Jeremy Cherfas

Eat This Newsletter 286: Cravings

Cruising the internet highway seeking nutritious alternatives to slop.

This week, unaffordable healthy diets, undesirable healthy diets, truck stops, forest gardens, and gluten.

buttondown.com/jeremyche…

Latest Episode: The Spice Bag

In 2008, staff at a Chinese takeaway in Dublin cooked themselves up a special treat after hours. One thing led to another and today you can find something similar not only across Ireland but as far afield as New Zealand.

eatthispodcast.com/spice-bag

I am totally in awe of the skills on (partial) display.

Obvious, when you think about it, that Brad Delong on how Substack and its writers might survive enshittification is paid only content. It would require “the continued maintenance by SubStack of exit paths, so that the credible threat of exit keeps platform incentives aligned with user success.” How’s that going, I wonder.

Eat This Newsletter 285: Antsy

Life’s little certainties: birth, death, and school lunch money.

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• On foot* 41.8812, 12.4409* 10 October 2025* 423.96 ppm CO2* OpenStreetMapFine walk in the late afternoon sunshine. I knew I had to do this one as the closest I could easily get would be the bridge between the two sides of the big park.

These are some good reminders of how to keep going when (almost) all you have is intrinsic rewards. “Push yourself out” is the tricky one for me because to me it sounds like “promote yourself,” which I find hard, rather than “keep doing what you like,” which I do, and which is No. 1.

Revisiting Historical Recipes

Even if you manage to make an old recipe, you’re left with an insoluble mystery: how should it taste? If you’re in search of some notion of authenticity, that is the ultimate stumbling block. There is just no way to know. Or is there?

eatthispodcast.com/past-tast…

Yes: Very happy to be able to get to IWC Berlin in person

Jo’s response to All That Spam is more constructive and creative than anything I’ve ever contemplated.

In keeping with one of the newsletter items, can’t wait to see what Tip-Top Tariffs makes of the UK’s latest crop breakthrough, assuming they eventually get enough to export.

www.bbc.com/news/arti…

Eat This Newsletter 284: Marketing

Food bank economics, Pasta Grannies behaving badly, white olives, a eulogy for “foodie”, tariffs on “English” tea, and some food-flavoured Ig Nobel prizes.

buttondown.com/jeremyche…

Just got a warning that TimeMachine had not done a backup for 46 days. Seems like quite a delay to warn me that something is wrong.

The Tragedy and Comedy of Don Quixote (https://lithub.com/the-tragedy-and-comedy-of-don-quixote?utm_source=Klaviyo=campaign…) , a recent article in Literary Hub, adds to my admiration for Laurent Binet’s Civilisations.

Started getting some interesting spam this week, in which an AI has read the show notes and responded appropriately and vacuously. So I’m deleting the website and email and posting it. Is that bad?

An amazing site (linked by Andy Baio) that tracks parking officers in San Francisco in real time. Two questions. Will the city shut it down? No Are the cops tracking the leaderboard? Officer 0440 needs to shape up, clearly.

Eat This Podcast: The Miracle of Salt

Talking to Naomi Duguid about her book The Miracle of Salt and we managed to avoid the whole pink salt diet trick nonsense. So should you. Listen at eatthispodcast.com/salt