#give me lewis in italian designers or else

[killa-trav]

okay but next season can lewis wear literally every single italian brand known to man i'm sick of him being forced to wear tommy hilfiger such a dead brand bro's drip is being affected negatively smh

[dayslynthesix]

i was thinking about it while i was listening to a podcast and ill give it a go, hope you enjoy this one because i love the idea, reader (whos gonna have a name because i cant write for y/n anymore and i dont know why is a redbull engineer who happens to have a podcast

Getaway Car | Charles Leclerc x podcaster!reader

When Anna Zedra accepted the job as junior engineering at RedBull racing, she never thought that a job on the navy blue team would also give her a boyfriend. A boyfriend who used to drive for the infamous red team. A boyfriend who wanted so bad to be world champion but who could never won on that team. Everything started in 2022, middle of the season, pole and no win. And again. And again. And it started to get exhausting. Until Austria. Charles won on Redbull ring, and he thought it would be different. But it wasn't. As the season went on, Christian and the entire team were keeping an eye on his performance. RedBull offered a 2 years contract, they would pay him out of Ferrari, he didn't signed. But Charles had kept that contract in his drawer for the most part of the 2023 season, until COTA, and after that disastrous race, he called Christian, and that called lead to a meeting and a meeting lead to the Brazilian GP, who leads to the cover of all the sports magazine "Charles Leclerc signs with RedBull Racing for the 2024 season."

When Anna Zedra accepted the job as junior engineering at RedBull racing, her podcast was already a success into the motorsport. The All About Racing was an informative podcast who almost every month received a new guest. The 2022 season was marked by almost everyone making an appearance on the podcast. Max, Daniel, Christian, even Lewis Hamilton agreed to be on one of the episodes - and it was one of the most streamed episodes of the platform.

When Charles and Anna started to see each other, during the 2023 Italian GP, he was yet under Ferrari contract, but every once in a while he made a comment here and there about wanting to be on the podcast. Once the 2024 season started, and Anna was designed as his race engineer, and he was announced as the second driver of the team, they made a deal, they would record the episode after the first race and it would be released after his first win of the team. Charles wasn't expecting to win so soon, but he claimed his firts victory at the Saudi Arabia GP, he won the race with 15s to second place. So the podcast was aired during the middle of the night, because a deal is a deal.

Podcast transcription:

Anna: Hello everyone and welcome back to All About Racing, just for a little announcement, this podcast was recorded on the march 2nd, right after the Bahrein Grand Prix and as you know, our guest for today episode is no one else but Charles Leclerc. Welcome, Charles, thank you so much for being here today. I know how it went, but tell us, how it went qualy and the race?

Charles: Hello Anna. Thank you for having me and lets pretending you had a choice on that *laughs* Qualy went very well for the team, first qualy with RedBull and we had a 1-2 for the team, Max did an amazing lap on q3, but I'm very happy with the results, the car feels amazing and I'm very proud of my lap as well. The race was very good as well, the car is incredible reliable and it felt amazing to be on that podium. Aiming the highest spot nex week

Anna: Im very happy to listen that the car feels nice, I spend a lot of time working on that project. Adrian Newey learned everything he knows from me. Jokes a part, I know your dream was to win with Ferrari, for your dad, for Jules, for your young self, so how does it feels to move to RedBull after 5 years with Ferrari?

Charles: I mean... it was a tough call. I always wanted to drive for Ferrari, win on the red car, put a flag in Maranello, and in some level I did those things, I won with them, I was very happy in Monza in 2019, and I had some very incredible moments with the team and the tifosi and all related. My dad would be so happy for me to drive for them, I wanted to keep Jules legacy alive and so far being compared to him is still the most amazing thing I could ever experience. But it came a moment that I knew that I couldn't do more than what I was already doing, the car was very difficult to drive and it didn't suited my driving style and a lot of bad stuf kept happening and slowly it was killing me, it was killing my faith in myself and I wasn't believing in me, or the driver I am. It hurt a lot the moment I decided to leave, not to wear red in Monza or not to recieve the tifosi love... I thought it was over, if I wasn't a Ferrari driver I thought I would be no one. And then Christian and I we talked and I signed that contract and I drove the RB20 and everything clicked, Christian let me do something that I don't think is pretty common, but earlier this year I went on a private practice with the last 2 RBR cars, and I remember, like, feeling the car and suddenly the driver I am was awaken again, and I felt my confidence again and it just made sense. After the announcement I was so afraid of what the tifosi would say to me and I was so surprised of the amount of love I kept receiving. Yeah, I am no longer a Ferrari driver, I was for 5 years and I loved being part of the red team, but it came a point of a driver career that we need to make the choices which are better for our inner driver, not just ourselves. And I am immensely happy with RedBull, with the car and the team and everything.

Anna: Wow, that was very deep, you and I we alredy had this same conversation but is still very warming to listen to all of that again and to know that you are happy with the team, we are also very happy with you wearing navy blue. You said you're very happy and all, but walk us through your relationship with Max and how beeing teammates is working so far. We are insanely happy that there was no inchidents on the race.

Charles: *laughs* Oh my God, you'll never gonna let go, are you? Max and I we became pretty close om track during late season of 2019 and of track in 2022, we spent a lot of time playing padel and tennis and alson on the sim. We drive pretty much the same way, so it is very easy for the team to build a car that suits us both. During the race today we spend solid 25 laps fighting for position, he is way more used with the car than I am, so he won that one, but I am coming for him next race, there was no incidents and I'm pretty positive we will keep this way. We work fine on track, and Christian made us swear that whatever happens on track, stay on track.

Anna: Well done. No more inchidents, I see. There's people making comments on twitter and instagram about teams orders and first and second driver... what do you have to say about it?

Charles: No team orders, Max and I are free to fight as long as there's no risk of compromising each others position or the team, if theresa risk whomever is faster will get priority and the slowest will defend. Choosing a first and second driver is very good for car development, but considering that our driving style is very close there's no need to chose in which direction the car will go, whatever suits Max will most likely suit me as well. Obviously, as the season will developing, if theresa risk or a driver coming very close in points, the one who has more point will get priority as well, which is fair. And Max and I we are definitely not allowed to pull a Baku 2018 or a Spain 2016.

Anna: As a engineer and e RedBull employee I was already very familiar with that. You seems to be very close to a few drivers, how do you think being this close to others drivers helped to improve your driving skills?

Charles: I didn't have the amount of teammates Lewis had, for example, but I was teammate with Seb for 2 seasons and it was such a great experience to learn from him, to be close, to see how he thinks and how he matches with the car and all of that helped me a lot on how I would connect myself with the car as well, I've learned to be patient, to trust my institution and principally understand how the car is working and how to merge with a car who does not suit me 100%. When I signed with RedBull I called my mom, obviously and Seb was the second person I've called and I remembered exactly what he told me all the years we raced together, to not to waste my talent. I'm very close to Lewis as well, we went surfing last year and we have a lot in common, as drivers and as human beings. Not ironically, Jenson Button was around during last year and we've spent some time together as well, I was trying to learn how to be more smooth and he told me not to do that, because the way I drive today is the way I've learned how to drive and that's what gives me speed.

Anna: Lately we all have been talking about woman in formula one, it is another of our conversations so i already know all your thoughts but the audience doesn't, so please, elucidate us with your thoughts.

Charles: I don't think it should have this separation between man and woman in motorsport, it is not like they can't tolerate the conditions of a track you know? I think with F1 academy we are miles closer to have a woman in F1 than we were a few years ago but we are also miles away from it. One, I don't think there's a lot of teams who would "take the risk" and two I think for the comments I've read online that it isn't fair for any woman to have to deal with that, you know? Not performing well is a shot in the ego and all this comments put together is harmful. I watch volleyball, it is a strange habit that I've developed with Jenson because his wife is a volleyball player and those girls are playing two and a half hours match, they're running all the court, they're jumping and throwing themselves on the floor and like the gym time? Insane. Tennis as well, there's a few matches that are hours long and they are playing high level tennis and tennis is a very aggressive sport... so like I don't think the "woman doesn't have the physical to formula one" because it is not true. F1 is still a very exclusive sport, especially if you bring sponsors and teams are not comfortable of letting money go, there's 20 of us, soon to be 22 or 24 if Porsche and Audi make it and there's nothing on regulation that prohibits woman in F1, it would be very nice if one of those new teams go for a woman line up. RedBull last year had a reserve driver who performed amazingly, it was like she could see physically the track, the lines and kerbs. I'm all for woman in motorsport, Max and I we went to a girls karting track in Germany during the winter break and they are very talented.

Anna: Race weekend after race weekend I saw people on twitter talking about how they think you are not a F1 champion material, how you should be more vocal about what you want... everything someone who never been inside a F1 car could tell about it. How do you keep you mentality strong? We all know that you can perform under pressure. You won in Monza with 2 Mercedes pressuring you, you won in Austria with a throttle issue. You won your F2 championship after your dad passed away, you kept going for Jules... that's all very different of the kinda of pressure every other driver suffered during their careers.

Charles: I mean, I don't have to prove myself anymore. I impressed who I had to impress, I won a F3 and F2 championship. I'm here. I'm driving a F1 car every sunday. I've won in Formula One, so there's no one else that I have to impress anymore. I'm not calling the team out on the radio during a race, I don't think that's how you fix things, and I think it is the kind of thing that you talk privately with your team behind garage doors. I'm the one who's driving, the team is the one who have tha data, the difference between the car in front of me and the car behind me, the window we have to pit, the tyres we can use and the omes that makes the car performs better. The team needs to have their best interests to maximize the points on that weekend. It is not my job to do more than drive. But one thing is for sure, I'm the one who's driving, who's feeling the car, and once I tell the team that pitting for hards is a bad choice and that we need to pit for medium, because I am feeling the car, and they don't listen to me, that's out of my hands. I'll take full responsibility for my own mistakes. Imola in 2022? It was on me. France 2022? It was my fault. I'll take that, I accept that and I'll learn with those mistakes and I will do better the next time. Just because I don't scream on the radio and expose the team to the media it does means that I will not call them out privately. And people talk about it because they are not the one who is inside that cockpit.

Anna: You've been doing your job brilliantly. Everyone who truly understands F1 knows that, you wouldn't be driving for Ferrari in your second year if you weren't a good driver. Or for RedBull, and God knows the amount of years we were waiting for this to happen.

Charles: It is happening now. And about my dad and Jules... I was doing my job, I mourned my father after that race, I've cried and I've missed him ever since, I kept going for him and for the legacy Jules was building in F1. I had to prove myself to them, and to my mom. People can say whatever they want to, and if they think they know more about strategy and power units and stuff they can apply to work in F1. I like the pressure. I think it makes me a better driver. Winning when there's no one challenging you it not my type of victory. I like being challenged, that's why I liked being Seb's teammate. He was 4 times champion of the world, he knew he was good, I knew it too, but he never backed down to a challenge.

Anna: I miss Seb. I think deep down we all miss him more than we let him see. Do you think that because of the challenges you and Max will perform better?

Charles: Max is coming for a season and a half without competition. He was winning with 15 seconds to the second place, and every time we fought wheel to wheel tha past season we talked after and it was such a thrill. Our driving style being so close makes it very possible for us to fight the way we like, so yeah, I think the pressure to perform well and the challenge to win Max will make me a better driver.

Anna: Do you have any funny story to tell us about?

Charles: I have one about you and Max. Fun fact, untill December last year Anna didn't knew how to drive. Max tried to teach her and I think that for the first time in his life he failed miserable. I remember trying to teach you how to drive and failing as well. But there's one day that is very clear in my mind. We just got back from Interlagos 2022 and we went to a small city in Sao Paulo so I could teach you and the car kept dying, so you stormed out of the car and called Seb crying, and you were crying so hard that I almost started to cry as well. We went back to Monaco, a few weeks latter Seb pulled out in front ou your house, Jenson Button as his co-pilot and they take the matters in their own hands and for a week you went out for like 5 hours and once that week was over you were a better driver than I am.

Anna: Well, asking you to teach me how to drive was a amateur mistake, you don't know how to park parallel. But yeah, Seb and JB they were excellent teachers. Thank you Seb. Thank you JB.

Charles: How did you have a drivers license if you didn't know how to drive?

Anna: Having a drivers license doesn't imply that I know how to drive, just that I've learned what to do to pass my drivers test. How do you drive a F1 car and doesn't know how to drive a manual?

Charles: I'm re learning, ok? You are the one with the eccentric taste for manual cars.

Anna: Obviously, it took me ages to learn how to reduce a gear, why would I drive an automatic if the automatic doesn't have to switch gears?

Charles: You have a point. And yet you are doing great on the automatics.

Anna: Let's move to my least favorite subject ever, personal life, people are wondering, is Charles Leclerc on the market?

Charles: *laughs* No, he is not. I'm very much out of the market, and very much in love with a beautiful and strong and smart woman and even though she's not the jealous type I not looking anywhere else.

Anna: Walk us through on how you two meet?

Charles: Yeah, it is very funny actually, we meet after Austria, 2022 but we only started to hangout after Monza last year, she's very into motorsport and formula one and a very private person, so please, let's respect that.

Anna: People on twitter are thinking that she is a ghost because we never saw her on race weekends, I'm inclined to agree with them, Charlie.

Charles: That's mean. And you have seen her on the paddock, a lot actually.

Anna: Some day, I'll be living in a big old city and all you ever gonna be is mean. God, I love Taylor Swift. But yeah, I saw her once ir twice, very nice girl, and pretty, very pretty as well.

Charles: Stop talking about yourself on third person, baby, is very weird.

Anna: Yeah, Charles, go ahead and tell the whole world our most deep secrets.

Charles: Anna... Lando and Pierre already told half of the grid and half of the grid is just pretending they don't know. We are not that subtle.

Anna: Well, okay, cat is out of the jail everyone, Charles is not single anymore, and it's not gonna be for a while. But let's go for the important topic: Taylor Swift.

Charles: Just that? Taylor Swift? What do you want me to say? *laughs*

Anna: Tell the people your favorite album and tracks. I already know them but that's my privilege.

Charles: Reputation, obviously. I like Our Song and Karma. You drive listening to them so I kinda like them too, and Champagne Problems... wow, that one hit hard and also Lover, because I am in love and ok, I like everything.

Anna: Okay, moving forward. Answer with the first thing on your mind. Favorite ice cream flavor?

Charles: Vanilla. Don't you ever think about cracking the joke I know you're thinking.

Anna: Ok. I wont. Favorite track?

Charles: Monaco. But I love Baku as well.

Anna: Interlagos?

Charles: Senna. I love Interlagos because it brings me closer to him as I could never.

Anna: Favorite movie?

Charles: The one with weddings and funerals.

Anna: Would you go out with me after we finish this one?

Charles: That depends, will you go out with me after we finish this one?

Anna: So guys that's it. Hope you have enjoyed this episode as much as we did while recording it. I think this one will be out way sooner than we expect. See you in a couple of weeks to go through the first 4 races of the season. Thank you, Charlie.

Charles: Thank you. See you guys.

*cut*

Anna: Stop tickling me or I'll call Max and asks him to blow all your medium tyres.

Charles: You could never.

Anna: Yes, I would.

Charles: Let's go, baby, I'll take you to dinner and after we can go karting with the boys.

Anna: Max is texting me so I can tell you to answer him.

Charles: Oh difficult life, my teammate likes me more than I think he would.

Anna: Don't tease him, he's lonely, he needs a girlfriend, how about we introduce him to Gia?

Charles: *hysterically laughing* Gia would crash him like a bug. Let's do it.

allaboutracing

liked by f1, maxverstappen, charles_leclerc, redbullracing, pierregasly and 324.177 others

allaboutracing and we are back!! welcome to season 3 of all about racing podcast, this season we're about to have a few special guest, we're gonna talk about all formula one related, analyze the cars, the races and the track - while i conciliate the races and the tracks on my full time job, i hope you enjoy this season as much as i did.

redbullracing full time race engineer and podcaster, well done mini.

maxverstappen1 im still waiting for my invitation

sebastianvettel well done, kid!

f1 adm is already on play with the firts episode

leclercsainz i love how she just went on and did a full podcast just for us to understand more about racing

jbuttonwdc i would love to see jenson button on the podcast

roscoeloveslewis remember when last season she said that she wanted to bring the champs for the podcast?

charles_leclerc im hoping to be on the couch as well

february 1st 2024

allaboutracing

liked by jensonbutton, sebastianvettel, lewishamilton, f1, charles_leclerc and 344.754 others

allaboutracing we are officially back. the first guests of season 3 are no more than the 2009 world champion jenson button and the 4 time champion of the world sebastian vettel. it was amazing to speak with booth of them, about racing, retirement, life and the changes that are happening in formula one. jb episode will be available on march, the 7th and seb will be available on march, 21th. hope you enjoy it.

lewishamilton great guy and than there's jenson.

sebastianvettel thank you for having me!

jensonbutton same time next week?

f1 that what we asked for

jbuttonwdc KA8SJSUQUWHAUAUHQGU IM NOT OKAY

beesebs i miss sebastian vettel more than i miss my parents and i moved away in 2017

alonsoxswift everybody moved on and i stayed here

sv5ismydad i cannot believe that she convinced seb to be on the podcast, anna youre my personal hero

february 16th 2024

picsbyanna

liked by charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, redbullracind and 175.234 others

annazadra break is over, time to go back in track. insanely anxious to this season and very excited about the car that me, myself and i helped to build

maxverstappen1 lets hope you didnt put a shitty box with 3 weels after the little prank i pulled you

charles_leclerc lets go vroom vroom

redbullracing christian is calling you about something like "prank war"

danielricciardo i left redbull and now suddenly they have funny engineers again

comments on this post have been restricted

february 28th 2024

allaboutracing

liked by charles_leclerc, pierregasly, scuderiaferrari, maxverstappen1 and 544.766 others

allaboutracing I've listening to you guys and i brought the monegasque favorite driver to the podcast. on the next episode we will talk about charles moving to redbull, what he expects of the team and the car, how he thinks his partnership will works with max, about racing on a general but we also want to know what you want on the podcast, so send you questions, se ya next week.

maxverstappen1 how can charles be on the podcast and im not?

allaboutracing max, you are so dramatic, you and the entire team have been on the podcast so far in season one

maxverstappen1 i want to go again

danielricciardo thing you can say during sex as well

maxverstappen1 this girl is taken, stop that

charles_leclerc it was a pleasure to talk to you, you were a wonderful host.

f1 next week? please, don't do this to us 🥲

march 3th 2024

redbullracing

liked by charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, allaboutracing, picsbyanna, lewishamilton and 877.265 others

redbullracing charles grabbed his first win with the team at the jeddah grand prix, well done charlie, we're insanely proud of you! ps: the all about racing: inside of charles leclerc mentality is out earlier to celebrate his victory, go listen to it.

picsbyanna wow, is he single?

march 10th 2024

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

my love-hate relationship with ‘stranger things 3’

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Inconsolable were the Harringroves; So beware the spoilers that come thine way. - Lewis Carrol, at some point

[Picture me holding up a ‘YOU SUCK/YOU RULE’ board. Chunks of my hair are missing.]

PROS:

· So much was going on at any given moment. It was a rollercoaster on an acid trip in the middle of a South Asian wedding after 2PM.

· It feels like the writers genuinely had fun with this season; the Big Bad was (ironically, considering its origins) fresh, the storylines went every direction imaginable- and beyond- and who the fuck cares about connecting all the threads when it’s so damn entertaining?

· Steve Harrington in a dorky sailor’s costume.

· Steve Harrington never changing out of said dorky sailor’s costume for the entire season.

· Robin Buckley in a dorky sailor’s costume.

· Robin Buckley in general.

· Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley in dorky sailor’s costumes, together.

· Straightbaiting.

· Steve finally getting a friend who doesn’t make him act like a douche / doesn’t dump him for a guy who creeped on them / has hit puberty.

· Male-female friendships that don’t end up in boning.

· Steve finally winning a fight.

· Dustin making a big deal out of this.

· Erica ‘You can’t spell America without Erica’ Sinclair.

· Hopper being El’s legal father.

· El breaking up with Mike.

· Female friendships that do not involve one being eaten alive by a monster from another dimension.

· Max giving El a makeover.

· Gratuitous references to the 80s.

· Will Byers.

· Me adopting Will Byers.

· On the subject of Will Byers- I know a lot of you headcanon gay Will, but consider: ace/aro Will.

· Nancy’s new haircut.

· Karen Wheeler being a decent mother to her daughter instead of hooking up with a boy the same age as her aforementioned daughter (the bar is literally so low for this woman, the only way to go is up).

