Hello all- it’s nice to see you all again so soon!

After the intensity of the last newsletter, I thought I would give a break with a more old-style newsletter before everything went Really Bad™. But of course, it’s me, so there will still be some philosophical style musings, specifically on Christmas (and also mentioning grief because it is inescapable in a really fun and chill way)!

As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, Christmas, as always, is creeping earlier and earlier. This year, they started stocking Christmas items before Halloween even happened, which annoys me to no end. As I try to be more politically aware and conscious, I can’t help but feel the constant adverts about buying gifts and spreading the cost of Christmas to be a reminder, not only for the dire economic state of the world right now, but the unrelenting pressure from companies to consume! consume! consume!

Of course, part of me has been dreading Christmas this whole year. For one, the Christmas markets have made walking through the centre of Manchester anywhere near the weekend a living nightmare. Also, for the obvious reasons that every piece of grief and/or Christmas related media likes to tell me, grief is the worst at Christmas apparently.

But one late evening, as I walk past the brightly lit ferris wheel in Albert Square when no one else is really about, I feel my heart tug at something. I start picking up a few gifts in secondhand shops. I drink mulled wine on my friend’s couch. I even buy a tinsel tree in Poundland.

I want to hate Christmas. I do. But I can’t. Not entirely, anyway.

Perhaps it’s because this year has been just so bleak. Summer had an unseen shroud of guilt around it, asking me from my bed as I lay despondent, why couldn’t I enjoy the blue skies and sunshine more?

But the winter feels more comfortable. My grief and anxiety has definitely made me more of a hermit in the last few months, which I am working on. But it has also taught me, a people person and chronic plans-haver ( a Google calendar hates to see me coming), that it is okay to take some time for yourself. You don’t have to be busy every Saturday for it to be worthwhile!

Also, Mum did not like Christmas. She said she found it too stressful, too much and she opted out of it as much as she could. For the last ten years or so, her presents were just ones I bought myself that she compensated me for. Of course, I was appreciative but it did make me a little sad every year.

Why? Because I love gift-giving! Call it a love language or call it justifiable materialism, but I love getting presents for people. It requires delving into your trove of knowledge and memories about them, and applying creativity and logic to apply this knowledge to everything you see, like solving the missing part of an equation. When someone gets you a good present that you did not ask for, it is revelatory. It is someone seeing the real you and divining your desires. It’s magic!

But despite what all the adverts say, I want to stress that getting someone a good gift is not dependent on cost at all. Sometimes the best gifts are cheap or even better, free. On my birthday this year, Mum surprise called me from the hospice. I had a lovely birthday, but just hearing her voice was the best present I got, and I would give anything to get that present again. (Not via AI though, that shit is truly evil).

When I first found out about Mum’s diagnosis, I remember crying to my partner about how when she would be gone, there would be no one who will love me like she did. And while it’s true that there is no one who will love me in the exact same way she did, Christmas can be a wonderful reminder that there are people who love you just as much, in their own ways, and that this is your chance to show them that the feeling is mutual.

So this year, I know I will definitely be sad at points. I will miss Mum a lot. But there is so much stuff I love around Christmas, that I will let myself enjoy the parts that make me happy without guilt. Having multiple Christmas dinners with my friends. Putting up the decorations to the entirety of Sufjan Steven’s Christmas albums. The widely accepted time period where you are actively encouraged to eat a lot of cheese.

Which brings me onto the part you’ve all been missing: the food roundup!

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Sainsburys Taste The Difference smoked Shropshire Red cheese + Marks and Spencers Taleggio

We hosted a Ren Faire themed party for my partner which included large turkey legs and a cheese board, which I assembled through various post-work supermarket trips. This were the two major winners; while the shropshire was a creamy, subtler take on smoked cheese, my favourite was the taleggio, which was like if a brie didn’t taste of feet. I had it again in a sandwich with truffle pesto and pickled walnuts and it was fabulous, as you might expect.

Garlic Butter Bun, Lottie’s Bakehouse

Recommended by my friend Alice, me and another friend Jeni checked out Lottie’s Bakehouse and the clear winner for me out of their range is the Garlic Butter bun. The fluffiest bun with a featherlight butter centre and while very savoury, just a hint of sweetness in the dough. Run, don’t walk for this one.

Bon Chance Cheese and Garlic Bread Crisps

Looking at the past three recommendations, I wonder why my cholesterol is slightly higher than I’d like at the moment. But when it tastes this good, who am I to fight it? Found in the world food section of Sainsburys, this is what if you made cheesy garlic bread into a crisp, literally. It’s honestly amazing to wonder how no one has had this idea before now because they are sensational and just as moreish as you can imagine.

Veggie Biang Biang Noodles, Kung Fu Noodle

Regular of the newsletter Cherelle admitted to me recently that she searches her own name in each newsletter to see when she appears. Are you happy now? However, as always, she appears again because she has yet to steer me wrong, although I had the name Kung Fu Noodle written in my phone with no further details, so went on a chance and what a good choice that was. I got to try vegetarian biang biang noodles for the first time with marinated tofu and vegetables and I have to say, it was a bianger!

Zaatar toastie with hummus, Fiori Cafe

The other Cherelle rec of the newsletter was this impromptu lunch we went to a couple of weeks ago, which was then followed by the waffle ice cream at Hello Oriental of last newsletter’s fame. I copied her order of the Zaatar cheese toastie with hummus and by god, what a combo. I think with either on its own it might have risked being a little boring, but together it was the perfect comforting combination of creamy, gooey, nutty goodness.

No knead bread

I finally did it. I made bread that wasn’t so flat and hard it could be used as a skimming stone. And it was courtesy of my friend Sarah, who runs a very cute and wholesome Youtube channel. Not only did she introduce me to the concept of an iced cinnamon scone (delicious) but also this no-knead recipe, which mean I actually produced a loaf of edible bread! I definitely want to practice it more to get it really good, but it was a real treat to have your own bread with soup.

Veggie Festive Bake, Greggs

The time I have been waiting for all year has returned. Greggs Festive Bake season is upon us and unlike some places, they do not leave us non-meat eaters out of the joy. We get (fake) chicken and bacon in creamy cranberry and onion sauce and crisp pastry and it is a great snack if you’re having to traipse around in the cold for Christmas shopping. While I do not like to shill for big companies, if they ever discontinue this version, I will actually riot.

