Friday Favorites No. 528 from Defined Dish, How Sweet Easts, Domestikated Life, and More

Welcome to Friday Favorites, a weekly series where I share interesting articles, books, fashion finds, recipes and more.

Good morning friends, happy Friday favorites to you.

It’s been a busy week and it is about to be even busier. We have guests arriving Sunday, then leaving Thursday and 2 days later my mom will be coming for a visit. I cannot wait! There will be lots of fun, family, adventures and even a few road trips.

This week salads and light meals were on repeat, so it is only natural that they ended up here on Friday favorites as well. I have been adding books to my Kindle and summer stack and cannot wait for a few hours tonight to dive in to one of them.

What are your plans for the weekend? How is your garden coming along? Have you planted anything yet or is it still too cold?

Ok, on to Friday Favorites.

FRIDAY FAVORITES NO. 528

Food

Spring salads, and lemon pasta are just a few of the delicious recipes I discovered this week.

Herby chicken salad, can be served over a salad, on a sandwich, or as an appetizer.

A bright beautiful spring version of the nicoise salad is loaded crunchy vegetables, creamy potatoes and salty olives. I cannot wait to make this!

Goat cheese walnut tarts are on the menu this weekend.

I made this Roasted Lemon Artichoke and Browned Butter Pasta this week and it is scrumptious!

Add this blueberry lemon loaf to your weekend menu, it is perfect with coffee!

Links

Your chance to see how they lived during the Gilded Age in NY

Are you watching the new series on PBS, Marie Antoinette? It’s hard to believe she left Austria, her 15 siblings, mother and her pug to get married at 14.

Welcome to Wedding Sprawl. Modern marriage celebrations can feel endless.

Has the Fountain of Youth Been in Our Blood All Along?

Quit Your Bucket List

14 Rules for Being You

How the British Royal Family Hides Its Wealth From Public Scrutiny

‘Bees Are Sentient’: Inside the Stunning Brains of Nature’s Hardest Workers

A music director goes public with a secret stash of private instruments

Books

The Echo of Old Books

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners—an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.

With no trace of how these mysterious books came into the world, Ashlyn is caught up in a decades-old literary mystery, beckoned by two hearts in ruins, whoever they were, wherever they are. Determined to learn the truth behind the doomed lovers’ tale, she reads on, following a trail of broken promises and seemingly unforgivable betrayals. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story—and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.

The Mystery of Julia Episcopa: A tale of Ancient and Modern Rome

In ancient Rome, a woman flees for her life.
Her enemies are those she once called ‘brother’.
Hidden beneath her blue cloak are secrets men will kill for.

Forgeries that prove the newly self-appointed bishops are not followers of the way, but pretenders who have seized power and will stop at nothing to shape this new religion to their own ends. Now, Julia – a woman who had once walked with Mary Magdalene and taught alongside Paul must preserve the legacy of the apostles in the face of terrifying danger.

Two thousand years later, classical archaeologists Valentina Vella and Erika Simone are tasked with advising the newly-elected Pope on the historical legacy of women in the early Christian period.

The women stumble across an ancient parchment buried deep in the Vatican archives, a document that has clearly been altered. They find themselves on the trail of a woman who may have been the first woman Bishop in the Catholic faith. To reveal Julia’s legacy will put them in the cross-hairs of a venomous Vatican battle for power and supremacy; to stay silent would make them complicit in an ancient heresy and would betray the teachings that Julia sacrificed her life to defend.

The Second Chance Store(pre-orderd from my library)

City dweller Gwen feels like she’s living a secondhand life. She’s thirty-eight, perpetually single, and in dire need of a dentist’s appointment. Her friends are busy procreating in the country, and conversations with her parents seem to revolve entirely around hedge borders and the trash pickup schedule. Above all she’s lonely. But then, isn’t everyone?

Then she’s let go from a job she drifted into a decade ago and never left, and Gwen realizes it’s time to make a change, starting with cleaning out her apartment. In the charity shop where she literally and metaphorically unloads her baggage, she discovers a group of weird and wonderful people devoted to finding a new home for donated items that have lost their use elsewhere. Gwen volunteers there—and finds a new home for herself among her fellow workers while discovering joy in the untold stories of secondhand things.

Now it’s time for Gwen to get out of her life in pause, and to find a way to move forward with bravery and humanity—and more regular dental care.

By Ash Oak and Thorn

The perfect read for kids in spring and summer.

Three tiny, ancient beings – Moss, Burnet and Cumulus, once revered as Guardians of the Wild World – wake from winter hibernation in their beloved ash tree home.

When it is destroyed, they set off on an adventure to find more of their kind, a journey which takes them first into the deep countryside and then the heart of a city.

Helped along the way by birds and animals, the trio search for a way to survive and thrive in a precious yet disappearing world.

NEED MORE BOOK RECOMENDATIONS?

If you have already read these books or missed something I have featured before on the blog check out My Bookshop on Amazon. 

Finds

Daily Outfit

dress//sandals//glasses/bag//hat//polish//pearl earrings//perfume

Spring table square, a beautiful embroidered addition to your spring and summer table to uses year after year.

You can never have too many blankets and throws, in my opinion. I can’t decide which color quilt  I like the best but I am leaning toward the green and blue.

UNTIL TOMORROW

I hope you enjoyed Friday Favorites and found something to make or read. Have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you for spending part of your day with me, I always appreciate it. If you have missed a Friday Favorites post you can find them all here. 

Don’t forget to visit tomorrow for Weekend Meanderings with Kim and Juliet.

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