· Heather Holloway, my girl in red.

· Carnivals.

· The Fourth of July.

· Carnivals on the Fourth of July.

· Billy’s mullet.

· Billy’s blue, blue eyes.

· Billy in a wifebeater and blue, blue jeans.

· Billy reminding me of multiple Taylor Swift songs.

· Billy getting possessed.

· Billy’s moral compass making a cameo.

· Billy dying right afterwards. (me, watching Billy’s childhood trauma: We saw this with Christian Grey, we saw it with Hardin Whoeverthefuck; they’re not gonna give him a redemption arc, are they? me, watching Billy get punctured like shishkebab: GIVE HIM THE GODDAMN REDEMPTION ARC.)

· Billy would not be amused with the existence of tentacle hentai.

· This dead meme that took me far too long to make that I’m far too proud of:

Graphic designing is my passion.

· Dustin and Suzie-not-Q’s duet trumping every Disney musical in existence.

· The dog. I don’t remember seeing it, but there must’ve been at least one.

CONS:

· The sheer secondhand embarrassment I got from the first episode alone. I had to leave my room multiple times to get a breather; it was an effort to convince myself to take the stairs instead of flinging myself off the goddamn balcony.

· Exploding into smithereens like one of those rats >>>>> seeing children making out.

· El and Mike not staying broken up.

· Evil Russians.

· Not being able to take a Russian course because I’m already falling behind on my Spanish and Italian and the Duolingo owl being a bitch about it.

· The US military getting later than my dad picking me up after school.

· The realization that Dad’s still going to be late as ever because I never fucking learned to drive.

· The pandemic that got in the way of my driving lessons.

· Billy’s Camaro- second to only the locker room for the most popular hookup spot in Harringrove fics- getting banged up.

· Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash not making an appearance.

· All the time I spent wondering which writer has a kink for seeing Joe Keery’s face in injury makeup because Steve Harrington gets the living daylights knocked out of him every season.

· ‘Injury makeup’ being something I made up on the spot because I don’t know what else to call it.

· The Coca-Cola product placements.

· Coca-Cola and Pepsi tasting the same to me.

· “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.” Mike, you’re, like, 12.

· Erica Sinclair going from funny to insufferable every time I blink.

· Billy getting skewered in the middle of his character arc.

· El knowing way too much for a girl who didn’t know what a friend was in the first season.

· Steve being too much of a comic relief and not enough of a person.

· Hopper being whatever the hell he was for this entire season. He was so jarringly out of character that they should’ve just given him another name and made him Hopper’s psycho twin or something.

· I heard somewhere that Maya Hawke had to ask for her character to be queer… but they’re perfectly fine with having middle-aged, married women lust over a teenager??? I reiterate, the bar is so fucking low, yet somehow the gays are below even that???

· My perseverance about making shitty memes.

[depressed-chicken-man]

Cooped Up

Shane x OC

CH1 CH2 CH3 CH4 CH5

Summary: 

After failing to start her dream in the city, the fashion designer turned farmer tries to cope with her new life in the last-ditch effort to make a happy home for herself. She has so many concerns for her new life. How much of her identity is stuck in the city? Will she even make a difference?

Even if she doesn’t think so, it’s undeniable that she will make a difference for a certain depressed coop keeper.

Chapter 1: Fake it

Chapter 1 on Ao3

To say that Jennifer’s world had done a complete 180 was spot on and in no way an exaggeration. Her new environment so harshly contrasted the life she had been living since she began college and graduated two years ago.

From studying to work in fashion design to being locked in at Joja Corp as a social media supervisor for their online accounts to being elbow deep in fertilized soil and beyond winded was as different as she could feel.

Having been on this new plot of land for only four days, she felt she had done well. She wondered if her grandfather would be proud of the way that she had cleared the weeds and drug all of the overgrowth and fallen trees from the choice plot in a short time.

In all honesty, this would never be her first pick nor was it something that she could ever see herself doing. It was the total opposite and she would be lying to say that she wasn’t concerned for herself and beyond doubtful. How could she ever do this successfully? When she cringed at the dirt that covered her? When she heard the call of a rooster and was startled and left uneasy by the prospect of being a victim to being flogged? When taking it easy and slow was already so difficult? She was deeply concerned and hoped that it wasn’t too obvious. She had always been somewhat hopeful and optimistic, even in the toughest times. She would always be okay.

She was even more determined to make it as she considered her other options. The day she decided that she couldn’t bear to work at Joja Corp anymore, she knew that she couldn’t turn back. The deep aversion to turning back now or years down the road was something that she knew wouldn’t wane. She couldn’t go back and with her dream of becoming a fashion designer, she wasn’t sure it would ever go forward. This plot of land, which she had never knew existed until a month ago, was her saving grace and she hopped it would continue to be.

She would have to fake it until she made it.

The dirt that coated her to her elbows was anything but fake, but the google search she had to make to learn how to till the soil and plant the parsnip seeds she had been gifted was more than enough to prove that she had no earthly idea how to run a farm or maintain crops. She had spent the majority of her free time absent of clearing the land in an exhausted state of watching tutorial after tutorial on how to do the basic things. Jen prayed that the videos and articles that she read held enough truth and experience for her to get through the season.

As she tilled the soil, breathing heavily and trying to ignore her aching bones, the farming podcast she was listening to mentioned something that she hadn’t considered before.

“…And in the spring is the perfect time for baby chicks! If you want eggs by summer, then this is the time to begin choosing the breed. Brown eggs come from…” she cut it short as she scrambled to pause the leave her tilling. Eggs would be great and would help her a lot in bringing in profit. She didn’t have as much faith in the parsnips as she did eggs and she was certain that she couldn’t pass the opportunity up. She wondered if there was anyone around in Pelican Town that sold livestock and could maybe give her some advice.

Setting the hoe down, she dusted herself off as much as she could and made her way into the small, drab house that accompanied the plot. She wondered how on earth her grandfather managed in it. There was no stove and only a fireplace, which she couldn’t imagine cooking on. For the past few days, she was living off ramen that she made with an electric kettle and cans of tuna. She was determined to get the place in working order as soon as she dealt with the stack of unpacked and nearly forgotten boxes that cluttered the small area. It was so small and disorderly, she couldn’t even bring her pet with her yet for fear of the move being too much for the old feline. Her dad kindly let it stay with him until she settled.

Scanning the box filled room, she spotted the small envelope that Robin and Mayor Lewis had emphasized as important. Pulled the paper out, her eyes lingered over the handwritten list of businesses in the town and she quickly found what she was looking for.

Marnie’s Ranch: Livestock and animal supplies

Jennifer nodded and took a look at the map she was also given. Lucky for her, the ranch was just south of her farm. She took a look at the time and it was only half-past noon. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to visit and ask a few questions, maybe get some advice?

Any advice would be good advice.

“Hey, are you Marnie?” She asked, her timid voice low. She had gotten herself a little spruced up, still wary of making good first impressions. The last thing she wanted was a lazy reputation when she was so new. She had opted to put on a full face of soft glam makeup and wash all the dirt from her before picking out a cropped shirt and high waisted jeans It was quite strange using the bathhouse due to the lack of shower in her new home, but it did the job. If there was one thing she could showcase to the town, it was her fashion, even if it wasn’t necessary.

Still, good style or not, she was still careful and timid as she shut the door to the ranch behind her, the older woman at the front desk raised her eyebrows and nodded. This would be the only person in the town that she had talked to yet besides Robin and Lewis. The woman gave her a knowing smile, her eyes creasing in the corners and her kindness was shown in the way her light wrinkled folded. She smiled a lot and her face showed that. Her red hair curled down and hung loosely, touching her faded overalls.

“Miss Jennifer, I was wondering when you would come to meet me! It’s so nice to meet you! Robin told me how lovely you were but I can see she under-exaggerated.” She cooed and made her way around to the front of the front desk, which upon further inspection, was just as much a part of her house as the kitchen to the right.

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you.” Jen gushed and waved her hand. “I was hoping I wouldn’t bother you but I need to ask some questions. I hate that our first meeting has to have a little bit of business thrust into it, but I need to know how I should start raising chickens on my farm.”

“Oh, you’re so polite. I don’t mind answering your questions a bit.” the elder woman said and began to muse, “Let’s see, now the first thing you need is a place for them to stay. I don’t know if Robin told you, but she can build you a coop that will suit the chickens just fine. Second, you need to have a way to feed them. I recommend a silo for grain, but you can always buy it from here. After that, then you can come back and buy the chicks that you want. You can pick them out and everything.” Jennifer took a page of mental notes and nodded along.

“Get a coop, some feed, and come back later? Got it.” She stated aloud, more for herself than for Marnie. The elder nodded and added something else.

“Yes, just come back and either Shane or I will help. We’ll even deliver the chicks to your coop after you pick them out.” She added and Jen released a breath of relief. She wasn’t sure how this was going to go with her not so hidden fear of chickens, but it was nice to know that she didn’t have to bring them home and have to worry about losing them from the ranch to her coops.

“That’s a relief. And Shane is…?” she asked and Marnie took a moment to be surprised that she hadn’t elaborated.

“Oh right, he’s my nephew. He helps me out around here with the cows and chickens. You haven’t seen him around yet, have you?” she asked and Jen shook her head.

“I haven’t seen much of anyone yet. I’ve been so busy getting the farm started that I’ve only been into the town once.” she admitted, a small laughed punctuated her statement.

“Oh gracious honey, you need a rest. A little bit of socializing and meeting the townsfolk will do your farm no harm, I promise. Have you been to the Stardrop Saloon yet?” Jen shook her head and looked down.

“Ah, no. I haven’t. I’m not much of a drinker.” She gave and Marnie laughed.

“There’s not just drinks there. They have coffee and Italian food as well.” the redhead explained and Jennifer perked up.

“Oh coffee… I guess I could take the evening. Besides, I think I might go nuts if I have to eat another cup noodle dinner.” She posed and Marnie reached out and patted her shoulder, much like a grandmother or very friendly church woman would do.

“There you go, you poor thing. Get your belly full and meet some people. There’s a girl your age you may take to, her name is Hailey and she might be there. She sometimes gets a bite to eat. You both would make great friends.”

Jen gave an embarrassed laugh and felt like a kid for a moment, being set up for a playdate.

“Okay, I’ll go. Thank you so much Marnie! I’ll be back when I get a coop up.” She promised as she took the doorknob in hand.

“Don’t wait too long! I wanna hear about you and your farm every once in a while.” and with that, Jen was out and walked along the fence to head over to the Saloon, determined that she would have a peaceful evening and eat well for the first time all week.

Inside the fence, a chicken clucked and startled her, her heart jumped and she immediately felt silly after a moment. Her concerns resurfaced in the back of her mind.

How was she going to cope with a coop full of scary chickens?

The Saloon was cozy and dingy, warm and rundown. The cushioned barstools were comfy enough and after a few short conversations with Gus, the bartender, Elliot, some writer, and Abigail, an odd yet kind girl, she should be feeling better.

But she did not.

With her acquaintances gone, if she could call them that, she stared down into the black coffee and still felt out of place. The spaghetti she had ordered was a nice contrast to the ramen she had been stuck with, but it only served to remind her of the amazing Italian restaurant back in the city. The coffee was, however, not delicious and she had trouble bringing herself to take another sip of the watered down and stale liquid. Out here, there were no fancy cafes or specialty restaurants. This black coffee was good enough for most people and it was her fault for being so spoiled, but she found herself extremely repulsed by the lack of espresso, steamed milk, and caramel sauce that she ordered every day.

She was more homesick than she realized.

She was silently mopping about her lack of familiarity with her surroundings and the absence of her favorite coffee. Not sure what had caused her sudden shift in mood, she suddenly wasn’t up to continuing “social hour” and wanted to go back home and watch more online classes about farming. If she began to slack, she would fail and she was terrified of admitting she was an absolute beginner in a new place.

Her identity was a caramel latte and now she was trying to be a plain black instant coffee. Was it safe to say that it was hard to identify with the farm type? Was it their differences or her own reluctance to understand that would fail her? She didn’t know. Maybe she was the plain black coffee and everyone else was the caramel latte?

She muttered a small thanks and good evening to Gus, who hummed in acknowledgment. With her coffee forgotten, she hopped down from the barstool and turned to leave but went nowhere. Instead, she slammed into something solid and was drenched with cold liquid. She gasped and stepped back, the coldness shocked her. She found herself in the midst of a big mess, and it only took one whiff to realize that she wasn’t drenched in water or soda, but beer.

The victim, though she wanted to believe it was her, stood and stared at her in disbelief, his dull green eyes narrowing. The man scowled at her, his five o’clock shadow only added emphasis to his disappointment. His dark hair was messy and his appearance even more so. Gus looked from her to the man in his surprise.

“Oh my-…I’m so sorry.” she covered her mouth in her shock and embarrassment. She should offer to buy him another one, it was only fair. She was going to jump to action to make it up to the stranger before he spoke up and interrupted her decision.

“You should be. Try watching out next time. You don’t own this saloon.” he growled out and shoved his now empty glass to the bar top. “You cost me my beer.” he glared and she could stop herself from snapping back.

“Oh, your beer is the concern? What about my shirt?” she snapped and the man rolled his eyes and scoffed.

“Your shirt? Looks like I did you a favor,” he smirked and turned away to order what he lost.

“Wow…” she started and mentally reevaluated the situation. Arguing wasn’t going to help and this was a bad enough first impression. Instead, she turned to the bartender.

“Have a good evening, I’m so sorry about the mess.” she apologized, shooting the angry man a glare. He didn’t seem to notice at all. A favor , yeah right. He looked like the type to go to Buffalo Wild Wings way too often, and that was not a compliment in the slightest.

The door to the saloon swung shut behind her and she took a deep breath. Any residual anger resided and she was left with the realization that she could have handled it differently. Although she knew she was justified, she was better than that. Her reputation was better and she knew her she would regret it. Even if she hadn’t said it, she still thought it.

Still, she needed to calm down. She didn’t know the town as much as she wanted to and the sun was beginning to set. Taking a walk wouldn’t hurt.

“That was a good girl you just ran off, you know that?”

Shane took the beer and handed over the appropriate amount of cash, before grumbling his response.

“Good. The less I see of her, the better.” He took his beer and shrugged off anything that Gus would have said, stepping over the mess that the woman had made. Served her right, he hoped that the encounter would warn her enough to stay the hell away. He didn’t want anything to do with the “new girl in town” that everyone was so curious about. It wasn’t like the arrival of anyone new would bring anything good to him and he knew that. All she would be is another face to pass by and ignore.

The gossip that everyone passed around is that she inherited some large plot of farmland and came from the city to give it a shot. A city girl like her wouldn’t make it a season, he decided, taking a large sip of his beer. The way she complained about her shirt. She wouldn’t last another few weeks.

The hearsay, not that he listened, was that everyone was excited and hoped she could help everyone out with her farm. No one wanted to rely on JojaMart and farmer’s markets in Pelican Town were greatly loved and anticipated. He would almost root for her if it meant taking money from the hellscape that was Joja Corp, but he knew she wouldn’t make a difference. All of the rumors and hopes were false. Everything that the townsfolk said was wrong.

Except for one thing. The rumors that she was nice looking were true.

The beer wasn’t doing it for him. He needed something stronger.

Venturing out into the dark, he stumbled along his path home, his light buzz only enough to smear his thoughts. This evening, he left the saloon just shy of nine, rather than his usual close to midnight departure. The atmosphere of the bar was a little more dense and uninviting this evening and he wasn’t about to hang around.

No, he would board himself in his room and get the whiskey he had stashed away.

The outside light of the ranch came into few and he took a deep breath. Jas and Marnie would still be up at this time and he really just wanted to sneak in unseen. He didn’t want to feel that lingering guilt if Jas saw him like this, but it wasn’t like she didn’t know. In his limbo, he thought he heard a distant voice. Maybe he was finally going crazy.

Moments later, he heard it again. It was too far away to decipher. Who would be out in the forest this late? He struggled between deciding that it was none of his business and checking it out. He wasn’t sure if he was curious or just delaying walking into the house, but he quietly followed the direction of the voice.

A faint glow of a phone and a voice came into view, at the end of the pier that stretched over the small lake. He could barely make the outline of the figure out in the darkness. The voice was both familiar and unfamiliar to him, but he immediately knew who it was. He frowned and wondered if he should yell out to her with something that will make her leave, but he opted to stand silently, his arms folded. Her conversation continued on, her half was all that was needed to understand what was being said.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, dad. I don’t know if I’ve made a mistake or did something right for once?” Her voice echoed over the lake.

A mistake

“I realized how much I miss home. How much I miss Greg. I miss…” she took a breath “The cafe I always visited every day.”

Good, go home, he thought. Go back to Greg , he thought, assuming that was her partner or boyfriend.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m complaining. I’m not giving up yet. Today has just been awful.” she paused and continued, “It didn’t start awful, but it ended awful. Long story short, I smell like a man cave carpet on Saturday night.”

Shane was sure she did and did he care? Not a bit. He had heard enough. He wouldn’t be seeing her much anymore and he took great satisfaction in that. Without much more of a clouded thought, he slunk away and tried to ignore the last thing he heard her say in favor of returning to his whiskey for the night.

“I just don’t know what to do.”

CH1 CH2 CH3 CH4 CH5

[alter-me-away-from-public-eye]

Synopsis: Alex is Jared Padalecki’s cousin and bestfriend. She first meets Jensen Ackles when he came to Jared’s but lost contact with him after the break. But when the Supernatural cast went to Italy for a convention, they now have a second chance at a relationship.

Warnings: Slight smut, fluff

Part 6: First Date (Mostly Alex)

Jared

I woke up with somebody else's leg over my own. Looking at the clock on my bedside table without having to wake up Alex, and seeing that it was only 7 in the morning, I wanted to go back to sleep so bad. But when I closed my eyes, I felt the leg vanish over me and movement clear beside me. Slowly, I turned around to see Alex already sitting on the edge of the bed with her face staring at her phone screen.

"Why are up so early?" I asked.

"Jensen asked me out on a date." she whispered.

I knew. Jensen asked me first if he could ask her out on a date. Of course I said he could but only if she wanted to.

"I know. He told me"

"He did?" She frowned. "I suppose you told him to go for it, right?"

"Naturally. Why? What's wrong?"

She shifted unconsciously and turned to look at me. "I said yes but I'm not sure if I should have."

"What are you so afraid of?"

"I don't know." She sighed. "I guess I don't want to start something I know I couldn't finish."

This time, I sighed. Alex knows the struggle of dating a celebrity. And I have myself to blame for that. Of all the girls I've dated before, no one really stayed, mostly because of the schedule I had. If I ever dated someone from the industry, none lasted longer than a year. And Alex knows all about it. She thinks guys with my kind of job would do better with girls who doesn't work or go to school so the girl won't mind having to leave at the last minute or travel for a long time. But she also says having a girl like that would mean we have to work double to pay for everything.

"Long distance relationships do exist, Al." I tried telling her. "Like us."

"It's not the same. You're my cousin and I know even though we don't get to talk for a long time, you will always be there. And I don't have to worry about you cheating on me, duh." she rolled her eyes at me. "Not like it matters anyway. I won't let this get farther."

Knowing my cousin, nothing I say would change her mind. Instead, I'd just let her be and hope Jensen can actually get through her.

Alex

I have nothing to wear tonight.

Jensen will be picking me up in a few hours yet I'm still wearing sweats. I called up my mom if she'd like to go shopping but she said she had matters to attend. I have my other cousins in town that might come but I don't really want to bother them today especially since it looks like another thunderstorm is coming. Maybe Jensen will cancel the date, though.

As I was actually hoping for a cancelation, my phone buzzed.

Jensen: Wear something nice. Don't worry about the storm. It'll pass soon.

"Great." I mumbled to myself.

Not knowing a lot of people here, I called the only person I know I can bother as much as I like. My brother.

"Hey Max, wanna go shopping?"

"No."

"C'mon! My treat!" I bribed.

I heard a muffled sound over the phone, probably asking dad if he could go shopping with me. "Yeah sure, but I'm driving."

We got to the mall just in time as rain started pouring. It's only half past 11 so I still had hours left before the date. Max wanted to eat first, and being the best sister that I am, I let him choose where. We ended up eating at some italian restaurant, of all places. Max's taste buds are very italian, unlike mine. I still prefer good ol' grilled steak.

I can see a lot of girls eyeing my brother while he sat there not having a care in the world. I must say, between us siblings, Max got the better genes. He's more European than he is American. And he's tall too. 15 and already catching up with me. Mind you, I'm the tallest among my friends.

