Leftovers #150

I’ve got a five hour drive ahead of me and I’ve been saving up multiple podcast episodes for this very reason. Looking like pure sun next week. Back down for shoots, the return of our friend Tor and some birthdays (mine included). Hauled a Yeti cooler on public transport so will be making use of the ice box for the next 14 days. Quick (and late) Leftovers because work has been full to the brim!

Nothing delights me more than a stacked fridge

1. Working on a bank holiday is weirdly nice because there’s no one to message you. So after five or six solid hours of work on the greyest of days, I cleaned the flat, took a shower, watched the last two episodes of The Bear and cooked a pot of Hainanese chicken rice. It was perfect. The best part is always the sauces.

   Ginger scallion:

   • Grate a thumb of ginger (peel the skin off with a spoon) and add to a small bowl

   • Chop 4-5 spring onions incredibly fine, almost as if they’ve been minced and add to the bowl

   • Add 1 tsp salt to the bowl

   • Heat up about 3 tbsp of neutral oil (I use sunflower) and once hot, pour over the ginger and spring onions.

   • Stir then add a splash of sesame oil

   Sweet garlic soy:

   • Add 3 tbsp soy sauce and 1/2 tbsp honey into a bowl and whisk

   • In the same pan that you heated up your oil (keep a bit in there) add 4 finely chopped garlic cloves and fry on a medium heat for about 3-4 minutes - you want the garlic to brown

   • Once fragrant and brown (but not burnt!) add to your soy sauce along with 1 tsp sesame seeds

2. I want to make this HUGE Vietnamese noodle salad for friends next week

3. Also will be taking this grilled corn, avocado and buttermilk-feta dressed salad to the beach.

4. New book alert: Days Of Light by Megan Hunter. As recommended by literary agent Emma Paterson, who I trust implicitly.

   

5. V good spring pasta with chilli crisp breadcrumbs from Cabbages World.

6. Anchovy marinade for your Sunday chicken? Roasted over potatoes?

7. I wrote about five of the best days of my life.

   Something interesting happens when you become detached from the rest of the world. Time stops. At least it did for me. Was it five days or five years that we lived in tents on the ground and slept under the stars with the tent doors open because it was 20º at night? Was it five days or five months that we ate hot grilled oysters and pizza and drank wine from the vines we ran through, giddy and high on the pure life of it all? Was it five days or five seconds that we danced under the moonlight and didn’t care what we looked like and forgot about the people who did?

8. Have been listening to this album non-stop. My friend Chris is a drummer who’s touring with Fancy Hagood at the moment and when he told me he’s played with Michelle Branch multiple times, I was SHOOK. Americana pop at its finest!!

9. I went on a run for the first time in five years and it was… great? I hate that it’s true that exercising does make you feel better. I just watched a news story about a woman in New Jersey who’s 100 years old and can hold a plank for three minutes. Her last words on the story were: GET OFF THE COUCH, and it was like she was staring right into my eyes. Fine, I’ll run! This is a v good 30 minute playlist I made for anyone motivated to move by music.

10. eliza mclamb
    wrote an essay about how everyone’s writing is sounding the same and I’m inclined to agree but also think I’m part of the problem? Also read a note on Substack about how so many writers on here are chasing virality because it’s turning into a social media platform and I realised I had been obsessively strategising about what kind of essay would do well for weeks (I gave up and just wrote whatever was on my mind) because I was seeing so many other amazing female writers reaching thousands of likes per post and I was like… wait, am I not doing a good enough job?

11. I found this note from my friends and yoga teachers in an old rucksack and the line ‘release the comparison and step into the seat of the teacher’ hit different at 33 (and after the above comparison thought).

    

12. A couple of good music episodes to listen to instead of scrolling on TikTok (reminder to myself):
    - Julien Baker + TORRES: Queer Country Radio
    - Dust To Dust: The NTS Guide To Ambient Americana

13. Shout out to Since No One Asked reader Ben and his brilliant food podcast, the Go To Food Podcast!

14. That TikTok trend where party 4 u by Charli xcx soundtracks moments of heartbreak, longing and nostalgia and then they did that scene from Girls where Jessa and Adam are looking at each other from opposite buildings and Hannah sees?? It’s too perfect.

    

    @brigawkoski#girls

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15. This is a great, sardonic interview on the literary takedown piece for Pioneer Works.

    It’s often a question of purpose. Is literary criticism journalism? Is it meant to explain the books that exist, and what they’re about? Or is it a service, which is to say, a recommendation engine? As a critic, your allegiance is more to the literary public than to the individual author. If we’re talking about sadism in a BDSM context, usually the object is getting something out of it. There are probably lots of public figures and authors who humiliate themselves in public on purpose. Maybe from that perspective, I’m cracking the whip in a sexy way, but it’s not my goal.

16. New playlist in the works. Lorde, Charli, Maggie, some old school Smashing Pumpkins, a little Kacey Musgraves. WIP but here it is: