The Silver Lining: Volume 007
Musings on living the good life: food, culture, art, and products designed to inspire. Top picks from me to you, every Thursday.
Quick note of gratitude for the particularly sweet notes I got back from last week’s issue — thanks for reaching out and I’m glad this little project we’re undertaking together can serve as a respite for the chaos around us.
Stay safe and be well — on to volume 007.
Top Track
This week we find ourselves on two continents for The Gloves Don’t Bite remix:
Mildlife, a 4-some from Melbourne, wrote the original version of the song (which is well worth a listen) for their album Phase in 2017. I read an article that referred to their genre as ‘Space Kraut Jazz’, and while I’m not quite sure what that means, it certainly sounds cool.
Mount Liberation Unlimited, a duo from Stockholm, came along a year later to edit the track ‘for the dancefloor’, and I’m sure glad they did. If you’re a fan of this remix, I think you’ll dig their 3 track EP that just came out this past Valentine’s Day as well.
Artist Date - c/o Julia Cameron
I came across this haunting photo essay from The New York Times called The Great Empty and was struck how each photographer framed this unprecedented moment across the globe.
Michael Kimmelman captures the soul of the photoset in his introduction:
Their present emptiness, a public health necessity, can conjure up dystopia, not progress, but, promisingly, it also suggests that, by heeding the experts and staying apart, we have not yet lost the capacity to come together for the common good. Covid-19 doesn’t vote along party lines, after all. These images are haunted and haunting, like stills from movies about plagues and the apocalypse, but in some ways they are hopeful.
I’ll share a few below, but definitely check out the full set. The interaction design on the piece was pretty slick, too.
Rome’s Spanish Steps Photo Credit: Alessandro Penso
Santa Monica Beach Photo Credit: Philip Cheung
And one special shoutout to Munich’s U-bahn for having the sexiest damn subway station I’ve ever feasted my eyes on. If anyone knows where I can buy these lamps, please send word.
Munich Subway Photo Credit: Laetitia Vancon
Barefoot Contessa Bootcamp
This week’s Bootcamp is dedicated to Nicolle, who (along with her brother) helped introduce Lee and I. I owe you my world — and I promise to pay down that debt, starting with the pantry stocking tips you requested this week.
This exhaustive guide from Julia Moskin can serve as a great resource for home chefs of all persuasions, offering 3 tiers: Essential, Expanded, and Expert. There’s even an organization guide that will be an OCD reader’s best friend.
Behold the beauty of a well-stocked pantry.
And a quick read from Melissa Clark offers another well catalogued guide to getting your pantry in order: “a well-stocked pantry can provide a sense of safety and control when the news is frightful and the future uncertain”. A little more control and ease of mind sounds pretty damn good right about now.
Long Read
If you’re like me — you have a stack of books you’re optimistically going to plow through over the next few weeks of quarantine. Good luck with that.
That said, I wanted to send along one of my favorite magazine long-reads of all time: 2009’s The Happiness Study from The Atlantic:
For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining “What Makes Us Happy”, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
I’ve always been drawn to stories about real people — what makes them tick, what makes them successful, what makes them happy or morose — and longitudinal studies are arguably the best way to answer these very questions.
June 2009 cover of the Atlantic.
Fun fact about this particular study: President John F. Kennedy was one of the participants, though his files were long ago withdrawn from the study office and sealed from release until the year 2040!
Table for 2
Pasjoli, an elevated french bistro in Santa Monica, is a hit with diners and food critics alike since it opened last fall.
When I got word that Dave Beran, the mastermind behind Pasjoli and the pri-fixe menu at Dialogue, was selling a limited number of his famous Basque cheesecakes with all proceeds going to pay employees’ healthcare, I was all in.
Basque cheesecake from Dialogue and Pasjoli chef Dave Beran
There’s some fun backstory on this unique type of cheesecake found in San Sebastian, where Beran fell for the desert during an R&D trip to Spain a few years back. His recipe is a closely held secret, but admits “it has five ingredients and two of them are sugar and salt.” If you’re looking to throw an apron on this week, Bon Apetit has an approachable recipe to try your hand at.
Social Starlette(s)
Another Corona inspired set of socials this week. The internet has some time on their hands, and I’m here for all of it:
— Don’t ask this lady to bust out her sewing kit —
— Sam Smith you can serenade us anytime —
— “Howdy, Cowboy” —
— Red or white, Kendra? —
One final note — Facetime your friends. They miss you.
That’s it for Volume 007. New issues of The Silver Lining drop weekly on Thursdays.
Email me your feedback: scott@thesilverlining.la — I love hearing from you!