes a life forever.

The Glass Hotel

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

Finds

The scent of Spring, Meyer Lemon, hand lotion, soap and more. 

My mom made these for us every year as kids, if you would like to give your kids or grandkids a special treat for Easter, a panoramic egg is perfect. 

That is it for this week, I hope share your finds from this week. Have a great weekend. Stay calm, and stay safe.