I dragged him inside a boutique I found that seemed alright. There weren't much people around so it was easy to look around. Even though Max hated shopping, I can always depend on his choices. I took out a few dresses to try and each one I had Max to judge. Two dresses out, I'm already trying on the third one. It was a simple backless black dress with a slit on one side that stops right on my thigh. It wasn't slutty but it's not completely innocent either, just the right amount.

I walked out from the changing room and Max nodded approvingly. I looked in the mirror and thought, for about half a second, that I looked like the kind if person I would totally have a girl crush on if I haven't really known myself. I changed back to my original clothes and paid for the dress. The saleslady recommended buying the black pair of heels it goes best with and I did. Satisfied, I left the store and looked for Max. He was already waiting for me by the railings.

"Do you want anything?" I asked.

"I might need new shoes." He smirked. I nodded and let him lead the way. We went inside a Nike store and his face instantly lit up. If there's one thing I know about my brother, it's his love for shoes and books. As he was out there choosing, I sat by one of the benches they had. I took out my phone and noticed I received an email.

To: Alex Lewis

Subject: Project

I'm sorry to bother you this holiday season, Ms. Lewis. The client wants a little alteration in the design. I'm sending you the details with this message and hope that you can find the time to look it over while you are at the America.

R. S.

I groaned. It was enough to think about a date with Jensen, but to add another work problem is a disaster. I decided to stay at one issue at a time and actually focus on tonight's event since it has been a while since I've been on a date.

Max came up to me a few minutes later with a pair of sneakers on hand. I gave him my card and told him to pay for it himself. He happily took it and walked away. At least someone is happy.

We got to the hotel around three in the afternoon. I still have to inform Jensen to pick me up at the hotel instead of Jared's house. As soon as I sent the message, I quickly went to shower. My body relaxes as the warm water hit my skin.

I stepped out of the shower smelling like strawberries and peach, dried my hair and body, and put on black lacy underwear. Then, I put on the dress effortlessly. Living in Milan, a fashion driven city, I learned to dress up. I applied a little make up and brushed my hair carefully. Just as I was about to be done, Max knocked and peeked a little through the open door.

"Some guy left this for you." He handed me a white box tied with a black ribbon.

"What guy?" I asked.

"The one at Jared's backyard. He called me down."

I opened the box and a beautiful silver necklace with a heart pendant surprised me. This is just what I need to complete the look! I slowly put it on me and without thinking, I touched the heart shaped pendant.

"He said he'll be waiting at the lobby." Max informed.

I nodded.

It took me about 10 minutes to reach the lobby. He was sitting at the couch wearing a black suit and tie. So formal. I didn't realize we were matching outfits. When he saw me, he immediately stood and walked towards me. I smiled at him and took the hand he offered.

"You look beautiful" he whispered.

"You don't look bad yourself" I giggled.

He led me to a black SUV and I got in. He walked over to the driver's seat and started the ignition. All my worries washed away by how beautiful the night was. No one would think it rained like hell earlier because tonight, the sky was as clear as it can be.

I don't know how long we've been driving but we stopped outside a rather small restaurant just outside town. Being the gentleman that he is, he opened the door for me and offered his hand. I gladly took it and let him lead me inside.

The restaurant was lit dimly but just enough for me to realize where we are. I thought it was a simple dinner but when I looked around, I saw the most beautiful paintings all over the room. We were guided by a host to our seats. There aren't a lot of people here tonight. It was just me, Jensen, and two other couples by the end of the room.

"This is wonderful." I said, a little too pleased.

"I'm glad you like it."

"Thanks for the necklace, by the way." I beamed, touching the pendant with my index and thumb.

"No problem. It looks perfect on you." I've never seen him smile so wide and bright like tonight. At that moment, all my fears seemed to disappear. Somehow I hoped this wouldn't be the last.

We ordered our food, had champagne, and talked a little about our day until the food arrived.

"By the way, I forgot to give you this the other day." He took out a cd from his jacket pocket and handed it to me.

I turned it over and squealed excitedly. He gave me a Panic! at the Disco album on our date! "I can't seem to stop thanking you tonight." I smiled.

"You don't have to. Having you here with me is more than enough"

Dinner came through smoothly. Jensen was so easy to talk to. He's funny, charming, and looking like a greek god clearly didn't help my plan to turn him down. I don't think I can ever turn him down.

He asked for the check and I offered to pay at least half of the bill but he wouldn't hear of it. When we got out, I thought we'd go directly to the car but he took my hand on his and guided me through the sidewalk. I felt the cold breeze on my back I started to shiver. He must have felt it because he let go of my hand and took his jacket off and put on me. I smiled as I felt the warmth and scent of his body still stuck inside the coat. He took my hand again and I was more than glad to accept. With courage, I intertwined my fingers with his. He seemed to be happy with it as he tightened his grip on my hand. We stopped at a park bench just a few blocks from the restaurant. We never said a word since we started walking but I wasn't complaining. We said more than we can without even talking.

"Thank you." I whispered.

He looked at me with the same wide and bright smile before slowly leaning closer to me. I was staring at his beautiful green eyes as he was getting closer. I closed my eyes as I felt his lips brush on mine for a second and then let go. I opened my eyes and saw those green eyes again, staring intently. Without a second thought, his lips were connected to mine once again, this time more passionately. He placed a hand on my cheek and another on my waist, pulling me closer. I wrapped my arms around his neck to do the same. I felt his tongue touch my lower lip and I parted my lips just enough to allow him enter. We were like that for a few minutes before needing to part and breathe.

"can we continue this over at my place?" he whispered. I felt shivers over my body at his voice. Not trusting my own, I nodded. We walked back to the restaurant with hands intertwined and hearts one.

The drive back to his house was longer than anticipated. I wasn't sure what to expect when we get there. I don't normally go sneaking around on the first date, much more sneak around with the kind of person I never expected to sneak around with.

The moment his front door closed, he had me pinned on the wall and kissed the italian out of me. His hands were on my waist, tightening. Mine were around his neck pulling him closer. I felt a bulge on my thigh and giggled through the kiss.

"Somebody's a little excited." I whispered on his ear as he left lingering kisses on my neck.

"What are you doing to me?" He whispered back, a moan escaping his lips when I grinded my hips over his hardening pants.

He took off his tie in a matter of seconds and led me to his room. I walked over to the bed and sat at the edge, removing my shoes. Slowly, I let one strap of my dress slip off revealing half of my chest to him. He was still standing by the door, leaning, with a huge plastered smile on his face and eyes filled with so much emotion.

With all the courage I could gather, I stood and I let my dress fall off me, leaving me in nothing but my black lacy panties.

"are you just gonna stand there gawking?" I whispered.

"I might." he responded, hands travelling to unbutton his black shirt and moving closer. His gesture towards the bed may as well be the unveiling of my heart. And the stripping of all my clothes. I could feel my legs getting weaker by the moment as the cool air brushed my naked torso. In attempt to keep my core controlled and not come at the view, I tightened my legs together. But the moan that escaped my mouth gave all of it up.

He ran his hand up and down my shoulder as he kissed the top of my head. .

"Are you sure about this?" he asked.

"Yes."

He pushed me gently on the bed as I felt my back hit the soft mattress. He was hovering over me, shirtless, kissing and sucking on my jaw. I closed my eyes in pleasure and found my hands roaming over his back. He nibbled softly on my neck causing me to whimper. He smiled at himself and went further down to my breast. He sucked one nipple softly while a hand kneaded the other. We were both whimpering as I reached in between our bodies to unbutton his dress pants. His breathing hitched as I found his lips back on my own. I pushed his pants down and he wiggled to get it off him. I felt his covered hard cock rub against my covered wetness as his hands tightened around my waist.

He pulled away before slowly removing his boxers. His quivering member, hard and swollen, sprang free. I saw him smirk when I tried to cover a moan. He hovered back over me and kissed my forehead. His right hand travelled down slowly, leaving soft touches all over my body as he reached my stomach. Without warning, he pushed a hand inside my underwear causing me to moan loudly and yank his hair. He rubbed my clit softly as I try to close my legs.

"Keep them open." he whispered.

I obliged and arched my back as he rubbed harder. He brushed his fingers across my folds to gather the wetness and went to push a finger inside me. I moaned louder than I hoped as he added another finger and began pushing it in and out, curling them in the process. I felt my legs shake and my stomach fill as I was close to releasing. "Come for me" he said while nibbling on my ear. And so I did. I came on his hands, trembling.

He kissed me softly as he pulled my underwear down. He reached to grab a small packet on his night stand and tore it open.

He looked over me before kissing me again. "Tell me if you want to stop."

I nodded.

I felt his hand on my waist as I reached over his shoulders. He was looking intently at me trying to figure if I had second thoughts. I smiled at him and kissed his nose. He reached in between us and pumped his cock a few times before rubbing it along my slit. My breathing grew heavier by the time and I moaned quietly. He carefully aligned himself into my entrance and pushed inside slowly. I closed my eyes at the sudden feeling and wrapped my legs around him. He stayed motionless for about a minute before slowly pulling himself out. I gasped as he pushed back in. Pleasure went over me and I pulled him closer. He kissed my neck with so much passion as my hands went to grip on his hair. His pace increased, hitting my gspot repeatedly and by then, we were both a moaning mess.

"So perfect" he whispered and reached over to rub my clit.

I felt my release growing closer and closer, eyes still closed from all the pleasure.

"I'm gonna come" I moaned into his ear.

"Come for me, babe." I felt him twitch inside me and couldn't stop myself from coming all over his cock. I trembled under him and he continued to push and pull out, making sloppy noises as he did. His breathing hitched and his pace became more and more irregular. About two thrusts in, his cock twitched again and spilled his juices inside me. He thrusted a few more times to help both of us ride our highs before stopping. He staying inside of me for a few more minutes, green eyes scanning my face, and fingers brushing hair strands over my ear.

He pulled himself out and rolled next to me. He pulled me in towards his chest and kissed the top of my hair.

"You are amazing in every way." he said with full emotion.

I smiled as I wrapped my arms around him, feeling his hands run up and down my bare back. He pulled the covers over us with his free hand and pulled me closer as possible. His warmth was enough to help me sleep.

"Good night, J." I whispered.

"Good night, Alex."

Jensen

I woke up to the smell of strawberries washing over me, my arms around a beautiful girl curled next to my naked body. I can't help but smile thinking about last night. It wasn't just sex. No. It was more than that.

I gently brushed a finger over her cheek and her eyes flutter open.

"Good morning." she spoke, snuggling closer into me.

"Good morning." I said, leaning in for a quick peck on her forehead.

We stayed like that for a few minutes before she rolled off the bed and fished through her purse, looking for something. When she found what she's been looking for, she came climbing back to straddle on my chest, naked. I laughed when she brushed her leg on my side but before I can stop, she snapped a photo of me.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making a memory." She answered, leaning in for a quick kiss.

I grabbed her waist and pulled her to the side as I rolled on top of her. She laughed. I found myself in awe at the movement of her lips and can't help but stare.

"Stop looking at me like that." She giggled.

"Like what?" I smirked.

"Like that." she pointed at me, giggling. I pushed myself into her, enough to be able to rest my head under her chin without crushing her with my weight. I felt her hand play with the hair at the back of my head and another rubbing circles on my back.

"As much as I want to stay, I really need to go." She whispered.

I can hear myself grunt. "Five minutes." I pleaded.

She sighed but nodded.

"Let me drive you home." I offered when we reached the front door.

"You don't have to. I called a cab." she replied, smiling.

I leaned for another kiss which she responded with enthusiasm. Her hair was tied in a messy pony tail, face washed fresh without any makeup, shoes in hand, and a borrowed shirt. But still, I can't seem to help myself think she's the most beautiful girl I've seen in the world.

"Call me when you get home." I said. She got in the cab and waved goodbye.

tagging:

@deans-baby-momma

[findmyrupertfriend]

Rupert Friend, who plays Quinn on the Showtime series, may not be an assassin, but he could be. In fact, give him a few weeks of study and he’ll be anyone you want. And he’s full of surprises: When the British actor sat for an interview in an Italian restaurant near his New York City home, he ordered in fluent Italian, then went on to discourse on everything from Philippine knife-fighting to Ernest Hemingway.

Here’s just a taste of what the 2013 Emmy nominee had to say.

You decided to learn Italian after watching “The Godfather,” which is an interesting inspiration to take from that film.

It’s so rarely spoken, when you find someone who does speak it, it’s sort of a secret code you have. Those codes exist all over the world, whether it’s film geeks talking about camera lenses or Hemingway freaks talking about early manuscripts. It’s like saying, “You’re in my tribe,” and you can engage with that.

When you’re playing Quinn, how, other than changing your accent, do you make him “American”?

Less observation, more imagination. That’s my strongest tool, the power to imagine something because it’s all fake and yet it’s all real. Between truth and lies, the middle is art and storytelling.

The presence of props, even if the audience never sees them, seems to heighten things for actors.

When we did the knife stabbing with Damian [Lewis] in the beginning of my time on “Homeland,” obviously we never stabbed him in the hand, but I had a real switchblade in my pocket the whole time. Nobody else knew that, but the fact that it was there made it safe enough to be dangerous in a safe way. I find that an exciting place to be in when you’re acting.

You’ve got “Hitman: Agent 47" coming out in August, and he makes me think of Quinn on steroids. This is your first big action film. How did you find it different from your other projects?

There’s a lot less standing around and talking, more running around and fighting people. I loved getting to grips with the physical fitness and dexterity — I did all the stunts myself. I love learning things, whether it’s a language or Philippine knife-fighting or the Viennese waltz. I find dipping one’s toe into all of these people’s lives is one of the major exciting points of being an actor. This dilettantism.

How bad an idea is it for Peter and Carrie to be getting into a relationship on “Homeland”?

It’s a terrible idea. It’s like putting two people who are recovering alcoholics together; they prey on each other’s Achilles’ heels. They’re both a little unhinged; they both deal in death and destruction daily and get paid for it. You’ve got to be a certain kind of person to say, “I will kill someone for money.” Let’s not forget this.

How did you get the acting bug in the first place?

The short answer is: I didn’t. I got the “I don’t want the normal job” bug. At home we have countless career advisors who would tell us to work in department stores and stay below the bar and not overreach our grasp. I didn’t believe any of them. They tell you, “You’re a people person and you like the outdoors. Why not work in a garden center?” And it’s, like, why shouldn’t that person aspire to design the grounds of Buckingham Palace? Let’s aim the bar a little higher than that.

You’re a British actor who’s spent the last few years playing an American; are you yearning to play roles again that are a little more like your own background?

One so rarely acts as oneself in one’s home. You’re always pretending on so many levels. There are so many levels of self-deception that I’ve never differentiated in the things that might be similar to me. To me, the place doesn’t affect the work. It’s an imaginative thing we do; it’s about immersing oneself in one’s imagination. If you’re a novelist, you do it with pen and paper. We do it with our bodies.

[asfeedin]

Father’s Day Gift Guide | Serious Eats

Father’s Day Gift Guide | Serious Eats

Le Creuset Cake Stand

If you’ve ever been given a homemade birthday cake, return the favor by buying your favorite baker this iconic cake stand. Its heavy base keeps cakes secure and makes all types of decorating techniques a breeze.

Magnetic Knife Rack

Not only do magnetic knife strips save space, they also look pretty badass hanging on your wall. They’ll keep your knives from rubbing up against other utensils, which can make them dull (and can be dangerous, too).

Egg Cups

Any dad who loves soft-boiled eggs deserves the perfect cup to eat them from. These sturdy stoneware Le Creuset cups come in a range of beautiful colors. They’re totally classic, which is a good thing because they’ll also last for generations to come.

Kitchen-Helper Stool

Daniel’s one-and-a-half-year-old son has a new and urgent interest in whatever’s happening up on the kitchen counter that he can’t see. He begs to be picked up, but that means Daniel can cook with only one hand, which, while kind of, sort of, maybe possible, is extremely difficult. Plus, the kid is heavy. It’s time to add a learning tower to the kitchen so he can stand and watch, sometimes even help, while Daniel continues to get dinner ready. This one is great because it folds up for easy storage.

Taketsuru Pure Malt Japanese Whisky

Anyone who appreciates Scotch (or good spirits in general) will embrace Nikka’s exquisite whiskies. The Taketsuru Pure Malt is named for the company’s founder, who studied in Scotland before bringing whisky distilling back to Japan. This bottling has a slight fruity character, with lingering sherry on the finish.

Meat Cleaver

This meat cleaver has a well-balanced weight, sharp edge, and solid construction—a boon since a lot of more-affordable cleavers like this one feel very cheap and after repeat use get wobbly around the handle.

Smeg Toaster

After years of putting up with a cheap toaster that I picked up at the supermarket, I recently upgraded to this super fancy Italian job in cool mint. It’s sleek design and soothing pastel color transform the kitchen’s most boring appliance into a statement piece, and it really does a good job with the toast itself. Plus, I mean, it’s really dang pretty. If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to read this toaster’s priceless reviews.

Simple Coffee Maker

The Bonavita is one of the faster models we tested, and it earned high scores in nearly all of our tastings. A single switch governs all of its operations, making the brewing process incredibly simple.

Wüsthof Classic Carving Knife

This knife features an extremely sharp edge; a well-balanced, comfortable handle; and plenty of flexibility. It carves through roast turkey like butter, leaving very little meat stuck to the bones. It has a composite handle and a full tang to offer balance and support, with a bolster that is lightly angled and slim enough to make gripping the blade easy.

REC TEC Wood Pellet Grill

REC TEC offers high-quality pellet smokers featuring excellent digital controllers and sturdy construction. With a 40-pound pellet hopper, a 680-square-inch cook surface, and nine inches of headroom, the REC TEC 680 is a large, smartly constructed pellet smoker. It also looks awesome.

12-Inch Stainless-Steel Locking Tongs

Indoors, I prefer the control that a shorter, seven- or nine-inch set of tongs gives me. When flipping a dozen steaks over a blazing-hot fire, though, it’s better to keep your distance. I use these OXO Good Grips Stainless Steel Tongs at home, and their solid construction has lasted for a good six years of heavy (and I mean heavy) use so far.

Culina Stainless Steel Grilling Basket

A good grill basket should be durable, with a tight enough weave to allow very small foods to be cooked without risk of getting lost. Finally, it’s worth hunting down one that’s sizable enough to cook large batches of food in one go. One of our favorites is the simple Culina stainless steel basket. The metal mesh keeps even the smallest food items up on the grill grate where they belong. You can even toast or smoke nuts in it.

Set of Two Rectangular Grill Grates

If you’ve ever used a gas grill and grown frustrated with unfixable hot and cool spots and overall weak performance, this tool is for you. Made from hard anodized aluminum, the GrillGrate system sits directly on your existing grate, amplifying and evening out the heat, which allows for more even cooking, flare-up resistance, and exceptional sear marks.

A Nice Apron

There’s form, and then there’s function. The aprons from Tilit are great on both fronts. Made from waxed cotton, they offer breathability along with water resistance, but they’re also damned handsome. Several NYC restaurants have commissioned custom apron designs from the company for their chefs and cooks, and I’m pretty psyched to wear one of these bad boys at home, too.

My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions

Mexico City is one of Sasha’s favorite cities in the world, and he’s traveled there a fair amount with his family. They always make sure to have lunch at Chef Gabriela Cámara’s restaurant Contramar when they’re in the DF. Her food is bright, light, and absolutely delicious, and her newly published cookbook is everything.

Presto Tilt-N-Fold Griddle

Presto’s Tilt-n-Fold model is very simple to set up and operate, and it has a compact design that makes it easy to store in kitchen cabinets when not in use. It has a large, smooth, nonstick cooking surface that heats mostly evenly, can be set at an angle to drain grease, and is easy to clean. We love the price, too.

KitchenAid Food Grinder Attachment

The great thing about buying a meat grinder attachment is that you already know that the hardest-working part of your grinder—the motor—is going to be a workhorse that can power through even the toughest grinding projects. Stand mixer attachments are a great option if you make a lot of sausage. You can grind the meat directly into the bowl, then attach the bowl to the machine and immediately start mixing it with the paddle to develop protein. It’s a real time-saver.

La Venenosa Sierra de Jalisco Raicilla

If your dad likes to be on the cutting edge of what’s cool, impress him with a whole type of spirits he may not have tried. Raicilla is distilled from agave, like tequila and mezcal, but few people have heard of it, since it only entered American markets in 2014. Sierra de Jalisco has a vibrant acidity, with earthy-fruity-vegetal elements playing around it. If Dad’s a fan of funky mezcals, he’ll enjoy raicilla’s incredible complexity.