Marks and Spencers Extra Virgin Olive Oil Crisps with Truffle

You can’t say I don’t cover both ends of the taste spectrum. I bought this very sceptically and was blown away by the thin, crisp but also somehow melt in your mouth texture? I’m a truffle fan (AKA class traitor) but they also do ham and salted flavours if that’s more your speed.

And that’s all for this edition, and I’m off to decorate the flat to Winter and Gold. However, as always, if you enjoyed it, feel free to share, comment or even tip me if you’re feeling the Christmas spirit:

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I’ve never been great at ‘growing’ my audience despite how many emails Substack would like to send me on the subject, but it’s been really nice having my own little corner of the internet to write my ponderings. I’ll be back before the New Year with my Best of the Rest Roundup as well as one last grief related post for the year, so do stay tuned. Otherwise a happy holidays to you all!

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TRIGGER WARNING: This newsletter will contain descriptions of anxiety attacks, death and medical stuff. The last thing I want to do is trigger anxiety attacks in someone else, so if that sounds like you, maybe leave it for now. However if reading that stuff may make you feel less alone, go right ahead.

I am becoming obsessed with the body. Of course, in the way like every young woman who grew up under diet culture, fretting over the social currency of my aging, imperfect body, but more so, the tangibility of it all.

After months of being with my uncle, we finally received Mum’s ashes. The picture first appeared on my phone as I sit down at the pub, three boxes tucked in a backpack. I felt like someone has just winded me in public but conversation carriesdon as normal and I found the absurdity of the situation means that the words to describe this situation became stuck behind my lips. How do you tell your friends that your mum is now sitting in the bottom of a bag? After all, their mums can’t. The vertigo between my life and theirs made me feel like I’m floating away, hanging onto any conversation by one slim thread.

From that moment onwards, I thought of the dust often, when I walk to the supermarket, when I cook dinner, when I try to sleep. When I thought about the translation of the person I knew, with thread veins on the apples of her cheeks, to grey, inanimate dust, I felt sick.

I went to the doctors. I had just finished working a temporary job, so decided to immediately treat myself by booking a doctors appointment to address the nagging feeling in the back of my mind for the last month. It had started on the hottest day of the summer. Despite drinking endless water, I didn’t just feel too hot, but if I wasn’t careful, I felt like my head would explode like a cartoon boiler when the pressure valve goes. However, it was early in the contract and I couldn’t afford to lose a day’s pay or potentially the whole contract, so I went to the bathroom, frantically towelling myself off with wet tissues before laying on the floor with my feet in the air and hoped for the best. I survived that day, just about. As it got cooler, I breathed an inward sigh of relief. However, I then starting noticing something weird.

My heart would start beating obnoxiously hard and fast. I would get random pains in my right arm and chest. Often pins and needles too, in my hands or my arm or my face, My lips would suddenly completely dry. I would then have to go to the bathroom five, six, seven times in quick succession. If I even just the slightest bit of a caffeinated drink, it would set me off for an hour. After making the mistake of drinking a large iced tea during a screening of Materialists, I felt on the verge of passing out for about two hours to the point I had to get one of my friends to buy a bag of fruit pastilles.

It feels pathetic to admit this stuff. Partly because I spent so long looking at myself trying to figure out which obvious mistake I was making. I cut out caffeine as that felt like an obvious perpetrator. I’ve never been a big caffeine drinker, but I used to be able to at least have one normal cup of tea and be fine. I was even starting to quite enjoy an iced matcha latte (yes, I’m one of those white women). But whatever progress I’d made has been deleted, like someone had pressed a factory settings button inside of me somewhere.

People told me that I was fine, it was probably just anxiety. They say it with the same tone and same knitted brow and I know they are trying to reassure me, I think in particular that they are trying to tell me that I’m not dying of cancer, which I appreciated. But I couldn’t say it reassured me that much either.

I’ve had anxiety before. Anxiety is often depicted in exactly one way, which is the “character is heavy breathing while saying I can’t breathe” version. (The most recent version I’ve seen is Season 1 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, where Conrad has one over hiding the fact his mum has terminal cancer. And yes, it did make me cry, obviously). And to be fair, that is the version I had pretty early on. However, I’ve also had the “can’t physically stop shaking” version. I’ve had the “instant and frequent diarrhoea” version (the glamorous one that no one talks about)! And sometimes just the ‘nothing in your body feels quite right’ version.

When I had CBT for anxiety and depression years ago, it was about what you could do to change your situation and your feelings. And it worked when I didn’t like my job. But there isn’t anything you can do here to stop someone you loved from being dead. It just keeps being your reality. And occasionally, when you do forget, and her being alive seems too vivid, you have to remember.

I remember the feeling of my heart racing the moment I realised this was the moment my mum dies. There was no heart rate monitors like in TV or film, or a dramatic moment when someone rushes in and tries to rescuscitate. It was just watching the gentle pulsing in her neck slow and disappear. There was nothing else to do, except say something you hoped would be vaguely reassuring.

I arrived at my auntie’s house, where the three boxes of Mum awaited me on the desk outside the bedroom. I picked one up, felt the weight and then I tilted it. I hear the sound of the dust moving, some pieces larger than others, a human rain machine. She used to listen to the sounds of rain to help her fall asleep. When I return to them in the evening, I cuddle one of the boxes to myself and cry, until my Auntie gently prises her away and puts her with the drinks cabinet (where she’d like to be, to be fair). I feel strange, like when someone takes your toy away as a child. As awful as it is to experience, it was nice to hold something again.

I flew back home. I left the ashes behind for now, so not to carry them through security. My life returned. My calendar filled up. My blood tests were normal. I booked career events. I had an appointment with a heart clinic, where they strapped a monitor to me for 24 hours. I realised its been a few days since I cried about Mum at all. I wondered about the gaps getting longer.

And then I saw a video of Tig Notaro reading a poem by Andrea Gibson, Tincture.

You can read it in full here, but it’s about the concept of the soul missing the physical sensations of the body after somebody dies.

The soul misses what the body could not let go—
what else could hold on that tightly to everything?
What else could see hear the chain of a swingset
and fall to its knees?

I cried again.

My mum was ready to die in that moment, because pain was all she knew at that stage. I know there is a possibility that that day will come for me too. So when I experience these symptoms, it’s hard not to take them as a potential omen that the day I fear is coming for me, and coming for me way sooner than I would like.

