Friday Favorites~a weekly series where I share interesting articles, books, fashion finds, recipes and more.
Good morning friends! Happy Friday!
How was your week? Did you see Barbie? Oppenheimer? Or did you make a day of it and see both?
It was another hot week here. And it is about to get even hotter because I am making lasagna this morning for the local women’s shelter. Since I have the oven on I might as well make something sweet, maybe chocolate chip cookies or a batch of brownies?
I have lots to share this week on Friday Favorites, including two cool and refreshing salads, a scrumptious watermelon cocktail, a few books, and lots more so let’s get to it!
Friday Favorites No. 543
Food-Recipes to Try
Summer is all about fresh produce, go out in your garden or to the farmers market and get yourself some cucumbers and tomatoes so that you can make this scrumptious salad.
Mediterranean orzo pasta salad with crunchy vegetables and spinach, briny olives, and feta cheese, a great lunch or dinner on a hot day.
Smoked Gouda and Bacon Burgers with Barbecue Sauce, yummy!
A watermelon gin and tonic cocktail to start the weekend.
Roasted cherry bars with browned butter struesel. These bars are so easy to make and you can add any fruit or fruit spread to the filling to suit your mood or the season.
Links
OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta agree to add AI safeguards
Americas Hazing Problem and Why Nothing Seems to Change
The History of the Big, Bright American Smile
Barbie’s global domination: Exactly how Mattel pulled it off
22 Best Restaurants In Charlotte, North Carolina
THE UNMISSABLE NEW TV SHOWS TO ADD TO YOUR WATCH LIST NOW
Jenna Lyons Lets Her Guard Down For The Real Housewives of New York City
When it’s this hot what should you eat?
Anne Boyd Rioux Considers How We Tell the Stories of Picasso’s Mistresses
10 Picture Perfect Places on the Coat of the UK
Take a look at this amazing house for sale.
There’s a Way to Get Healthier Without Even Going to Gym. It’s Called NEAT
Books
There’s No Coming Back From This (Free with First Reads on Amazon Prime)
It seems lately that Poppy Lively is invisible to everyone but the IRS.
After her accountant absconded with her life savings, newly bankrupt Poppy is on the verge of losing her home when an old flame, now a hotshot producer, gives her a surprising way out: a job in costumes on a Hollywood film set. It’s a bold move to pack her bags, keep secrets from her daughter, and head to Los Angeles, but Poppy’s a capable person—how hard can a job in wardrobe be? It’s not like she has a choice; her life couldn’t get any worse. Even so, this midwesterner has a lot to learn about the fast and loose world of movie stars, iconic costumes, and back-lot intrigue.
As a single mom, she’s rarely had time for watching movies, she doesn’t sew, and she doesn’t know a thing about dressing the biggest names in the business. Floundering and overlooked, Poppy has one ally: Allen Carol, an ill-tempered movie star taken with Poppy’s unfiltered candor and general indifference to stardom.
When Poppy stumbles upon corruption, she relies on everyone underestimating her to discover who’s at the center of it, a revelation that shakes her belief in humanity. What she thought was a way to secure a future for her daughter becomes a spotlight illuminating the facts: Poppy is out of her league among the divas of Tinseltown.
Poppy must decide whether to keep her mouth shut, as she’s always done, or with the help of a scruffy dog, show the moviemakers that they need her unglamorous ways, whether the superstars like it or not.
Manhattan, 1923. Scandalous flapper Dot King is found dead in her Midtown apartment, a bottle of chloroform beside her and a fortune in jewels missing. Dot’s headline-making murder grips the city. It also draws a clutch of lovers, parasites, and justice seekers into one of the city’s most mesmerizing mysteries.
Among them: Daily News crime reporter Julia Harpman, chasing the story while navigating a male-dominated industry; righteous NYPD detective John D. Coughlin, struggling against city corruption; and Ella Bradford, the victim’s Harlem maid, closest confidante, and keeper of secrets. Adding fuel to the already volatile crime: a politically connected Philadelphia socialite, an Atlantic City bootlegger, Dot’s dicey gigolo lover, a sultry Broadway dancer, and a cagey sugar daddy guarding secrets of his own.
From Broadway’s glittering lights to its sordid underbelly to the machinations of the country’s most powerful men, Julia embarks on a quest for justice. What she discovers, twist after breathtaking twist, might be even more nefarious than murder.
One day she had everything – the next it was gone
William and Amy love their busy city life, but when Will collapses on his way into work he decides enough is enough and moves his family to the country.
Three months later, Amy is standing outside Helmshill Grange, a sullen monstrosity of a house, deep in the Yorkshire moors. Within days, Will has traded in the Audi for a Land Rover, and brought home chickens, goats, sheep, a serial-killer cat and a mad dog.
But when tragedy strikes, Amy finds herself living a dream that isn’t hers . . .
Jackie, Public, Private, Secret
Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and lovers over a thirty-year period―as well as previously unreleased material from the JFK Library―Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli paints an unforgettable new portrait of a woman whose flaws and contradictions only serve to make her even more iconic. “I have three lives,” Jackie told a former lover, “public, private and secret.” In this revealing biography, readers will become intimately familiar with all three.
Twenty-nine years after her death and sixty years after the assassination of President Kennedy, Jackie delivers the last word on one of the most famous women in the world.
NEED MORE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS?
If you have already read these books or missed something I have featured before on the blog check out My Bookshop on Amazon.
FINDS & SALES
Outfit of the Week
dress//sandals//tote//glasses//perfume
Barbie Pink Finds
Anthr0~Pre-Fall
Nordstrom-last week of the sale
H&M
Boden
UNTIL TOMORROW
I hope you enjoyed the recipes, links and books I discovered this week on Friday Favorites No. 543. If you have missed a Friday Favorites post you can find them all here.
I’ll see you tomorrow for Weekend Meanderings with Kim and Juliet.
This post contains affiliate links, if you make a purchase I will earn a small commission at no cost to you.
There are so many delicious recipes in this week’s edition of Friday Favourites, Elizabeth! I definitely want to read the book on Jackie Kennedy. I recently read a fictionalised version of her time in Paris during her university days called Jacqueline in Paris and it was wonderful. Have a fabulous weekend!
Good evening April!
I agree the recipes look amazing. I cannot wait to make them.
I am off to order this book, it sounds interesting.
Have a wonderful weekend.
How wonderful of you to make lasagna for the local women’s shelter! Bravo, Elizabeth! I have not had watermelon yet this year. I need to order it. Salads are so refreshing this time of year. Can’t get enough of them.
Brenda
Thank you Brenda, we are part of a group that makes food for the shelter every month. Typically I bake but this month decided to do lasagna. Salads are so good, especially the it is so hot you don’t want to move. I am sooooooo over this heat. I cannot wait until Fall.
Have a wonderful weekend my friend.
Evening here has included thunderstorms and a tornado watch.
William, hopefully there was no damage to your town.