shelf care #7

Recommendations on reading and consuming, i.e. lots of links

Hello old and new subscribers—welcome! If you like this newsletter, follow 💌shelfoffering on Instagram and please share with a friend or two.

I’m always wheeling shelf care out whenever I can’t be arsed to write a proper essay. Usually, my excuses (to myself) are that I’ve been so lazy. This time it’s a good one – I got married! After 6 years of long distance! That is an achievement in itself so I’m rewarding myself with a week of ‘taking it easy’. I also have been reading regularly and frankly have no ideas on what to write about, so sending you some links.

Here’s what I’ve been consuming since the previous shelf care newsletter.

Books

I’m reading Butter, like everyone else I know and don’t! Passed by my local cafe last week and my partner pointed out the bloke in the window seat reading it. A day later, it was someone on the tube. Every three days I see someone reading it. I find the book to be unsettling in parts but I’m only halfway through it. I heard it gets better. Also reading Anna Sulan Masing’s Chinese and Any Other Asian, which I’m very excited about! I live next to a charity shop that has been putting out some books that I’ve wanted to read for a long time but couldn’t afford to buy. So next on the reading list are: The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. As I’m going to publish this newsletter, Teresa Finney’s cookbook zine has arrived and it is stunning!

Words wide web

I’ve read two pieces on copyright infringement so far, one on how inescapably ubiquitous the influencer industry has become (and by extension the horrors surrounding mindless consumerism), and the other, via a physical copy of the New Yorker, about a romantasy novelist stealing another writer’s story. Both are about standardised tropes backed up by a corporate algorithm, but of course the former is more insidious, more about commerce than anything else. This might be annoying to some people but the Wikipedia page for craquelure, which is the fine pattern of crack formed on old paintings or ivory that has eventually been used to authenticate art. I love a Wikipedia deep dive; I used to be a dictionary kid. Citrus taxonomy comes a close second. This excellent essay on raw milk and the collapse of consensus reality. Noreen Ocampo’s poem First Notes on Tennis, lyrical and beautiful, is laid out on a tennis court!! Barely wider than a human hair, only a handful of women have the skill to make this intricate Sardinian pasta. The weeds are catching up to genetical engineering in agriculture. Celebrity wines are shit because “These people don’t give a shit about the wine and they don’t give a shit about you,” as Rachel Hendry writes.

Other newsletters

Dr Sarah Duignan’s interview with her daughter on food in minecraft. TW Lim’s beautiful prose on care. Cameron Steele on transformation and loss. Alicia Kennedy on the recipe as an object. Devin Kate Pope on not making a living as a food writer. A Vittles essay by Conale on how the Sainsbury’s nectar card sparked an emotional release. Melisa on recipe mistakes. Katie Mather on an unrequited love with fizz. Katy Kelleher on a hot pink residence in Santa Fe. Karmela Padavic Callaghan on fantasies and worldbuilding. Rebecca Thimmesch on everyone trying to eat more protein. Jessa Crispin on Neil Gaiman being an industry problem. Margaux Vialleron on the alphabet in the kitchen. Lily Wakeley for Feminist Food Journal on selling identity through scent. Chiara Cui on giving up the ghost and to keep making your art. As always there’s more to include but I’m running out of time!

Cooking and eating

Where do I even begin? My (our?) wedding meal was spectacular: veg-forward, seasonal, and cooked to perfection. We began with jerusalem artichokes, burrata, and hazelnuts and purple sprouting broccoli, walnuts, confit garlic, preserved lemon. Roast chicken, grape mustard mayonnaise, the crispiest pink fir potatoes, mixed leaves, tarragon, mustard. Myself and other veggie friends had a spelt risotto with cheese and caramelised squash. Dessert was an outstanding ginger cake, poached rhubarb, and custard. In the evening, we had sfincione and pork fat scotch bonnet on toast (two items that I sadly missed out on, it was gone in seconds!!) as well as the cake I had made for the wedding, the Nigella Lawson chocolate guinness cake and corresponding icing. My contribution was a rum salted caramel sauce made with sour cream. 10/10, no notes. Everything else I’ve eaten so far pales in comparison.

Work

I will be in conversation with Anna Sulan Masing (on the day her book is out!) at The Scarlett Letters, a radical independent bookshop in Bethnal Green in London, on the 6th and I’m both nervous and thrilled in equal parts. Apart from that, a few pitches here and there but really nothing substantial. Working on three recipes, two of which should come out soon. I don’t know if this counts as work but I designed my wedding invitation and also hand drew the place cards for the same. It was fun!

Watching/Listening to

My partner and I worked on our wedding playlist but it is (lol) incomplete; it also has a key song in Hindi that I actually wanted in Tamil. But you can listen to it! We channeled all our millennial angst into it. Also, a lot of Eagles – specifically their live setlist at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Would love to know what you’ve been reading, browsing, thinking, and listening to!