But part of me knows that at least some of the sensations I am experiencing is just the sadness and the shock of my mother’s death haunting my body with phantom feelings. Some of them are just a sign that in the wake of this, I need to take care of myself more. And some of them are just signs of life itself.

This poem reminded me that we are not alive without the experience of the visceral. This week, I went for lunch with some friends and afterwards we got an soft serve in a waffle cone, despite it being November. We walked down the street, and I felt some kind of rush. Perhaps it is the childlike joy in licking the cold cream, despite my fingers already being freezing. Maybe it’s just the sugar. But either way, it was a significant moment of true, simple happiness which I didn’t realise I had been missing for so long.

I have an appointment with the clinic on New Years Eve to talk about the potential secrets of my heart. In the meantime, I will try to relish in my life, whether it’s spice burning on my tongue, the chill of the winter wind or the sting of tears while in the warm embrace of a loved one.

I am here, experiencing being alive now, and that’s all I can hope for.

That’s all for this edition - I decided to separate my usual food roundup as it didn’t feel right for this piece, but I will be posting my autumn recommendations hopefully in the next week or two. Also as your girl is back to jobhunting around the Christmas period, if you resonated with my work, you can chuck me a quid or two here :

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However I understand things are financially tough for a lot of people at the moment, so one of the most useful things you can do for a writer is share their work! So please feel free to share on social media or pass onto any friends who may need it.

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And finally, as I always say, if you relate to anything in this newsletter, I’d love to hear from you. One of the hardest things about grief is how lonely it is.

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Otherwise, I’ll see you all soon.

hello again! It’s been a month (or so)! And what a month it’s been.

Firstly, thank you to all the lovely responses to the last edition of the newsletter. It reminded me why I love writing and gave me that excitement about why I do this again.

Secondly, I’d like to apologise to my mother after someone rightfully pointed out to me that if you read this newsletter through Substack you may not open the emails. It’s nicer to think that maybe it was simply a classic older-generation-mum-style tech issue. After all, she was one of those women who had to read her phone at an arms length over her glasses, so it’s plausible. What is annoying is that I now can’t take the piss out of her for it.

So, what’s new?

the homeland

Well, if I could give the screenwriter of my life notes, I would say they’re overdoing it a bit now. A week or so after my last newsletter, my grandma also passed away. To be honest, it’s just rude at this point. She died of dementia, which most people are unfortunately familiar with these days, but it is still awful. When someone is dying, you have to reckon with watching someone disappear in front of you. Dementia is perhaps one of the worst versions of this, where someone can remain physically intact for years, but bears no resemblance to who they used to be. It traps you in a limbo of not wanting to lose them but also wanting them to not be in distress as they are visibly confused. So, that sucked.

Also as she was Irish, her loss has raised weird feelings about losing that connection to my family identity. I come from a family who lives all over and no one is from where they live. I moved down to Cornwall from London when I was a toddler and spent most of my childhood in Cornwall, but I can’t say I was made to feel like I belonged there. There were the kids whose families all knew each other and then there was us. We never felt like locals. But despite being born in London, when I moved to London at 18 it became clear very quickly that I didn’t really know London at all either.

So part of me likes to cling on to my Irish-ness, historically because I think a significant chunk of the Martin-Strong’s trace back to Ireland at least, and I was once told, unprompted, that I look Irish by a friend’s mum who was pissed at a campfire. (Still uncertain what that actually entails).But when I went to Ireland with my (English) boyfriend, people in the street asked him for directions and presumed he was bringing his English girlfriend home. I clearly don’t look that Irish.

Wherever I go, I cannot help but feel I am the interloper, the stranger in a new land. I would love to go somewhere where touching the soil feels like an anchor, tying me back to some rich history and family I never knew but unsurprisingly, I’ve never really found that feeling. I don’t know if it even exists. But it’s partly why living in cities feels easier. At least a lot of us are interlopers here.

Maybe it’s because I’ve moved house at least sixteen times in my life. Technically seventeen, if you count emptying Mum’s house. This means there is no childhood bedroom I can return to, except in my dreams. Instead there are just buildings I don’t belong to anymore but I watch from a distance, lingering on the outside. Home as a physical place is something I have never been able to hold onto, because I know just too well how it can be taken away. So like the hermit crab, I build a home in whatever I can hold onto in that moment. Objects - of course, I am a hoarder. But also people. Of course family, but also friends.

With these people, you create small traditions and rituals that happen time and time again without thinking. It’s having a cup of tea and watching a reality show on your friend’s couch, or having drinks in someone’s tiny kitchen at a house party, or sharing bread and dips at an evening with the girls. With Mum, it was having tea and toast in her garden in the mornings, or her making a chip butty the first night I would arrive. That was my home, more than any building or place ever was. But like every home, it can fall away. So I keep moving, and I hope I find something else that will shelter me from the rain.

the milkshake

Mum died right before lunchtime. So, when I did have to finally leave her, it was to get lunch. It feels stupid to say. Hunger should feel inconsequential to the immensity of grief but after two days of no sleep and the worst moment of your life, you need to eat something to carry on. So my uncle dropped me and Ed into town and we sat outside a cafe with toasties.

I ordered a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream. I love strawberry milkshake but it doesn’t often feel right to order with most meals, especially as a thirty year old woman. But raised on the bright pink of Nesquik, it still holds a soft spot for me, especially as it reminds me of this little cafe that me and Mum would visit near Lands End. After my parents separated, if we were at home just the two of us, Mum knew I’d never say no to a drive somewhere. Having not had a car until I was fifteen, every drive felt like an adventure to a whole new world. We’d drive down so we could walk to the beautiful hotel near the cliff face, before walking back to the cafe for a slice of cake and a milkshake. It was decorated in this slightly funny old fashioned way, with glass cabinets full of elaborately decorated cakes and pies. We’d sit just the two of us, the place almost empty. It felt like our secret. It was funny years later how the milkshake that awful afternoon looked and tasted just like how I remembered that cafe all those years ago.

the supermarket

The other place we used to drive to a lot was the supermarket. It was always easily justifiable, even on a school night. During COVID, venturing to different supermarkets provided much needed variety during the day. Because of this, I find them immensely comforting, especially in the quiet of the late evening or a lazy weekday afternoon. Or at least, I used to.

