Friday Favorites from The Curious Plate, Life Made Simple and More

Are you looking for some game day appetizers or Valentines Day treats? How about a book to read by the fire? I’ve got you covered, I am sharing recipes, books, finds and more this week in my Friday Favorites post.

Good morning Friday morning friends. Are you ready for some football? I don’t care about the game, if Kansas City(my husbands team) were playing I might be able to fein a little interest but to be honest, I am all about the commercials and the food. Who doesn’t love party food?

I have some interesting appetizers, some great articles and so much more to share with you today so let’s get to it.

Food

Pimento Cheese Nachos! Two of my favorite things in one scrumptious appetizer.

Slow Cooker Tex, Mex Queso is the perfect dip for the game. The Curious Plate also has 60 easy game day recipes you might want to add to your party table.

My husband love wings and these oven baked firecracker wings are right up his alley. I on the other hand love Buffalo Cauliflower Wings.

I love sugar cookies, and frequently make them for the holidays but I have never made a chocolate sugar cookie, this week Sugar Salt Magic posted her beautiful recipe and I think these need to be on everyone’s Valentine’s Day cookie plate! The best part, only 7 ingredients and I am sure that you have every one in your pantry right now.

If you would like to make my favorite sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day you will find the recipe here.

House & Home Interiors

The Gilded Age: eight decorating rules to look for in Julian Fellowes’ lavish new series.

An elegant house in Chelsea layered with soft colour and thoughtfully curated art

Step Inside Gwyneth Paltrow’s Tranquil Montecito Home

Intersting Articles

The At-Home Pizza Revolution Is Here.  We started making out own pizza at home years ago, sometimes we make cast iron skillet pizza and other times we use our Ooni pizza oven.

The Last Oyster Tongers of Apalachicola

Truffle lovers you will want to read America’s Next Food Craze Is Buried in Appalachia

The Cake Doctor is Still in the House, I have had The Cake Doctor cookbook for year but never knew the story of how it started.

This startup is turning the laundromat into the doctor’s office.

No one will read your book And other truths about publishing.

Fascinating, The Extinction Crisis That No One’s Talking About. Coffee, wine, and wheat varieties are among the foods we could lose forever.

Lessons in Reuse From French Couture

The tiny islands leading the green transition

The Kept and the Killed, fascinating history of photography during the depression.

If you are watching the Sex and the City Reboot, ‘And Just Like That’: Michael Patrick King and Writers Explain Finale Choices, Talk Potential Season 2 of ‘SATC’ Sequel

Snowboarding was once called ‘snurfing’—and other winter sport histories

Pivoting—at Every Age!—Is Happening at Unforseen Levels. Here’s How to Do It Well

The Time Hack Everyone Should Know Much like Dorothy discovers at the end of “The Wizard of Oz,” the key to hacking time is a tool we’ve had all along: Choice.

“What We Need Now is a Great ReConnection”: Here Are 6 Ways to Deepen Relationships and Make New Ones in This New, Hybrid World

Eye of the Beholder Beauty products should have a high impact for the face, not the environment.

Books

Love & Saffron

When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter–as well as a gift of saffron–to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic–exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.
 
Food and a good life—they can’t be separated. It is a discovery the women share, not only with each other, but with the men in their lives. Because of her correspondence with Joan, Imogen’s decades-long marriage blossoms into something new and exciting, and in turn, Joan learns that true love does not always come in the form we expect it to. Into this beautiful, intimate world comes the ultimate test of Joan and Imogen’s friendship—a test that summons their unconditional trust in each other.

The Christie Affair

In 1925, Miss Nan O’Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie. In every way, she became a part of their life––first, both Christies. Then, just Archie. Soon, Nan became Archie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him. Nan’s plot didn’t begin the day she met Archie and Agatha.

It began decades before, in Ireland, when Nan was a young girl. She and the man she loved were a star-crossed couple who were destined to be together––until the Great War, a pandemic, and shameful secrets tore them apart. Then acts of unspeakable cruelty kept them separated.

What drives someone to murder? What will someone do in the name of love? What kind of crime can someone never forgive? Nina de Gramont’s brilliant, unforgettable novel explores these questions and more.

The Nine

The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris.

The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbrück. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape.

Don’t forget if you would like to see more of my Friday Favorite book picks you can click on  “My Book Shop” in the side bar or visit “My Book Shop Board” on Pinterest.

Finds

I love this dress it’s from H&M and they are having a sale this week. I was going to order it but it is sold out in my size.

Season Everything with Love Tea Towel

Just because it is cute, a unicorn mug.

That is it for this week my friends, I hope that you found something you might like to eat, and something to read.  I hope that you have a wonderful weekend, if you are watching the big game, enjoy! Don’t forget tomorrow to join my friends Kim of Northern California Style and Juliet of Make Mine a Spritzer  and I as we our Saturday Meanderings.

 

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