Quaintrelle Weekender

Four ways to a better weekend

Welcome to Quaintrelle Weekender.

This is a short list of things I am currently loving to make eating, drinking, and hosting easier and a lot more interesting.

To Serve:

Ali Stafford’s Crushed Olive Dip

Holy. Smokes.

Friends, I have been crushing hard on

Alexandra Stafford

’s newsletter and blog, Pizza Every Friday since joining Substack. I just simply love her creative spirit, generosity of knowledge, and beautiful balance between realistic and aspirational kitchen projects.

Her new cookbook, Pizza Night was just released (and, according to my delivery tracker, should arrive on my doorstep c’est soir!) and she’s been sharing that same wisdom on podcasts like She’s My Cherry Pie or Taste .

All of this gushing is to say her newsletter yesterday included a recipe for crushed olive dip and I’m pretty sure my life, and my hosting, will never be the same. I can see this dip served alongside martinis (obvs), but also a crisp and fruity sparkling wine.

Staying In:

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

The 2007 memoir from one of publishing’s most iconic and powerful women.

Judith Jones is responsible for rescuing The Diary of Anne Frank from the slush pile, and advocating Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking when most passed on the now-quintessential book. Ms Jones passed away in 2017 at the age of 93, having trail-blazed a 50-year career discovering some of food’s most formidable cooks: Madhur Jaffrey, Lidia Bastianich, Edna Lewis, just to name a scant few of the famous writers under her helm.

This book, unsurprisingly, focuses mostly on her thoughts about food and cooking. While highly enjoyable, and I do recommend it, I wished it contained more about her life as a woman coming up through the ranks of the publishing world in the 1950’s and 60’s; her 40-plus year marriage to Evan Jones, the love of her life and seemingly equal partner in every aspect of her life; and perhaps even how she managed to get by solo after his death, some 20 years before hers.

However, Sara B. Franklin’s biography, The Editor is to be released later this month which should reveal the juicy bits, so The Tenth Muse will be a good primer.

Set the Scene:

Stonebriar 8-Hour Burn Tea Lights, 200 pack

In the first edition of Quaintrelle Weekender, we discussed how, now that I am a lady of a certain age, good lighting is non-negotiable. To wit, I’m a candle girl through and through: winter mornings when the sun doesn’t rise til noon, and spring/summer evenings when the sun doesn’t set til nine.

I love an evening nightcap in the cooling evening, under the indigo sky and soft glow of flickering candles. A few years ago, I discovered the Stonebriar brand which does, impressively, burn for eight hours. While the $50-ish price tag might induce some sticker shock, that comes to 29 cents per candle, or 3.6 cents per hour. A magnificent deal when compared to the cheap candles that the drug store or the Swedish furniture place sell.

Summer Style

French Market Basket

This is where I get to bust out my inner-women’s mag copyeditor with a line like, “get instant summer Euro-glam with this stylish French market bag.” Or maybe, “Bring a splash of St Tropez to the local farmer’s market with this chic French market tote!” Hmmm… I think I need work in the descriptors, “whimsical,” “effortless,” and “breezy.” Let me pour a glass of rosé and have a think on it.

In the meantime… I’ve used this whimsical/stylish/breezy bag every single day over the last three years (note the lock-down uniform from 2021 in the picture above) for grocery runs, beach days, as a de facto brief case to lug all my stuff to Wine School. And I always, always get compliments on it.

After stuffing it full with shoulder-breaking stuff, my original has started to give out, so I’ve now replaced it with a new version from Home Smith, an all-too-tempting home shop that used to be on Roncesvalles in Toronto’s west-end, but has moved north to Yonge and Eglinton. I’ve poked around, and Home Smith, for all its luxury, really has the best prices on these chic/effortless/glam French market baskets. They also ship internationally.

Hey – did you know if you check that little heart at the bottom or the top of this post, the magic internet fairies will show it to more people? And, seeing little hearts all lit up just makes mine light up too.

If you like reading Quaintrelle, it would mean so much to me if you could share it with a few like-minded winos, foodies, travellers, and party throwers.

And if you feel like saying hi, I love to hear from you.