Currently, my grief is tucked away under my ribcage somewhere, I think, in order to survive. Every time a memory resurfaces it feels like that moment before you plunge under cold water, that sudden breath that you hold onto as you fall. It will surprise you what plunges you under. The other day, it was one of those miniature cans of Fanta in Lemon and Fruit Twist flavours - we’d often get one after the trip to a big Asda somewhere, and drink it in the car park before we’d set off home. I wonder what she would think about the new flavours. I get sad that I’ll never know.

But I am finding some joy in it again, slowly.

With the newsletter back, I find myself scouring the shelves for new things to try. ‘For science’, I mutter to myself as I skip to the self-checkouts with Kewpie mayonnaise in one hand, KitKat Funky in another (can recommend both, FYI.).

Some other recent highlights include:

• everything bagels - an extra savoury version of the bagels we know and love.

• higgledy halloumi and hot honey rolls -

• cheese topped pretzel roll, Lidl Bakery - finally a supermarket branching into Pretzel bread.

• Morrison’s Aioli Dip. - Morrisons had no reason to go this hard on their own garlic dip but they did. Also equally good but a bit more spenny is the Sainsbury’s Roasted Garlic Aioli Dip

• La Famiglia Rana Garlic and Mozzarella Filled Gnocchi - thanks to our friends Greg and Alice, excellent cooks and consummate hosts, who introduced these to us recently. I fried at home with sundried tomatoes, the sundried tomato oil and crispy chilli oil for extra savoury goodness.

• Four Colour Bic. Mum was always particular on pens, both on accounts of being dyspraxic and being creative (she advocated being ambidextrous her whole life). As one of the few that passed the snuff, she always had one of these pens kicking around. I don’t know if I need more pens, but when I hold it, I feel in safe hands.

the feed

One of the things I appreciated most right after Mum died was being fed by other people.

Cherelle, a good friend to me and the newsletter, almost immediately brought us over some homemade bread and butter(!!)and a delicious tomato and aubergine sauce so we could at least make some really nice spaghetti without any real effort on our part.

Then my Dad turned up at my flat in Manchester, and spent the next few days buying and making food for me and my sibling while we binge-watched Never Mind The Buzzcocks. He introduced me to watermelon, feta and mint and It was really nice to have this little bubble of a family life in the immediate wake of everything being awful.

A group of my friends from London clubbed together to get me a Just Eat voucher, which proved a godsend during the various treacherous trips to clear Mum’s house.I couldn’t bear to cook much while emptying that kitchen where we had spent so many hours.

It’s all been so, so appreciated. So, after thinking on this for a while, I’ve decided to end this newsletter the way I started it - with gratitude. Specifically, I thought in true Finally Some Good Food style, I would do a shoutout to some particular highlights from what other people have fed me over the last month or so.

Emma’s boozy tiramisu

I love my friends. I love it even more when they live physically close to me. I advocate that all friendship groups should consider proximity to each other when they move. Living right by your friends has the pros of a commune, without all the weird class politics and nonethical monogamy or whatever. Particular if your friend/neighbour makes a tiramisu and needs immediate help in eating it. So thanks to Emma for this surprise treat, and for the ingenious idea of subbing in Five Farms Irish Cream liqueur as your booze of choice! Just don’t eat it like Josh did.

Medea’s cake for MASH

I went to a pole jam at Asteria Studios in Radcliffe where Medea, one of the instructors, made both an incredible chocolate cake and strawberry and rose tres leches. Not only were they downright delicious, they were raising money for a great cause: Manchester Action for Street Health, a charity that helps sex workers in Manchester with their health, safety and emotional wellbeing, needs funds for their roof that has a leak. Without it, they can’t run their drop-in centre which provides a lot of their face-to-face support. If you have a quid to spare, you can donate below.

Raise the roof for MASH

hot honey cashews

I’ve been having a regular crafts night with some of my girl friends and it has been incredibly beneficial to my wellbeing to make things with my hands. I will write about it in full in a future newsletter, but in the meantime I can talk about how it is an excuse for us to all go true Girl Dinner mode and eat bread and crisps and many aforementioned aioli dips. Special shout out to Pascale for sourcing this Aldi rarity, a rare combination of both your fave sweet and savoury nuts!

ackee and saltfish

I got to try ackee and saltfish for the first time, as aforementioned queen Cherelle made it for us as part of a Jamaican Independence party. It is Jamaica’s national dish, and is made with ackee, which is the national fruit of Jamaica and a version of salted cod. It has a really interesting background as a dish which Jamaicans have reclaimed from its history with enslavement, which you can read about here.

To eat, it’s light but flavourful, and unlike any other fish dish I’ve had. So when I went to the Campfield Weekender market, I saw Palette Bakery at the Weekender advertising it in a patty and I had to try. The ackee and saltfish patty was a lovely portable version with crisp pastry and just enough spice for a kick, but not too much to leave me, a fragile white person, in tears. However, while eating the patty was something pretty new for me, I thought it looked familiar.

It turns out that Jamaican patties also have an interesting history; they are believed to be influenced from the Cornish pasty due to, you guessed it, colonialism. But over time, they were transformed using spices brought by indentured labourers from China and India as well as the Scotch Bonnet chili, which is native to Jamaica. It is definitely worth trying if you haven’t already, and you can read more about the history of patties and the Canadian Patty Wars(!) here.

a trip to Scotland

I got to go on a very brief weekend trip to both Edinburgh and Glasgow recently. I managed to microdose the Fringe Festival with my Dad, which was pretty good actually except when we accidentally went to Jena Friedmen’s new show about losing her mum to cancer. Whoops! But after then, I got to be hosted by my childhood friend Sam and their lovely partner Charlie in their gorgeous flat in Glasgow. It’s great to hang out with people who are not only obsessed with food in the same way, but will share their late night air fryer snacks. Here is a highlight reel from my flying Scots trip.

• Lays Green Onion crisps - so good I ate the entire bag over 1 Drag Race episode to the surprise and not horror of my hosts (hopefully).

• La Gelatessa - I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the newsletter before that I am a fan of Mary’s Milk Bar in Edinburgh, however, as this trip was during the fringe, I knew I simply couldn’t be arsed to queue. Luckily, Glasgow has their own star gelateria that I would say comfortably rivals Mary’s, La Gelatessa in the Southside. I had their peach and basil flavour as well as buttered corn and both were incredible. I love basil as a savoury note in a sweet dish so of course I loved that one, but the buttered corn was a pleasant surprise - like a slightly stronger cornflake flavour! If you’re in the area, I’d say it’s a must-go.

