🍽️📚📻ERL February 2025

Elizapples, Tallow, L'engle, and a pipe crafting book.

Morgan and I periodically write a post on what we are eating, reading, and listening (ERL) to. In today’s world, it feels like the act of reading a physical book is a form of cultural protest. Am I being dramatic? Perhaps, not.

I remember seeing someone somewhere comment about the folks who post pictures of frying food in tallow. They claimed it was viture signaling. Well, this whole post might be one big virtue signal. To kick it off, I will post a picture of some fries being fried in tallow.

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🥩 Eating

Taylor

Fried some fries in beef tallow. They were amazing.

Morgan

Marshmallows. I have finally perfected the homemade Marshmallow. It took me a long time to get the consistency right but now I could do it with my eyes closed! We add these to hot chocolate, eat as a snack, or a decaf in the afternoon. They are made with beef gelatin and maple syrup so they are a great little pick me up!

I started trying to make these last year but I just never got the hang of it. This recipe is from mixing together recipes from Ashley Turner and Fox Meets Bear. I think getting the maple syrup really hot and making sure you mix your gelatin in your water at the beginning is super important.

Homemade Marshmallows

• 2 cups water, divided

• 6 tablespoons gelatin

• 2 cup maple syrup

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoon vanilla

• Arrowroot powder

Line a 9x13 pan with parchment and arrowroot powder. Put the gelatin and 1 cup of water into your mixer and stir to combine. Let it sit while you heat up the other cup of water and maple syrup over the stove. Bring to a boil. It needs to stay boiling on the stove for about 10 minutes. Then add the maple syrup and water to the gelatin in the mixer. Add vanilla and mix on high until it is white, fluffy, and triples in size. QUICKLY transfer to the baking dish. Top with arrowroot powder and let it set! Store in the fridge.

Beef Tallow French Fries. This is a labor of love. My kids like the “shoestring” style so that in itself takes some time. Then we fry them in small batches in our cast iron. They are best hot off the skillet, so most of them get eaten “mysteriously” here and there before we even make it to the table.

📚 Reading

Taylor

I have funneled almost all my social media attention to Substack and in doing so I have found a few writers that I really like.

Benjamin Bramble

and his

The Fox Holler Almanac

is a publication I’ve come to look forward to. His piece on the Eastern Red Cedar was one I found particularly interesting.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I no longer feel obligated to finish a book. I will keep multiple books on my bed side table and around the house. If I stop picking up a book for an extended period of time, it will eventually find its way back to the bookshelf. I haven’t always been this way and found myself reading a lot less. I felt a sense of guilt that came with not finishing a book I started. To avoid this guilt, I would avoid taking a risk on starting a book. Months would go by where I wasn’t reading anything. If this is you, let me remind you that we read for many reasons, but reading to finish a book isn’t one of them.

I’m currently reading through a couple Wendell Berry books (What are People For? & The Need to be Whole), a pipe crafting book, David Benner’s The Gift of Being Yourself (again for the third time), and I am a few pages from finishing Fischer’s The Great Wave. I’m enjoying them all!

Morgan

I recently purchased some books I have been eyeing. Here is my stack.

Walking In This World by Julia Camron - Julia is most famous for her book The Artist Way. Walking In This World is one of the books following the groundwork laid out there.

Edges of His Ways by Amy Carmichael- This is a little devotional. Amy Carmichael was recommended to me by a friend after telling her I love Madeline L’engles nonfiction. Carmichael made a huge impact on Ellizabeth Elliot. It is dated, and just a little a paragraph or page each day. So I am planning on reading this in the mornings.

Two-Part Invention by Madeline L’engle- Speaking of L’engle…Her Crosswicks series are my most favorite books of all time. This is the FINAL one from the series. I am a little sad, and also very excited to read it. It’s about her marriage. If you look up a description on amazon this is the first sentence. “A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.” I love how L’engle is always sharing little nuggets of truth throughout her story telling.

For The Time Being by Annie Dillard- I have been wanting to read Annie Dillard. I have her Writing Life book but have been wanting to read another. She is tackling big questions about the world, God, evil…and weaves a few different stories together along the way. I am a couple of chapters in and very intrigued.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I am reading this with some friends for a Classic Literary Society. We decided that we have not read enough good classics and that we are going to start. We started with Jane Austen…I had a hard time. All I remember about this Dickens book was that I read it sometime in early high school when I had zero interest in classical literature. I remember the creepy lady in her wedding dress…but that’s about it. I think these will be books that I start with listening and then pick up reading about halfway through.

📻 Listening

Taylor

Eliza Greenman inspires me. I’ve followed her for over a decade and she continues to stay on the edge of the knowledge frontier in her area. Her interview with

Andy

from the

The Poor Prole's Almanac: Restoration Agroecology

was a delight to listen to.

Morgan

I listened to a really good podcast on marriage with The Perrys and have been sharing it with lots of friends.

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