At a slow simmer
Highly Enthused is a newsletter, once a podcast, concerning all the best things to consume in life. It’s written twice per month by Sophie McComas-Williams and Sophie Roberts, and today’s dispatch is written by SoRo! The majority of each newsletter is free, but there are five extra recs in each for paid subscribers. That’s often where the gold nuggets lie. Thanks for being here!
Puppy life man! Up in the night to take him to pee, smothering him in cuddles on the couch in the evening, singing him the world’s STUPIDEST songs (he hates them, I won’t stop), and trying to stop him chewing on my jeans when I walk past him.
The best part (apart from cuddling his sweet fluffy body every night) is being forced out for walks every day. The streets of the deep Inner West are sprinkled with citrus trees, which are all in full flush. After all our walks around the neighbourhood I know where to find the lemon trees that lean over fences, the mandarins that are already dropping fruit and the tiny lime trees poking through gaps. Sometimes I come home with a stolen item or two stuffed in my pockets. Our life might have gotten a little more scheduled, a little more homebound since Pepito arrived, but I’m enjoying sinking deeper into where we live instead of rushing off to a million different places every day.
It’s finally “spend two hours in the kitchen over a simmering pot” weather and in spite of the rain and the dark that rolls in earlier and earlier every day, I’m taking some joy in it. This week I found some short ribs on special at the new Harris Farm in Marrickville (I have not stopped talking about it since it opened!) and knew I’d be turning to this Short Rib Ragu recipe from Gourmet Traveller - a recipe I’ve been cooking for over ten years now! I first made this when I lived in a share house in Darlington, when my housemates and I would invite 20 or 30 people over for long Italian lunches in our scruffy backyard. Even our shitty oven could handle the low heat required for the long braise, and the smell of it cooking would fill the entire house luring everyone out from their bedrooms to ask when it’d be ready.
Cooking it is a process - ignore the timing the recipe gives you, because it takes longer than it says - you’ve got to dice all the vegetables small, get a good brown crust when you sear the short ribs (you’ll need to do them in batches unless your dutch oven is ENORMOUS) and reducing the stock down cup by cup takes forever. This is also one of those recipes where I really do think the overnight marinating makes a difference. Once you’ve shredded the meat and returned it to the sauce, I like to skim as much fat as I can get off the top (last night I got over a cups worth!) and let the meat and sauce simmer and get friendly with each other for a bit. Serve with any pasta shape you like, but for ultimate decadence the pillowy softness of gnocchi can’t be beaten.
The premise of this book left me feeling a little queasy. In Who Wants to Live forever, an American pharmaceutical company named Yareta has discovered the secret to seemingly eternal youth, and has launched a drug that promises to extend your life by hundreds of years. The book follows a couple - Yuki and Sam - when only Sam decides he wants to start taking the drug. Over the course of decades we watch their relationship unspool as only one of them ages at a normal rate.
I had a few issues with the book - I wish there’d been more in depth exploration of how society would change with a growing portion of the world just..not aging and dying, and I found one of the secondary characters that was introduced extremely annoying - but I enjoyed it’s zippy pace (I finished it in a weekend) and it left me pondering whether or not I would want to take the drug if it was available. My answer to this kept changing! It left me feeling morally unsettled! That in itself makes it worth the read.
I’m going to need you guys to trust me on this one. My friend Oscar and I have recently embraced..sound healing. We went to our first session on a bit of a lark. He suggested we try it “because we need hobbies”, and honestly it sounded weird and funny and interesting enough to give it a go. To get to Frequency Lab, you walk up the stairs to the second floor of a building on King St in Newtown, shuck off your shoes and jacket into a locker and then after a quick briefing from the facilitator, head into a dark room filled with about 10 individual water beds. You lie down on the beds with your head between two speakers, close your eyes and then the craziness begins. The facilitator starts playing - gongs, sound bowls, rain sticks - the bed vibrates in sync with the music and above you a white light flashes and swirls, triggering your brain to start hallucinating vivid patterns and colours and movement.
There’s apparently some science behind it - something about the frequencies of the music and the light triggering something in the pineal gland to promote healing - but we love it because of the way an hour disappears in a strange psychedelic vortex, and you come out of the session feeling oddly rejuvenated. So far we’ve tried the Restore and the Empower sessions, and next on our list is Expand (apparently that one made the Financial Review health writer “see God”).
A quick-fire rundown of the miscellaneous finds we’ve loved this month. In this edition: A pair of pyjamas that I don’t strip off in the middle of the night, a new breakfast routine, a great Muji find, my new favourite candy and a lovely little bar with a perfect martini.