Affordable Mandoline Slicer

A great mandoline will rapidly make photo-worthy cuts of your favorite vegetables, whether it’s thin slices of radishes for a salad or potatoes for a gratin. This basic OXO slicer has three thickness settings and perches over a bowl to easily catch the slices as they fall.

Brooklyn Bartender

If your dad has a taste for a well-made cocktail, but isn’t that likely to take off on a bar crawl in Brooklyn, this book is the perfect solution. It features 300 innovative and classic drink recipes from the best bars of the borough; every cocktail I’ve made so far has been killer. The drinks Carey Jones has selected aren’t dumbed down at all, but, for the most part, you’re not looking at mile-long ingredient lists, either.

World’s Fair Barbecue Rub

Ariel discovered this spice mix 11 years ago, and it’s still one of her favorite things to give as a gift. It’s a perfect blend of everyday ingredients (shallots, garlic, paprika, and sea salt), but with unusual flavor notes from grains of paradise. She buys it by the pound to dump on meat, seafood, and even eggs, but you can start by picking it up a reasonably sized jar or bag.

Julep Cups

I don’t often recommend single-function items, but for the cocktail enthusiast, a couple of julep cups really are fun to have. There’s nothing like holding that metal cup frosted with ice on a blisteringly hot summer day—glass just doesn’t pull the effect off in the same way. If the recipient doesn’t have an ice crusher, check out my Lewis bag suggestion as well.

PDT Cocktails App

At drink o’clock, wefind myself turning to this app. Enter all the bottles you have at home when you start, and the app will tell you all of the drinks you can make, with recipes straight from New York’s famous PDT cocktail lounge. You can also search for drinks of a certain type or cocktails created by a favorite bartender, and save favorites for making again. (To give an app as a gift, look for the arrow to the right of the “buy” icon.)

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

A New York Times best seller! The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt is his column from this very website, blown up to 900-plus pages (and seven-plus pounds) of concentrated culinary science. Gorgeous color photos, detailed how-tos, and elaborate explainers cover ingredients, technique, gear, and the secrets of the universe underneath it all. May include puns.

Big Ice Cube Tray

If you like your whiskey with a giant ice cube, then you’ll really be into Mammoth Cubes—unlike ice cube trays from current competitor brands, these make eight cubes (not six) and are actually stackable, so they don’t require a section unto themselves in your freezer.

Wooden Pizza Peel for Launching Pizzas

Wooden peels absorb excess moisture and have a rougher surface than metal, which means that your stretched and topped pizza dough will remain loose and easy to launch far longer, saving you from potential pizza-spilled-all-over-the-oven accidents. Though there are cheaper options around, I love my Perfect Peel Baker’s Board, handcrafted to last a lifetime from gorgeous solid cherrywood. They’ll even put your initials or logo on it if you’d like!

Espresso Cups

Espresso cups make a nice gift on their own for coffee fiends. But when they’re Le Creuset, they’re even better—mostly because everything from the French heritage brand is aesthetically pleasing and built to last. Oh, and these cups might be the most affordable Le Creuset pieces on the market. So, if you want in on the trend for a moderate price, they make a good starter item.

Lever Corkscrew

The OXO worked on every bottle and cork we tested it with. The two-step motion—push down, then pull up—yanks the cork out in about two seconds. Repeat the process, and the cork drops free of the opener. The capable foil cutter clips into the body of the tool.

Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers

This cookbook by Julia Turshen, author of Small Victories and Feed the Resistance, is full of simple, delicious meals for everyday eating, parties, and holidays. Better yet, each one includes a bunch of suggestions for how to remake it as leftovers. It’s a trove of great, creative ideas, and a must for any bookworm.

Misen Chef’s Knife

This is the holy grail of inexpensive chef’s knives: incredible quality and design, high-end materials, perfect balance, and a razor-sharp edge.

Uuni 2S Pizza Oven

There are a lot of custom-designed pizza ovens out there in various price ranges. I reviewed a bunch of them, and one of my favorites was the Uuni 3. It consists of a small stainless steel box with a pizza stone set inside it. You load up a hopper on the rear of the unit with wood pellets, light it up with a torch or lighter fluid, and let it preheat. About 15 minutes later, you’re ready to cook. This little powerhouse hits temperatures in excess of 900°F and bakes up Neapolitan-sized pizzas in just 60 to 90 seconds.

Serving bowl

There’s no such thing as too many serving bowls, and this simple two-tone piece goes with virtually everything. At 11.5 inches across, it’s the perfect size for dad’s favorite side dishes; in my house, it’s go-to for salads, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, and pasta.

AeroGarden Harvest

Cooking with fresh herbs makes every recipe better. Cooking with fresh herbs that you grew all by yourself makes life better. The AeroGarden takes the guesswork out of growing herbs inside, with an automated light to keep your parsley and thyme thriving and weekly reminders for water and nutrients. Just prepare yourself for epic amounts of basil.

Welding Gloves for Grilling

After countless failed grilling mitts, we got ourselves a pair of welding gloves to use when grilling or smoking and never looked back. With great heat protection, dexterity, and construction, these are a necessity for every backyard cook.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread

Marco Colzani is a great Italian bean-to-bar chocolate maker, with a number of excellent products under his brand, Amaro. But it’s his spreads that have Ed addicted, particularly the Cacao Nocciole, or hazelnut-and-chocolate variety. Imagine a Nutella-like substance, but made with the freshest roasted hazelnuts and extra-chocolaty high-quality cocoa powder.

Zojirushi Rice Cooker

A couple years ago, I managed to convince my wife of the necessity of buying a rice cooker. Not just any rice cooker: a Zojirushi. The only concession I was willing to make had to do with the size, since she wisely noted that we didn’t have the counter space for any rice cooker at all, let alone the kind of rice cooker that I had in mind. So I bought a little guy that fits, max, three cups of rice, but really is only usable for about two and a half. She’s since come around to the indisputable excellence of the cooker, and she loves everything about it, from the wonderful rice it makes to the “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” it plays when you turn it on.

Small Baking Steel Griddle

These days, I keep this solid slab of steel permanently atop one of the burners of my stove. One side has a pebbled surface—ideal for getting extra-crisp, better-than-a-baking-stone crust on homemade pizzas. And, unlike a baking stone, this thing is going to last forever. The griddle arrives as shiny steel, but with just a few uses, it seasons up into a dark, slick nonstick surface that Dad can use for pancakes, eggs, hamburgers, grilled cheese, and more.

KitchenAid Pasta Attachment

This is hands down the KitchenAid attachment I use most often. It takes all of the frustration and fussiness out of making fresh pasta, and, unlike the manual alternatives out there, it’s incredibly easy and efficient to operate on your own. Hello, homemade ravioli!

Mediterranean Power Snacks Gift Box

There’s nothing worse than a hangry family member. Make sure Dad always has a snack on hand with this Mediterranean-themed gift box, brimming with Spanish snacks like chorizo, crunchy almonds, crackers, and fig cake.

Charcuterie

Ruhlman and Polcyn do a great job of demystifying one of the more abstruse cooking arts, and, while charcuterie may seem daunting, it can be gratifyingly easy. Start simple, with the pancetta, confit, rillettes, and duck prosciutto, and you’ll find yourself with a mold-inoculated curing chamber in no time.

The One True Barbecue

Race relations, religion, the New South versus the Old: These are just a smattering of the heavy issues Rien Fertel writes about through the lens of—well—smoked meat in this new book. And, while you might be thinking, “Oh, man, another book about barbecue?”, this one stands out from the crowd thanks to Fertel’s superb writing and storytelling skills. In a book that’s part culinary history, part personal narrative, and part tale of an American road trip, Fertel travels throughout the South, documenting the men who have long stood behind the fires practicing the time-consuming pursuit of whole hog barbecue—the ones who have been keeping alive the embers of what once seemed like a dying art, and the ones who are inspiring a new generation of pitmasters today.

Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto

If you’re looking for one definitive primer on pasta-making in its myriad forms, this is it: Superlative step-by-step photographs take the guesswork out of potentially intimidating fundamentals, like mixing and kneading dough, as well as more intricate tasks, like pleating teardrops of corn- and cheese-stuffed culurgiònes. Better yet, author Marc Vetri arms you with the tools and knowledge that allow for controlled, intelligent experimentation and exploration before sending you into the fray.

Ice Cream Maker

Homemade ice cream tastes better than almost anything you can buy in a store, and it’s a snap to make. This ice cream maker, from Cuisinart, is all the gear you need: an easy-to-use workhorse that makes delicious ice cream every time. The simple construction means that there are few moving parts to break, and the wide mouth at the top makes it simple to add mix-ins and scoop out your ice cream when it’s at its fresh, creamy best.

Salt Cellar

Proper seasoning is one of the most important parts of cooking, and if you’re still using plain table salt from (heaven forbid!) a saltshaker, you’re shooting yourself in the food. Using kosher salt from a salt cellar lets you feel exactly how much salt is getting into your food, whether it’s a tiny pinch or a big ol’ wallop.

Lewis Bag

If you’re following my advice to buy someone julep cups, you might as well go all the way and grab a canvas Lewis bag, too: It’s used to smash ice into a fine powder with a mallet. Unless, of course, the person you’re buying for already has an ice crusher.

Vacuum Sealer

Know someone who’s interested in sous vide cooking? They’re gonna want this. And it’s handy for way more than just sous vide cooking. A vacuum sealer makes it really easy to save meats or other foods in the freezer, and it keeps air (read: freezer burn) off it all. The Oliso sealer uses a unique resealable-bag system, which means far less wasted plastic than a conventional cut-and-seal vacuum sealer.

Electric Countertop Pressure Cooker

A pressure cooker is a cooking vessel that just keeps on giving: Once you discover the time-saving feats it’s capable of, you’ll never look back. The good ones aren’t cheap, but man, is it ever worth having one. A countertop electric model gives you set-it-and-forget-it convenience. With the Breville Fast Slow Pro Cooker, not only do you have complete control over your pressure cooking (including any pressure level from 1.5 to 12 psi), you also have a slow cooker and a rice cooker built right in. It’ll even sear meat for stews.

Wusthof Classic Chef’s Knife

If you’re dead set on a traditional German knife profile—characterized by a more curved blade that’s bigger and heavier than the Japanese options—the Wüsthof Classic continues to be a stalwart. It weighs more than most of the other knives tested, giving it a solid and sturdy feel, but it still handles well and has a sharp edge.

Introduction to Japanese Cuisine: Nature, History and Culture

The Japanese Culinary Academy has released a series of textbooks about Japanese cuisine and technique, and every one of them is gorgeous. It’s the ideal gift for a dad with an interest in Japanese cooking.

Cynar 70

Cynar (pronounced chee-NAHR) is often identified by the artichoke on the label, but that’s just one of the many flavors you’ll find in this complex liqueur. And, while we’re fans of the rich, sweet, and vegetal 1950s original, we’re really excited about the new Cynar on the block. Cynar 70 is 35% alcohol instead of 16.5%, and the extra booze makes a marked difference, rendering the liqueur a bit less sweet and accentuating its bold, spicy flavors. If Dad likes Negronis or other bitter drinks, this is a great choice for a gift.

Dyson Handheld Vacuum

Dad keeps his kitchen spotless because even just one crumb will summon all those Florida critters. This handheld vacuum (which I have, use, and swear by myself) ensures zero crumbs left behind, whether it’s hanging in that small space under the dishwasher or the crevice between the stove and the cabinets.

Anova Precision Cooker

Sous vide cooking—cooking foods in vacuum-sealed pouches in precisely controlled water baths—is no longer relegated to fancy restaurant kitchens. The Anova Precision Cooker is the best home water-bath controller on the market, with an easy-to-use interface, Bluetooth support, rock-solid construction, a sleek look, and an affordable price tag to boot.

Anson Mills Grits

It may sound nuts to mail-order cornmeal and grits, given that they’re found on any supermarket shelf. But I’d argue that you haven’t experienced the best cornbread, grits, or other classic Southern dishes until you’ve had them made with the kind of high-quality stuff Anson Mills is selling. It’ll change how you understand those foods and what they can be.

ThermoWorks Thermapen

The Cadillac of kitchen thermometers is indispensable when roasting meat, cooking steaks, making candy, deep-frying, or at any other time precise temperature control is needed. With a big display and a blazing-fast measuring time of under two seconds, you won’t find a better, easier-to-use thermometer out there.

Baratza Virtuoso Coffee Grinder

It’s not exactly cheap, but this burr grinder does an admirable job of grinding coffee for espresso, pourover, or drip, all at a significantly lower price point than similarly performing competitors.

Craighill Trophy Bottle Opener

We wouldn’t normally spend $9 on a bottle opener, let alone $95. But this beautiful creation from Craighill, made by Niki’s good friend from college, is both sculptural and functional, just as the website proclaims. When it’s not opening bottles, use it to decorate your coffee or dining table, or even as a paperweight on your desk.

Weber Spirit E330 Liquid Propane Gas Grill

The Spirit E330 was introduced last year to replace the E320. The two models are identical except that the 330 adds a 7,500-BTU sear burner between the left and middle main burners. Sear burners are one of our favorite extras for gas grills. You’ll love turning this baby up to 11 when searing steaks and burgers.

Miracle-Gro Twelve Indoor Growing System

After previously lauding Aerogardens for how easy they make it to grow herbs at home (and how having a constant supply of fresh herbs has changed her cooking), Ariel’s upgraded to this larger system from Miracle-Gro. The increased size—it’s about as big as a side table—and bright lights allow you to grow a bounty of lettuces, herbs, and other greens, and you can program the app to turn the lights off and on according to your schedule. An expensive but excellent gift for anyone who loves fresh produce and fears their own black thumbs.

Leave-In Dual-Probe Thermometer

The Smoke is designed for grillers and barbecuers, but it’s a precise two-probe thermometer that can be calibrated and is just as handy indoors. Use the meat probe to gauge the temperature inside a roast and the ambient probe to track the smoker or grill’s temperature.

Tiffin

I’m a sucker for bentos, tiffins, and other tidy ways to carry lunch to the office, and the fact that I don’t technically have an office to carry lunch to anymore has only slightly dampened my enthusiasm. This two-layer tiffin is neat and attractive without being too cutesy, and it’s small enough that it won’t occupy too much space in a shared fridge. In the warmer months, it’ll do just as well for packing sandwiches and individual portions of salad or fresh fruit for a picnic.

Beefeater Burrough’s Reserve Gin

Burrough’s Reserve is a rare thing indeed: a gin you can enjoy neat. It’s distilled in founder James Burrough’s original copper pot still, then rested in barrels that once held the aromatic aperitif wine Lillet, picking up a light straw color and a touch of oak. The barrel-aging mellows the familiar juniper-citrus character of Beefeater just a bit, for a spirit that’s smooth and satisfying. It makes a superior Martini or Vesper, but it may be at its most appealing served solo in a chilled glass.

Pistachio Spread

Since first getting his hands on a jar of this pistachio spread, Sasha hasn’t shut up about it. Made from Sicilian pistachios, olive oil, sugar, and sea salt, it’s sweet, slightly salty, incredibly creamy, and just flat-out delicious. While it’s not cheap, this is one of those specialty products that are actually worth the price tag, and it makes a great gift. Spread it on bread, drizzle it over ice cream, or just eat it by the spoonful straight from the jar.

Stainless Steel Food Scale With Pull-Out Display

A good digital scale is an essential tool for bakers or home charcuterie makers. The OXO Food Scale comes with an easy-to-clean removable stainless steel weighing surface, great accuracy and precision, and a pullout backlit display to make measuring simple, even for large or unwieldy items.

Mixing Glass

This hand-blown and -etched mixing glass from Japan looks stunning on a bar cart and even better in action, whether you’re stirring a Negroni, a Martini, or a Manhattan. Mixing glasses made from two parts joined together sometimes split at the seam, but this version, made in one piece with a beaker-like spout, can stand up to heavy use.

Stovetop Pressure Cooker

I tested dozens of stovetop pressure cookers before settling on Kuhn Rikon’s Duromatic. It has a heavy sandwiched-aluminum-and-steel base that gives you even heat and a pressure gauge that makes telling exactly how much pressure has built up inside visual and intuitive.

Tojiro Fujitora Honesuki

Over the course of his career, Daniel has slowly built up a decent collection of both traditional and Western-style Japanese knives. Next on his list is a honesuki—a small, triangular butchery knife that tapers to a fine point. It’s designed for breaking down chickens and other small pieces of meat. The blade isn’t meant to cut through bone, but instead to deftly slide through meat and connective tissue, and carve its way between joints.

Best Poultry Shears

Oxo’s poultry shears include an easy to engage and disengage locking mechanism, a looped handle that won’t allow greasy hands to slip when squeezing hard, and a take-apart hinge for thorough cleaning. But what really makes it our top pick is that it’s one of the only pairs of shears we tested that can both snip through squirmy skin and cleave through bone. If poultry shears can’t do that, you might as well not own a pair.

Sant’Eustachio Whole Coffee Beans

Sant’Eustachio is a coffee-bar institution in the center of Rome, and it’s where Sasha’s life as a coffee drinker began when he was a kid. The baristi at Sant’Eustachio perform coffee alchemy at espresso machines outfitted with custom-made metal partitions that keep their methods secret from curious onlooking customers. He always tries to bring back a bag of Sant’Eustachio coffee for his father every time he visits the Eternal City, but now he can just order some online. How convenient!

Rice, Noodle, Fish

Warning: Reading this book might lead to the purchase of some very expensive plane tickets. The Roads & Kingdoms crew will get you hungry for a journey to Japan: for onigiri basted with chicken fat, juicy one-bite gyoza, milky-white tonkotsu ramen broth, and briny sea urchin. Is Japan the best place on earth to eat? This book will convince you that it is.

Buttery Popcorn Seasoning

Ariel’s dad has long been a movie-theater-popcorn fanatic—he’s been known to go into the theater just to get popcorn, then leave. This popcorn seasoning will cut out the middleman, allowing her dad to make his very own cinema-worthy popcorn right at home.

Dark-Chocolate Sea Salt Almonds

You can find dark chocolate and almonds combined in any number of candy bars. What distinguishes these delicious nuggets from Nuts.com is the generous sprinkling of sea salt embedded in the thick chocolate shell. Just be sure not to open them for a taste—once you’ve had one, the rest will never make it to Dad.

Insulated Beverage Bottle

The Hydro Flask is designed to keep water cold for hours on end, but its vacuum-insulated walls don’t discriminate between beverages: The 32-ounce flask can also accommodate a full bottle of wine, or a big batch of margaritas. It’s ideal for picnics and trips to the beach, no matter what you’re drinking.

Cast Iron Skillet

Old cast iron has a perfectly smooth nonstick surface that’s surprisingly easy to maintain. You can sear, bake, roast, braise, stew, and deep-fry in it, and there’s nothing more thoughtful than a gift that you have to expend a bit of effort to find (check out eBay, yard sales, and flea markets). Of course, these modern Lodge pans will do in a pinch if vintage isn’t in the cards.

Frankies 457 Olive Oil

Fancy olive oil always makes a good gift, but there’s a difference between fancy olive oil and good fancy olive oil. The house oil from Frankies 457 Sputino in Brooklyn is delicious (i.e. great on fresh bread and in dishes), is DOC cerified, and comes in a nice tin that prevents the light from spoiling the product.

Metal Pizza Peel for Retrieving Pizzas

Wooden pizza peels are too thick to easily slide under a pie once it’s hit the oven; for that, you’ll want a thin-bladed metal peel. A thin-gauge aluminum peel is just fine for the occasional baker, but it’ll bend and warp eventually. If you’re going to be making pizza multiple times a year for many years to come, you might want to spring for something heavy-duty. I use the KettlePizza Pro Peel, which has a thick-gauge aluminum body that extends fully past the solid teakwood handle.

Whiskey Set

For the last few years, I’ve taken to buying my dad a nice bottle of whiskey for most special occassions. This year, I’ll be staying on theme, but changing things up by giving him something a bit longer lasting. This whiskey set from Snowe is durable and elegant, and I know it’ll get serious use in the years to come.

Cuisinart Blender

The Cuisinart is an easy-to-use, powerful blender that aced many of our tests. This model’s dashboard is intuitive, and it features a built-in timer that counts down for you or can be programmed to stop after a certain number of seconds.

Diaspora Co. Turmeric

This turmeric is as bright as a bar of gold, with a lovely, sleek label to match. Apart from the high-quality turmeric and nice packaging, the spice comes with a feel-good story: Diaspora Co. is run by queer women of color, and each jar purchased puts a much-higher-than-average amount of money back into the turmeric farmer’s hands.

