Fermented Fries and Taylor Swift's treats 🍟
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start reading Captain Marvel's Cookbook while drinking cold-brew coffee in a ghost kitchen, where I’d sell my soul to have a taste of a magnificent life that’s all mine
Hi there! I have a story for you.
After the storm passed, Jake stepped outside to enjoy the petrichor wafting through the air, pulling out his old dumbphone to call his friend Sarah at her new ghost kitchen.
She was in full beast mode, preparing farm-to-table dishes while occasionally giving side-eye to her ancient computer that could barely process a single teraflop.
«Hard pass on adulting today», she texted him later, after doomscrolling through yet another cancel culture debate while sipping her cold brew (★recipes).
Jake laughed, realizing YOU just read all ten new Merriam-Webster additions—plus a bonus word—without breaking a sweat.
Have a good week!
Piero
✹Lee Chae-Min most quoted quote of Bon Appétit, Your Majesty (폭군의 셰프). Anyway, that could be fit for my graveyard.
Lessons in food (and friendship) chemistry
This one is a cookbook by Brie Larson (Oscar-winning actress turned host) and Courtney McBroom (former Milk Bar culinary director), who bonded over queso while working on Lessons in Chemistry. The 100 recipes mix nostalgic comfort with millennial creativity: Mexican martinis, miso deviled eggs, Cheesy Jenga Bread, ranch made from ramen packets, and a Ritz cracker cake with cherry Kool-Aid frosting. It's part cookbook, part teen magazine, part friendship manifesto—the philosophy being that life's short, so celebrate everything with your "BFFFs" (Best Food Friends Forever). The spirit is pure joy over perfection, fun over fuss, connection over entertaining anxiety.
Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations by Brie Larson and Courtney McBroom
→ Shortplot: 🥚 🍗 🍸 🥗
The Spice of a Showgirl
The time of these years is unquestionably marked by three major events: wars, epidemics, and Taylor Swift’s albums.
And in analyzing the singer-songwriter’s latest work, The Life of a Showgirl, we can find - amidst the glamour and backstage drama - a few succulent references to the culinary world and flavors that enrich her storytelling.
⭐️The first glimpse of the high-life comes in Elizabeth Taylor, a track that transports us directly to Hollywood’s Golden Age with the mention of a legendary institution:
“We hit the best booth at Musso & Frank’s”
This iconic Los Angeles restaurant serves as the setting for an exclusive dining scene, evoking private dinners and the enduring allure of Old Hollywood’s elite.
🍯It is in the track Honey where literal flavors and drinks become central. The title itself is a sweet term of endearment and a direct nod to the food substance, honey. The lyrics are rich with sensory details:
“Summertime spritz (★recipe), pink skies”
The “spritz” is a reference to a refreshing beverage, setting a scene of relaxed, celebratory summer moments. Furthermore, the flavor of a kiss is described using a specific sweet-mint flavor:
“Wintergreen kiss, all mine”
This line injects a specific gustatory element into the album’s romantic language.
💃🏻In the final and titular track, The Life of a Showgirl, the struggle for stardom is framed as a desperate hunger. In a line that captures the dark side of ambition, a character expresses their yearning for success:
“She said: I’d sell my soul to have a taste of a magnificent life that’s all mine.”
Here, the word “taste” is used metaphorically, defining the experience of fame and luxury as something to be consumed and desired, highlighting the lengths one would go to just to sample a magnificent life.
It's not much, but Taylor Swift definitely used the language of food and drink to ground her stories of celebrity and desire.
🍟I'm Gonna Try These Fermented Fries (★recipe) 🌊The Dreamy Cinematography of Noma's Seaweed à la Crème 🖼️Fancy Fruit Toasts (★recipe) 🧳Why Can’t You Pack a Bag? and the updated Indefinite Backpack Travel 🏨Yes, I have a thing for Hotel stationery too 🌮How to Make Tortillas Puff? (possibly a repost) 🩸The Menstrual Girl Dinner, Explained 🎃The Best Simple Stuffing 🍏José Pizarro’s recipe for parsnip, apple and chickpea albóndigas in saffron-tomato broth 🍲"Whenever I’m sick I make this soup from the Chinese Cultural Revolution Cookbook and it fixes everything" (★recipe, is this?)
The Top 25 Food Culture Trends That Defined the 2000s
Kat Kinsman and Amelia Schwartz / Food & Wine
The internet didn't just change food—it exploded it. Everyone became a critic. Chefs became activists, media moguls, memoir writers. We documented meals before tasting them, ordered from ghost kitchens, survived a pandemic that nearly killed the industry. This is the story of how food culture got democratized, commodified, and occasionally traumatized.
