Friday Favorites from What’s Gabby Cooking, The Suburban Soapbox, The Forked Spoon and More

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Good morning friends! A very happy Friday morning to you, how are you? How are you holding up? Does it feel like Friday to you or just another day? I hope that you are getting outside for some fresh air, that you are being good to yourself and that you are giving yourself some grace. I’ve been a bit of a slacker this week, I skipped yoga a few times and took longer walks so that I could enjoy the beautiful weather, and listen to some of my favorite podcasts. A few days I worked on my computer in bed because I just didn’t feel like sitting at my desk. Is anyone else “sliding” or is it just me?

I hope that you enjoy my finds from this week. 

Food

I been baking a lot of things these past few weeks but have yet to try bagels, this recipe for Everything Bagels from A Merry Thought looks so good I am going to try it today. 

I never met a pizza I did not like, and this pizza from What’s Gabby Cooking looks like it could be my new best friend. 

Banana bread is a favorite at my house, typically I use a recipe I found in Cooks Illustrated but everything I make from Smitten Kitchen is delicious and this recipe for The Ultimate Banana Bread is no exception. I made this twice this past week. 

Easy Beef Stroganoff from The Forked Spoon.

Whipped Coffee Mudslide Cocktail from The Suburban Soapbox

Interesting Articles

Stones, Leaves, and Shells Whorl in Hypnotic Land Art by Jon Foreman

Massive Artwork Painted on the Alpine Terrain

7 TV Shows to Watch for Design Inspiration

How the Gym Came Home

Thanks you Taste of France for sharing this article: Is the Coronavirus on My Clothes? My Hair? My Shoes?

17 Crafts to Do At Home(Even If You Are Not The Crafty Type)

How to Make Soap At Home

Everyone is Baking!

NY TIMES Best Recipes and Tips for Quarantine

The Art World Works From Home: Interview With Martin Kemp the worlds most esteemed Da Vinci Scholar.

I love this video, it is a uplifting and it’s only 2 minutes.

Books

Modern Country Cooking: Kitchen Skills and Seasonal Recipes from Salt Water Farm

Good cooking has nothing to do with fancy equipment, complicated recipes, or trendy, hard-to-find ingredients. The fundamentals are really quite simple: it’s about instinct, technique, and freshness. Annemarie Ahearn, dubbed by Food & Wine Magazine as someone “changing the way America eats,” believes that developing these essential skills can lead to a greater sense of confidence and fulfillment in the kitchen. Her credo: 1) Grow at least some of your own food to establish a deeper connection with the earth that provides your nutrition, 2) Be familiar with a range of cooking techniques so you can develop flexibility and intuition in the kitchen, and 3) Master the age-old cooking skills that will serve you your whole lifetime–cooking in cast iron, sharpening knives, and using a mortar and pestle. With these classic skills under your belt, and with 75 tried-and-true seasonal recipes, you’ll be on your way to putting consistently delicious, satisfying meals on the table every day while you learn to fall in love with the process.

 The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking

The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is a fully revised and updated edition of the bestselling, ground-breaking, and revolutionary approach to bread-making–a perfect gift for foodies and bakers!

With more than half a million copies of their books in print, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François have proven that people want to bake their own bread, so long as they can do it easily and quickly. Based on fan feedback, Jeff and Zoë have completely revamped their first, most popular, and now-classic book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Responding to their thousands of ardent fans, Jeff and Zoë returned to their test kitchens to whip up more delicious baking recipes. They’ve also included a gluten-free chapter, forty all-new gorgeous color photos, and one hundred informative black-and-white how-to photos. They’ve made the “Tips and Techniques” and “Ingredients” chapters bigger and better than ever before, and included readers’ Frequently Asked Questions.

This revised edition also includes more than thirty brand-new recipes for Beer-Cheese Bread, Crock-Pot Bread, Panini, Pretzel Buns, Apple-Stuffed French Toast, and many more. There’s nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread to fill a kitchen with warmth, eager appetites, and endless praise. Now, using Jeff and Zoë’s innovative technique, you can create bread that rivals those of the finest bakers in the world in just five minutes of active preparation time.

A Way To Garden

“Those with dirt already under their fingernails will treasure Roach’s in-depth knowledge, wry humor, and reflective look at how seasons in gardening mirror the passage of time.” —Publishers Weekly

For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she refers to as “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize (like how to plant a bulb) and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener. 

The Splendid and The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

What’s your ikigai?

“Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.” —Japanese proverb 

According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—the place where passion, mission, vocation, and profession intersect—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there’s no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they’ve found a real purpose in life—the happiness of always being busy. 

In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigaireveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find happiness in every day?

Finds 

Dress H & M

I like this lemon print dress from HM. HERE

Earrings

And these earring too (HERE)

That is it for this week. I hope that you found something that you liked. Please share your favorite recipes, books, finds and whatever else you enjoyed this week. 

Stay safe and have a good weekend.