Sleeping on a Cloud

Finding even more reasons to not get out of bed.

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!

The most clicked link in SoMo’s June fast five was a cute, retro point and shoot camera perfect for throwing in your bag. See the post here.

Little bit late with this issue this week - sorry! I’ve been in a whirlwind of my own making. I quit my job(!!), started planning a last minute trip to the Northern Territory and came down with my first cold of the season which has left me feeling like death warmed up. But let’s not dwell on that! I also finally figured out how to blow dry my own hair! Never too old to learn.

If you find yourself in Glebe and hungry on a sunny Saturday, direct yourself to Kim’s Bopon Glebe Point road. I managed to squeeze myself into a bar seat in the tiny restaurant for lunch without much of a wait (perks of the solo diner), and was completely charmed. The room is long and narrow, bright from the picture window at one end, the open kitchen small and strictly organised, wrapped in a narrow bar with high stools for pairs or solo diners. It has the feel of a restaurant in another city - I can’t quite put my finger on why but it reminded me of San Francisco or Berkeley - so I felt like I’d been transported on holiday. The menu is short, but I immediately knew I wanted the bibimbap with a side of the clear seafood broth. Your meal arrives on a lacquered tray - a perfect mound of rice with your choice of protein (gochujang pork for me), and generous scattering of perilla seeds, a plate of pickled and grilled vegetables on the side, and a perfect tiny portion of pickled daikon, and home made kimchi. Tossing it all together you get so many different delicious flavours in every mouthful. I basically licked the plate clean.

When it comes to Juicy by Sheree Joseph, my biases must be acknowledged. Sheree is one of my closest friends, I have probably sent and received more messages to her than most people alive, and I am literally a character in this book! But that doesn’t make this recommendation any less sincere. A memoir covering about 8 years of her life from her late 20s to her mid 30s, Sheree has written a book for anyone who’s life has veered off the path they expected it to go down. It’s emotionally raw and funny, and takes you from bedside in the ICU to a wedding in a luxe villa in Siciliy, to devastating zoom calls with fertility doctors in a tiny one bed by the beach during the pandemic, to a convertible with the top down cruising around San Francisco. If you’ve ever wondered what my group chats sound like, this book gives you a glimpse. It’s available for pre order before the 27 July release!

The EOFY sales got me good this year. I was browsing the Bed Threads website and become fixated on getting a new set of cotton percale sheets for our bed. We’ve got a few sets of well worn linen sheets which have served us well, but our only cotton sheets are like 10+ years old and looking a little dingy. I had a vision of turning our bed into a delicious little cloud. I settled for the reversible Espresso and Vanilla duvet set with piping (!) in sky blue, and a set of Vanilla sheets (I used the bedding bundle builder for a further discount). Sadly the sale is no longer, but the sheets are delightful, somehow crisp and cozy at the same time. In the same afternoon I also finally bit the bullet and bought a plush mattress topper. Cloud city ahoy!

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Looping back on a previous rec of the month - I think I solved my underwear dilemma. These bikini cut briefs by Bendon are lightweight, 100% cotton and the right price. So far they’re holding up in the wash too.

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For paid subscribers next week’s fast five includes a luxe vinegar, a Swedish feminist literature classic, my favourite Substack for finding new books, my latest trick for getting more fish into our diet and my hefty - yet perfect - kitchen chopping block.

See you next week! SoRo x