Something Good #2
Hello to friends both old and new!
I celebrated my 30th birthday this week, marked by an email with the 30 things I learned that made me who I am today.
While those are all true, there's been another side.
This past year has had me thinking about traditions, family, and our connection to the people who have come before us and the ones who will come after.
In Bulgaria, your middle name comes from your father and is possessive. It translates to Nina "Belonging to Ianko [my father]" Iordanova.
When I was a teenager, I intentionally stripped my middle name from all my legal documents. Every time I needed to update something - a health card, a driver's license, a passport - I would use the one piece of ID I had with just my first and last name as a reference. And just like that, my middle name would disappear.
I didn't want to "belong to my father". I was embracing feminism, I wanted to be my own person, forge my own future. And the first step was to reject all the things that tied me to a past and culture that felt out of place.
Now, nearly 15 years later, I regret that decision.
There's so much richness and history that's gotten me here. And the pursuit of a boundless, open future doesn't feel very meaningful without an equally deep connection to the past.
So I'm trying to find that now.
I'm practicing my written Bulgarian over WhatsApp chats with my grandma.
I'm learning Bulgarian humour through Sunday calls with my grandpa, where we exchange jokes.
I've been writing down and preparing traditional recipes with my mother.
And I'm actively working on reinstating my middle name.
This caught my eye
🛌 7 ways to make your bed look fluffy. I tried a dozen different ways to make my bed look like the ones in magazines, then gave up and asked the internet. There's a whole treasure trove of secrets here, from how to pick the right pillows, how to arrange your throw blanket, and what actually makes for a puffy-looking duvet (without spending $400).
🔊 What's the difference between white, brown, and pink noise? A 2-minute video describing the difference between all the different colours of sound. If you've been looking for some background noise to fall asleep to, this is a great intro to see which colours you want to experiment with!
🚀 Bar soap in a tube and other free startup ideas! Half kidding half not, these are Max Nusseunbaum's free startup ideas, yours for the taking! Go forth and make billions, or at least millions! Or even dozens of dollars! Maybe even LOSE money, WHO KNOWS!!
🏝 Chill poolside music from Poolside.fm. If you ever wanted to travel back in time, I've found the portal. It comes with a strong dose of nostalgia, like GTA Vice City meets 8 bit arcade games. Go for the music, stay for the easy vibes.
🎧 A funky, feel-good Spotify playlist by me! I'm a big music n00b so you can't really trust me, but these are the songs that I've been listening to for the past week, nonstop. Over and over. So, much like It Follows, I needed to share this with you so you can start listening to it and I can move on to other things.
👇 "When Love Arrives" by Sara Kay and Phil Kaye. This gets me every time. A story of love from childhood to adulthood, told by two awesome slam poets. I love the interplay of their two voices and sense of humour. It's bittersweet and regular sweet and hopeful all at once.
The good people answered
I asked for Masala Chai recipes and the Good People answered!!
The spices will vary by recipe, but come prepared with loose leaf black tea, a little pot, and a tea strainer to make this happen!
☕️ The Sam Special™️ by Sam B. (🇮🇳)
Sam's recipe doesn't call for many complex spices, so it's easy for beginners like me to try. It's on the lighter side, using water as the base, and comes together really quickly. I love how fragrant it is, that it's flavourful without being too intense, and that the ginger and cardamom really have space to come through.
☕️ Doodh patti by Osman A. (🇵🇰)
This is SO creamy! It's the only recipe here that uses milk (I used soy) as the base, so it's thick and rich and smells incredible. When I was making it, my whole house smelled like a Cinnabon store in the best possible way. You throw in a whole cinnamon stick and a handful of other spices, then watch (and smell) as the milk starts to thicken and caramelize. This is almost a dessert!
☕️ Masala Chai by Nihaarika K. (🇮🇳)
While it calls for a variety of masalas (spices), Nihaarika's recipe leaves you room to play - you can omit many of them and adjust the quantities to find the sweet spot for you. It's complex, fragrant, and strong! I used the high-heat method the first time I tried it, and am excited to try again for longer on a low-heat simmer. Nihaarika also gives a way to make this ahead of time once you've nailed your ratios, so you can have delicious chai in half the time 😉
Thank you to Sam, Osman, and Nihaarika for sharing your knowledge and traditions with me!!
Things my mother taught me
My mother has never purchased containers. There just hasn't been a need. Whenever we finished a jar of something (jam, pickles, roasted red peppers, coconut oil, various spreads, etc.) she would wash it and tuck it away somewhere.
Then, when the time came, they would become...
🥘 containers for lunch
❄️ storage for freezing food
🌱 pots for planting seeds or propagating cuttings
🧂 spice holders
I used to be so embarrassed by it.
I would see my friends' kitchens and everyone had colour-coded tupperware of all shapes and sizes, spice racks that came in a set so that everything matched, ziplock bags in the freezer with the date written on them... In our house, we used mismatched jars for everything and had dozens more in the basement, ready to go at a moment's notice.
It felt like it screamed for all the world to see that we were poor and immigrants and didn't understand how things worked around here.
And now, it's one of the sweetest things in the world to me. That you can take something and repurpose it so that it doesn't create more waste, but becomes useful to you. Now I keep all my spices in these mismatched jars.
A big old jar that once housed kosher pickles now stores dried basil from my mother's garden.
Old jam and pepper jars are now full of cumin and curry powder, and I recognize them by their lids.
A tiny bottle of buttermilk from Good Food is where I keep my red pepper flakes.
And whenever I cook, I think of home and the traditions that brought me here.
Closing thoughts
“The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?”
-- Stephen King, The Gunslinger
If you're enjoying this newsletter, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend! 💌
Thanks for reading and I'll see you in two weeks! 👋