Food Dehydrator

Elazar’s dad has always been into gardening, but recently he found a way to actually use all of the produce he grows. Since he got an Excalibur dehydrator a few years ago, he’s put more or less everything he grows through it. That means Elazar gets sent bags of dehydrated tomatoes, apple and pear slices, and more. This is a great gift for any dads who love to garden—or make jerky! Plus, if you’re lucky, you’ll start getting gift baskets from them.

Wine Fridge

Take it from us: Living in hot urban apartments makes storing age-worthy wines nearly impossible, unless you don’t mind risking the life of a pricey Burgundy by putting it through years of extreme temperature swings. Anyone with an interest in building even a modest collection of special-occasion bottles should get a wine fridge. It’s a small investment that protects your real investment.

Le Creuset Wooden Scraping Spoon

I have a problem with wooden spoons. I collect them like nobody’s business. But there are a few I always turn back to, and this one, from Le Creuset, is one of them. It’s gorgeous to look at; it has a flat front, which makes it great for scraping up fond or stirring vegetables; and it’s got a smooth, ergonomic grip that makes using it a joy.

Roccbox Outdoor Pizza Oven

The Roccbox is an incredible little oven with simple, reliable operation, whether you’re using gas, wood, or charcoal to fire it. It consistently hits wood-fired-oven temperatures and maintains them for as long as you are cooking, with no fussing or babysitting, which means Dad can spend more time enjoying pizza with his friends and family and less time coddling a temperamental flame.

Island Creek Oysters by Mail

Few things get me as excited as a good raw bar, but most of the time, I eat far fewer than I want because, after the first couple dozen oysters or so, it just gets to be too expensive. That’s even truer when the oysters are top-notch, like the briny little suckers from Island Creek up in Massachusetts. But here’s the good news: You can order Island Creek’s oysters online by the 50- or 100-count for much less than they cost at most restaurants and have them in your hands the next day for an at-home shucking extravaganza. (Obviously, it helps to learn to shuck first.)

High-Output Torch

Forget those puny kitchen torches designed to make crème brûlée for ants. If you want some serious torching power in the kitchen, for putting the final touch on fancy desserts or for finishing off a sous vide steak, you want a high-output torch like this one. You’ll get a deeper char than you’ll ever be able to get from using a skillet alone.

Fixed-Cup Spice Grinder

The sleek and minimalist design of the Krups means it’s easy to hold, handle, and store—perfect for anyone tight on space. Even without a removable bowl, cleanup is a cinch because spices never get trapped beneath the blade, and there are no unnecessary ridges or notches to clog with spices. The one-touch operation makes it easy to use, and it quickly yields a fine and consistent grind in both large, tough spices and smaller seeds.

Belgian Waffle Maker

Waffles are a pretty big deal in my family, and my dad knows full well that when I gift him kitchen equipment, I plan to use it whenever I come to visit (whether that’s buttermilk waffles on a whim, or a well-timed batch of yeast raised waffles on Christmas morning). Plus, my dad’s no stranger to the kitchen, so that iron will see plenty of use through the years.

Breville Smoking Gun

At home, my mom usually does all the cooking, so when my dad takes a crack at dinner it’s really an event. Without the burden of having cook every night, he’s like a kid at an amusment park, gleefully breaking out the pressure cooker and dusting off the blow torch. The smoking gun will make the perfect addition to his rowdy dive into the culinary world. It allows you to easily smoke anything indoors with just the flip of a switch. Equipped with an assorment of wood chips, the smoking gun offers instant dad-fun right out of the box. I can see it now—there’s probably going to be smoked dal along with smoked chana masala and smoked raitha at the next “dad” dinner.

Pizza Wheel

When it comes to portioning pizza, a knife simply won’t cut it. At least, not if you don’t want to drag cheese and toppings all over the place. For my money, nothing beats a traditional pizza wheel.

Tacos: Recipes and Provocations

My good friend Jordana Rothman cowrote this thoughtful ode to tacos with chef Alex Stupak, and it’s a must-have for anyone ready to take a deep dive into corn, masa, tortillas, and everything—modern and traditional—you can stuff into them.

Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling

In this book, Meathead Goldwyn, the founder of AmazingRibs.com, distills decades of research on the art and science of barbecue and grilling into a single volume that shows not just the best ways to take food to live fire, but why the techniques work. Far more than a recipe book alone (though there are tons of bulletproof recipes), this text will teach Dad the hard-tested fundamentals of outdoor cooking, giving him the confidence to cook anything, even without a recipe. The myth-busting and equipment tips alone were enough to get me hooked.

R. Murphy Duxbury Oyster Knife

I’ve used many, many oyster knives in my life, and the R. Murphy Duxbury knife is my hands-down favorite. It has a fat, grippy handle that’s easy to wield, and a short blade that tapers to a point and always manages to find the sweet spot on an oyster’s hinge. Pop! The slightly sharpened blade edges make slicing through the muscle and removing the top shell as smooth as butter.

The Chili Cookbook

This isn’t just a chili cookbook. Robb Walsh digs deep into the beloved dish’s ancestry, tracing threads through Mexico City, San Antonio, and Santa Fe—as you might expect—but also Hungary, Greece, and the Canary Islands (off the coast of North Africa). Walsh is one of food writing’s best storytellers, so the book is satisfying even if you never whip out your Dutch oven and get cooking. You should, though: The fascinating tale is best enjoyed with a big bowl of chili con carne. (Walsh’s recipe from El Real in Houston is killer.)

Snow Leopard Vodka

Snow Leopard stands out among vodkas for its texture—distilled from spelt, it’s fuller-bodied and richer-tasting than most vodkas. It makes for a pleasantly weighty martini.

Marble and Acacia Wood Cake Stand

Like a pretty Bundt pan, a beautiful cake stand has an aesthetic value of its own, even without a cake—but present it with your giftee’s favorite cake on top, and it will also be a nice reminder of the day.

Misono UX10 Chef’s Knife

A deft and nimble blade, Misono’s UX10 is one of the lightest-weight knives we tested. It’s razor-sharp right out of the box and handled every task we threw at it with ease, dicing an onion as if it were as soft as a blob of Jell-O and making paper-thin slices of smoked salmon as if the knife were a true slicer.

Fancy Glass Pitcher

I actually received this classic Waterford pitcher as a wedding gift, and it’s become a workhorse in my home. When I’m not using it to decant wine, it’s hard at work serving cocktails, ice water, and juices. And in between any special occasion, you can drop in some fresh flowers and use it as a vase.

Beyond Curry Indian Cookbook: A Culinary Journey Through India

Indian food has a reputation for being difficult and time-consuming, with hard-to-find ingredients and new techniques. I get it. It’s intimidating. But in this book, Serious Eater Denise D’silva Sankhé breaks Indian cooking down into simple techniques that any home cook can master to produce amazingly flavorful dishes with minimal effort. Over the course of more than 100 recipes, Denise introduces us to simple cooking from every region of India, focusing on home-style dishes that move well beyond the world of curries. I’m also super stoked that she includes notes with every recipe on whether it’s vegan, vegetarian, and/or allergy-friendly.

Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking

I’ve never been to Zahav, the Philadelphia restaurant where Michael Solomonov serves his Israeli cuisine, but its namesake book has nevertheless changed the way I cook. If Dad still cooks the occasional meal for you, you might point him toward the hummus tahini recipe, which includes a novel technique for incorporating garlic and lemon that alone is worth the price of admission. I’ve loved the Yemenite beef soup (and the accompanying hot sauce), his wide focus on vegetarian-friendly dishes, and a host of homemade condiments that will elevate almost any meal, even if you don’t follow the full recipes from the book.

Pralus

I don’t mind baking with supermarket chocolate bars, but when it comes to snacking I’d rather spring for the good stuff—especially when it comes to my dad. He’s decidedly a “bite of dark chocolate after dinner” kinda guy, which means every bite needs to count, and that’s where this stack of single origin chocolates comes in. It’s a fun way to explore the world of chocolate, and learn how different beans and countries of origin can impact its taste. Plus, I can steal some when he’s not looking.

Green Mountain Grills Davy Crockett Pellet Grill (Wifi Enabled)

Surprisingly, many of the portable pellet smokers out there still have an antiquated LMH controller, while Davy Crockett employs Green Mountain’s advanced digital touch-pad controller, with an integrated meat thermometer that lets you check internal meat temp with the flick of a switch.

Breville Crispy Pizza Oven

If our rice cooker got it on with a Roomba, we imagine their offspring might look a bit like the new Breville Crispy Crust countertop pizza oven. It’s a new plug-and-go appliance that promises “professional brick-oven results right in your own kitchen,” for about $150.

Glass Tumblers

My dad lives in Florida and never drinks enough water. These little tumblers seem like the perfect compromise to get him to drink just enough to not get totally dehydrated every day. And if he refuses to fill them with water, at least he can use them for alcoholic beverages. The final plus: They stack, so they won’t take up too much space in his cabinets.

Gin Mare

Friends have toted bottles of this fantastic gin back from Barcelona, but now you can buy it in the US. Macerated with Arbequina olives, thyme, rosemary, and basil, along with cardamom and coriander, it’s remarkably creamy, savory, and spicy. It makes for a wonderfully aromatic Martini and a super-complex, earthy G&T.

GelPro Floor Mat

If you love to cook and host parties, you’ll know that a lot of prep time is spent on your feet. Why not make at least the cooking part a bit more comfortable with one of these gel mats? It’ll provide some nice cushion under your feet, so when it’s time to put on your party shoes, you’ll be ready.

The Glenrothes Triple Pack Gift Set

Why give your dad one Scotch when you can give him three? This gift set includes three 100-milliliter bottles. A combination of 10 vintages from 1989 through 2007, the Vintage Reserve is mellow and fruity, the range of young and older whiskies contributing both bright, fresh citrus on the one hand and rich, oaky elements on the other. Sherry Cask (aged, as the name might suggest, in used sherry butts) leans toward dried fruit, and the Bourbon Cask (aged in bourbon barrels) toward creamy vanilla.

The Cocktail Chronicles

Having The Cocktail Chronicles at your side is like having a friend who always knows a good drink recipe for whatever you’ve got on hand. It doesn’t talk your ear off or suggest something with a dozen ingredients. Instead, it shares classics, recent spins on classics, and drinks you’ve never heard of but can easily mix up and enjoy, and the introductions are never preachy or boring. This book will appeal to full-on cocktail fanatics and newbies alike; there’s something delicious on every page.

Portable Kitchen Timer

I can’t tell you how many times I burn bread crumbs or forget about the nuts I’m toasting in the oven. At least, I used to. That was all before I got myself a couple of these easy-to-use, loud kitchen timers that I can hang around my neck, so I never forget about something in the kitchen, even if I leave the room.

Cooking Coat

Aprons get all the attention, but they don’t protect your clothes nearly well enough, leaving large swaths of sleeves and shoulders exposed to spatters and stains. You could always put on a shirt you don’t care too much about before donning an apron, but a protective work coat like this keeps your clothes safe without requiring a complete costume change.

Cuisinart ICE-21 Ice Cream Machine

The value-to-cost ratio on this lightweight model can’t be beat. It uses a pre-frozen, coolant-lined canister to chill down the ice cream base, eliminating the need for salt and ice or an expensive compressor. When properly frozen, the canister churns up in less time than any other model we tested, for creamy and smooth ice creams and other frozen desserts. This undemanding model has one button, a lid that easily snaps into place, and a small footprint for tight spaces.

Carbon Steel Omelette Pan

A good carbon steel has many of the qualities that make cast iron great—it’s durable, it forms a completely nonstick surface if cared for properly, and it’s inexpensive—but it’s lighter and easier to maneuver than cast iron, making it great for sautéing and searing everyday foods.

Espro Press P5

Thanks to a few simple innovations in the filter and beaker design, this French press fixes a few of the brewing device’s biggest drawbacks. The result is a cleaner batch of coffee that won’t accidentally over-steep.

Good Kitchen Shears

A good pair of kitchen shears is one of those things that are hard to appreciate until you have them. Sure, there are all the obvious uses, like opening food packages with a snip and cutting up poultry, but that’s just the start. Take another look at those things. Yes, that’s right, they’re also a nutcracker. Aha, yup, and a bottle opener. Did you see the flathead screwdriver built into them? Handy, right? Oh, they can also be used to unscrew stubborn jar tops. They’re way more than just a pair of scissors. Plus, the two blades come fully apart, so you can wash them really well—no icky chicken juice hiding in the recesses. Isn’t avoiding salmonella poisoning a gift worth giving?

6-Quart Instant Pot

The Instant Pot Duo60 is a fantastic value and performed almost as well as the top pick among countertop pressure cookers we tested. It’s easy to use, the company has a reputation for great customer service, and there’s an avid and helpful community of users online to boot.

Unicorn Magnum Pepper Mill

I’ll admit it: I’m a pepper mill snob. I need my mill to produce a shower of evenly crushed peppercorns. I want to be able to control the size of those grains, from a rough crush to a fine powder. Not only that, I want my pepper mill to last. With a solid metal burr and a unique, easy-to-load design, this is my favorite pepper mill of all time.

Cast Iron Combo Cooker

A combo cooker is the key to getting a gorgeous, shattering crust on homemade bread. It acts as its own little steam chamber, like what you’d find in a professional bread oven, and it costs way less than a kitchen renovation.

OXO Good Grips Two-Piece Grilling Set

A quality spatula and tongs are essential for good grilling. Seek out ones with long handles, such as OXO’s two-piece grilling set, to keep your fingers as far from the heat as possible. The nearly flat, scalloped edge on the OXO tongs is especially appealing—it’s extra easy to slide the tongs under meat, vegetables, and other ingredients on the grill.

Redbreast 15 Year Irish Whiskey

If Dad finds Scotch too smoky, bourbon too sweet, and rye too spicy, Irish whiskey is the ideal gift. Redbreast emerges from the barrels complex and substantial; some of the whiskey is aged in sherry casks, lending it a weight and dark hue, while some is aged in bourbon casks, imparting characteristic vanilla flavors. There’s a hint of fruit up front and spice on the finish.

Countertop Seltzer Maker

Make your own seltzer water at home with this easy-to-use unit. It comes equipped with LED indicators displaying three levels of carbonation and a BPA-free bottle that locks into the unit with no twisting, and it requires no batteries or electricity to operate. This model fits 14.5-ounce and three-ounce CO2 cylinders, which can be traded in for just the cost of the gas at your local hardware or home-goods store.

All-Clad Two-Quart Saucepan

This small 2-quart saucepan is perfect for making and warming sauces, cooking small portions of grain, and heating liquids.

Japanese Nakiri Vegetable Knife

A good gift for dads who are knife-curious, a nakiri is a double-beveled knife typically used just for slicing vegetables. This one is all carbon steel, so it’s easy to sharpen on a whetstone and holds its edge well. On the other hand, it’s susceptible to rust, so it needs to be dried after each use and periodically wiped down with mineral oil. Given its price point, this nakiri is perfect for a cook who wants to experiment with specialty Japanese knives or with caring for a non–stainless steel blade.

Precision Coffee Maker

While you can get it brewing with just the push of a button, the Breville offers layer upon layer of fine-tuned control for the coffee geek who wants to tweak brew variables. Finishing near the top of our taste tests, this spendy machine allows you to control brew-water temperature and time and the blooming phase. It can also make cold brew, and it’s compatible with popular pourover devices like the Hario V60 and Kalita Wave.

Terra Cotta Cazuela

Daniel’s owned these terra cotta dishes in several sizes for many years now. They’re attractive enough to go straight from the oven to the table, and versatile enough to be used as baking dishes for cooked foods or as serving dishes for snacks when you’re hosting guests.

Smuggler’s Cove

This remarkable book, from Martin and Rebecca Cate of San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove, traces the birth and evolution of exotic drinks and tiki bars—bars that embodied an American escapist fantasy. A lively exploration of our country’s drinking history (and the current tiki scene), it’s essential reading for rum lovers, offering the best categorization of the headspinning-ly diverse spirit that I’ve encountered. The Mai Tai recipe is great, too.

Liquid Intelligence

Dave Arnold (you might know of his bar, Booker and Dax in NYC) won’t just accept the common assumptions about cocktail technique—his mission in this excellent book is to dig into the science of how the very best drinks are made. If your dad is the inquisitive type, and likes to host cocktail hour at home, this is a must-read for him.

Chimney Starter

Lighter fluid is fun to play with, but it can impart an off flavor to your food. A chimney starter is faster, cleaner, more efficient, and better for the environment. It’s a tall metal cylinder with holes punched in it and a grate at the bottom for holding the charcoal. It works with the power of convection: When a lit newspaper is placed at the bottom, igniting the lowest coals, the hot air rises up, pulling fresh oxygen in through the vent holes and through the bottom. This constant supply of fresh oxygen, coupled with the fact that the metal efficiently reflects heat back toward the coals, means you require nothing more than a single piece of newspaper and a match to turn a full six quarts of coals into a roaring inferno within 20 minutes.

ThermoWorks ThermoPop

In the inexpensive-thermometer department, the ThermoPop is the new kid on the block, but he comes in an impressive package. An easy-to-read display rotates at the touch of a button, so you don’t have to twist your head to read it. It takes a few seconds longer to read temperatures than its big brother, the Thermapen, but it’s every bit as accurate.

Char-Griller Kamado Smoker

The Akorn is a double-walled, insulated steel egg that is much lighter and in some ways more durable than the popular Big Green Egg. It performs fairly close to traditional kamados at a fraction of the cost, so you can spend your saved bucks on getting some great meat.

Hands-Free Soap Dispenser

Messy cooks—or germaphobes—will love this easy-to-use soap dispenser. Unlike some other models that have finicky settings, this Simple Human dispenser changes how much soap you get based on where your hands are: Keep them up high for just the right amount to wash your hands, or move them lower for enough to clean a few dinner plates.

High West Barreled Manhattan

A premixed 2:1 rye-vermouth Manhattan with a few dashes of bitters, this stuff spends three months aging in used rye barrels, which integrates the flavors and adds a touch of woody character to the drink. Give it a quick stir over ice for chill and dilution, spray an orange twist on top, and you’ve got a drink worthy of any cocktail bar—no barrel required.

Joule Sous Vide Circulator

The ChefSteps Joule is the smallest circulator on the market. It’s sleek, compact design fits in a drawer and it heats quickly and accurately. It has the advantage of the ChefSteps community and legacy content built into its app, though its one downside is that it requires a smartphone or tablet along with a registered account to operate.

Ceramic Sangria Pitcher

This pitcher arrives sangria-ready. The pinched spout is a genius detail that keeps all the fruit and ice from splashing into your glass, and when it’s not filled with sangria, it can be used as a vase. We love a two-fer!

Magimix 14-Cup Food Processor

The Magimix impressed us with each slicing, chopping, grating, and puréeing test we tossed at it, especially with pizza dough, which it combined so well that no additional kneading was required.

Blackstone Pizza Oven

The Blackstone is the oven of choice for high-output, rapid cooking, as it takes very little time to preheat and recover, pumping out pie after pie at a nonstop clip. Users who are comfortable making frequent mechanical repairs and adjustments, and who care more about speed than about versatility and aesthetics, will be happy with this one.

MAC Professional Santoku Knife

This santoku from MAC’s professional line is an absolute pleasure to use, no matter the task. It’s lightweight, well balanced, sharp as can be, and comfortable to hold. It made perfect carrot cuts, broke down a chicken with ease, and filleted a whole fish as if it were a fish-shaped block of butter.

Granite Mortar and Pestle

With both parts made of rock-solid granite, the Thai mortar and pestle is (literally) a heavy hitter, and arguably the most versatile type of large mortar and pestle you can own. Its heft and weight, especially when combined with the stone-on-stone action that the all-granite build provides, make it ideal for one of its intended uses: making a Thai curry paste.

Iittala Essence Glasses

No matter what your father likes to drink, it’ll look good in these universal glasses from Iittala. They’re big enough to accommodate a 12-ounce beer, his favorite cocktail, or a monster pour of wine…because it’s Father’s Day, and he deserves it.

Pourover Coffee Brewer

There are enough coffee-brewing devices on the market to drive a person crazy, but it’s hard to beat a quality pourover brewer like this Japanese one. It’s compact and solid, making it ideal for home or the office, and it brews a mean cup of coffee. It claims to make two to four servings, but we find it’s perfect for a full 12-ounce single cup, too (note that you need these filters for it).