• Not Just Coffee’s pistachio brownie - While everyone and their mum seems to be selling a pistachio baked good these days, I wish they could make something as good as this brownie. Not only did it actually utilise the flavour perfectly, but it was just a brilliant brownie by brownie standards. The texture was perfectly fudgy with pistachio creme running through it as perfect creamy and salty notes. It’s true, they don’t do just coffee.

• Soda Folk Blueberry Soda - I’lll say it now, the ‘health food shop’ as my family call it, is a UK staple of every town and city that does not get enough praise. Anyone with a dietary requirement or a love of yogurt covered things knows this to be true. Yes, they are pricy as hell sometimes, but they are the most reliable source of your fave veggie sausages, herbal teas or gluten free pasta. Also, they are a niche food paradise of small brands and producers, and if you’re a real foodie, it’s worth checking out your local one for any good curios. In Glasgow, we went into one called Roots, Fruits and Flowers that stocked this delightful blueberry soda and personally, I’m now convinced blueberry is not used enough as a soft drink flavour.

• Pizza Crunch - a true Scottish tradition or a pandering to tourists? I don’t know - the history is hard to find online. However, do I care? No. With the crispy batter, it’s kind of like fish, if it had a thin layer of tomato sauce on the inside. Either way, what’s there to hate? Do you not want to live deliciously?

That’s all for now, but I’ll hopefully see you all again soon. If you enjoyed my work, you can either chuck me a quid or two here:

Tip me, if you like

Or if you’d like, you can check out Dementia UK, which you can donate to or you want to look at their resources, you can do so here:

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As I said last time, if you relate to anything in this newsletter, I’d love to hear from you, because one of the hardest things about grief, whatever kind, is how lonely it is.

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Otherwise, if you enjoyed this newsletter or found it meaningful/helpful, please feel free to share on social media or pass onto any friends who may need it.

It started again, with quiche.

A key trait that most people know me by for the last ten years or so is that I hate quiche. In fact, my first proper standup routine when I was 18 was about how I hated quiche. What if we made a pizza eggy and sad? I told the audiences, who were all definitely crying with laughter. But then, recently, I went to Sainsburys and they had in the reduced section a ‘Mature Cheddar and Crispy Chilli Oil quiche’. I love both cheddar and crispy chilli oil, but was unsure about the combo I obviously had to try. Spoiler: once heated, it was delicious, gooey and savoury. So firstly I realise I’d like to apologise to quiche everywhere for all the bad things I’ve said. Turns out you just needed a better filling.

Perhaps the more important thing I realised while eating this quiche was that I realised I miss writing this newsletter.

In case you didn’t know, my mum died in May. It’s been horrid and sad, but perhaps one of the most brutal things about all of this is that when I loaded my mum’s tablet up recently, I found in her email inbox that most of these newsletters were unread. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure how to take that. Everyone’s a critic, I guess. After all, I’m not sure who else still reads these either, especially when everyone has a newsletter these days, and our email boxes are fighting for their lives against every subscription you’ve forgotten you’ve signed up to.

But even so, I miss it. I miss telling you all about these good things I’ve eaten. You are my community and writing this newsletter feels like talking to my friends. I care about each and every one of you! And because of you guys, I have kept writing this newsletter for over 4 years now, having written forty of them. Maybe that’s not big for some people, but that’s big for me!

At my mum’s house, I went through the boxes with all my writing so far. I have always felt bad for not writing every day and being ‘consistent’, but seeing thirty years worth of it collated reminded me that you don’t have to show up every day to be showing up. Maybe you write intensely for a week and then not again until two years later. Maybe you write a newsletter every week for a few months, then release one whenever you can. But it still exists, and I am the writer I am because of each one of those pieces of writing and the distance between them.

Grief workshops will tell you how important writing is to process, and I know I need to write about this because it’s been two months and I’m still sad. This is not surprising, but perhaps what is surprising is that I feel like I’m not supposed to talk about it anymore. I feel like everyone else is moving on with their lives and I’m supposed to be too. I should be getting on with things, rather than still bursting into tears if I even try to talk about Mum. But if anything, I miss her even more now. So, I have to write.

I can’t pretend it will be consistent to any plan. As much as the algorithm likes you to have a regular schedule, I simply can’t do it. I can’t neatly proportion and schedule my feelings for ‘the grind’ or to ‘organically build a following’. All I can do is write as much as I want to write, and I will stop when I need to stop.

I want to write about food. But also, for the moment, I want to write about stuff that isn’t food more. So I will write about both, but apologies if if reading about grief is too heavy for you or you are just here to read about supermarket/restaurant/recipe recommendations - I will include as and when, and if you read to the bottom, I’ve got a recipe for anchovy butter pasta I’ve been making. However, if you are looking for company, comfort or perhaps you are just morbidly curious, I’d love for you to stick around.

Also, I will be pausing paid subscriptions as I’m not going to put any of this stuff behind a paywall because that feels super weird! However, financially I can’t say I’m in a place to entirely say no to money, and if you do enjoy any of this work or just feel sorry for me and happen to have some spare cash, feel free to give me a little gift here:

Donate here!

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has already been so generous lately, your kindness has not been forgotten. When I do finally get published, I will put as many of you in the acknowledgements as I can physically allow!!

Now it’s time for my personal highlights and lowlights of late:

• I have various phone calls with customer service to cancel every direct debit Mum had. Firstly, why does every customer service line make you go through 15 rounds of options until you reach an actual person? Secondly, the plus side is that having to talk to all these people means saying the words ‘my mum has passed away’ out loud don’t affect me anymore. Some people are good, some are …less good. Her union and car insurance are extremely helpful, the internet company, less so. One guy proceeds to tell me about his family’s history with cancer which would have been fine if he hadn’t emphasised that his mum had ‘luckily’ not died because they “caught it early”. Lucky you! But then the next colleague he passes me onto is a lovely older woman who talks to me about Albert Schloss, and I am endeared.

• I watch The Shrouds out of morbid curiosity. Luckily, it is far too daft and horny to actually upset me in any meaningful way.

