The Pop Five

June 14, 2013

My mom arrives on Sunday for a visit. We don’t have set plans for the week, but I’m thinking both she and Margaret would enjoy a trip here. And we’re of course celebrating Father’s Day on Sunday. Dan requested farmers market pastries (doughnuts!)  for brunch and my Grammy’s chocolate sheet cake post-dinner. He’s so easy to please!

I’ve covered French life here and here, so I find this Vanity Fair piece particularly poignant. Plus, who could resist reading these two fabulous sentences?

Unlike her neurotic American sisters, a French bachelorette would never be caught dead moping on the sofa, digging into a tub of Häagen-Dazs because some doofus didn’t call, and she never goes out looking as if she just crawled out of a laundry hamper. And unlike some of her slaggy British cousins, she doesn’t get bombed on alcohol and barf on the pavement as the capper to an evening’s entertainment.

My friend, Jen, curated an event in Atlanta called Root City Market that’s tomorrow. I cannot wait to check out all the goods including pieces from my favorite jewelry designer, Asha Patel.

Isn’t Keira Knightley’s wedding style cooler than cool? I die.

Image: Courtesy of Landov

My nieces adore their American Girl dolls. This exhibit by photographer Ilona Szwarc is on display in NYC until July 3 and looks incredible. I so wish I could see it in person!

Image: Ilona Szwarc, Courtesy of the Foley Gallery

As someone who just this week was assigned a 900-word article for $75 (for those of you with mathematician minds, that’s not even a penny a word), this article, about a journalism degree being the worst return on an investment one can make, is a sad, but likely true, read.

Image via Mashable, iStockphoto, amdandy

you might also like...

Short Stack

June 11, 2013

I’ve been frustrated with Kickstarter lately. I blame Zach Braff! There’s a great article, here, explaining how celebrities are ruining the crowd-sourced funding site. That said there are so many projects that you stumble upon, like this one by Nick Fauchald. Short Stack, Fauchald’s food publication, combines two of my great loves, cooking and reading, with his gorgeous series of one-ingredient subjects. The Short Stack campaign runs through the end of this week and he’s already surpassed his 50K ask. I got a chance to interview Fauchald, where we talk goals, the joys of holding a physical book (dog eared pages!) and food writing talent.

danapop: How did the idea for Short Stack Editions come about and what would reaching the Kickstarter goal of $50K do for your vision?

Nick Fauchald: Short Stack was a way for me to work on a purely print-based project. I’d had my hands in so many digital things in recent years that I missed working with something you could hold in your hands.

We were lucky enough to reach our Kickstarter goal within the first week of our campaign. Any extra money we raise beyond this goal will go towards printing more copies of each edition, which in turn will pay our authors more for their hard work.

danapop: How did you choose the three singular ingredients you did of strawberry, egg and tomato? Was the publication purposefully timed (the tomatoes and strawberries) to correspond with peak season?

Fauchald: We want each Short Stack edition to be used throughout the year, but we’re also sensitive to seasonal ingredients. Some editions will be more seasonal than others; for example, you can get great eggs all year long, while the season for the best tomatoes and strawberries is more finite, so we’ll be sure to publish these editions near peak harvest times.

danapop: As much as I love my iPad and Kindle, I still love to hold newspapers and books in my hands. I like the weight, the smell and the overall feel of them. Your editions are darling in size, seemingly so simple, but so thoughtful – what do you want the person that buys and reads them to get out of it?

Fauchald: There’s something about flipping through a cookbook that you can replicate on a computer. The Internet is great for searching for a recipe, but I don’t trust just anything I find via Google; I want to know who created the recipe and if they took the time to make sure it will work in my kitchen. I hope our readers will keep their Short Stack editions handy for whenever they need a new idea for cooking a favorite ingredient. And, like all good cookbooks, we hope our readers will collect Short Stacks and pass them along to their friends and family.

danapop: Tell me more about Susan Spungen, Ian Knauer and Soa Davies. How did you connect with such stellar talent? What about the suppliers of the paper, the printer, — how did you determine all of these factors to create such high-quality literary gems?

Fauchald: We start each edition by finding the best author possible. I’m not interested in having a big-name author, writer or chef take on an edition unless they can deliver fresh, dependable recipes. Susan, Ian and Soa are all known for creating this level of content. Then we ask each author to pick their favorite ingredient, something that excites and inspires them to cook, and that becomes the theme for their edition.

Next, we met with a bunch of printers in New York; we want to produce these booklets as close to home as possible, and using the best materials we can buy. We could have printed these overseas and on cheaper paper, but I think the finished product wouldn’t have felt as special. I hope our readers will notice and appreciate the difference, even if it means charging a few extra bucks for each copy.

danapop: As far as lofty goals, what’s next for Short Stack and where do you want this to go?

