Friday Favorites from The Fountain Avenue Kitchen, the Recipe Runner, Carlsbad Cravings and More

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Good morning friends how are you? I hope that your week has gone well considering the all of the things going on in the world. I was a little down yesterday when the governor mentioned that he might be putting a pause on further re-opening or going backward if cases continue to rise here. 

Summer Vegetable Platter from The Clean Plate

For now I am enjoying summer, my husband, my pups, being back with friends at yoga and all of the classes that I am taking on-line. I hope that you enjoy my finds this week. 

Food

I’ve made this Penne with Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes twice this week but instead of the penne pasta I made it with roasted asparagus, it is fabulous!

Asian Chicken Wraps from The Fountain Avenue Kitchen

Spinach Orzo Feta Salad from Recipe Runner

Mexican Salad With Cilantro Lime Dressing from Carlsbad Cravings

Spiced Cauliflower Salad from Collective Gen

How to Make Cordials and Syrups from Flowers

Chocolate Beet Bars from Chatelaine

No-churn Vanilla Bean Ice Cream is the perfect accompaniment to the Chocolate Beet Brownies!

Articles

18 of Americas Best Historic Houses to Visit 

Arctic Circle Sees Highest- Ever Recorded Temperature 

Bookshops Fight Against the Virus and Amazon

Jessamyn Stanley on the Work of Body Acceptance

I’ll Never Be Able to Cook the Bad News Away. But I Try Anyway

Water Meditation(Daily Om)

4 Things We Must Realize About Happiness(Love this)

Even in Lockdown, Dressing Up is an Act of Power and Joy

The Battle Over Masks in a Pandemic

Oprah’s 5 Best Pieces of Advice to Graduates

Books

The White Bone

A thrilling journey into the minds of African elephants as they struggle to survive.

If, as many recent nonfiction bestsellers have revealed, animals possess emotions and awareness, they must also have stories. In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that yet illuminates our own.

For years, young Mud and her family have roamed the high grasses, swamps, and deserts of the sub-Sahara. Now the earth is scorched by drought, and the mutilated bodies of family and friends lie scattered on the ground, shot down by ivory hunters. Nothing-not the once familiar terrain, or the age-old rhythms of life, or even memory itself-seems reliable anymore. Yet a slim prophecy of hope is passed on from water hole to water hole: the sacred white bone of legend will point the elephants toward the Safe Place. And so begins a quest through Africa’s vast and perilous plains-until at last the survivors face a decisive trial of loyalty and courage.

In The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy performs a feat of imagination virtually unparalleled in modern fiction. Plunged into an alien landscape, we orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness and begin to feel, as Gowdy puts it, “what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory.”

It’s About Damn Time

“A hero’s tale of what’s possible when we unlock our potential, continue the search for knowledge, and draw on our lived experiences to guide us through the darkest moments.”—Stacey Abrams

From a black, gay woman who broke into the boys’ club of Silicon Valley comes an empowering guide to finding your voice, working your way into any room you want to be in, and achieving your own dreams.

In 2015, Arlan Hamilton was on food stamps and sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, with nothing but an old laptop and a dream of breaking into the venture capital business. She couldn’t understand why people starting companies all looked the same (white and male), and she wanted the chance to invest in the ideas and people who didn’t conform to this image of how a founder is supposed to look. Hamilton had no contacts or network in Silicon Valley, no background in finance—not even a college degree. What she did have was fierce determination and the will to succeed.

As much as we wish it weren’t so, we still live in a world where being underrepresented often means being underestimated. But as someone who makes her living investing in high-potential founders who also happen to be female, LGBTQ, or people of color, Hamilton understands that being undervalued simply means that a big upside exists. Because even if you have to work twice as hard to get to the starting line, she says, once you are on a level playing field, you will sprint ahead. 

Despite what society would have you believe, Hamilton argues, a privileged background, an influential network, and a fancy college degree are not prerequisites for success. Here she shares the hard-won wisdom she’s picked up on her remarkable journey from food-stamp recipient to venture capitalist, with lessons like“The Best Music Comes from the Worst Breakups,” “Let Someone Shorter Stand in Front of You,” “The Dangers of Hustle Porn,” and “Don’t Let Anyone Drink Your Diet Coke.” Along the way, she inspires us all to defy other people’s expectations and to become the role models we’ve been looking for.

Raphael, Painter in Rome: A Novel

Another Fabulous Art History Thriller by the Bestselling Author of Oil and Marble, Featuring the Master of Renaissance Perfection: Raphael!

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here, in Raphael, Painter in Rome, Storey tells of its creation as never before: through the eyes of Michelangelo’s fiercest rival—the young, beautiful, brilliant painter of perfection, Raphael. Orphaned at age eleven, Raphael is determined to keep the deathbed promise he made to his father: become the greatest artist in history. But to be the best, he must beat the best, the legendary sculptor of the David, Michelangelo Buonarroti. When Pope Julius II calls both artists down to Rome, they are pitted against each other: Michelangelo painting the Sistine Ceiling, while Raphael decorates the pope’s private apartments. As Raphael strives toward perfection in paint, he battles internal demons: his desperate ambition, crippling fear of imperfection, and unshakable loneliness. Along the way, he conspires with cardinals, scrambles through the ruins of ancient Rome, and falls in love with a baker’s-daughter-turned-prostitute who becomes his muse. 

With its gorgeous writing, rich settings, endearing characters, and riveting plot, Raphael, Painter in Rome brings to vivid life these two Renaissance masters going head to head in the deadly halls of the Vatican. 

Blackbird House

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House. 

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

From the writer Time has said tells “truths powerful enough to break a reader’s heart” comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House.

I Was Told There Would Be Cake 

From the author of 2018’s much buzzed about Look Alive Out There…

Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, Sloane Crosley’s debut collection of literary essays is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory. The New York Times bestseller that both captured and influenced a generation.

 

From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions — or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a startlingly funny and revealing portrait of a complex and utterly recognizable character who aims for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she is. I Was Told There’d Be Cake introduces a strikingly original voice, chronicling the struggles and unexpected beauty of modern urban life.

If you want to see more of my favorite books you can find them here on My Bookshop Pinterest Board.

Finds

I love this Rose Dress with Puffed Sleeves and think it would be a beautiful dress to wear this summer. 

And this toile tunic.

I ordered these napkins to use on the 4th and this summer. They are on sale at Kohl’s. 

That’s it for this week, I hope that you found something that you enjoyed. Please share your favorites from this week, recipes, books, articles or whatever else you found this week that we might enjoy too. 

Have a safe and happy weekend.