Tiramisu Balls and the Handsy Mayor 🖐🏻
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start baking with heart-shaped tins, freezing egg wraps and dreaming about ant-fermented yogurt
Hi there!
I don't know about yours, but my days have been chaos.
Last week I wasn't sharp enough to write a decent newsletter, so I didn't.
No real takeaway here.
Except this: listen to Rosalía's new record, Lux. It's incredible. It might take time to grow on you, but give it a chance.
Piero
✹Ferran Adrià Acosta, Spanish revolutionary.
What the contents of our kitchens say about us
When Bee Wilson baked her husband a wedding fruitcake in a heart-shaped tin, she couldn't know it would later symbolize loss—he left before their 25th anniversary. The Heart-Shaped Tin uses kitchen objects as a lens to explore how ordinary tools carry our histories and help us endure change. It's a beautiful book because Wilson weaves her divorce and her mother's dementia alongside wider stories, from David Drake's revolutionary pottery made while enslaved to families clinging to objects through war. She proves small things hold great power: they make homes, preserve identities, and when too heavy, we can let them go. The book transforms grief into something comforting through its recognition that we're all trying to hold on to what matters.
THE HEART-SHAPED TIN: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects by Bee Wilson
→ Shortplot: 🫶🏻 🍰 🔪
The best meal, hands down
This morning, I kicked off my day with a simple breakfast—two crisp toast slices, lavished with a luscious layer of jam.
As the clock ticked towards mid-morning, I found myself at the office, peeling a banana like it was the most normal thing in the world. Sure, a few seconds later I couldn’t resist the allure of a chocolate treat, and yes, I split a slice of strudel with a colleague.
Lunchtime rolled around, and let me tell you, it was a busy day... I resorted to cutting up an apple right at my desk.
And yes, you guessed it—I was munching away on everything with my bare hands.
Now, I wouldn’t have paused to ponder this rather primal way of dining if it weren’t for some interesting news last week. New York just elected a new mayor who had to defend himself during his campaign against accusations of eating rice with his hands. I mean, come on! I’d wager that at least 2 billion people, on any given day, are doing the very same thing without a second thought.
Does eating with my hands make me less civilised? I don't think so. And this Mamdani guy leveraged his lifelong love of eating to inform his policy plans and spread his message.
We should remember that the sense of touch can be a crucial part of dining, one thing that some cultures have understood better than others.
🧋Chinese MilkTea Brands Are Now writing Fanfiction on Receipts (and People Are Actually Reading It) 🍲It's time for the 35 Best Soup Recipes 🇮🇹The Olympyc-Shaped Pasta Thing Has Gone Out of Hands Already 🍪 Sablé bretón de chocolate (★recipe) 🎃Pumpkin Spice Loaf (★recipe) 🥧Freeze dozen pies for your air frier 🌯Bacon, sausage, and egg wraps (★recipe) 🛞Ok, Apple Made Its Own Chef's Table 🐜Good, let's make yogurt with ants 🍅How to Make Stanley Tucci’s Simple Tomato Sauce 📺I promise you, Pluribus is a really good show (but I also enjoyed Romantics Anonymous because it has the whole package: love, Japan, OCD and chocolate)
The Kid Is All Right: In Defense of Picky Eating
Irina Dumitrescu / Serious Eats
On learning to accept your child’s discriminating tastes, even when it hurts.
The Restaurant Resistance
MAD Digest
The restaurant industry has historically resisted oppression and authoritarianism. How is it responding (or not responding enough) to current immigration crackdowns in the US?
