10 things of interest #15

hot honey, autumn wardrobes and lots of personal essays

1. This Hot Honey is a must-have. My mom and I stumbled upon it in the fancy food section of a garden centre (it’s one of those places with the bougie salad dressing that costs £10 and is made by a small business so you feel inclined to support it). I’ve been putting the hot honey on everything: cheese and

   crackers, chicken, sandwiches.

2. I know nothing of beekeeping except for the delightful stories that

   Will Cooper
   shares. In “A metaphorical postcard #2,” he describes his bees as “crotchety and bad-tempered” as they are “unable to settle on a monarch, testy when opened, and unruly, so much so that they follow you out through the orchard when you’ve packed up the kit.”

3. Rosana S
   recounts her date with Stuart, a history-centric reader with a bad back. Her comedic writing follows a three-part series of dating in your thirties.

4. In “Youth is not always the answer,”

   Ava Williams
   reflects on the pressures of achieving success at a young age and challenges the glorification of “overnight success.” Ava acknowledges her failures and small victories, ultimately redefining success on her terms, finding value in perseverance and personal growth rather than adhering to society’s rigid timelines.

5. Katie shares BLT’s new cousin in the Sunday Stack: the doublePLT: peach, prosciutto, lettuce, tomato. It’s on my list of sandwiches to try.

6. If you’re like me and go through phases when you feel spendy, then Anna Newton from The Wardrobe Edit offers alternative ways to scratch that itch. It doesn’t help that Autumn is around the corner and new styles are going to be hitting the racks very soon.

7. Angelina Hazzouri
   ’s love letter about her purple Jeep is a wonderfully personal and nostalgic memoir about her car. It’s a repository of memories, a symbol of her coming-of-age, and a connection to her past self.

8. In “Drowning with Envy,”

   Haley Nahman
   addresses a reader’s struggle with intense envy, which I think we can all relate to. She writes, “Feelings observed are distinct from feelings felt…This gap between our observations and our experiences is unclosable. There is, on the one hand, our idea of things, and on the other, the reality of them.”

9. In “Too Much Cooking,”

   Cat Sarsfield
   reflects on feelings of loneliness and the desire for a relationship while contemplating baking brownies. Feeling hormonal, she shares her hunger for intimacy and “there is something different about a lover cooking for you…. the mundane things that people in love say are boring and routine, but actually sound really quite excellent.”

10. In response to Emily Sunberg’s viral Substack essay, I appreciated

    alex brown
    defence about writing nothing. This quote sums up quite perfectly my thoughts: “If someone is making money off of Substack, it’s because individuals are choosing to engage with their work. I understand the natural frustration that might arise from watching someone do what you do with not even half the same perceived effort, but your decision to make a career out of writing does not give you the right to talk down or belittle the work of writers who do not.”

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