Review: Modern Potluck by Kristin Donnelly

Modern Potluck is the first book from food writer Kristin Donnelly.  The straight-forward title tells you the basics about this book: it is indeed a book of recipes that would work well for potlucks.  But not, of course, old school potlucks replete with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup-based casseroles, warm deviled eggs, and Country Time Lemonade made from powder.   Instead, Donnelly has created a beautiful book full of delicious recipes that focus on fresh, whole ingredients and complex flavors inspired by many types of global cuisine.  When I first heard about this book, I was not super excited by the concept.  Why do you need a book all about potlucks??  Just make whatever you want!  But in looking through the book, I remembered the times when I have gone to potlucks and worried about what to bring.  For the most part, you want dishes that don't need to be hot and don't require much on-site preparation.  It needs to feed a fair number of people, and it will ideally fit in with a wide variety of other dishes.  In other words, the seemingly straight-forward potluck is actually a minefield of mistakes waiting to happen, particularly if the potluck you're attending is a "modern" one and you don't want to embarrass yourself with something of the Cream of Mushroom Soup-casserole variety.  So in fact, a whole book of tasteful yet not fussy recipes for potlucks is actually really useful!  It's great to have a book full of recipes that you know will travel well and otherwise check the boxes I noted above.  The recipes also just sound and look delicious, and sine I don't actually attend that many potlucks, these are recipes that I will mostly be making for dinner, rather than for potlucks.  The recipes are all quite straight-forward, and yet sophisticated and beautiful.  Every recipe includes a "Potluck Prep" note that includes information about preparing parts of the dish the night before, and what you should assemble on site.  Among the recipes that I found particularly compelling were Spice-Roasted Carrots with Lentils, Kamut and Cauliflower Salad with Smoked Almonds and Marmalade Dressing, Miso-and-Molasses Baked Beans, Smoky Squash Mac & Cheese, Caramelized Onion, Gouda, and Pecan Scones, Caramelized Kimchi Corn Bread, and Potato Chip-Crusted Magic Bars.

(I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.)

Cath Kidston Story Books Print

(Cath Kidston)

"Food for Thought": Books as Canned Soup by Maria Mortvintseva-Keeler

(Behance)

Review: Punderdome: A Card Game for Pun Lovers

Punderdome is a new card game based on a hipster live pun competition in Brooklyn invented by a father and daughter team.  Like the all of the best games, Punderdome is very simple at heart.  It has no bells and whistles.  Basically, it's a game that encourages you to make up terrible puns.  I have a love-hate relationship with puns.  On the one hand, they kind of annoy me with their stupidity, but I also can't help finding some of them clever and ridiculously amusing.  This game perfectly captures that probably pretty common reaction to puns.  One person is the pun master who randomly picks out two cards (like the ones you can see above), and then everyone else has a limited amount of time to come up with a pun that brings the two words together.  The pun master then decides which pun wins.  Simple!  Punderdome follows in the "venerable," or at least popular tradition of other creative and very simple card games like Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity.  The entire game comes in a little box (like the Trivial Pursuit box of cards) with a few envelopes (you can fill them in with your own words that people have to pun with), a couple of pads of paper for pun concocting, and a big stack of cards with words on them.

(I received this game from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.)

"Last Night I Dreamed I Went to Manderley Again": Karen Elson in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca-Land by Erik Madigan Heck for Harper's Bazaar July 2016

(Fashion Mayhem)

Gulliver Little Books

At first glance, these look like run-of-the-mill Penguin books, right?  In fact, they're called Gulliver Little Books, and they were 1/3 the size of actual Penguin paperbacks!  These miniature books, which were obviously modeled on Penguin books, were produced during World War II in the UK for children.  They were miniature because of wartime rationing, which extended to paper.

(Design for Today and etsy)

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Parisian Pantone from How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, by Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, Caroline De Maigret, and Sophie Mas

As should be evident from this blog, I love Pantone, paint chips, and anything charming.  These Parisian paint chips from How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are make me very happy.  One chart shows Parisian colors of winter, including Clouds over the Pont Neuf, Chairs in the Luxembourg Gardens, A mean Yorkshire terrier, The Seine overflowing, It's always raining, Chipped nail polish, Rose-flavored macaron, and A run in your tights.  Summer's swatches include An afternoon fling, A burst of laughter, A novel by Françoise Sagan, An irritating rainfall, Verbena ice cream, The scent of vetiver on skin, Smiling Parisians, A glass of rosé, The Seine, always, A Flore cocktail, Brunch in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, A city tan, and The anise in your pastis.  Aren't they all lovely?  And the authors did a really amazing and thoughtful job of picking the colors to describe what are in most cases abstract or otherwise evanescent terms.    

(Doubleday)