• A mirror that a dear friend is restoring for me turns out to be a valuable antique mirror from the seventies. Of course, Mum had left it in the garden where it had been almost wrecked by nature! Because why wouldn’t you! I can’t be too mad though. I’m not going to sell it, and neither was she. If we treated everything we owned as if we were going to sell it, that would be an awful way to live. Use up the perfume! Wear the clothes until they break! Chuck valuable furniture into nature - for short periods of time, so your friend doesn’t have to dispose of all the dead bugs that accumulate within it. Sorry Josh.

• My sibling sends me a picture of a heart shaped like a cloud, which we both take to be a sign beyond the grave. Mum was always a fan of Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s book and series about Cloudspotting. It’s because of this I can still identify cumulonimbus and cirrus, but maybe this heavenly sign is a sign it’s time to finally read the rest of the book so I can learn any other cloud shape.

  

• A friend tells a story about a bride whose mother tried to wear white on her wedding day. I make a joke that at least that’s not going to be a problem. 10/10 bit from me, I like to think, and one of my new favourite things is making jokes around my friends about Mum and seeing the face they make before they allow themselves to laugh. Tee hee! In reality, unfortunately I will probably be the cliche bride who leaves an empty chair for Mum or something like that, unless it’s too expensive. Sorry Mum!

• She visits me in my dreams twice. The first in person, the second in the form of a phone call. Both were nice while they were happening, until I remembered in-dream that this should not be possible. The first one afterwards left me upset and weird all day afterwards but the second had the opposite effect weirdly. This time, she was giving me a pep-talk through some sort of magical phone loophole. At the time it applied to a dance audition (??) which I was doing, but what she was saying wasn’t dance specific at all, and felt so incredibly real, more real than any part of a dream I’ve had, that I like to think she was perhaps just talking to real-life Ruby however she could.

  

And finally, some good food (content) - I can’t remember much of what I’ve eaten recently, so I don’t have much in the way of singular recommendations bar the quiche at the moment. There is this recipe I’ve been making a lot lately, loosely inspired from a couple I’ve seen online:

Anchovy Butter Pasta - a vague recipe

You will need:

• tin of anchovies

• butter

• garlic

• white wine vinegar

• chopped parsley

• breadcrumbs

• pasta of choice

Method:

• Prepare breadcrumbs however you like- that could be buying them, or in my partner’s case, making your own using any leftover stale bread, toasting under the grill with olive oil and garlic and putting in the food processor with some leftover anchovy oil. But you do not have to be that extra (they were delicious though!!)

• Melt butter in a pan on a low heat. Add crushed garlic for a moment, before adding your tin of anchovies.

• While the anchovies break up and melt into the butter, cook your pasta. When you drain, make sure to save some pasta water.

• Once the sauce is quite reduced and sufficiently brown from the broken up anchovies, you can add some pasta water, along with a splash of white wine vinegar and some parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then toss in your pasta. One of my best grabs from Mum’s kitchen draws was those tongs that look like little hands - excellent for any noodle-y dish!

• Top with your chosen breadcrumbs and/or cheese and serve.

That’s all for now, but I’ll see you when I see you - I’ve bought a different reduced quiche to try so I’ll let you know how that goes. If you relate to anything in this newsletter, I’d love to hear from you, because one of the hardest things about grief is how lonely it is. Also, if you’ve been bereaved by cancer, I really recommend The Loss Foundation, who do free workshops and support groups that have been a bit of a lifesaver at the moment. Otherwise, if you enjoyed this newsletter or found it meaningful/helpful, please feel free to share on social media or pass onto any friends who may need it. As High School Musical once said, we’re all in this together!

Hello my little crumpets, and welcome back to Finally Some Good Food. In exciting news, we’ve got some new subscribers here - Hello! Welcome! Make yourself at home! -So I figured I’d give a little reintroduction to what to expect at FSGF.

Our humble newsletter is written by me and only me, and is not part of any wider, more sophisticated publication. I am my own writer, subeditor, meme designer, etc etc. so our house style is loose and ephemeral, like underwear blowing away on the washing line. But despite the jokes, be warned that I do sometimes take my writing seriously. Sometimes the intro is a genuinely sincere page-long treatise about some philosophical topic like death or depression, but also sometimes it is two sentences about a day trip or a meme. Truly, the two genders.

For example, when I started drafting this back in January, this newsletter was a very depressing piece. Now, finishing it off in April with blossoms and sunshine and the return of my will to live, it’s a much more optimistic affair. Don’t get me wrong, there are still current factors in my life that are too difficult to write about at the moment* which may hinder future newsletters to come (as a side note, I loved this piece on failing to write after grief by one of my fave critics, Barry Pierce). However, recently I’ve rediscovered a new kind of joy. I’m enjoying being bored.

I’m trying to get used to boredom. I was inspired by various thinkpieces and this Eddy Burback video in particular, but there are two main reasons I think this is useful. For one,I realise that I use music to get through more mundane tasks. This is not inherently a problem, but I want to be able to get better at not procrastinating and completing normal tasks without being distracted. So, I’m experimenting to see how much of my focus can be regained by changing my behaviour and lifestyle factors, versus what parts of my neurodivergence require actual medical intervention.

Secondly, I’ve realised that boredom is an excellent tool for creativity. If I have to sit alone with my own thoughts, I have to make up some interesting ones. Sometimes this also means I have to sit with some uncomfortable or upsetting ones, but I hope this means that I am actually processing what I’m feeling rather than deferring to a later date.

In the specific case of cooking however, the most notable thing I've found is that I’ve been experimenting more and improvising almost everything. This is not to say I don’t use recipes or believe in them. In fact, quite a few of the things I made sprang off someone’s beloved blog to begin with, but having to be fully present in the process of cooking means it has become a sort of creative expression, like doodling. There is something quite joyful about this - it is play!

Therefore, today’s newsletter is somewhat recipe-rich, but as usual, we will also be rounding up my favourite snacks and restaurant dishes I’ve tried as well. I’m trialling moving these free editions to a quarterly schedule to give me more time to work on my various writing projects and workshops.

Speaking of which, for those who want to do some in-person writing, my next workshop is a FREE writing workshop and walking tour with The National Trust on the 11th of May, where we will be exploring writing prompts based on Manchester’s blossoms and plants. Also I’m looking to book more writing workshops over the next year, if you are a business in Manchester or otherwise, especially if you are a food business interested in hosting a food writing workshop, get in touch!

For the final shameless plug, I’ll be releasing a travel exclusive for paid subscribers in the next few weeks about what I ate in Mexico, so if you’re a keen traveller, stay tuned!

Now, let’s get into it, shall we?

Every season is a salad season if you’re eating salad

As mentioned in my newsletter at the end of last year, I’m still trying to eat ‘healthier’, aka trying to eat more vegetables. However, after our New Year's hangover, my partner also wanted to try, especially as he is a Type One Diabetic and wanted to improve his blood sugars. Therefore, we have been experimenting with eating fewer carbs.

Do not be mistaken!

This is not me telling you to cut carbs in any way. It is because I am too lazy to cook two separate meals, and most importantly, I am not going carb-free, just reducing it slightly. I cannot say for the most part, there has been any noticeable benefit that these fad sites might try to sell you. I am not a new woman, I haven’t mysteriously discovered some font of energy, and I am not more beautiful than before because you can’t improve on perfection. The one thing I have enjoyed is the variety it has brought to my diet; I enjoy pasta and pizza a bit more now it feels more like a novelty again.

As the unemployed person in the relationship, this means I have been doing the majority of the cooking, but most of what I have been making is salads. I have resisted the idea of salads for most of my life due to toxic diet culture, but because I want my partner to feel good in his body as much as possible, I decided I was going to investigate how I could make salads flavourful and interesting. I have boiled it down to two main steps.

1. Roast vegetables in as delicious a mix of spices and oils as possible. MSG, smoked paprika and crispy chilli oil are your friends.

2. Dressings are everything. There’s no way in hell I’m having a dry salad.

That being said, these are the big winners I’ve come across so far.

Salad #1: Fake chicken, roast veg, avocado and salted lemon yogurt

As mentioned last year, I became obsessed with Ottolenghi’s charred tomato dip. However, as I was constructing my newfound salads, I wondered if I could use the delicious salted lemon yoghurt elsewhere.

As my partner is a big fan of breaded chicken, and I was looking for a source of veggie-friendly protein for each meal, this was a fairly straightforward swap. The yoghurt dressing is just Greek yoghurt, flaky sea salt and lemon zest. The roast veg I used was primarily sweet potato and tomato, but obviously sub in what you like - tenderstem broccoli would also work well here.

Salad #2: egg fried in crispy chilli oil (Lao Gan Ma), roasted chickpeas and veg, salted lemon yoghurt, tahini dressing, salad leaves

I roasted sweet potato and aubergine with the chickpeas in smoked paprika, garlic and MSG. It uses the same yoghurt as before, which is on the base of the dish, layered with the veg, and then the tahini dressing (which was vaguely inspired by this recipe but with added Worcester sauce), is drizzled over the top before the egg is added.

Salad #3: soy, honey and crispy chilli salmon, roasted veg, pickled ginger, sesame seeds/dressing, salad leaves

Similarly to the last one, aubergine and sweet potato go well, along with some tenderstem broccoli, roasted in salt, pepper, MSG, sesame oil and crispy chilli oil. (FYI sweet potatoes tend to take slightly longer to roast than aubergines so its staggered timing). Melt some butter and mix with soy sauce, garlic, a tiny bit of honey and sesame and crispy chilli oil. Wrap a boneless salmon fillet in foil and drizzle the butter mixture over and season with salt and pepper before sealing. Once the veg have about 10 minutes left, put the salmon in. Mix the salad leaves with the pickled ginger. You can also make a bonus dressing for the leaves by mixing the pickled ginger brine with soy sauce and mirin, or if you’re lazy, I really recommend Kewpie’s sesame dressing.

If you want more carbs, I also recommend adding potatoes. But this is a general rule for a lot of dishes, not just salads.

Salad #4: Tortilla, roast veg, aioli and/or balsamic dressing, salad leaves

For a slightly more mediterranean inspired salad, I recommend using one of those ready made tortillas you get in the supermarket as your protein (I got one of those Unearthed ones when they were on Nectar card offer), and roasted tomatoes and courgette in garlic, lemon peel and olive oil, before serving with salad leaves and aioli.

Salad #5: (fake) bacon, blue cheese, avocado, butterhead lettuce, balsamic dressing

Slightly inspired by caesar salad and Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus (an indispensable guide for all experimental cooks out there!!), this is exactly as described. Cut the bacon into small bits and fry until crispy, serve with chunks of the blue cheese of your choice (I recommend a creamier one, like Saint Agur). Balsamic dressing is just balsamic vinegar and oil, but you can also buy this dressing ready-made.

Salad #6: grapes, blue cheese dressing, cashews, salad leaves

This one was almost entirely inspired by scrounging what hadn’t gone off in our fridge and cupboard before the weekly food shop, but while I hadn’t thought to put nuts in a salad, roasted cashews were a surprisingly nice addition. The blue cheese dressing is just blue cheese in a blender with a smidgeon of greek yogurt.

Salad #7: potatoes, labneh, hummus, falafel, avocado, salad leaves

My most recent experiment inspired by another Nectar card offer, this time on Sainsbury’s new ‘small plates section’ having a 3 for £8 deal, I cooked some salad potatoes (I like to parboil and finish in a pan, but do it however you like) and served with either or both of their dips, hummus and labneh (the labneh is particularly delicious, with confit tomatoes), salad leaves and avocado.

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That’s my top salad recipes for now, but I am looking to continue expanding my repertoire over the summer months, so please send me any certified banger recipes if you have them. (Unless they contain raw onion. Respectfully, miss me with that sh*t.)

Potatwo Pot Luck

As long term followers of the newsletter will know, last year me and my friends held a potato themed potluck for St Patrick’s Day. Of course we had to do it again this year and this year I decided to do something between a cheese and potato pie and a galette, using folded puff pastry, parboiled potato chunks and a mix of cream cheese, wholegrain mustard, salt, pepper and a lot of comte.

This was obviously delicious, but I wanted to challenge myself further and after avidly following Great British Menu this year, I decided I wanted to try making a pickled walnut ketchup. Turns out this is much easier than anticipated, as long as you’ve got a blender and a sieve - I used this recipe and it made the perfect companion for my pie.

If you’re looking for potato dish inspiration, the other dishes this year were:

• Vada pavs by my friend Joe - these were so good they gave Bundobust a run for their money!

• Emma’s potato pizza - She made not one but two different kinds, but the spiced potato was chef’s kiss!

• Alienor’s cheese and leek stuffed potato skins

• Bran’s cheese and pepper sweet potato rounds

• Will’s even more cursed-looking homemade potato smilies (still tasty though).

