Fragrant and intimidating

Or, what to do with quinces

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!

May has been a bit of a non-event over here. A lot of work catch-up, a lot of adjusting to the dark mornings and darkening evenings, a lot of reallllly missing sourdough toast, and a lot of getting excited about buying a dryer after two weeks of rain left all our laundry damp and mildew-y.

June is looking good though - especially if you’re a paid subscriber! Along with your two, regularly scheduled recommendation newsletters, paid subscribers can also look forward to our first guest edition of our ‘Day in the Life’ series AND my long-awaited (lol) Mexico guide. A bumper content crop!

And now, the things that made May a little less dreary..

Eat / Drink

The other week at Carriageworks while treating myself to a leisurely browse of the fruit and veg stands (yes I am definitely 36) I found myself buying a small pile of quinces without any clear idea of what I was going to do with them. Something about their fleshy, medieval shape always makes me think of old Dutch still lives. They sat in my fruit bowl for a while, fragrant and intimidating, while I aimlessly googled “what to do with quinces”.

Sophie eventually steered me towards old kitchen faithful Stephanie Alexander, and one night I found myself quartering and coring them, simmering sugar syrup to pour over them and then popping them in a low oven. Did I then do the maths and realise they’d be coming out of the oven at 11pm? Yes. Don’t be like me. Plan ahead. These babies need a long time in the oven to coax out their jewel-like sweetness. Luckily your whole house will smell like perfumed heaven while they cook.

Once you’ve got your batch poached serve them for breakfast with yoghurt and walnuts, or for dessert with ice cream or cream, or you could probably also use them in a crumble? Keep the excess poaching liquid and mix it with soda and you’ve also got yourself a great non-alc drink too.

Read / Watch / Listen

As one of three daughters, I feel almost contractually obliged to watch any movie or show about sisters (Charmed, Little Women, Practical Magic etc). Now make it a show featuring sisters, written by and staring genius Sharon Hogan, about the well deserved murder of their horrible brother-in-law and you’ve got Bad Sisters - a tv show basically conjured by the algorithm exactly for me!

This show is DARK, and deliciously, grimly funny. The first episode opens with (horrible) John Paul’s funeral and unfolds in flashbacks and forwards as we watch to see how exactly he ended up dead. There are gas explosions, cold plunge swimming, horrible pet-related accidents, a paintball scene that justifies my fear of trying it and I promise you, it only takes a little bit of time in John Paul’s presence to feel like he deserved what he got.

Do / Buy

I’d been noticing the emergence of tank tops made from pointelle - the soft, girlish, fabric previously reserved for sleepwear and under layers - over the past few years, but never really felt like it was something for me. It seemed too pretty or too “trying to be Kate moss”? But after doing a few idle, unrelated searches for pyjamas the other week, instagram sent me to a brand doing simple, decently priced separates that seemed to straddle that challenging line between cozy/comfortable and flattering/sexy.

I ended up buying the cami, the shorts and the long sleeve top, and yes - these are literally pyjamas - but I’ve already got plans for wearing the cami with jeans peeking out of an oversized cardigan. I’m into it!

The Fast Five

A quick-fire rundown of the miscellaneous finds we’ve loved this month. In this edition: a room spray that makes my house smell like a bushwalk, a new season of the best show, a looks-luxe-costs-less lip gloss and a perfect novel.