Fauchald: After we produce and distribute our first three editions, we have a bullpen of authors ready to work on future Short Stacks. We’ll start producing the next editions right away—you’ll be able to buy them on our own website (ShortStackEditions.com) and through select retailers later this summer.

you might also like...

The Pop Five

June 7, 2013

After what was a very fun weekend, the week that followed was rough. On the home front, Margaret cut her first tooth on Wednesday (second on Thursday) and the two days leading up to the big breakthrough were spent with her being incredibly fussy and clingy. When the first was finally visible, it was like I had my daughter back … all grins and playing coy showing off the new additions to her gums.

On the work front, I had a project move into a different direction than I hoped and had more than one difficult conversation surrounding it all. It’s awful, but I’m often reminded of my father’s, bad news doesn’t get better over time rule. I’m hoping to lay low this weekend, but on Sunday I have a 100^th birthday party to attend. Isn’t that incredible?

On Tuesday, I got a glimpse of Metamorphoses and Mighty Myths & Legends from Georgia Shakespeare before they open this summer. So good!

For all that Shakespeare-watching in the park, wouldn’t these adult sippy cups be great?

As someone who gets enough pick your brain emails to consider a side business as a creative consultant, Marie Forleo’s advice is fantastic.

I love Sofia Coppola’s take on privacy in Sunday’s T Magazine. Also, it’s interesting that this year, Lee Radziwill and Coppola traded interviewing each other for the same publication. PS – Isn’t that photograph stunning?

Image of Sofia Coppola in her West Village apartment: Photograph by Jason Schmidt; makeup by Aaron de Mey at Art Partner; hair by Ayumi Yamamoto at Defacto for Shu Uemura.

We’re just starting to think about babyproofing our house a bit, which means we’ll need a new coffee table soon. Wouldn’t one of these custom trays from BirdAria look cute holding remote controls and coasters?

you might also like...

The Pop Five

May 31, 2013

I cannot believe Memorial Day was this week. I’m a firm believer in the summer Friday (which I actually take year round). Come Friday around 2 p.m. I find myself stepping away from the computer and starting my weekend. My sister and I often joke that if we were to ever start a company together we’d for sure instate bikini Friday. Meaning, grab your laptop, cocktail and head to the pool! Here’s to the start of summer!

I never read Jeannette Wall’s memoir, The Glass Castle, and honestly I’m not sure I could stomach it. This piece, Mommy Nearest, about Walls’s mother living in a cottage on her farm was a very tough article to read, but so beautifully written. It’s one of those pieces that I felt so uncomfortable and sad the whole time I was reading it, but had to get to the end.

Image: Courtesy of Ilona Szwarc for The New York Times

There’s always money in the banana stand! On Sunday, Arrested Development became available for streaming on Netflix and it’s like the return of an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, but feel as if no time has passed. We’re on episode six and hoping Franklin and Annyong show up soon!

Image: Courtesy of Marion Curtis/Startraksphoto.com

This is one of my favorite photos of my parents. Every Memorial Day, I think of my father’s 21-year career as a journalist in the Army and wish he were still around to tell me about it all.

I’m convinced Margaret is going to wind up sounding like Demi Moore once she starts talking. These days she’s certainly finding her voice. And by voice I mean something that sounds like a feral catfight with screeching and squawking at the top of her lungs. I’ve taken to calling her the little lynx because she sounds like a wild animal. So sad this one born recently at the Nashville Zoo passed away this week from pneumonia.

Image: Courtesy of Amiee Stubbs/HotSpot /Landov

Nathan Fielder’s last text prank cracked me up and this one might top it.

you might also like...

The Pop Five

May 24, 2013

This was a tough news week. I’m so sad for Oklahomans. The story of the path of devastation hit very close to home. My parents met and married in OKC and we have family there. I hope the town of Moore and the surrounding areas can begin the long process of healing and starting over. Here’s to a weekend of remembering to hold your loved ones tight and taking a moment to appreciate just how fleeting and precious life actually is.

They don’t make ‘em like George Plimpton anymore! This looks so good.

I barely passed Economics 101 in college. My professor stumped me on day one with his explainer of the theory that “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” So, this piece about black market drug trade is both fascinating and baffling to me.

Image: Courtesy of David McNew/Getty Images

Isn’t this photo series on abandoned farmhouses stunning?

Image: © Niki Feijen

I can get behind the Donald Miller Storyline.

Image: Courtesy of Laura Dart

I’ve recently added salads into our weeknight meal repertoire. I’m not talking about the iceberg and mushy tomato piles of water I was accustomed to in the Midwest, but hearty greens that actually fill you up. I made this on Monday night. So good!

Image: Courtesy of Con Poulous

you might also like...