Leftovers #173
Some food, a few recipes, lots on yearning and longing and wanting
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, whether you were gathering around the table, on the floor by the Christmas tree, sunk into sofas, out for crisp walks, or dunking into icy cold seas. Nothing like spending time with your niece and her asking: “Auntie Cat, are you a grown up?” several times because she’s confused why you’re not married with kids. Can’t escape the single bashing, even from a five year old!
Good things to consume (bodily)
Christmas indulgence means I need more Asian food pumping through my body. The first thing I did when I came home after Christmas lunch was eat a bowl of namul (나물), Korean bean sprouts typically served as part of banchan. Recipe for namul here.
Not a baker, but maybe in 2026 I will make this dark chocolate, rosemary and orange cake?
More drinking than eating out this time in London, but just a reminder that a solo lunch at Leila’s alone on a Friday is really the best way you can spend your time. It is, ultimately, the cafe/wine bar I want to create in Penzance. Dim sum at Tao Tao Ju on a hangover is also an excellent idea, especially when followed by an impromptu half pint of Guinness with your dad at Waxy O’Connors. Of course pints and darts at the Macintosh is how I always want to spend my time, so went there two nights on the trot for pork pies and endless wines.
I went into Idle Moments on Columbia Road and was recommended this delicious red alongside the repress of Sakura by Japanese musician Susuma Yokota. I did drink that bottle of wine illicitly inside a pub after several pints of Guinness, but I remember it tasting delicious and feel it would have paired well with that album had I been sober enough to think about it.
Popped to see my friend Debbie who runs Wild Wine School en route home to pick out a strong selection of Christmas wines. These were all delicious and would recommend if you want something for a special occasion!
Ojai Vinyard Riesling (California)
Salt River Sauvignon Blanc (South Africa)
Primata Red (Portugal)
(I can’t find the Walcot Gamay online sorryyyy!)
Good things to consume (culturally)
This is a section mainly about love and yearning
Read Lily King’s latest novel Heart The Lover in a single day. Shout out Sophia Jennings who brought it for me despite not finishing it because she knew how much I’d like it. Broken into two parts, it followers an unnamed narrator at college as she navigates two significant relationships whilst learning to become a writer; and then how those relationships have evolved twenty one years later. It might have just hit me at the right moment.
And if you’ve read it, I enjoyed this conversation with Lily King about the novel (it does contain spoilers!)
Only just learning about the love letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. The longing! The passion! The verbage! You can read a couple of them here via The Paris Review.
I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that.
This poem which I find via the poet Cecilia Knapp:
If any other millennial women have become similarly obsessed with the love triangle that is Conrad, Jeremiah and Belly, then you might appreciate this The Cut piece on yearning like a teenager (and also this New York Mag one on being thirsty for Conrad Fisher). I feel like I’ve been seeing this topic doing the rounds – how we’re all just yearning, longing; wanting to kiss and be kissed, free from responsibility and away from the digital world. Praying for more of this in 2026.
She didn’t necessarily really want Conrad, she corrected herself (though Christopher Briney is hot), but as she watched, she started feeling what the characters felt: that intense longing for something or someone you can’t have, the perpetual reaching. She remembered what it was like when you couldn’t capture what you wanted and so you soaked in every close approximation — ruminating, daydreaming, cataloguing every minor interaction as some small, sustaining substitute for the object of your desire.
Keeping a list of films to watch because there are too many (most of them romcoms from the 1990s) and I am planning on lying on the floor next to the fire from Saturday until 5th January watching these on the projector.
I remember listening to this song sobbing on my bed after my grad ball, waiting for a boy who would never be mine to turn up (he did, at 4am and we lay on the bed together, realising we never should have been anything more than friends for those past three years). Every time I listen to it – usually at night, on a dark road, white lines and headlights flashing past me – I remember that sense of yearning, almost sweetly, because longing is such an important part of life. In fact, I still listen to this song and yearn – that lyric, “who am I darling, to you? Who am I darling, for you?” forever ringing in my ears.
I simply love to yearn. This is such a wonderful round up! Adding that book to my list asap.