Digital Electric Gooseneck Kettle

This is the electric kettle of my coffee-delayed dreams. It has an elegant gooseneck spout that makes pouring a thin, controlled stream easy (very helpful for Chemex and other pourover coffee methods) and a base with controls that allow you to set a specific temperature and hold it there.

Recipe Journal

Trying to get your dad to finally write down all those family recipes? This sleek Moleskin journal will get him organized and become a precious family heirloom in the process.

Rancho Gordo Beans

A bean is a bean is a bean. Or is it? Once you go down the rabbit hole of eating quality dried beans (after they’re cooked, of course—raw dried beans aren’t so great), you’ll fall in love with their variety of flavors, textures, and colors. Some are starchy, some are nutty, some are earthy, and some are slightly sweet. Rancho Gordo is one company that sells some really cool ones to try. You won’t look at dried beans the same way again.

American Waffle Maker

The Breville produces crispy brown waffles the fastest and with the most consistent color of all the batches we tested, making it the best option if you prefer thinner waffles. Although it only makes one waffle at a time, it reheats and cooks rapidly, so you can crank out waffle after waffle with ease. The built in drip tray, non stick surface, and minimal design keeps clean up effortless.

Bamboo Steamer

Since I am now the best dad in the world, according to the bib I definitely did not buy my daughter, I get to pick something that I want for our Father’s Day gift guide, and I want several bamboo steamers for my wok. They are useful for steaming, particularly large-ish things, like a whole (if small) fish, like a porgy or a diminutive sea bass. They are super useful! Easy to clean! I want it! Buy me it!

Half Moon Orchard Gin

The New York–made gin is distilled from wheat and apples, resulting in a faint but perceptible dried-apple character alongside prominent juniper and cardamom—an exciting dimension that works especially well in cocktails.

Spaghetti con la Colatura Gift Box

One of our favorite recipes from the year thus far is Sasha’s spaghetti con la colatura di alici. Conveniently, Gustiamo is selling a gift box based on the building blocks of the dish: a bottle of colatura, a bottle of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil, and a box of pasta, for a tasty gift indeed.

All-Clad Immersion Blender

A high-speed hand blender is great for whipping up silky soups and purées, making emulsions like mayonnaise and Hollandaise, or smoothing out sauces, all right in the pot. No need to dirty up an extra blender jar!

Rice, Noodle, Fish

Warning: Reading this book might lead to the purchase of some very expensive plane tickets. The Roads & Kingdoms crew will get you hungry for a journey to Japan, for onigiri basted with chicken fat, juicy one-bite gyoza, milky-white tonkotsu ramen broth, and briny sea urchin. Is Japan the best place on earth to eat? This book will convince you that it is.

Louie Mueller’s Brisket

Brisket is Texas’s best-known contribution to barbecue culture, and though you can now get slow-smoked brisket in just about every major American city, you still need to go to the source to get brisket so good it will make you cry. But if you can’t make it to Texas, ordering Louie Mueller’s is the next best thing. The Muellers have been smoking the stuff since 1949. The key here? They ship the whole brisket, which means you get plenty of the critically important fatty half. Why is it critically important? Because we all know that fat IS flavor. Phone orders only: (512) 352-6206.

Pasta by Hand: A Collection of Italy’s Regional Hand-Shaped Pasta

No pasta machine? No problem. This book is devoted to the art of handcrafted Italian dumplings, from yeasty, spindle-shaped cecamariti to classic gnocchi to golden-brown parallelograms of deep-fried crescentine. If the adage “practice makes perfect” fills you with excitement rather than dread, this is the kind of book that will make you utterly determined to prevail.

Staub Heritage Baking Dish

It can be easy to brush off appearances as unimportant, but tableside presentation is a big part of a baking dish’s appeal. If you want excellent performance combined with a handsome and classic design that will look great on your holiday table (or on your Instagram account), Staub is your best bet. This heavyweight dish heats evenly in the oven at temperatures up to 575°F (300°C) and has great heat retention, keeping food hotter longer when you’re serving. The generous four-quart capacity is ideal for large roasts and extra-deep casseroles.

The Original Bear Paws Shredder Claws

In addition to making you look like Wolverine, shredder claws make quick work of pork butts (hello, pulled pork!), smoked chicken, smoked chuck roasts, and other meats, allowing you to tear the meat into shreds in no time. Sure, you could try doing it with forks, but you’d better have a lot of time on your hands.

Inexpensive Wire Grill Brush

Grill brushes come in all shapes, sizes, and styles, but for a tool that sees so much use, I find it hard to justify spending a huge amount of money. This simple, heavy-duty wire-style grill brush has served me well for years, and if it ever wears out, well, it’s cheap enough to replace.

George Dickel Barrel Select Tennessee Whiskey

Made from whiskeys averaging 10 to 12 years in age, this bottling is all vanilla and toffee in the aroma but spice and char on the finish. It’s sophisticated and eminently drinkable.

[Header photograph: Shutterstock]

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The New and Old Food-Adjacent Shows We’ve Been Streaming This Week

HBO/Curb Your Enthusiasm

Looking for something delicious to watch this weekend? We’ve got you.

Like most people living under shelter-in-place orders or voluntarily socially distancing because of COVID-19, Eater staffers are watching a lot of TV right now. Coming from series past and present, here are the best food-related scenes, episodes, and shows that we used to cope this week.

Party Down (Seasons 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu)

The gist: The failed dreams and enduring delusions of a Hollywood catering company’s employees are all on excruciating, glorious display in this criminally underwatched 2009 comedy series, which ran for two brief but glorious seasons on Starz. Each episode is set at a different function where the crew has been hired to sling hors d’oeuvres: a funeral, a college conservative union caucus, a preschool auction, a singles seminar, Steve Guttenberg’s birthday party, and one spectacularly unsuccessful orgy night.

While food and booze give the show its reason for existence, it’s the personal struggles of the caterers — and often their clients — that provide its brand of satirical, irreverent, and often very biting humor. Almost all of the company’s employees — the failed actor, the aspiring screenwriter, the stage mom, the struggling comedian — have been chewed up (or at least teethed on) by the Hollywood system, which lets the show examine and skewer the industry’s class struggles and pretensions with a hilarious lack of remorse. That said, Party Down wouldn’t be nearly as effective without its cast, which includes Jane Lynch and Megan Mullally, along with the then-relatively unknown Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, and Martin Starr. Watching them grimly work a room armed with cheese platters and shrimp puffs is one of life’s more specific pleasures, and also among its most reliable. —Rebecca Marx

The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I’ve been getting real joy out of watching Ted Allen on the original run of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which upon second watch is hilariously antagonistic toward the straight guys. Unlike Antoni, who tries to meet these men on their level by having them make avocado toast or pancakes, Allen basically cooks everything himself and gives his subjects busywork. Men can assemble crudite, if they want, or whip egg whites while Allen has already infused cream with vanilla beans and has it melting with expensive chocolate on the stove. In one episode, Allen orders his subject $50 jars of kosher foie gras to make armagnac-infused mousse, to be served with shaved black truffle, because “people are pretty accustomed to” pâte (???). And then, when the guy’s girlfriend doesn’t seem to like it, he bemoans “that’s $150 of foie gras!” like it’s everyone else’s problem for having bad taste. This is not about teaching men a new skill. There is nothing practical about most of Allen’s cooking, and it’s thrilling to watch men who have never set foot in their kitchens pretend like this is the sort of entertaining they’ll be doing from now on. —Jaya Saxena

Project Runway (Season 10, Episode 2, available on Hulu)

I’m going to admit outright that I had embarked on a journey to rewatch all the Project Runway seasons available on Hulu even before this pandemic started, but now that a lot of us are confined at home for the indefinite future, there are few better background-television choices I can recommend than the original drama-filled fashion competition reality series. One standout episode is the second in Season 10. In “Candy Couture,” the designers raid boutique candy store and New York City staple Dylan’s Candy Bar, snagging licorices, gummies, and jelly beans to create outfits that range from “wow!” to “not bad” to “that?” To hear snatches of catty comments and catch glimpses of a lively, bustling NYC in between footage of designers burning their fingers with hot glue guns — ah, different times. —Jenny Zhang

ZeroZeroZero (Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8, available to stream on Amazon Prime)

ZeroZeroZero, an Amazon Prime series that follows a shipment of cocaine through four countries, has some predictable drug cartel narrative arcs — double crossing, violence and cruelty, me softly saying “it’s just not worth it” over and over again — but one nice change was the Calabrian mob’s dining table mainstays: a hunk of cheese, salami, bread, and wine. When the going gets tough for these guys, they just need a hit of carbs, cured meat, and some salty, creamy dairy, washed down with adult grape juice. Who among us can’t relate?

I wonder who out of the mob grunts makes sure they’re stocked. Are there wheels of cheese in the trunk of their car? Salami hanging from the coat hooks in the back seat? Are they kneading their own sourdough, letting it rest, firing up the wood oven that they just built after feeding some poor sod’s corpse to the pigs? Who cares! These guys are committed to the “simple ingredients, done well” philosophy, and for that, I commend them. — Pelin Keskin

Playtime (available to screen on the Criterion Collection)

I cannot say that I’ve ever experienced a true restaurant shitshow. The closest I’ve come is perhaps witnessing a bartender slip and fall at a restaurant where I received no service for an hour and then got up and left. I sometimes envy my colleagues in New York, who used to regale readers with tales of ninja servers and tunamatos during their annual Shitshow Week (may it rest in peace). But now I can safely say I’ve experienced a shitshow, thanks to the 1967 Jacques Tati film Playtime, currently streaming on the Criterion Collection. This movie is, on its surface, toying with sound editing (if you’re into that sort of thing) and poking fun at the strangeness of midcentury aesthetics and American tourists in Paris. But it’s the second half of the movie where Playtime really hits its comedic stride, at a restaurant opening where just about everything goes wrong. The kitchen runs out of food. The air conditioning stops working. The harsh metal chairs leave marks on the backs of the patrons and rip the pants of servers. The ceiling falls in. While it’s billed as a comedy, it’s the Criterion Collection, so we’ll file it under amusing. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this for anyone missing restaurants — even truly bad ones. What I wouldn’t give for an uncomfortable metal chair right now. — Brenna Houck

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 10, available to stream on HBO GO)

Absurdist times call for the comedy of Larry David, so I’m particularly grateful that he brought back his HBO hit Curb Your Enthusiasm just in time for an election year and global pandemic. Season 10, which premiered in January after a two-year-plus hiatus, is a comedic buffet of food riffs: Larry reignites his rivalry with coffee-slinger Mocha Joe when he opens a “spite store” called Latte Larry’s directly next door to Mocha Joe’s cafe; Larry realizes he’s consistently seated in the “ugly section” of a trendy Italian spot with a condescending host (played to smarmy perfection by Nick Kroll); Larry and Jon Hamm fight with Richard Lewis about the appropriate allotment of appetizers; Larry wears a MAGA hat to lunch so that his dining mate will cut the meal short; Larry gets a sweaty server (Abbi Jacobson) fired after she shamelessly declares that she’s suffering from diarrhea, then gets diarrhea himself from his favorite licorice; Larry offends the staff of a Catalonian restaurant when he knocks out his tooth and pronounces everything with an unnecessary “th” sound. Then, of course, there’s the season-long debate: What makes a good scone?

If you worry that Curb Your Enthusiasm would seem particularly trite while the world is figuratively on fire — well, it is trite. And it always has been. Nitpicking on life’s small annoyances to the point of embarrassment is kind of the point. — Madeleine Davies

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (available to stream on Netflix)

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch is a very tender and funny one-hour comedy special on Netflix lightly satirizing Sesame Street, and everyone with a soul should let it gently touch them. Mulaney stars alongside a cast of impossibly cute child actors and guests like David Byrne, and it’s all built around musical numbers like “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul,” which will probably make you cry, and “Sacha’s Dad Does Drag (and the Act Needs Work!),” which might also make you cry. There are two great food tie-ins, not including the sack lunch of the title. There’s a brief stub of a song called “Let’s Play Restaurant,” in which — when Mulaney plays along — the restaurant is closed for a private event, sorry, you should have checked their website. And then there’s an instant classic of a song that’s near and dear to my heart as a once-upon-a-time very plain-eating child, called a “Plain Plate of Noodles,” in which Orson Hong, a little boy, explains his gastronomic limitations in song and dance. The lyrics! The choreography! Thirty out of 10. — Caleb Pershan

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HBO/Curb Your Enthusiasm

Looking for something delicious to watch this weekend? We’ve got you.

Like most people living under shelter-in-place orders or voluntarily socially distancing because of COVID-19, Eater staffers are watching a lot of TV right now. Coming from series past and present, here are the best food-related scenes, episodes, and shows that we used to cope this week.

Party Down (Seasons 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu)

The gist: The failed dreams and enduring delusions of a Hollywood catering company’s employees are all on excruciating, glorious display in this criminally underwatched 2009 comedy series, which ran for two brief but glorious seasons on Starz. Each episode is set at a different function where the crew has been hired to sling hors d’oeuvres: a funeral, a college conservative union caucus, a preschool auction, a singles seminar, Steve Guttenberg’s birthday party, and one spectacularly unsuccessful orgy night.

While food and booze give the show its reason for existence, it’s the personal struggles of the caterers — and often their clients — that provide its brand of satirical, irreverent, and often very biting humor. Almost all of the company’s employees — the failed actor, the aspiring screenwriter, the stage mom, the struggling comedian — have been chewed up (or at least teethed on) by the Hollywood system, which lets the show examine and skewer the industry’s class struggles and pretensions with a hilarious lack of remorse. That said, Party Down wouldn’t be nearly as effective without its cast, which includes Jane Lynch and Megan Mullally, along with the then-relatively unknown Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, and Martin Starr. Watching them grimly work a room armed with cheese platters and shrimp puffs is one of life’s more specific pleasures, and also among its most reliable. —Rebecca Marx

The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I’ve been getting real joy out of watching Ted Allen on the original run of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which upon second watch is hilariously antagonistic toward the straight guys. Unlike Antoni, who tries to meet these men on their level by having them make avocado toast or pancakes, Allen basically cooks everything himself and gives his subjects busywork. Men can assemble crudite, if they want, or whip egg whites while Allen has already infused cream with vanilla beans and has it melting with expensive chocolate on the stove. In one episode, Allen orders his subject $50 jars of kosher foie gras to make armagnac-infused mousse, to be served with shaved black truffle, because “people are pretty accustomed to” pâte (???). And then, when the guy’s girlfriend doesn’t seem to like it, he bemoans “that’s $150 of foie gras!” like it’s everyone else’s problem for having bad taste. This is not about teaching men a new skill. There is nothing practical about most of Allen’s cooking, and it’s thrilling to watch men who have never set foot in their kitchens pretend like this is the sort of entertaining they’ll be doing from now on. —Jaya Saxena

Project Runway (Season 10, Episode 2, available on Hulu)

I’m going to admit outright that I had embarked on a journey to rewatch all the Project Runway seasons available on Hulu even before this pandemic started, but now that a lot of us are confined at home for the indefinite future, there are few better background-television choices I can recommend than the original drama-filled fashion competition reality series. One standout episode is the second in Season 10. In “Candy Couture,” the designers raid boutique candy store and New York City staple Dylan’s Candy Bar, snagging licorices, gummies, and jelly beans to create outfits that range from “wow!” to “not bad” to “that?” To hear snatches of catty comments and catch glimpses of a lively, bustling NYC in between footage of designers burning their fingers with hot glue guns — ah, different times. —Jenny Zhang

ZeroZeroZero (Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8, available to stream on Amazon Prime)

ZeroZeroZero, an Amazon Prime series that follows a shipment of cocaine through four countries, has some predictable drug cartel narrative arcs — double crossing, violence and cruelty, me softly saying “it’s just not worth it” over and over again — but one nice change was the Calabrian mob’s dining table mainstays: a hunk of cheese, salami, bread, and wine. When the going gets tough for these guys, they just need a hit of carbs, cured meat, and some salty, creamy dairy, washed down with adult grape juice. Who among us can’t relate?

I wonder who out of the mob grunts makes sure they’re stocked. Are there wheels of cheese in the trunk of their car? Salami hanging from the coat hooks in the back seat? Are they kneading their own sourdough, letting it rest, firing up the wood oven that they just built after feeding some poor sod’s corpse to the pigs? Who cares! These guys are committed to the “simple ingredients, done well” philosophy, and for that, I commend them. — Pelin Keskin

Playtime (available to screen on the Criterion Collection)

I cannot say that I’ve ever experienced a true restaurant shitshow. The closest I’ve come is perhaps witnessing a bartender slip and fall at a restaurant where I received no service for an hour and then got up and left. I sometimes envy my colleagues in New York, who used to regale readers with tales of ninja servers and tunamatos during their annual Shitshow Week (may it rest in peace). But now I can safely say I’ve experienced a shitshow, thanks to the 1967 Jacques Tati film Playtime, currently streaming on the Criterion Collection. This movie is, on its surface, toying with sound editing (if you’re into that sort of thing) and poking fun at the strangeness of midcentury aesthetics and American tourists in Paris. But it’s the second half of the movie where Playtime really hits its comedic stride, at a restaurant opening where just about everything goes wrong. The kitchen runs out of food. The air conditioning stops working. The harsh metal chairs leave marks on the backs of the patrons and rip the pants of servers. The ceiling falls in. While it’s billed as a comedy, it’s the Criterion Collection, so we’ll file it under amusing. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this for anyone missing restaurants — even truly bad ones. What I wouldn’t give for an uncomfortable metal chair right now. — Brenna Houck

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 10, available to stream on HBO GO)

Absurdist times call for the comedy of Larry David, so I’m particularly grateful that he brought back his HBO hit Curb Your Enthusiasm just in time for an election year and global pandemic. Season 10, which premiered in January after a two-year-plus hiatus, is a comedic buffet of food riffs: Larry reignites his rivalry with coffee-slinger Mocha Joe when he opens a “spite store” called Latte Larry’s directly next door to Mocha Joe’s cafe; Larry realizes he’s consistently seated in the “ugly section” of a trendy Italian spot with a condescending host (played to smarmy perfection by Nick Kroll); Larry and Jon Hamm fight with Richard Lewis about the appropriate allotment of appetizers; Larry wears a MAGA hat to lunch so that his dining mate will cut the meal short; Larry gets a sweaty server (Abbi Jacobson) fired after she shamelessly declares that she’s suffering from diarrhea, then gets diarrhea himself from his favorite licorice; Larry offends the staff of a Catalonian restaurant when he knocks out his tooth and pronounces everything with an unnecessary “th” sound. Then, of course, there’s the season-long debate: What makes a good scone?

If you worry that Curb Your Enthusiasm would seem particularly trite while the world is figuratively on fire — well, it is trite. And it always has been. Nitpicking on life’s small annoyances to the point of embarrassment is kind of the point. — Madeleine Davies

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (available to stream on Netflix)

John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch is a very tender and funny one-hour comedy special on Netflix lightly satirizing Sesame Street, and everyone with a soul should let it gently touch them. Mulaney stars alongside a cast of impossibly cute child actors and guests like David Byrne, and it’s all built around musical numbers like “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul,” which will probably make you cry, and “Sacha’s Dad Does Drag (and the Act Needs Work!),” which might also make you cry. There are two great food tie-ins, not including the sack lunch of the title. There’s a brief stub of a song called “Let’s Play Restaurant,” in which — when Mulaney plays along — the restaurant is closed for a private event, sorry, you should have checked their website. And then there’s an instant classic of a song that’s near and dear to my heart as a once-upon-a-time very plain-eating child, called a “Plain Plate of Noodles,” in which Orson Hong, a little boy, explains his gastronomic limitations in song and dance. The lyrics! The choreography! Thirty out of 10. — Caleb Pershan

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[theloudpedal]

2019 Sonoma Speed Festival: Where did the time go?

What the hell happened?

When did the 90s become “vintage?”

“Retro,” maybe, but “vintage?”

I guess the writing has been on the wall for a few years now, but recent events have woken me from my blissfully ignorant slumber…more on that later…

One such recent event was the inaugural Sonoma Speed Festival at Sonoma Raceway. I was interested to see a new interpretation/incarnation of what I think was formerly the Wine Country Classic and then Wine Country Motorsports Festival, mainstay Northern California vintage events that have been must-sees for us for at least a couple of decades. I’ll admit that I was a little skeptical of this new incarnation of one of my favorite things, and honestly, I was a bit surprised by the cost of entry for the first run of the event. That aside, I went into the weekend with an open mind, and empty memory card in my camera and hopes that this event would deliver on it’s many promises.

What I got, from the word “GO” was all of that (maybe a little more), and also an unanticipated revelation.

The event was about as as tidy as any racing affair I’ve ever attended. In an obvious nod to the Goodwood Festival of speed, the paddock area of Sonoma Raceway was transformed into quite a civilized occasion. There wasn’t a transporter, trailer, RV or easy-up in sight. In their stead were several long open-sided tents featuring cars arranged by racing group with minimal team equipment or infrastructure. Though the cars were fairly close to each other, I never got the sense that I had any less access to walk around the cars and to take pictures and chat with drivers and mechanics that I’ve had in the past. Though I’m sure the teams missed having their kit closer, the situation really presented well.

At the ends of the rows of long tents were various corrals, carpeted with artificial turf, and surrounded with low white picket fences. Some of the corrals featured several priceless Italian cars on static display, one a stunning de Tomaso Sport 5000 racer destined for the upcoming Bonhams auction at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering and others provided chairs and tables and benches on which to soak in the sites, partake in some fine food and local wines or just rest weary feet.

The permanent pit garages were packed with a dazzling array of vintage dragsters, classic Formula 1 cars, a zillion dollars worth of French pre-war hardware (both road and racing cars), and a display featuring Jim Clark’s Indy 500 winning 1965 Lotus 38. These alone would have made for a pretty decent vintage event, but there was more….so much more.

Nestled in the heart of the event was the ever changing corral of Radwood cars. I’m an unabashed fan of Radwood, and I relish every opportunity to sing their praises and preach their message. True to form, they presented a tour-de-force of 80s and 90s cars, fashion, culture, tons of free swag and a photo op area for any and all to enjoy. I take my hat off to this group for representing their unique brand of retro, jank and period style to an event that would not normally pay proper homage to the all but forgotten modern classics of the Rad era. Well done to them and good on the event’s promoters for featuring the cars and culture of the 80s and 90s as those things become the new “classic.” (again, more on that later)

The cherry on top of this event was something that I frankly thought was a BS promise by the event planners. I was beyond skeptical that ANYONE would be able to deliver a modern era F1 car to Sonoma Raceway, let alone have it take to the track in hopes of snatching the track record. Well, they did just that, and quite a bit more. They didn’t just present us with a used up back marker of a car, they got a factory supported 2016 Mercedes-AMG F1 W07/04. This wasn’t some cobbled together test mule…it was the car Lewis Hamilton’s world championship winner, the most successful individual chassis in F1 history. As if that wasn’t a lot to deliver, Mercedes even threw in factory test driver and former F1 hotshoe Esteban Gutiérrez to attempt to snatch the track’s lap record of 1:21.688. (Without wading into the politics bragging rights and records, I will only note that the track’s standing “race record” time was set by Marco Werner in an Audi R8 in 2004 in an actual race) Gutierrez completed his fastest lap (on a clean and empty track and under ideal racing conditions) in an astounding 1:15:430!

Now I’m Ferrari Tifosi through and through, but I was humbled just to see the thing. As much as it pains me to say nice things about the car and the team that belittle my beloved Ferrari every other weekend, I have to give praise where it’s due. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to be up close to a remarkable machine driven by one of the greatest drivers in the history of F1 racing.

Also on hand, in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas garage were two other examples of Mercedes’ participation and dominance in Grand Prix racing. Positioned to the left of the F1 W07/04 was the ex-Rudolf Caracciola 1938 W154 which was the last of Mercedes’ pre-war grand prix cars. The sheer size and overall presence of this car is almost unfathomable. It looks sounds and smells like almost nothing else in the universe. Of the thousands of cars I’ve seen in my lifetime, the only cars that I could begin to compare it with would be the other Silver Arrows, the cars of the Audi Auto Union. That’s some pretty rare and hallowed company.

The car stationed to the right of the modern Mercedes hybrid was an example of one of the most recognizable cars from the dreams of any fan of vintage cars, racing or design for that matter. This particular ex Fangio/Moss 1954 W196 was not the most successful car of its kind, but nobody really cares about that. It’s one of those masterworks of automotive technology and design that you get to see once in your lifetime and you never forget. After taking this car in for the first time on Saturday morning, I quietly uttered the phrase, “this thing on its own was worth coming for.” This is a phrase I would utter several more times over the weekend.

I guess this is a good segue to try to quantify the event without blubbering on about specific things with (more) superfluous language. You probably wouldn’t want to read it all, and frankly there was a lot going on. As much time as I spent walking around the event over two days, my travels on social media sites have shown me that I missed some things….a lot of things. Upon reflection, this event was bigger than I thought it was.

The other things at the event that are noteworthy:

The event featured no less than three Ferrari 250 GTOs (2 races and a road car)!

On that note, there were a lot of other Ferraris 250 variants on display too. (GTOs, SWBS, Testarossas, Oh My!)

A 1997 McLaren F1 GTR Longtail graced the grounds and the track. This was the first F1 GTR to win a race.

A spectacular 1992 Ferrari F40 LM dazzled in the paddock and on the track, driven by Johannes van Overbeek.

Saturday afternoon featured a nostalgic dragster demonstration on the track’s legendary drag strip. (Never seen that at a historic event before!)

When I began composing my thoughts about the Speed Festival, I was ready to say that the event was pretty good, but also that I was a little shocked at the ticket prices. I wasn’t sure that any first time happening could be worth the admission. We’ll unflinchingly pony up for events we know and love. We have the benefit of history on which to judge whether or not we want to drop the coin. Good value is worth the money. This in mind, after deliberation on my experience, reading the accounts of others and looking at all of the comments pictures and write-ups all other the internet, I’ve changed my mind. As I said earlier, I’ve been to a lot of historic events over the last few decades, but really, this one packed more good stuff into its program than most. It was well presented, it was well thought out, and most importantly it delivered much more than I expected and I really couldn’t find a flaw with it. We will absolutely put and keep the event on our calendar in the future. It truly is an event not to be missed. It is worth the spot on your calendar too and absolutely fantastic value for your racing dollar.

And a final thought, because the writing was on the wall….

As I mentioned at the top of this piece, I’ve been woken from ignorance by this event and also from a few others in the last couple of years. What’s really slapped me in the face is that I’ve discovered that vintage racing is evolving into something interesting. It will always be a place to watch the cars of yesteryear…things made of brass and hand hammered metal, things with big blocks and things that make smoke….but now there’s more to it. Vintage racing events are becoming places to see things that are very much modern…things made by and with computers….things made of plastic and things that aren’t necessarily loud and things that might not shake the ground. The Audi R8 is now a vintage race car, as well as the slightly older, McLaren F1. In the paddock, the cars of Radwood, the cars of the 80s and 90s, don’t seem out of place at all. In fact, these cars seem to be drawing on a couple of generations of car lovers who might not otherwise want to go to type of event that would normally feature relative dinosaurs. I’m turning 43 in August and I have to relate that both my 12 year old son and I seem to be gravitating and embracing these relatively new arrivals to the scene, and in some cases were getting more out of them than we are the more “standard fare.” (look out 250 GTOs!)

As we’ve opined numerous times, we see many difficulties in the future for vintage racing. Cars are taken out of commission because they become too valuable (or they get wrecked), many drivers and caretakers of vintage cars are (respectfully) “advanced in years” and, well, nothing lasts forever. These things are true, and they will remain so. The good news…the writing on the wall…is that the (relatively) new kids on the block are making themselves known, and they’re establishing their place in the paddock. For this, we are grateful. Because of this, events like the Sonoma Speed Festival with exist and thrive to provide all of us with what we love.

[marcusssanderson]

120 Adventure Quotes To Inspire World Travel

Looking for inspirational adventure quotes about traveling around the world? These quotes about adventure and travel will stir the wanderlust in you.

Are you tired of the same old, day to day? Are you looking for more adventure in your life? Do you have a whispering voice that encourages you to go, see and do!

Yes, it’s easy to silence that voice. It’s easy to get distracted by the day and just get right back into your routine. But, what’s really holding you back from traveling? Why can’t you buy the plane ticket? If you’re being honest with yourself: have you just settled? Have you talked yourself out of it? Think about that.

Travel is undeniably the one constant item you’ll find in everybody’s bucket list. It doesn’t matter if you plan on venturing out nationally or internationally. Travel is being done for the sake of experience and memories, not just to escape. It’s more than just a trend; it has become a lifestyle.

According to Trip Barometer, travelers are likely to spend more on sightseeing than on shopping, souvenirs and nightlife combined. So don’t just lounge for hours on a local beach. Splurge on that trip instead of material acquisitions.

Below you’ll find our collection of inspirational, wise, and cool adventure quotes, adventure sayings, and adventure proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years.

Best Adventure Quotes For A Journey Around The World

1.) “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” ― Anita Desai

2.) “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”  ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

3.) “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures.” – Lewis Carroll

4.) “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ― Gustave Flaubert

5.) “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.”  – Jennifer Lee

6.) “To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.”  ― Elizabeth Gilbert

7.) “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

8.) “Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.”  – Asian  proverb

9.) “It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for someplace that doesn’t exist. I felt that. Still do. I’m never completely at home anywhere.” ― Danzy Senna

  10.) “Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” – Paulo Coelho

11.) “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett

12.) “Travel makes you realize that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn.” – Nyssa P. Chopra

13.) “I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.” ― Charles Bukowski

14.) “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

  Adventure Quotes about Exploration and Fun

15.) “If you think adventure us dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.” – Paulo Coelho

16.) “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Unknown

17.) “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

18.) “The journey, not the arrival matters.” – T.S. Eliot

19.) “For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”  ― Jean-Paul Sartre

20.) “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.”  – Gael Attal

21.) “Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”  – Walt Whitman

22.) “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” – Hilaire Belloc

23.) “Please understand, I have been waiting to leave ever since I figured out there were roads willing to take me anywhere I wanted to go.”  – Unknown

24.) “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in 10 seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”  – Ray Bradbury

25.) “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” — T.S Eliot

Inspirational Travel Adventure Quotes about Life

26.) “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” – James Michener

27.) “Adventure, yeah. I guess that’s what you call it when everybody comes back alive.” ― Mercedes Lackey

28.) “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” –  Aldous Huxley

29.) “…adventures don’t come calling like unexpected cousins calling from out of town. You have to go looking for them.” — Unknown

30.) “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you’ve traveled.” – Mohammed

31.) “If you can’t live longer, live deeper.”  – Italian proverb

  32.) “My heart swings back and forth between the need for routine and the urge to run.” – Unknown

  33.) “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s life.” – Mark Twain

  34.) “Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.” – Peter Hoeg

  35.) “I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

  36.) “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

Best Adventure quotes about seeing the world

37.)  “Always there has been an adventure just around the corner–and the world is still full of corners.” ― Roy Chapman Andrews

38.)  “Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” ― Jodi Picoult

  39.)  “And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” — Kahlil Gibran

40.)  “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin

41.) “I would rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little.”  – Alexander Sattler

  42.)  “Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul.”  – Jaime Lyn Beatty

43.) “No reason to stay is a good reason to go.” – Unknown

44.) “Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free.” ― C.J. Milbrandt

45.) “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

46.)  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

47.)  “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

48.) “One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” – William Feather

49.) “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Adventure quotes for couples

50.) “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” – Ernest Hemingway

51.) I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. — Mark Twain

52.) “Love is the food of life, travel is dessert.” – Annonymous

53.) “As soon as I saw you, I knew you would be an adventure of a lifetime.” – Winnie the Pooh

54.) “I would like to travel the world with you twice. Once to see the world. Twice, to see the way you see the world.” – Anon

55.) “A couple who travel together grow together.” – Ahmad Fuadi

56.) “It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.” – Andre Gide

57.) “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb

58.) “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey

59.) “If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventure should be top priority.” – Richard Branson

60.) ”Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life was meant to be.” – Steve Pavlina

Adventure quotes that inspire you to tackle the world

61.) “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” ~ Susan Sontag

62.) “And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” – Unknown

63.) “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” – Ernest Hemingway

64.) ‘’Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles in life.’’ – John Amatt

65.) “Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure and go ever upward.” – Drew Houston

66.) “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

67.)  “Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” – J.K. Rowling

68.) “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” –Rosalia de Castro

69.) “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” – G. K. Chesterton

70.) “I’ll look back on this and smile because it was life and I decided to live it.” – Unknown

Motivational quotes about adventure and living life to the fullest

71.) “I do not have the slightest clue what I am doing…that’s the adventure…I stopped worrying about it…that’s the beauty.” – Jason King

72.)“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart

73.) “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

74.) ”Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure” – Bob Bitchin

75.) ” If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new. ” – Johann Friedrick von Schiller

76.) ”Fill your life with adventures, not things. Have stories to tell not stuff to show.” – Unknown

77.) “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discoverthat I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

78.) “Life is full of adventure. There’s no such thing as a clear pathway.” – Guy Laliberte

79.) “There is no certainty; there is only adventure.” – Roberto Assagioli

80.) ’The only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty ‘YES!’ to your adventure.’’ – Joseph Campbell

Adventure quotes to inspire you to live the life of your dreams

81.) “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” ~ Louisa May Alcott 

82.) “If it’s both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it.” –Erada

83.) ‘’Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.’’ – Jack Kerouac

84.) “Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.” – Angelina Jolie

85.) “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – Herman Melville

86.) “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” – Alan Cohen

87.) ” We’re not home-and-hearth people. We’re the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we’re only alive.” – Alexander Eliot

88.) “If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.” – Drew Barrymore

89.) “Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.” – Roy T. Bennett

Inspirational adventure quotes

90.) “Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.” – Danny Kaye

91.) “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”- Michael Althsuler

92.) ‘’A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.’’ – Willfred Peterson

93.) “Adventure is not outside man; it is within.” – George Eliot

94.) “We love because it’s the only true adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni

95.) “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

96.) “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

97.) “Here’s to freedom, cheers to art. Here’s to having an excellent adventure and may the stopping never start.” – Jason Mraz

98.) “Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.” – Annie Besant

99.) “Make your life a mission – not an intermission.” – Unknown

100.) “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” – Trenton Lee Stewart

Adventure quotes to ignite your wanderlust

101.) “You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.” – Karen Blixen

102.) “I’m still a kid inside, and adventure is adventure wherever you find it.” – Jim Dale

103.) “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” ― André Gide

104.) “Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop

105.) “Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.” – Eckhart Tolle

106.) “A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motori

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

F1 season preview - What's driving Lewis Hamilton?

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/f1-season-preview-whats-driving-lewis-hamilton/

F1 season preview - What's driving Lewis Hamilton?

On Sunday, Lewis Hamilton will start the 209th grand prix of his Formula One career. If all goes to plan he will do so from pole position with the realistic aim of cementing the first win on the way to his fifth world championship.

The second part of ESPN’s team-by-team preview for the 2018 Formula One season looks at the top five from last year’s championship standings, including the three teams most likely to fight for the title.

Many things will be flashing through his mind. His engineers will have briefed him that morning on the car’s strengths and weaknesses and how the two will combine to form the optimum race strategy. Plan-B and Plan-C will also be logged in his memory just in case an accident brings out an unforeseen Safety Car or the wear rate of his Pirelli tyres proves surprisingly high.

The start procedure will also be at the very front of his mind; a sequence of switch changes committed to memory in order to prepare the car for the quickest possible launch down to the first corner. He may also have considered how to defend or attack as he hurtles towards that first apex or, more likely, he will leave that in the care of his natural reflexes and vast experience.

Lewis Hamilton is about to take part in his 12th season in Formula One. Paul Ripke/Mercedes

But somewhere in the back of his mind there will also be a memory. A recognition of all the hard work that has brought him to this point. All the hard work that turned a kid from Stevenage into a multi-millionaire sports icon and a four-time world champion.

It may be the second-hand go-kart he received for Christmas ahead of his eighth birthday that flashes through his mind or it could be the three jobs his father took on to pay for his early karting career. Something will be there at the back of his mind and he will use it to give himself an extra competitive edge over the next 58 laps of racing.

“That’s often in the back of my mind when I’m in the car,” the 33-year-old told ESPN in a recent interview. “I never forget that my family sacrificed everything and moved mountains for me to have the opportunity that I have.

“That hunger that I had when I was eight years old; when the teachers said that I was never going to amount to nothing; when the other racing drivers’ dads said I was never going to amount to nothing; when the kids shouted abuse at the race track to me and my family. That still powers me on through the races.”

On the morning of our interview, the first race of the season is still over a week away and Hamilton is working with Mercedes’ title sponsor Petronas to launch the Malaysian oil company’s new Research and Technology Centre. TV crews from across Europe have flocked to an industrial estate outside Turin in order to be granted ten minutes with the world champion and an outside balcony is clogged with cameras and lighting equipment vying for his attention.

Hamilton’s time both on and off the race track is incredibly valuable, and he knows it. He is currently leveraging that value to seal a new contract with Mercedes that is expected to keep him at the team until the end of 2020. The ‘i’s have yet to be dotted and the ‘t’s are waiting to be crossed, but ahead of our interview Hamilton reassures a packed press conference that it will go ahead. But with 62 victories to his name and one more title than he needed to achieve his childhood dream of equaling Ayrton Senna, what is the motivation behind the new deal?

“I just love racing,” he says with clarity and conviction. “I still love racing today, I still love the challenge of every year getting myself in shape.

“I always have this question of if I can still drive before I get to the first test; can I still do it? Do I still have it? I love that unknown. People are like ‘it’s never gonna go’ but maybe one year you don’t feel good in the car, so I’m always excited by that.

“I love racing and working for this team. There is nothing quite like the working environment you have when you are working for a big organisation like this and there are so many creative people and engineers and designers and I am fascinated by that.

“It’s my 12th season and I am still going to the factory and I am still seeing things being built and made, and I’m like how do you do it? This is a car that comes from all different parts of the factory and it comes into one little space and it fits together perfectly. I love that and then there are only two of us who get to drive that incredible machine that they built.

Javier Martínez de la Puente/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“And then on top of that I’m the most competitive person I know. Until today I’ve not met anyone who’s more competitive than me and I want to win — and I truly believe I can if I put my mind to it and if I work hard for it. I like that it doesn’t come easy. I like that I have to work hard for it.”

Arguably the only thing missing from Hamilton’s impressive career is a drive with the most successful F1 team of all: Ferrari. Maranello has lured many a driver during the prime of their career and is often seen as the ultimate destination for F1’s greatest talents. To date, Hamilton claims not to have approached the Italian team and insists it is not a box that needs to be ticked before he retires.

“I’ve never made Ferrari aware that I wanted to race for them, so it doesn’t really surprise me [they haven’t contacted me],” he adds. “I’m not really bothered by it and I still have respect for that team.

“It was never something for me as a kid to have the goal to get to Ferrari. It was just to get to Formula One.”

But even without a Ferrari contract, Hamilton is already surprisingly popular in Italy. Prior to the start of our interview, a group of fans congregated outside the factory gates hoping to get a glimpse of their hero. Based on Hamilton’s movements on social media and a sixth sense for the world champion’s whereabouts, members of his fan club shadow him at almost every public (and sometimes non-public) event he attends. One member of the Turin-based chapter of ‘Team LH’ has hand painted several scenes of Hamilton’s 2017 title victory on a large canvas and gives it to him as a gift. Hamilton later posts a picture of it on social media in reciprocal appreciation.

“I know that I have people powering me on and following me,” he says afterwards. “There are people stood at the gate over there with my logo tattooed on their arm and they are like ‘we can’t wait for the first race, we are going to get it! We are going to go for number five!’

“It’s like a journey that I’m on with so many people. It’s almost impossible to fully embrace how special the journey is and how important it is to me and those people that are on the journey with me.”

Lewis Hamilton talks to ESPN’s Laurence Edmondson at the launch of Petronas’ R&T centre in Turin. ESPN

But all great journeys need a destination, and in recent years Hamilton has talked more frequently about his life after F1. He admits that even during the highs of his fourth world championship campaign he took some time to question where and when it would all end.

“At the end of the season of course I am wondering to myself ‘do I want to keep racing?’ I have to ask myself that for sure. Even through the year I have to ask ‘how long do I want to keep racing?’ but I don’t know at the moment.

“Do I want to go next year? Yes. Do I want to go the year after? Most likely. Do I want to go after that? I’m not sure. But what I can tell you right now is that if I feel this way next year and the year after that I’m going to keep extending it and just keep going.”

Hamilton is now embarking on his 26th year in some form of motorsport competition. A quarter of a century and the vast majority of his life has been dedicated to reaching his current position and it’s formed a story that he is quite rightly proud of. For all his other interests in fashion, music and the wider world beyond F1, he knows he will never achieve such heights in a chosen field again. And for now that is enough to keep him at the top of his game and convince him to stay in the sport.

