Charred in a good way

And our first newsletter in our new format!

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! This newsletter is free!! Paid subscribers also receive a second newsletter with five extra recs, and a monthly voice note download from the two of us. The Fast Five is often where the gold nuggets lie! Thanks for being here!

I blinked and it was the end of January. I swear that golden week of holidays between Christmas and New Year get’s faster every year. If we ignore the torrential downpours, summer cold I caught and disturbingly high frequency of shark attacks - it’s been a pretty lovely time. We went down the coast and discovered my new favourite swimming spot, I made nectarine and oolong gelato, saw a very silly film in the cinema, and rediscovered the fun of a backyard sprinkler. I really do thrive when it’s warm out! New Years was quiet, but I’m following Soph’s lead and telling myself the year doesn’t really start ‘til the Fire Horse year is here.

This New Years Eve was one of the first I’ve ever spent chilling at home. Usually I’m out on a rooftop, or dancefloor, or at least feasting and carousing with my nearest and dearest, but this year we just weren’t feeling it. Instead Andrew and I cracked into a bottle of sake we brought back from our Japan trip, and cooked up a Japanese feast. We bought sashimi, made miso eggplant, slurped down oysters and I made a huge serve of the Ester roasted prawns, but somehow the standout dish were these delicious, crackly, buttery rice balls. Andrew and I became a bit obsessed with yaki onigiri when we were in Japan, and after a failed attempt to make them at Christmas I was determined to get them right. The two key tricks seem to be in shaping and cooking the onigiri while they’re still warm (the warmth helps the grains stick together and not fall apart on the grill!) and cooking them on parchment paper in the cast iron pan. It changed the game! The rice still get’s crackly and delicious, nothing sticks to the pan, everything stays compacted together. I didn’t have a mould or use plastic wrap as the recipe suggests - just shaped and compressed it with my hands - and it still worked. Don’t be afraid to get them charred. Topping them with butter is optional but also really really not optional.

When Andrew pitched me Listers - a Youtube documentary about extreme bird watchers, I wasn’t immediately sold. But I was wrong! This scrappy, meandering, picaresque doco follows two brothers as they decide (while stoned) to learn about competitive bird watching by attempting to have their own “Big Year”. They sleep in their car, become obsessed with logging their sightings in the eBird app, and criss-cross America as they try to sight and log hundreds of bird sightings. It’s got the vibes of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the handmade charm of Michael Gondry’s The Science of Sleep and the genuinely beautiful bird content of a National Geographic. A true, unexpected delight!

I’ve been Internet friends with Stevie McKenzie Smith for years now, loving watching as her work evolves. I was a big fan of the podcast Layers she made with Ana Kinsela, and now I’ve been encouraged by her approach to writing and self expression, to try to embrace my creativity in it’s own scrappy, unformed way. My first foray has been with her online Writing Workshops. The first one I tried out was Memory Zine (soon to be re-titled) which I accessed as a digital download and did self paced. It encourages you to rummage through the material you already have - fragments in diaries or notebooks, the contents of your Instagram captions, emails or notes apps - and to turn them into something tangible. I got out the glue stick! I printed things! I made something small and messy and just for me. Inspired, I decided to sign up for a session she ran at the end of the year, designed to give you space to reflect on the year that had passed. I always get a little moody and emotional in December, and am often trying to find a space and structure to process how I feel about the transition between years. Doing this workshop helped me feel like I’d done something tangible, and my summer break felt much lighter and less fraught, and less like I was still carrying around the emotions of 2025.

The workshops are super accessible and Stevie has a really warm and approachable demeanour that makes the whole enterprise much less intimidating. She’s always playing around with the format and content of the workshops so it’s worth keeping an eye on her instagram to see what she has coming up next.

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This month, the rec I need is ideas for our entry and hallway. It needs a zsuj. When you walk in you currently see a pile of running shoes, seven umbrellas, and a small hallstand piled with mail, library books, spare dog-poo bags and random tupperware I need to return to my mum. I need inspo! I need ideas! What do you for shoe storage? Is there such a thing as a chic umbrella stand? (My google searches have not been encouraging). What about coat racks? Help!

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For paid subscribers, this weeks fast five includes my new fave instagram food account, the best book I’ve read this year (and I’ve read 9 so far), a lip stain with the texture of melted gummy bears (complimentary), a chic souvenir found in an unexpected place, and the nicest way to pour and drink sake.

Will be back in your inbox in a jiffy! SoRo x