Soupy summer orzo, 100 best books, and how to help someone through griefCaroline Chambers selects her top Substack readsThis week’s Substack Reads is guest edited by Caroline Chambers, author of the cookbooks Just Married and the upcoming What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, based on her popular Substack of the same name. Caroline writes What To Cook from her Carmel Valley, California, home, where she lives with her husband and three sons, ages 5, 3, and 1. Some of her most popular recipes are salmon crunch bowls, the Thai chicken chop, and chicken chili verde burgers. If you dig Caroline’s selections here, be sure to subscribe to her on Substack. I’ve never been an early adopter of anything. My now-husband informed me that it was “kind of embarrassing” that I still had an AOL email address in 2010, I finally started working on my Instagram presence a decade after it became cool, and I still can’t figure out TikTok. But somehow I wound up as one of the first people using Substack as a paid platform to share my recipes, in 2020. In 2019 I wrote a proposal for a cookbook titled What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, where every recipe would comprise a complete meal, dirty as few dishes as possible, take under an hour to cook, and use only ingredients that can be easily found at a standard grocery store. I was quickly rejected by every major publisher because I didn’t have enough reach, aka didn’t have enough Instagram followers. At the time, I was working as a freelance recipe developer, mostly using my Instagram simply as a portfolio to share my work, not at all using it to grow a community. But when the pandemic hit, my freelance work went poof overnight—and I resolved to never have anyone tell me that I couldn’t have something I wanted because I didn’t have enough reach ever again. I spent many months cranking out free recipes and content on Instagram, growing a loyal following who trusted me and my recipes. Somewhere along the way, I listened to a podcast that preached that having and maintaining an email list is the most important thing that an online creator can do. TikTok could finally get banned, the IG algorithm could change for the millionth time, but you always own your subscriber list, and you know that without fail, your newsletter will show up, in chronological order, in your people’s inboxes. So I started putting a lot of effort into a weekly newsletter. Eventually I started sharing photos and videos of a recipe on Instagram but sharing the recipe itself exclusively via my newsletter, which led to tons of new subscribers every time. And then one day, I heard about Substack. Lots of food people were turning to Patreon in those days, but I knew that my audience (busy people who like good food but never feel like cooking!) would have no patience for another app. But an email with a really easy recipe, showing up right in their inbox? Consistently, every single Saturday, at the exact same time? That, they could handle. I moved my newsletter over to Substack in November 2020 and flipped on the paid feature in December. Back then, there were no paywalls, there were no Notes or private chats … everything was pretty spartan, but it got the job done. I thought having a few hundred paid subscribers would be an incredible side hustle, a nice way to have income security as a freelance recipe developer; 20,000 paid subscribers later, “having a Substack” is my main career focus, and it landed me that cookbook deal that no one would give me back in 2020. What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, the book, comes out on August 13. I’m really proud to be a part of this community. I’ve loved getting to know so many members of the Substack team, both at cocktail parties and via my incessant “but what if you added this feature?” emails. But mostly I’ve loved, loved, loved getting to know other writers here. I’ve never been a part of the cool L.A. or NYC food person scene. I’m just a mom writing a newsletter from the chaos of her kitchen table. But as a part of this community, I can shoot Mark Bittman an email to ask him to fill in while I’m on maternity leave. I can get to know my longtime blog crushes Joanna Goddard, Jenny Rosenstrach, and Deb Perelman well enough to ask them to write blurbs that will live on the cover of my cookbook. I love being here. There are so many Substacks that I adore. Here are a few of them. FICTION“After I had my second son—a short 18 months after having my first son—I experienced a brief but overwhelming ‘Who the fuck am I anymore?!’ bout of postpartum not-quite-depression. Recognizing this, and not wanting to slip back into the definitely-postpartum depression I had experienced after having my first son, my husband and I put some measures in place. Every Saturday: he encouraged me to do whatever made me feel inspired, happy, and ‘like myself’ while he solo-dadded. Go try a new restaurant, hike with a friend, drive down to Big Sur to listen to live music, whatever. One of the first things I did was head to my local bookstore to grab a new book, and that new book was Emma Straub’s All Adults Here. It took me a few Saturdays to finish it, and during those hours, I was transported out of my overworked, over-touched, over-stimulated working-mom body and into the lives of the Strick family, who were way more dysfunctional than I was, and it somehow made me feel like everything was going to be OK. I adore Emma’s writing, and was so pleased to find her on Substack. I loved this post about not being embarrassed about past versions of ourselves because I am often very, very embarrassed by ‘all the other people I have been,’ and Emma’s beautiful words give my past transgressions such a nice PR spin.”I loved smoking—Emma Straub in Emma Straub's Newsletter
FOOD“Clare is the owner of Stissing House and co-owner of King, two of Hudson and NYC’s coolest restaurants, but, more importantly, she’s a fellow three-boy mom. I had, full disclosure, never heard of her restaurants before discovering her Substack, but I visited King on a recent visit to New York and was blown away by the way that her team manages to turn even the simplest dish into something you can’t stop talking about. (The panisse!) Have you ever wondered what really fancy, cool chefs actually cook at home, on a normal Tuesday? The Best Bit takes you inside Clare’s home for the real-deal, no-fuss recipes she cooks when she’s not at the restaurant.”Soupy summer orzo—Clare de Boer in The Best Bit
RELATIONSHIPS“You know when you run into a really good friend at the grocery store or at school pickup when you’re having a really rotten day, and they take one look at you and instantly know something’s wrong, and exactly what to say? Receiving a new Platonic Love email in my inbox is the digital embodiment of that feeling of being so cared for and understood by a friend. Every time one of the subject lines pops up in my inbox, I’m like, ‘Wow, I needed this!’Aliza Sir and Aja Frost have posts about how to be a better friend, how to rock at conversation and get out of the ‘So, how do you like living in Boston?’ conversation slump, and how to be a great business partner, and their regular feature ‘Links we sent our friends’ feels just like … well, getting a text from a friend with a great new rec. I’ve quoted this line many times from their post about how to help a friend through grief: ‘Walk to a wedding, run to a funeral.’ Sprint toward your loved ones’ suffering—they need us a lot more when they’re suffering than when they’re joyous.”How to help a friend through grief—Aliza Sir and Aja Frost in platonic love
DINING OUT“Khushbu is the former restaurant editor from Food & Wine, and her newsletter provides vibrant, fun, relaxed, and informative eating guides for cities. She also interviews cool people who live in, or travel often to, certain places to get their top restaurant picks. I love it. Reading it feels like calling your cool friend who always knows the best restaurants, and having a nice long chat about all the delicious things they’ve eaten lately.”Sohla El-Waylly’s essential NYC restaurants
LIFESTYLE“The thing that I love most about—and learn the most from—Big Salad, the Substack by Cup of Jo’s Joanna Goddard, is the absolutely brilliant clickbaity (but not in a bad way!) post titles:‘Ilana Glazer told me the sexiest move to try in bed (gahh!)’ |
|
|
|
Inspired by the writers featured in Substack Reads? Writing on your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and this week’s edition was guest edited by Caroline Chambers of What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking. Substack Reads is edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment