Eggs and Rice
There's something about eggs and rice that makes me feel smugly whole. A bowl of steaming rice on a cold winter morning, to me, is perfection. I didn't have to cook, I didn't have to stir a pan. I rinsed my rice, 1, 2, 3 times, I dumped it into the rice cooker and I flicked the switch. In the time it took me to shower, I have my breakfast. It's the closest I've ever come to feeling in control of my life.
I don't just have plain rice though - although I could. I definitely could. My love for rice stretches that far. Sometimes I fry an egg, but often I just crack one straight onto the steaming fluff and stir with chopsticks, TKG style. I add a dash each of fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, because I like them. Sometimes I add furikake, sometimes I add a mango masala spice mix I found that's absolutely bomb, sometimes I use sumac instead, sometimes I add Dunn River chicken seasoning. Sometimes on top of that, I add katsuobushi (bonito flakes). Always, always, always, I add LGM crispy chilli oil. That's a lot of salt. But if that's what it takes to make me eat breakfast, I'm fine with that trade off. I'll drink more water.
I started eating this breakfast relatively recently, after finding this article: "The World's Simplest Breakfast The You're Probably Too Scared To Try". Call me a sucker.
It's a wonderful insight into the author's personal connection to this simple dish, despite the ugly title. In fact, most recipes about TKG have a deeply personal angle. It's a comfort food, so it reminds people of ways they have been comforted by it.
I don't have comforting memories about TKG, but I'm creating them in my own hotch-potch, bastardised way. I'm strengthening myself with food I enjoy, that I get a thrill from, every day.
Other Stuff
Isaac Rangaswami is, currently, my favourite writer. His regular updates on his @caffs_not_cafes Instagram account are deeply-felt insights into the menus, decor and community status of local greasy spoons (however recently, he went to New York and the diners he visited there were just as sensitively logged.) His other Instagram account, @stink_pipes_of_london is potentially even better - a faithful log of Victorian stink pipes spotted on the long walks he takes around London. His posts cover local history, community, urban decay and gentrification, the simple joy of spotting something out of the ordinary, or the comfort and beauty that resides in the extremely ordinary. He finds beauty and fascination in the mundane, and sparks new interest in things we might have seen before hundreds of times. That's what a writer is for. That his work is on Instagram rather than in a book or on a website is just a sign of the times. I've been more inspired to write by reading his musings on fried bread recently than by anything else I've come across. Take that as you will. I mean, I do love fried bread.
Today is "Plough Monday", the agricultural start of the year. Look out for straw bears.
Actually, the Whittlesea straw bear festival has been cancelled this year, so take a look at their charmingly hand-made merch instead.
A truly fantastic read by Brandon Taylor looking at convergence, optimization, the diffusion of trends, social media and the internet and preserving your own experience via Wordle and Calvinism.
Since this newsletter was about rice, you may as well learn how a rice cooker works. It's pretty cool. (Thanks for the link, Michael)
My Stuff
I've been commissioning editor for Glug magazine for about 8 months now and I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying it. Please take a look at the Glug site and check out some of the stories there. There are some absolutely brilliant reads and I'm so proud to have been able to commission them.
Matthew Curtis included Tom and I and our bar Corto in the Pellicle Trendsetters and Trailblazers 2021 piece, which is astonishing to me, and we're both extremely grateful. You can read the whole list here.
I've signed up to do a couple of courses this year to try and get back into the groove of living and working and using my brain. One such course I thought quite a few of you might find interesting/useful is this one from Arvon, about reading as a writer.
I am partially paying for the Arvon course with money given to me through my Ko-fi, so thank you very much to those of you who have given some of your hard-earned dosh to me over the past couple of months!
A' Chailleach by Innes