Welcome to Friday Favorites, a weekly series where I share interesting articles, books, fashion finds, recipes and more!
Good morning friends, it is Friday and that means it is time for Friday Favorites! Are you ready for the weekend? We are having a dinner party Saturday and Sunday I have peonies, lantana, and some other flowers to add to the beds.
I have lots to share with you this week, including appetizer recipes that you may want to make this weekend a few books to add to your stack and some beautiful finds. Get yourself a coffee, tea or chocolate and settle in for a nice long Friday favorites post.
FRIDAY FAVORITES, FOOD, FINDS, BOOKS AND MORE
Food
Image Cookies & Cups
The The “Best” Bruschetta is a great appetizer to serve on a hot summer day with cocktails.
Image Cindy Hattersley
A Delicious Healthy Dinner Salad You Will Love from Cindy Hattersley.
Image Recipe Runner
Chicken Gyro Bowls, marinated chicken, fresh vegetables, feta, and tzatziki all piled onto a bed of rice.
Image Domestic Gothess
Hummus Bowl With Crispy North African Chickpeas and Tomato, Chilli and Caraway Jam
Did someone say coffeecake? This cream cheese coffeecake is scrumptious and one of my all time favorites to bake.
Interesting Articles
What it takes to make all the food – so much food! – for the HBO series Julia
The revival of a forgotten American fruit
The Utopian Promises and Novelty Cheese of a Discount Grocery Store(Aldi)
Patron the mine-sniffing dog awarded medal by President Zelensky
Using banana peels as fertilizer – to improve your plants’ health
Letters from the Loneliest Post Office in the World
Dancer Lizzy Howell on Fame, Fatphobia, and Being a Role Model
Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe painting sold for record-breaking $195m
Spot the Difference: The Invincible Business of Counterfeit Goods
The ripple effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine are changing the world
Books
One More Croissant for the Road
A land of glorious landscapes, and even more glorious food, France is a place built for cycling and for eating, too – a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. Here, you can go from beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polder to Pyrenees, and taste the difference every time you stop for lunch. If you make it to lunch, that is…
Part travelogue, part food memoir, all love letter to France, One More Croissant for the Road follows ‘the nation’s taster in chief’ Felicity Cloake’s very own Tour de France, cycling 2,300km across France in search of culinary perfection; from Tarte Tatin to Cassoulet via Poule au Pot, and Tartiflette. Each of the 21 ‘stages’ concludes with Felicity putting this new found knowledge to good use in a fresh and definitive recipe for each dish – the culmination of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all of our taste buds.
The Italian Villa
Callie, a lonely small-town waitress, is still reeling from the discovery that she’s adopted when she arrives in Montevino, Italy in search of answers – the keys to the stunning hillside villa she has just inherited clutched tightly in her hand. Inside the rusted gates, and through a large wooden front door dripping with sun-kissed flowers, Callie can’t decide if she’s more astonished by her new home or her first encounter with the mysterious young groundskeeper, Tommaso.
Wandering the villa barefoot at night, Callie finds a diary belonging to a woman named Elisa, wrapped in faded blue ribbon and hidden in her birthmother’s antique wardrobe. Page by page, Callie is swept away by its story of love, passion, heartbreak and betrayal as she reads how Elisa married her childhood sweetheart in secret before fleeing to the woods to join the resistance. They vowed to find each other again when the war was over, but history had other plans.
Callie is certain that her and Elisa’s lives are somehow connected, and that the truth about her family is hidden somewhere within the diary’s crinkled yellow pages. It gives her the courage to start asking questions around the close-knit village until, at long last, she feels her closed-off heart begin to open. Perhaps even enough to let someone in…
But when a devastating betrayal in the final pages of the diary unlocks a heart-breaking secret about who Callie’s mother really is, the chance for a new life shatters in front of her. Can she persuade the locals to forgive her past and accept the truth about her identity?
The Heat of the Day (Published in 1948)
In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II.
Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.
Just a reminder
You can find all of the books I have recommended on Friday Favorites, have read or have on my list to read on My Bookshop Pinterest Board.
Friday Finds
This tablecloth would look beautiful on your summer tables.
This dress reminds me of a 1940’s movie star. The color is beautiful and it comes in ivory too. A simple, elegant dress for a summer wedding.
Love these appetizer plates!
I hope you enjoyed my Friday Favorites and that you found something to make or to read. Don’t forget to stop by tomorrow for “weekend meanderings” Kim and Juliet.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Athena Calderone, Jules Buono, Lessons in Chemistry and more on Weekend Meanderings. 
Friday Favorites No. 550 from Half Baked Harvest, Nutmeg Nanny, Honestly Yum and More
Friday Favorites No. 549 from Kale Junkie, Running to the Kitchen, Julia’s Album and More
Friday Favorites from Butter Your Biscuit, Greens & Chocolate, 40 Aprons and More.
Love the quotes you shared in the post. Those plates are beautiful. Unfortunately, they have a note that they’re do limited they are no longer available
Cindy, the entire line by Julia is selling out fast!
This could not come at a better time!!! I was trying to figure out what to make this weekend since I am on a no carb and no sugar thing to try and help my health issues. I am making both salads! Thank you so much, I needed this so badly!
YIKES, no carb, no sugar! I hope that you are feeling better soon Melba.