“There is a long, long time after racing, a long time in retirement. Maybe the first six months are going to be amazing and you are going to be able to do things that I’ve been able to do before — it will be difficult for people to grasp exactly what those are but I’m excited about that.

“But after that you are going to miss racing, you are going to miss competition, you are going to miss that pressure. There’s no other environment that I’m going to be in that is going to have the pressure that I am able to resist and compete under anywhere else in my life. So how do I feed that adrenaline and that excitement rollercoaster ride with something else?”

Coverage of Formula One in the U.S.A. will return to ESPN this year and begins at Melbourne’s Albert Park with the Australian Grand Prix. Full programing details below (all times Eastern Time):

Rolex Australian Grand Prix Practice 1 – Thursday, March 22, 9:00 PM – ESPN3 Practice 2 – Friday, March 23, 1:00 AM – ESPN3 Practice 3 – Friday, March 23, 10:00 PM – ESPNEWS Qualifying – Saturday, March 24, 2:00 AM – ESPN2 Race – Sunday, March 25, 1:00 AM – ESPN2

[vdbstore-blog]

New Post has been published on Vintage Designer Handbags Online | Vintage Preowned Chanel Luxury Designer Brands Bags & Accessories

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No elevation required: the new way to shop the high street | Fashion

I bet you think you know how to shop the high street. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s what we all do. You, me, the women I squish up next to at fashion shows, the women I squish up next to on the Victoria line. Yes, there are women who wear exclusively designer clothes, but even on the fashion front row they are in a tiny minority. That there are rich fashion pickings to be had at high-street prices is not news.

Still – and don’t take this the wrong way – most of us are shopping the high street all wrong. The principles by which we approach what we buy from what shop lag behind the reality of what is out there. To get the best out of the high street, we need to think again.

Source of obsession … camel coat by Osman, from Next’s Label/Mix collection, £275.

For the past decade, we have lived by two unbreakable commandments of high-low shopping, repeated and reprinted for so long that we have absorbed them as gospel. Like the Lord’s prayer of retail, we mutter them under our breath as we shop.

Commandment number one: the high street is great for basics, while designer boutiques are unbeatable for special pieces. Sharon Stone is the patron saint of this mantra, appearing on the Oscars red carpet in a Gap white shirt and a satin Vera Wang skirt, smiling as beatifically as a stained-glass angel. Commandment number two: beyond basics, the strength of the high street is throwaway, blaze-of-glory party dressing of the buy-today-wear-tonight school. Look at the price per sequin and ignore the fact they will fall apart in the taxi home.

These principles are out of date and out of touch. The best new high-street fashion of 2017 moves beyond the tired tropes of elevated basics and magpie sparkle. If you know where to look, there are interesting, eyecatching, wearable, well-made clothes that are made to last and do not require “elevating” with the addition of a designer piece.

This is the post-basic high street. Some of the best clothes of the new season originate from names you might have had down as – let’s be frank – a little dull. Next is known to many of us as a source of good-value workwear and great kidswear, but the new designer-led, limited-edition collection Label/Mix has produced a camel coat with a wide faux-fur panel that runs behind the lapels like a football scarf that I have been obsessed with since I saw it at a press day months ago (it’s by Osman and launches on 9 November for £275). LK Bennett gets flak for a kitten-heel mentality, but the LK Bennett x Preen collaboration has kick-ass desk-to-dinner dresses (such as the sequin dress above), while the Patti cashmere sweater with multicoloured jewels on one shoulder is excellent value at £195. The perfect high-necked statement blouse, in striped crepe de chine and with micro‑pleated ruffles? It’s £170 from the Icons collection at Boden.

‘These clothes are special, confident and exude a joy in fashion’ … the new collection by Finery.

The following is a conversation I have about once a fortnight. Me: “Ooh, that dress/coat/jumper is nice, where is it from?” The reply: “Cos – but one/five/eight years ago.” Label/Mix by Next and LK Bennett x Preen are this season’s hottest collections, but credit for the slow-burn trend for grownup-but-not-boring high-street pieces goes in large part to two H&M-owned brands, Cos and & Other Stories, which launched 10 and four years ago, respectively.

These brands introduced us to a new way of shopping. We bought pieces that were special, but not showy – and, crucially, discovered that we were still wearing them seasons later. Whereas Cos is all about the subtle detail, & Other Stories has a winning line in quirk: you could go for corduroy culottes in traffic‑light red for £59 or this season’s block-heeled ankle boots in a shiny tortoiseshell effect for £125.

Grownup, but not boring … & Other Stories AW17.

Finery launched three years ago with a mission “to put the excitement back into shopping”. Originally online only, it’s now sold on the shop floor in John Lewis. These clothes are special, confident and exude a joy in fashion. “Say ‘hello’ to the dress you didn’t know you need, but you really, really do,” reads the blurb for an asymmetric-hem rose-print patchwork midi dress.

A by Jigsaw is an upscale high-street line; its exquisitely made Italian wool coats are often seen at fashion week. Like Finery, it’s powered by the philosophy that design integrity should be accessible to a consumer who has been left behind by the ever more stratospheric prices of Bond Street. (I want the Ellsworth-Kelly-ish pleat skirt, £199.) With a price tag of between £1,000 and £2,000 now standard for a dress from a luxury name such as Gucci, Prada or Balenciaga, the rise in prices has fuelled another fashion industry obsession: a clandestine love of the discounts at Bicester Village, now the fashion editor’s favourite day out.

At this point, I must come clean. There are certain pieces about which I am unmovably snobbish. I have no qualms about wearing £30 shoes – I often sing the praises of M&S (so comfy!) on the front row and plan to buy its £49.50 ankle boots for Christmas parties – but I cannot, however much I try, be satisfied by a cheap bag. If I can afford it without whimpering, it leaves me cold. While I will happily wear a Next coat (see above), I would rather become a hermit than carry a diary that wasn’t Smythson. And don’t get me started on my luggage snobbery, which is out of control. I can only give thanks for the supply of Louis Vuitton holdalls on resale site Vestiaire Collective.

Snobbery isn’t dead, then. It’s just that – like everything else in fashion – it doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

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[easyfoodnetwork]

HBO/Curb Your Enthusiasm Looking for something delicious to watch this weekend? We’ve got you. Like most people living under shelter-in-place orders or voluntarily socially distancing because of COVID-19, Eater staffers are watching a lot of TV right now. Coming from series past and present, here are the best food-related scenes, episodes, and shows that we used to cope this week. Party Down (Seasons 1 and 2 streaming on Hulu) The gist: The failed dreams and enduring delusions of a Hollywood catering company’s employees are all on excruciating, glorious display in this criminally underwatched 2009 comedy series, which ran for two brief but glorious seasons on Starz. Each episode is set at a different function where the crew has been hired to sling hors d’oeuvres: a funeral, a college conservative union caucus, a preschool auction, a singles seminar, Steve Guttenberg’s birthday party, and one spectacularly unsuccessful orgy night. While food and booze give the show its reason for existence, it’s the personal struggles of the caterers — and often their clients — that provide its brand of satirical, irreverent, and often very biting humor. Almost all of the company’s employees — the failed actor, the aspiring screenwriter, the stage mom, the struggling comedian — have been chewed up (or at least teethed on) by the Hollywood system, which lets the show examine and skewer the industry’s class struggles and pretensions with a hilarious lack of remorse. That said, Party Down wouldn’t be nearly as effective without its cast, which includes Jane Lynch and Megan Mullally, along with the then-relatively unknown Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, and Martin Starr. Watching them grimly work a room armed with cheese platters and shrimp puffs is one of life’s more specific pleasures, and also among its most reliable. —Rebecca Marx The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (available to purchase on Amazon Prime) I’ve been getting real joy out of watching Ted Allen on the original run of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which upon second watch is hilariously antagonistic toward the straight guys. Unlike Antoni, who tries to meet these men on their level by having them make avocado toast or pancakes, Allen basically cooks everything himself and gives his subjects busywork. Men can assemble crudite, if they want, or whip egg whites while Allen has already infused cream with vanilla beans and has it melting with expensive chocolate on the stove. In one episode, Allen orders his subject $50 jars of kosher foie gras to make armagnac-infused mousse, to be served with shaved black truffle, because “people are pretty accustomed to” pâte (???). And then, when the guy’s girlfriend doesn’t seem to like it, he bemoans “that’s $150 of foie gras!” like it’s everyone else’s problem for having bad taste. This is not about teaching men a new skill. There is nothing practical about most of Allen’s cooking, and it’s thrilling to watch men who have never set foot in their kitchens pretend like this is the sort of entertaining they’ll be doing from now on. —Jaya Saxena Project Runway (Season 10, Episode 2, available on Hulu) I’m going to admit outright that I had embarked on a journey to rewatch all the Project Runway seasons available on Hulu even before this pandemic started, but now that a lot of us are confined at home for the indefinite future, there are few better background-television choices I can recommend than the original drama-filled fashion competition reality series. One standout episode is the second in Season 10. In “Candy Couture,” the designers raid boutique candy store and New York City staple Dylan’s Candy Bar, snagging licorices, gummies, and jelly beans to create outfits that range from “wow!” to “not bad” to “that?” To hear snatches of catty comments and catch glimpses of a lively, bustling NYC in between footage of designers burning their fingers with hot glue guns — ah, different times. —Jenny Zhang ZeroZeroZero (Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8, available to stream on Amazon Prime) ZeroZeroZero, an Amazon Prime series that follows a shipment of cocaine through four countries, has some predictable drug cartel narrative arcs — double crossing, violence and cruelty, me softly saying “it’s just not worth it” over and over again — but one nice change was the Calabrian mob’s dining table mainstays: a hunk of cheese, salami, bread, and wine. When the going gets tough for these guys, they just need a hit of carbs, cured meat, and some salty, creamy dairy, washed down with adult grape juice. Who among us can’t relate? I wonder who out of the mob grunts makes sure they’re stocked. Are there wheels of cheese in the trunk of their car? Salami hanging from the coat hooks in the back seat? Are they kneading their own sourdough, letting it rest, firing up the wood oven that they just built after feeding some poor sod’s corpse to the pigs? Who cares! These guys are committed to the “simple ingredients, done well” philosophy, and for that, I commend them. — Pelin Keskin Playtime (available to screen on the Criterion Collection) I cannot say that I’ve ever experienced a true restaurant shitshow. The closest I’ve come is perhaps witnessing a bartender slip and fall at a restaurant where I received no service for an hour and then got up and left. I sometimes envy my colleagues in New York, who used to regale readers with tales of ninja servers and tunamatos during their annual Shitshow Week (may it rest in peace). But now I can safely say I’ve experienced a shitshow, thanks to the 1967 Jacques Tati film Playtime, currently streaming on the Criterion Collection. This movie is, on its surface, toying with sound editing (if you’re into that sort of thing) and poking fun at the strangeness of midcentury aesthetics and American tourists in Paris. But it’s the second half of the movie where Playtime really hits its comedic stride, at a restaurant opening where just about everything goes wrong. The kitchen runs out of food. The air conditioning stops working. The harsh metal chairs leave marks on the backs of the patrons and rip the pants of servers. The ceiling falls in. While it’s billed as a comedy, it’s the Criterion Collection, so we’ll file it under amusing. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this for anyone missing restaurants — even truly bad ones. What I wouldn’t give for an uncomfortable metal chair right now. — Brenna Houck Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 10, available to stream on HBO GO) Absurdist times call for the comedy of Larry David, so I’m particularly grateful that he brought back his HBO hit Curb Your Enthusiasm just in time for an election year and global pandemic. Season 10, which premiered in January after a two-year-plus hiatus, is a comedic buffet of food riffs: Larry reignites his rivalry with coffee-slinger Mocha Joe when he opens a “spite store” called Latte Larry’s directly next door to Mocha Joe’s cafe; Larry realizes he’s consistently seated in the “ugly section” of a trendy Italian spot with a condescending host (played to smarmy perfection by Nick Kroll); Larry and Jon Hamm fight with Richard Lewis about the appropriate allotment of appetizers; Larry wears a MAGA hat to lunch so that his dining mate will cut the meal short; Larry gets a sweaty server (Abbi Jacobson) fired after she shamelessly declares that she’s suffering from diarrhea, then gets diarrhea himself from his favorite licorice; Larry offends the staff of a Catalonian restaurant when he knocks out his tooth and pronounces everything with an unnecessary “th” sound. Then, of course, there’s the season-long debate: What makes a good scone? If you worry that Curb Your Enthusiasm would seem particularly trite while the world is figuratively on fire — well, it is trite. And it always has been. Nitpicking on life’s small annoyances to the point of embarrassment is kind of the point. — Madeleine Davies John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (available to stream on Netflix) John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch is a very tender and funny one-hour comedy special on Netflix lightly satirizing Sesame Street, and everyone with a soul should let it gently touch them. Mulaney stars alongside a cast of impossibly cute child actors and guests like David Byrne, and it’s all built around musical numbers like “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul,” which will probably make you cry, and “Sacha’s Dad Does Drag (and the Act Needs Work!),” which might also make you cry. There are two great food tie-ins, not including the sack lunch of the title. There’s a brief stub of a song called “Let’s Play Restaurant,” in which — when Mulaney plays along — the restaurant is closed for a private event, sorry, you should have checked their website. And then there’s an instant classic of a song that’s near and dear to my heart as a once-upon-a-time very plain-eating child, called a “Plain Plate of Noodles,” in which Orson Hong, a little boy, explains his gastronomic limitations in song and dance. The lyrics! The choreography! Thirty out of 10. — Caleb Pershan from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3aIhVEC

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-new-and-old-food-adjacent-shows.html

[marcusssanderson]

100 Adventure Quotes To Inspire World Travel

Looking for inspirational adventure quotes about traveling around the world?

Are you tired of the same old, day to day? Are you looking for more adventure in your life? Do you have a whispering voice that encourages you to go, see and do!

Yes, it’s easy to silence that voice. It’s easy to get distracted by the day and just get right back into your routine. But, what’s really holding you back from traveling? Why can’t you buy the plane ticket? If you’re being honest with yourself: have you just settled? Have you talked yourself out of it? Think about that.

Travel is undeniably the one constant item you’ll find in everybody’s bucket list. It doesn’t matter if you plan on venturing out nationally or internationally. Travel is being done for the sake of experience and memories, not just to escape. It’s more than just a trend; it has become a lifestyle.

According to Trip Barometer, travelers are likely to spend more on sightseeing than on shopping, souvenirs and nightlife combined. So don’t just lounge for hours on a local beach. Splurge on that trip instead of material acquisitions.

Here are quotes about adventure and travel to stir the wanderlust in you.

Best Adventure Quotes For A Journey Around The World

1.) “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” ― Anita Desai

2.) “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”  ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

3.) “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures.” – Lewis Carroll

4.) “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ― Gustave Flaubert

5.) “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.”  – Jennifer Lee

6.) “To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.”  ― Elizabeth Gilbert

7.) “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

8.) “Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.”  – Asian  proverb

9.) “It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for someplace that doesn’t exist. I felt that. Still do. I’m never completely at home anywhere.” ― Danzy Senna

  10.) “Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” – Paulo Coelho

11.) “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett

12.) “Travel makes you realize that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn.” – Nyssa P. Chopra

13.) “I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.” ― Charles Bukowski

14.) “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

  Adventure Quotes about Exploration and Fun

15.) “If you think adventure us dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.” – Paulo Coelho

16.) “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Unknown

17.) “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

18.) “The journey, not the arrival matters.” – T.S. Eliot

19.) “For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”  ― Jean-Paul Sartre

20.) “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.”  – Gael Attal

21.) “Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”  – Walt Whitman

22.) “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” – Hilaire Belloc

23.) “Please understand, I have been waiting to leave ever since I figured out there were roads willing to take me anywhere I wanted to go.”  – Unknown

24.) “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in 10 seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”  – Ray Bradbury

25.) “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” — T.S Eliot

Inspirational Travel Adventure Quotes about Life

26.) “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” – James Michener

27.) “Adventure, yeah. I guess that’s what you call it when everybody comes back alive.” ― Mercedes Lackey

28.) “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” –  Aldous Huxley

29.) “…adventures don’t come calling like unexpected cousins calling from out of town. You have to go looking for them.” — Unknown

30.) “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you’ve traveled.” – Mohammed

31.) “If you can’t live longer, live deeper.”  – Italian proverb

  32.) “My heart swings back and forth between the need for routine and the urge to run.” – Unknown

  33.) “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s life.” – Mark Twain

  34.) “Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.” – Peter Hoeg

  35.) “I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

  36.) “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

Best Adventure quotes about seeing the world

37.)  “Always there has been an adventure just around the corner–and the world is still full of corners.” ― Roy Chapman Andrews

38.)  “Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” ― Jodi Picoult

  39.)  “And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” — Kahlil Gibran

40.)  “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin

41.) “I would rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little.”  – Alexander Sattler

  42.)  “Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul.”  – Jaime Lyn Beatty

43.) “No reason to stay is a good reason to go.” – Unknown

44.) “Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free.” ― C.J. Milbrandt

45.) “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

46.)  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

47.)  “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

48.) “One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” – William Feather

49.) “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Adventure quotes for couples

50.) “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” – Ernest Hemingway

51.) I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. — Mark Twain

52.) “Love is the food of life, travel is dessert.” – Annonymous

53.) “As soon as I saw you, I knew you would be an adventure of a lifetime.” – Winnie the Pooh

54.) “I would like to travel the world with you twice. Once to see the world. Twice, to see the way you see the world.” – Anon

55.) “A couple who travel together grow together.” – Ahmad Fuadi

56.) “It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.” – Andre Gide

57.) “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb

58.) “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey

59.) “If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventure should be top priority.” – Richard Branson

60.) ”Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life was meant to be.” – Steve Pavlina

Adventure quotes that inspire you to tackle the world

61.) “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” ~ Susan Sontag

62.) “And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” – Unknown

63.) “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” – Ernest Hemingway

64.) ‘’Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles in life.’’ – John Amatt

65.) “Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure and go ever upward.” – Drew Houston

66.) “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

67.)  “Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” – J.K. Rowling

68.) “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” –Rosalia de Castro

69.) “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” – G. K. Chesterton

70.) “I’ll look back on this and smile because it was life and I decided to live it.” – Unknown

Motivational quotes about adventure and living life to the fullest

71.) “I do not have the slightest clue what I am doing…that’s the adventure…I stopped worrying about it…that’s the beauty.” – Jason King

72.)“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart

73.) “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

74.) ”Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure” – Bob Bitchin

75.) ” If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new. ” – Johann Friedrick von Schiller

76.) ”Fill your life with adventures, not things. Have stories to tell not stuff to show.” – Unknown

77.) “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discoverthat I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

78.) “Life is full of adventure. There’s no such thing as a clear pathway.” – Guy Laliberte

79.) “There is no certainty; there is only adventure.” – Roberto Assagioli

80.) ’The only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty ‘YES!’ to your adventure.’’ – Joseph Campbell

Adventure quotes to inspire you to live the life of your dreams

81.) “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” ~ Louisa May Alcott 

82.) “If it’s both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it.” –Erada

83.) ‘’Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.’’ – Jack Kerouac

84.) “Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.” – Angelina Jolie

85.) “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – Herman Melville

86.) “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” – Alan Cohen

87.) ” We’re not home-and-hearth people. We’re the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we’re only alive.” – Alexander Eliot

88.) “If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.” – Drew Barrymore

89.) “Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.” – Roy T. Bennett

Other inspirational adventure quotes

90.) “Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.” – Danny Kaye

91.) “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”- Michael Althsuler

92.) ‘’A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.’’ – Willfred Peterson

93.) “Adventure is not outside man; it is within.” – George Eliot

94.) “We love because it’s the only true adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni

95.) “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

96.) “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

97.) “Here’s to freedom, cheers to art. Here’s to having an excellent adventure and may the stopping never start.” – Jason Mraz

98.) “Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.” – Annie Besant

99.) “Make your life a mission – not an intermission.” – Unknown

100.) “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” – Trenton Lee Stewart

Life’s An Adventure! Which of These Adventure Quotes Spoke To You? 

Hop on a plane, take a train or embark on a cruise. Heck, some even make homes out of their vehicles just so they can travel. You’ll come back with twice the amount of appreciation for everything, and everyone, you left behind.

So what are you waiting for?

Hopefully, these adventure quotes have inspired you to live the life of your dreams. Do you have any other adventure quotes to share with us? Tell us in the comment section below.

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