Mother's Day Brunch and Cherry Rose Compote 🌹
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start making notebooks from fish skin, Gorgonzola croquettes, and bake a witchy focaccia
Hi there!
Last weekend I had some free time — and instead of hunting links for this newsletter I fell into a rabbit hole: self-hosting.
A way to reduce platform dependency and reclaim some privacy. Also a way to waste a lot of time.
What can I say? A project will save you.
Piero
✹Decolonial Thoughts, found here: Food as a Weapon (Guerilla mood: activated).
Cook solo, remove pressure
Start with yourself on the stove: cooking solo is an act of self-care, not solitude.
«When you cook just for yourself alone you remove pressure, you remove performance anxiety and you can concentrate unselfconsciously on the process itself», says Nigella Lawson on FT (paywalled, but free with registration).
The kitchen goddess flips the familiar idea of the kitchen as a stage and makes a case for the quiet thrill of feeding only yourself. Without the pressure to please, cooking becomes learning, experimentation, and pleasure: you can make mistakes unseen, trust your own palate, and savor small, low-effort dishes that suit your private cravings. Like an anchovy-and-butter pasta: tweak anchovies, lemon, herbs and nuts however you like (★recipe).
«This is the joy of it all: you’re released from the need for consistency or obedience; and this is exactly how cooking feels less like work and more like play».
🫑Woo, What was for Dinner at the 2026 Met Gala? + A funny backstage🥫Hey, we have an unexpected The Bear episode with Mickey and cousin Richie 🔪Oh, we have some footage of Tony, the young Anthony Bourdain movie 🧀 Yeah, Gorgonzola Croquettes and Quince Ketchup (★recipe) 🌴Wow, soak dates in coffee, you double the pleasure (★recipe) 🌸Aw, Mother's Day Brunch Recipes ☕️Roar, Everything About the Invention of Instant-Coffee ❄️Whiz, Six ways to store asparagus 🍒Kaboom, a Cherry Rose Compote (★recipe) 🍞Zap, The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America 🤖Zzzz, AI isn't replacing you, it's dismantling you (and that's not necessarily bad news)
Could This Fish Be a Notebook?
David Byrne / Reasons to Be Cheerful
From Iceland to the Great Lakes, some fisheries are learning to use every part of the catch — skin, bones, head. Even for stationery! Byrne thinks it through and adds his own fish head soup recipe. Circular economy with the right flavor.
The invisible force making food less nutritious
Naema Ahmed and Sarah Kaplan / The Washington Post
CO₂ doesn't just warm the planet, it quietly drains nutrients from the crops we eat. Wheat, rice, chickpeas: all losing zinc, iron, protein as carbon levels rise. By 2050, 175 million more people could face zinc deficiency, 1.4 billion women and children pushed deeper into anemia. In wealthy countries, you swap foods or buy supplements. In low-income regions, where two or three staples are your entire diet, there's nowhere to turn.
