Asking the big questions
What candy could make you betray your family? Do you spend time on rural Azerbaijani cooking internet? Do Sleepy Girl Mocktails work? Where shall we drink tonight?
Hello readers!
Welcome back to another newsletter, hope your year has started off well! We’re getting back into the swing of things.
In some very exciting renovation news, and after the most amount of dust hammering and drilling through an old fireplace, we uncovered some beautiful tiles dating somewhere between 1910-1920.
The fireplace still needs a lot of work and repair, and I’m really hoping to restore the tiny tile damage in the corners, but this was a really exciting find and our first big look into what this house may have looked like in the early 1900’s.
This week we’re asking the big questions:
What is wrong with people?
What candy could make you betray your family?
Do you spend time on rural Azerbaijani cooking internet?
Where shall we drink tonight?
Do Sleepy Girl Mocktails work?
How would you like your Negroni?
What is wrong with people?
Starting off on a different note, Republican governors in 15 states rejected summer food money for kids. This week I read in the Washington Post that “Republican governors in 15 states are rejecting a new federally funded program to give food assistance to hungry children during the summer months, denying benefits to 8 million children across the country. The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.””
When I write about food, cocktails, and hospitality, it’s hard to ignore the ways access to food has been weaponized in political ‘debates’. And perhaps even more worryingly, the way this has been normalized as a ‘political’ issue rather than a moral one.
On a lighter note, because at drink seco we cover everything from the important to the silly.
What candy could make you betray your family?
This was the first line I saw when I opened Doug Mack’s substack Snack Stack. Wonderful.
He is, of course, talking about Turkish Delight and Narnia. When Edmund Pevensie encountered the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe he ignores all tales of ‘stranger danger’ and literally every other tale where eating food from strangers ends badly. (I’m thinking Snow White, Hansel and Gretal, the warnings of strangers offering candy to kids, or even good old Adam and Eve!). What can I say, there’s a long mythical lineage of culinary deceptions! Anyways, Edmund eats the White Witch’s cursed Turkish Delights, and when she tells him she’ll give him more if he brings his siblings to her, he accepts!
Naturally, the biggest takeaway as kids reading this story was: “Wow, that stuff must be delicious”. What a huge letdown that was. Turkish Delight was not to my expectations “worth trading family for” but chewy soap. Doug Mack reminded me, and twitter agrees.
I’d argue it’s even more deceptive than the chocolate chip cookies that turn out to be raisin cookies. It simply has no place looking that sweet and tasty.
In Doug’s substack he tries to crack the code. He investigates Cara Strickland’s article “Why Was Turkish Delight C.S. Lewis’s Guilty Pleasure?”, newspaper archives from 1950 (when The Chronicles of Narnia was published), and Turkish Delight’s reputation through the ages. It’s highly informative and entertaining, you can read more here.
Do you spend time on rural Azerbaijani cooking internet?
No? Well, you should.
A food corner of the internet I found recently is rural Azerbaijani cooking. Niche right?
Country Life Vlog is a look at rural life in Azerbaijan where Aziza and her family cook meals on open fires and share their life.
It reminds me of the surge of ‘slow tv’ we saw in Covid of trans-continental railway trips. Slow television has emerged as an intriguing cultural phenomenon over the last decade. It might as well be called finding inner peace in late capitalism.
Nathan Heller wrote said in the New Yorker that:
Slow TV seems slow in part because, unlike our standard experience of the world, it’s unshaped by interior consciousness. Instead of drowning out its viewers’ inner lives, it seems to want to be a backdrop that can give rise to their own reflections. A slow-TV program is like a great view you encounter on vacation: it’s always there, impervious, but it gains meaning and a story depending on what it conjures in your head.
The videos have no music or talking—just sounds of nature and the cooking (and their cute dogs in the background). it’s also beautifully shot, hats off to the faceless cameraman.
Delicious food and hard work, that’s what this is. It’s entrancing to watch them cook in the middle of the snow and fascinating to see another corner of the world.
With over 6 million subscribers and some videos with 30 million views they’re getting something right, and clearly tapping into a cultural need.
I feel like I’m slowly collecting slow-cooking youtube channels, last year I wrote about Pasta Grannies and other granny cooking content.
It is not lost on me that my desire to slow down or escape from the fast-paced consumerist society and mass media products is being met by a different media form and online consumption.
If you’re someone who finds it hard to slow down or spend too much time on your phone, maybe this is the perfect way to take a minute and vicariously change pace to the Azerbaijani countryside. It can’t change the world, but maybe it’ll help you take a deep breath and reframe your perspective.
Here are two of their videos from different seasons to start you off:
Best Eggplant Dish EVER - Turkish Stuffed Eggplant KARNIYARIK (filmed in summer with ducklings in greenery)
Cooking Campfire Pizza on The Sadj Grill, The Best Pizza You'll Ever Eat (filmed in winter and the middle of the snow)
I also love their dedication to calling every video/recipe “the best ever”, a type of confidence that transcends cultures for every family’s recipes.
Where shall we drink tonight?
Building off what I wrote about in the last newsletter and the research showing that “when Americans drink it’s at home” I was reminded of a zine that reframed the idea of a bar list.
Sometimes bars can’t top the feeling of opening a cold beer in the park on a summer night, a glass of wine in the cinema, or the first drink in the couch after a long day.
Australian magazine Veraison which explores the intersection of wine and culture released a zine titled 'Good Wine Bar Archive’ explores those unofficial drinking spots in Melbourne, Australia.
It reminds me a little of psychogeography- alternative mapping through personal connections, habit, and meaning. The classic example would be the Situationists in Europe in the 1950s. However, a modern example would be The Loneliness Map by Ingrid Burrington a precise example of psychogeography, mapping out the missed connections of lonely individuals in the city (as found on Craigslist).
Veraison’s Good Wine Bar Archive captures some of the magic drinking spots around Melbourne ranging from bars to parks, to living rooms. I love it.
Do Sleepy Girl Mocktails work?
I saw this piece in the NYT this week about ‘sleepy girl mocktails’ going viral on tiktok. In dry/damp January when all the New Years resolutions of cutting back on alcohol and getting to sleep at a reasonable hour are still fresh in your mind, coupled with the enduring ‘girl’ trends, the Sleepy Girl Mocktail was a recipe for success.
The ‘mocktail’ (which I already take issue with this word) is made of tart cherry juice and magnesium powder.
“Tart cherries are fairly rich in melatonin, which, in theory, might mean they can induce sleep, said Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University. But they contain only a small fraction of the amount of melatonin in pills and gummies sold to help people sleep: One study found that 100 grams of tart cherry juice contained around .01 percent of a milligram of melatonin.”
The same goes for magnesium, which has inconclusive data about its sleep-improving qualities.
While it might not be the magic sleep potion it’s presented as, Dr. Prather interviewed in the piece reinforces that the combination of cutting back alcohol, establishing bedtime rituals, and believing it will work is very powerful and probably will help you sleep better.
This hit home for a girl who quit drinking over 150 days ago and has been taking magnesium pills nightly for three months. I can’t vouch for the ‘mocktail’ but I can say that I sleep better than I did without the magnesium and before I quit drinking. Go figure.
How would you like your Negroni?
This week I’ve got a cocktail recipe for you that works for whatever January you’re having, dry, damp, or doused! I would edit the classic recipe to 1 oz of Gin, rather than it’s suggestion of 1.5, but that just gives you a 4th option!
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading, I’ll leave you with this New Yorker cartoon because I’m assuming you’re all back in the office…
Carlie xx
I was wondering when they were going to pay the "cheese tax"... lol