The Silver Lining: Volume 23
Musings on living the good life: food, culture, art, and products designed to inspire. Top picks from me to you, every Thursday.
Top Tracks
I’m a sucker for music industry documentaries. If you’re looking to add to your queue — Muscle Shoals, Amy, and 20 Feet from Stardom — are a few of my faves.
I was excited to see David Foster’s doc land on Netflix last weekend. The man is a prolific producer, 16-time Grammy award winner, and helped launch the careers of Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Michael Buble, and countless others. He’s also quite famous for helping Whitney Houston create the iconic cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘73 track “I Will Always Love You”, our first track this week:
Whitney’s version, created for the 1992 film The Bodyguard, spent 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and is one of the best-selling singles of all time. Check out the full Foster doc for some remarkable archival footage of him in the studio with some of the world’s greats!
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Next up is a new voice that some are saying has the Whitney Houston chops. Jenevieve is a 22-year-old singer based in Miami, with Cuban, Bahamian, Spanish and French roots. Her two-song EP debuted in March, and we’re digging “Baby Powder” in particular:
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Finally this week, thanks (again) to Max for sharing the beauty and bounty of Fela Kuti. A Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician, and composer, Fela was considered the pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre and human rights activist.
This cut “Let’s Start” comes from a 5 track album titled “Fela with Ginger Baker Live!, which should accompany your breakfast prep vibes this weekend:
Ginger Baker, the drummer from Cream, accompanied Fela to Africa to study the continent’s rhythms. They duo went on to record this live album together in 1971.
Artist Date
If you’re into fashion, the pandemic has helped democratize some of the most prestigious Fashion Week events usually reserved for the rarefied few. The New York Times has all the Fashion Week events conveniently collated here; Milano’s Digital version runs July 14-17.
Barefoot Contessa Bootcamp
I try my best to cook everything I feature before it makes it into TSL, but life has been busy as of late and I haven’t gotten around to making this Greek take on chicken soup. Chrissy Teigen actually turned me on to it, and it looked delicious enough to share with you all before I tried it on for size myself.
The Kitchn sums up this Greek dish well:
Almost every culture has a homey version of chicken soup to comfort the sick or the soul weary, or to stave off the chill of cold weather, but the Greeks might just have one of the best: the egg and lemon soup known as avgolemono.
Here’s why Greek egg and lemon soup is my favorite. First of all, it’s gorgeous. The broth is vibrant yellow from the eggs and heavily scented with lemon fragrance. Next, when you dig in for a spoonful, the broth is not only stunning, but it’s also silky and rich without a drop of cream in sight.
Can’t wait for a break in this heat wave to make this luscious Avgolemono soup!
SKU of the Week
Lee stumbled across Ordinary Habit this week, and I like what I’m seeing from the brand focussed on helping us slow down:
Ordinary Habit was founded in 2019 with a simple purpose: to create artful objects, designed to be both fun and functional, that would help people access habitual moments of calm and connectedness.
Their first SKU is particularly on-trend right now: Puzzles. 6 beautiful puzzles are all part of Collection #1, and can be purchased together as a set or individually. In a moment where our screen time and anxiety are up, I like the idea of going offline with one of these beautiful projects.
‘Ecstatic Motion’ by Priscilla Weidlein, for sale at ordinaryhabit.com.
Social Action
I loved listening to last week’s Good Food with Evan Kleinman, where she spotlighted Chewbox from Chef Roy Choi and Kim Gaston:
Chewbox is a food delivery service focused on healthy, chef-driven meals and job opportunities for underserved communities.
Chewbox started as a pilot program for teachers who only had 30-minute breaks and unhealthy lunch options. Meals are made and delivered from Choi’s former Locol kitchen in Watts, and the program is now open to the public during the pandemic. The goal is to take the program across the country.
I love what Chewbox is doing — empowering local communities, starting with Watts, installing an industrial kitchen and training local chef talent with good-paying jobs. The result: great tasting food at affordable prices for underserved communities. Below is the origin story of Chewbox, which pre-pandemic got its start focussing on serving teachers quality lunches:
If you feel compelled — consider donating to Chewbox via their Venmo account. Details below:
Social Starlette(s)
A well deserved smile to kick us off this week:
These cake videos were all the rage this week. Talented, if not gratuitous:
To be in the room where it happened:
And after its was all said and done:
Sad but true. ‘Please scream inside your heart’:
Clean lines from Djibouti in East Africa:
And finally, a real treat from Tom Misch & friends (thanks Conner for the share!):
That’s it for Volume 23. New issues of The Silver Lining drop weekly on Thursdays.
Comments, questions, tips?
Send a letter to the editor –– Scott Silver:
scott@thesilverlining.la / @thesilverlining.la