They’re here, and I’ve seen them, and they’re broad, slim, and beautiful — three cheers for A4 Habanas!
In honor of the new size, we’ll be giving away four A4s to our lucky readers… enter by Monday, April 30th at midnight EST by completing the form below. Continue reading »
A couple years ago, I tried and failed to bat back the tangled mess my RSS reader had become. (Categories helped me prioritize, and I cut some subscriptions, like BoingBoing, that I knew I could never keep up with… but I’ve still got more than a thousand unread posts.)
Social media mavens say that people are relying more on their friends (through Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and less on personal subscriptions to keep up with Internet content. That isn’t quite true in my case — I’m on Facebook, but I’m not very active, and I gravitate first to sites like the New York Times and Slate, which I’ve had bookmarked for years — though I often find great blogs and articles through Quo Vadis’s own social media presence. Still, I’d be curious to learn more about other people’s habits. What’s your preferred mode of navigation and/or discovery? Has it changed over the past few years?
It’s something old, something new this Friday with reviews of the Canadian Minister (similar to, but slightly different than, the US version) and the hot-off-the-presses Hebdo, a new format for 2013 with lots of space for Sundays!
Thanks for the great reviews, guys, and happy Friday!
Here’s an intriguing idea from bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, which I got to via The Kitchn: use an address book to store your most-referenced recipes.
It’s the most important tool I own, and I never set foot behind a bar without my book. The alphabetical tabs make it quick and easy to look up a recipe, and inside I’ve got years worth of classic cocktails, house recipes, syrup and mixer recipes for prep or to share with guests, variations, and layer upon layer of correction fluid and margin notes. It’s absolutely indispensable to me.
Morgenthaler uses a Moleskine address book for this purpose, but you could easily use the insert that comes with your planner (assuming that, like many of us who are tethered to our cell phones and computers, you don’t already use it for addresses) and move it with you from year to year, as it grows. And of course, you could store more than cocktails — I know I’m always looking up the quantities for my favorite pancake recipe on the weekend, which I can never seem to remember…
Our latest Writers’ Project interview is live! This month, we sat down with Michelle Krell Kydd, who writes about the history, myth, and folklore behind different scents and flavors at her blog, Glass, Petal, Smoke, and various other outlets. It’s an unusual niche, so be sure to check it out and learn how Michelle discovered her “nose,” what she’s working on, and her love of the pencil.
While you’re there, you can catch up on some archived interviews with cookbook author Maggie Green and playwright J.D. Eames.
I haven’t seen them yet, but our A4-sized Habanas are apparently ready to ship. At the moment, they only come with blank (ivory) pages and black covers, but if they’re popular, that may change.
For those who aren’t familiar with the size, A4 is 8 ¼ x 11 ¾ inches. So these new books are bigger than our current large Habanas by a couple inches in each direction.
If you’re interested, please ask your favorite retailer! And watch this space for further updates, cause Karen has a few of these to give away…
Today’s roundup is short and sweet — there’s just one review to feature. Nonetheless, it comes from an interesting source: Modern Vintage Man, a blog that advises gents “on what’s cool, awesome, and needed.” As Tim points out in his review of our Trinote:
The ability to plan ahead is a trait that sets truly great men apart. Planning requires discipline, wisdom, insight, and direction; qualities all men should strive for.
Read the full review here.
I am an inveterate guest book lurker… I don’t often sign them myself, but I love looking through them at hotels and seeing, for example, where other visitors come from and what they thought about their stays.
In this era of large chains, however, they’re getting harder and harder to find, which is why I was so pleased to find one not just in the lobby of the bed and breakfast we stayed at on our trip to Tennessee, but in our room itself. I didn’t take a picture of it — somehow, that seemed antithetical to the spirit of the thing, depriving it of its geographical and experiential specificity — though I enjoyed reading other people’s comments.
Do you like to sign or read guest books?
It’s amazing how restorative even short trips can be… we left for the Smoky Mountains on Friday and spent the next two nights in Townsend, TN; during the day, we went for long hikes and scenic drives.
In many ways, though, the most memorable part of our stay was waking up to the mist-covered mountains that our bed-and-breakfast’s windows faced. It’s from these mists, apparently, that the Smokies got their name, and they are no less amazing to behold when you know you can expect them.
When I lived in Europe, it was a truth universally acknowledged — at least among people my age — that Easter was the perfect opportunity to hop on a train and take some sort of mini-vacation. Of course, it helped that Good Friday’s a holiday, and Monday, too, which left one with a nice amount of time; I went to Prague one year, Italy the next.
I haven’t traveled on Easter since I came back to the States, but earlier in the week, when we looked at our calendars and weighed our options, my husband and I realized we had room in our schedules, so we’re heading for the hills: the Smoky Mountains.
Are you going anywhere this weekend?