• Shoutout to Jake, who only got a proper oven this year for many years with some weird shit hybrid, but still made some excellent roasties.

• And not a potato dish but Cherelle made her version of Nigella’s Guinness cake, which truly never misses.

Adventures in Hot Sauce

While in the past I would have identified myself as a spice wimp (not a moral judgement if you are also a spice wimp FYI), after travelling to Mexico in February and accidentally eating a large amount of habanero sauce (more on that in the paid newsletter), upon my return I have been tentatively experimenting in a much more normal amount. If I am ever invited on Hot Ones, I don’t want to be not completely unprepared and pull a DJ Khaled. These are the preliminary success stories for those interested in branching out:

• El Yucateco Habanero and Charred Pineapple: This one was a souvenir from Tulum, and while it was more hot than I’m used to, it had a superb fruity flavour. It went surprisingly well with a grilled cheese and would definitely get again as the flavour was good enough to try working on my tolerance for.

• Pablo Diablo - Jalapeno, Lime x Coriander Hot Sauce - This is technically classified by Tubby Tom’s website as a mild sauce, and to be fair, they are correct. It is very mild, so good for complete beginners.

• Nuff Love - Tropical Hot Pepper x Pineapple Jerk Glaze and Hot Sauce: This is listed under their hot sauces, and it is slightly hotter, but good flavour. In fact, I found myself using this one more than the milder one, which I think is growth.

Pancake Day

As you can probably tell by the potato potluck, I am a big fan of single-food-item-based holidays; it will therefore be no surprise that I love Pancake Day. Who doesn’t? I once spent a solid six months with a coeliac flatmate in Venice perfecting a gluten-free crepe recipe. Anyway, this year my friend Emma hosted a pancake evening that was lovely and delicious, except for one anomaly. We experimented with mixing some crispy M&Ms into some batter, but when I took a bite, my tongue started tingling in a way not too dissimilar to an allergic response. I stopped eating immediately and had a funny stomach for an hour or so afterwards (presumably the stress of perceived potential anaphylaxis) - but I’m wondering, has anyone experienced a reaction like this? Especially with crispy M&Ms? Or am I just mentally unwell?

However, in terms of something actually useful to you guys, I do have a handy tip: if you’re looking to make buttermilk/American style fluffy pancakes but can’t find buttermilk anywhere, I have found out you can use kefir as a substitute! All the pancakes I made with it were perfectly fluffy and went very well with maple syrup and butter as a topping. (Yes I’m late to the maple syrup and butter game, but now I’m here I’m not looking back).

Bury Market, you will always be famous

Now, as you may know, I wrote a bakery crawl piece for The Manchester Mill. I loved doing it, and I’m so glad to see the bakery crawl getting wider coverage in the Guardian only weeks later. But as you can imagine, getting published in a big publication that is read by thousands of people is slightly daunting. Naturally, I reacted to its release by obsessively reading the comments. Pretty much all of the comments seemed fair; I only had a certain amount of words to try and cover every single city centre bakery (that wasn’t Greggs), and there was stuff I just couldn’t fit in. However, I was and currently still am working on a follow-up to cover the bakeries outside the city centre - please send me your recommendations! So far, I have Barbakan and La Chouquette on my list, and there is one stop I have completed already: Bury Market.

Bury Market is such a delightful find, particularly on a sunny Saturday morning. For one, it sells all sorts of food and has genuinely cheap lunch options (I got a fried egg sandwich for less than £3). Also, if you’re interested in more niche baked products, this is definitely the place to go. Not only could I found the increasingly rare Staffordshire oatcakes (like a savoury pancake made of oats) which the vendor told me he could only procure “through a favour”, but I was finally able to get my hands on more Manchester specific delicacies, including eccles cake, chorley cake, a Manchester tart of course, and my personal favourite: the Wimberry pie.

Wimberry is another name for bilberry, which is the sweeter, juicier version of the blueberry and tends to be native to the UK. Unfortunately, they are too juicy and delicate to survive the transporting to become a frequent feature in supermarkets (honestly, same), but luckily for us and Bury, some bilberries grow locally on Holcombe Hill. The flavour is sexy and jammy and somewhere between a cherry and a blueberry, which is just delightful in shortcrust pastry, ideally served warm with some form of cream or custard. I got mine from Harry Muffin, which is a family-run stall, and I can highly recommend getting out of the city centre to visit. It’s just a tram ride away!

Best of the Rest

• I attended my first friend wedding, and it was so lovely! Everyone looked great, all the speeches were lovely, and to top it off, I had perhaps my favourite apple crumble I’ve ever had. I was initially thrown off by the bright blue ice cream on top, but it turns out it was just vanilla and tasted lovely anyway. Also, they had a buffet of perhaps the nicest fries I’ve had in the late evening, which was an inspired choice considering all the wine I had consumed and the wedding cakes were two personalised Colin the Caterpillar cakes. There’s nothing more heartwarming than discussing love with your friends in your finery while munching on Colin’s face slab.

• I tried two new recipes from the Green Roasting Tin, which were both great: the crispy gnocchi with sage and mushroom, and the creole spiced leek and mushroom tart. The tart was particularly impressive as the bottom turned out perfectly crisp.

• My partner and I went to 10 Tib Lane for Valentine’s Day. It is always good, especially their cheese beignets, but I want to shout out their beetroot dish. I’m normally not a fan of this wet vegetable that tastes of soil, but they served it with pickled blackberry, whipped buttermilk and walnut, and it was surprisingly really good (and less soil-y).

• After dinner, we went to Schofields and I had the Esmeralda, which was a creamy chocolate mint cocktail. An excellent dessert alternative.

• Finally, my friend Cherelle made the nicest paneer curry, but I forgot to ask for any of the details, so if you’re reading this, drop the recipe queen.

That’s all for this edition of the newsletter, I know it’s a long one, so thanks for sticking it out until the end, and as always, if you’ve enjoyed it, please feel to share.

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I’m also still open to requests or recommendations or burning questions from anyone, and it would also make my day if you try anything mentioned, so please get in touch!

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Also if you want to keep all these cool free recommendations going, I highly suggest perhaps flinging a donation this way or paying for a subscription if you can afford to do so; I am in the process of building an archive of all my recommendations on my website, so any donation will be very useful in making this happen!