28: Food, Honesty and Christmas Dinner

I love watching food travel shows. They're obviously ideal for a bit of escapism, and the best ones teach you something about local food and drink culture alongside gratuitous shots of bountiful market stalls. Unfortunately they're inherently problematic too; you can't show everything about a particular country, or even a region within an hour or so. Something's going to be simplified, something's going to be missed, something's going to be sensationalised for effect. There are some great ones, and some terrible ones, and I'll watch them all, hearing over and over again about the wonder of food in context, looking at flights on Skyscanner as the presenters crack crab claws by the glittering ocean.Over Christmas there will be hundreds of re-runs of fake-kitchen how-to cookery shows and they'll encourage me to write out shopping lists of ingredients I'll never buy. There'll be thinly-premised travelogues stringing together cheese eating and wine drinking: I'll watch them too. Because deep inside the cold mashed potato structure of every perfectly-lit food programme is a sliver of truth. When people travel and eat food, those are the best times. Things happen to them. They say stuff they believe is meaningful with a mouth full of spaghetti. They get emotional about dips. They hold a bottle of beer, enlightened by knowledge they've received telepathically, transmitted to them by a bowl of broth. I relate. Hard.Whenever I see a remotely poignant moment of honesty on a TV show, it's usually when food, and a tiny bit of exhaustion, is involved. Speaking of which, I can't wait for Christmas dinner.Happy Christmas!I hope you all have a wonderful and restful Christmas week and don't get stuck behind too many tenner-wavers at the bar! I'd like to say that I'll definitely be writing up a newsletter for next week, but I don't for definite that I'll be able to, or want to for that matter. If you enjoy reading this and you want to buy me a Christmas drink (I'm on the sauce as we speak, actually) you can do so via www.ko-fi.com/shinybiscuit, or find me at The New Inn. Thank you very much for reading this newsletter and supporting my work, and see you in the New Year (probably)!Other Stuff

• Travel down to the very bottom of the sea. I lost a lot of time on this. It's incredible. And so very, very spooky in a really real way.

• Do you like learning in-depth things about foods you take for granted? Me too! Everything we know about chocolate chips is wrong.

• No, Eoghan doesn't pay me to put his pieces in this newsletter but he seems to write one every week and I always like them. So here is his latest, where he takes us all on his Trans-Siberian Express honeymoon. Don't worry, it's not awkward. You don't have to sit next to them.

• Look at these amazing procrastination gingerbread houses.

• Cheese triangle labels from the 40s and 50s! That's it!

• Do you like beer writing? Then here's a collection to get stuck into. Boak & Bailey's own "best of 2019".

• I woke up nervous and scared about going to work on Tuesday. It happens fairly often, even though I quit my job almost two years ago. This piece on burnout couldn't have come at a better time.

• A lovely piece about those wooden duck ornaments, you know the ones, by Caroline O'Donoghue.

• I had no idea about the urban folklore around this ridiculous, potentially incestuous advert but this article about it is.... *kisses fingers*

• Soleil Ho and Ruth Reichel -- two of my biggest heroes -- talking about the changing role of food writers.

• A great piece by The Cider Critic James Finch about where cider is now and where trends might be taking it.

• Super interesting insights into the human brain, via the super interesting topic of Arctic exploration.

• There is nothing on the internet more soothing than an official website for a nature reserve. Walthamstow Marshes is a perfect example.

• The incredible, sad story of Letizia Battaglia -- the woman who photographed the mafia and lived.

• "...stories that cover the emergence of new culinary trends in gentrifying cities without acknowledging the traditions that are already in place do more than just erase these stories from the public narrative. They tell people who are already being displaced that their experience never mattered in the first place." -- Mariana Viera has lived in North Hollywood all her life and she wants her panaderías back.

My Stuff

• All of us Original Gravity folks were asked for our best beer memories of 2019. I wrote something super nice about mine and Tom's wedding, and it also includes bonus witch marks.

• Fancy a lol? I found an interview video a student made of me while I was on an Alumni panel thing at my old uni.

• Maybe this is a long shot but if you're at an Accrington game in the near future, you can pick up a copy of the latest edition of Raw Milk. I've written about beer for it and I'm super proud to be involved!

• Reminder that I'm making zines -- email me at [email protected] with your full name to reserve a copy.

"My father's collection of 1940s and 50s cheese labels"by Julian Tysoe