The Lost Art of Pictureless Cooking 🤳🏻
The best place for unseen recipes, hungry hearts, Lambrusco spritz, foodie priests and food guilts
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place for unseen recipes, hungry hearts, Lambrusco spritz, foodie priests and food guilts
Hi there!
How're you doing?
Alison Roman shines when writing about the mundane. Take, for instance, her delightful description of breakfast bean tacos—leftovers she cobbled together but found too unsightly to photograph for her readers.
Sometimes because it’s genuinely hideous (see: ugly burrito), or sometimes a stunning plate of perfect spring pasta goes “unlensed” because it’s too dark in my dining room or I forget or I’m too hungry or I just am tired of taking photos of everything I cook or eat.
Then she addresses a universal guilt we likely all share: readers rarely attempt recipes from her cookbook, if they lack accompanying photographs. One of those was Cumin-Roasted Cauliflower and Dates with Tahini and Pine Nuts (hey, now it has its picture!).
I began cooking when cookbooks were about 85% text and 15% images. Now, pictures alone don't suffice. We demand 10-second, well-lit TikToks teasing dishes and 5-minute YouTube tutorials before we even consider grocery shopping for something.
And you - forget the basics - have you felt the desire to cook something unphotographed recently? I'll certainly do that.
Happy week!
✹Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Whatever the reason you're eating, try to eat well.
Reclaim your relationship with food
Weight lifter Casey Johnston was once trapped in the never-ending cycle of chronic dieting, endless cardio, and food guilt. Her relationship with her body was defined by restriction, cravings, and the false promise that suffering equals results. Then she discovered that the "no pain, no gain" mentality is sabotaging aour bodies; running marathons while eating less can leave you weaker; your hunger cues aren't the enemy—they're valuable signals your body needs fuel. This isn't a diet book—it's liberation from diet culture disguised as a strength training guide.
A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting by Casey Johnston
→ Shortplot: 🏋🏻♀️ 🥩 ⚖️ 🤛🏼
What do would-be popes eat (and we won't see)
I'm writing this as the Cardinals are entering the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave. I must write quickly, because I wanna hit "send" before we have the new Pope.
Wait, you already know who he is? Well, you're a late newsletter reader, then!
Anyway, during papal conclaves, numerous food restrictions were historically enforced to prevent secret communications: whole chickens, closed pies, opaque drinking vessels, and unexamined cloth napkins were all forbidden, with guards meticulously inspecting meals passed through a wall-mounted turntable called the "ruota".
To understand this, we need to go back to 1274 when Pope Gregory X imposed various food restrictions on the cardinal electors. It took them three years to reach a decision, making it the longest conclave in history (1268-1271).
As a result, Gregory decided to change the rules, making the event less gastronomically enjoyable. In fact, the cardinal electors could only eat one dish per meal if they didn't "hurry up" and agree on the verdict within 3 days. If the choice wasn't made within that time frame, they were even restricted to just wine and water.
Today's cardinals, who begin their conclave today, will consume simple regional cuisine from Lazio and Abruzzo prepared by nuns at the Domus Sanctae Marthae — dishes like minestrone, simple pasta, and boiled vegetables — reflecting Pope Francis's emphasis on humility, while the Vatican's primary security concern has shifted from food-concealed messages to electronic surveillance.
Also, every time we have a Conclave we talk about "pasta del conclave", a simple dish of pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese. According to historical accounts, it's not really a recipe but rather a dish that reflects the sobriety and simplicity of the Conclave.
A sober meeting... under Michelangelo's masterpiece, sure.
🥞"Rosco Style", Heirloom Masa, or Sicilian Flapjacks: Meet NYC's Newest Pancakes 🍞How to Dry Your Sourdough To Keep It Alive While Traveling (video) 🐮Move over, oat milk: Lactose-free dairy is having a moment 🍹3 Effortless Spritz Recipes From NYC’s Coolest New Cocktail Spot, including Pineapple-Lambrusco Spritz and Espresso Spritz (★recipe) 🐍That's a way to develop a recipe: he let snakes bite him some 200 times to create a better antivenom 🍮Home Made Caramel Sauce (★recipe) 🥐Oh, oh, oh: Sourdough Croissant Bread (★recipe) 🤖If you suspected that much of what we see now is fake, and the reality we face is full of horrors, this one by Jia Tolentino is for you (about 20 min reading time)
Starved in Jail
Sarah Stillman / The New Yorker
I was reading about this in the novel The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow. Now I stumbled upon this essay about a simple question: why are incarcerated people dying from lack of food or water, even as private companies are paid millions for their care?
A Spring in Every Kitchen
Charles C. Mann / The New Atlantis
There is so little fresh surface water on Earth that if you collected it all into a ball, it would barely reach across New York City. Running water is a miracle — but the technology that brings it to us and takes the waste away is actually thousands of years old. The only barrier to staying hydrated today is political will.
