Issue #10: Lessons learned doing a masters degree at 30, and the only brownie recipe you'll ever need
Whipping the sugar & eggs together makes all the difference.
A weekly dose of tidbits, spanning food, recipes, health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, destinations, books, advice, ideas and musings. Let’s spark conversation.
to read
Why Calories don’t Count by Giles Yeo. If you don’t want to read the whole book, then watch this lecture. He explains, really simply, why calorie counting fails as a weight loss tool (there are so many reasons!). One of my favourite reasons is the awesome sounding food matrix, and I love the way he explains it. Take a corn on the cob, and finely milled cornmeal. If you eat 100 calories of corn on the cob, your body has to work to breakdown the corn kernels, to extract energy. If you eat 100 calories of cornmeal, your body doesn’t have to do as much work to break it down. It’s already extremely broken down. We extract and absorb a lot more energy from the processed cornmeal, than the corn on the cob, despite eating the same number of calories. So, if you see a really high number of calories next to a nutritious, whole food option, do not be alarmed. The number of accessible calories is most likely a hell of a lot lower than that of the highly processed alternative.
to listen
Listen to this podcast, explaining the importance and benefits of skeletal muscle that goes far beyond the aesthetic. It used to be thought that skeletal muscle only really made us look good, and protected our bones. But it also prolongs the health of our brains, maintains our metabolism, keeps us sensitive to insulin - all even more good reasons to start/keep resistance training.
to make
It’s flu season. I was smote down recently, and this little hack for a homemade tonic really helped and soothed. Simply add orange flesh (use a knife to top and tail the orange, then slice off the skin, going around the fruit), lemon flesh (ditto), grapefruit flesh (if you have one lying around - I happened to) a big knob of ginger, a couple of teaspoons of turmeric, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a pinch of black pepper, into a blender or nutribullet. Blend until smooth. Taste it - could it take more heat? Add more black pepper - it activates the turmeric, and helps us absorb it better. Does it need to be more sweet, or sour? Add either more orange or more lemon. When you’re happy with the taste, pour the mixture into ice cube trays - I love the silicone ones because the cubes plop out so pleasingly. I use ones like these, because the galley is full of silicone moulds - the previous chefs were clearly very into their patisserie. When you want your tonic, simply plop an ice cube into a big mug, cover with boiling water, add honey to taste, and feel instantly better.
I first tried this brownie on a beautiful hike in the French countryside, with my wonderful friends, Lizzie & Christophe. Lizzie is an accomplished chef, and Christophe is a world class butler and passionate cook, so I was in very good hands. We’d already enjoyed a perfectly wobbly quiche Lorraine, with a fennel, olive, mint & seed salad (putting my bread-centric picnics to shame) and the brownie was simply the pièce de résistance, after all that walking.
I immediately asked for the recipe, and Lizzie generously obliged. The secret to the success of this brownie, and its superiority over all others, is that the sugar is whisked into the eggs, so much so that the sugar fully dissolves, and the mixture goes really light and airy. It truly does make all the difference to the end consistency. The resulting brownie is, quite simply, perfection.
Ingredients
185g butter
185g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
3 eggs
240g caster sugar
90g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
100g white chocolate, chopped
100g milk chocolate, chopped
100g raspberries*
*I always use frozen raspberries, because they’re cheaper. I think fresh raspberries would be a waste here.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line a square 8x8 inch baking tray with greaseproof paper.
- Melt the butter and dark chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat, stirring until smooth. When it’s completely melted and smooth, take it off the heat and leave to one side to cool a little.
- To properly whisk the sugar into the eggs, you can either use a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, or a large mixing bowl with an electric whisk. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until the mixture is pale, silky smooth and has significantly increased in volume - about 4-5 minutes of whisking.
- Fold through the melted chocolate and butter mixture. Sift over the flour and cocoa powder, and fold through. Add the chopped chocolate and raspberries, and fold through. Pour into the tin, and bake for 25 minutes.
I find the easiest way to cut brownies is after they’ve been refrigerated for a few hours. If you want really neat slices, use a long knife, and have a big jug of hot water next to you, so you can clean the knife between each slice.
I folded crushed meringue through the brownie mixture (I had loads of meringue leftover, which I made due to having loads of egg whites leftover) and rippled a simple cream cheese/caster sugar/egg cheesecake mixture on top. Et voila, the raspberry meringue cheesecake brownie.
you could fold crushed pretzels through the brownie mixture, and ripple peanut butter on top. The peanut butter pretzel brownie.
fold through crushed Oreos/M&Ms/branded chocolate of choice.
sandwich Lotus Biscoff spread in the middle of the brownie mixture, and top with Lotus biscuits. The speculoos brownie.
Every single time I bake brownies, there’s one person who acts a bit shifty around me (I can sense the question coming) and they eventually ask, ‘Is it supposed to be, like, raw in the middle?’ Honestly, it happens every time. I personally love nothing more than a super squidgy brownie, so if you do too, only bake it for 25 minutes, max. As soon as the top looks crackled, you can take it out. It will keep cooking, and even if it’s super raw, it will solidify when it cools. Are you with me? Do you love a brownie that’s verging on raw? What’s the best brownie you’ve ever had?
In 2022, it felt like I had the mother of all crises. I was on an island in the Grenadines (I know how this sounds. I was incredibly lucky to be there), working in a job that, in theory, was great and was everything I had ever wanted, but I was struck with this insane foreboding that I could not continue on this trajectory. All of a sudden, I was intensely aware that I could not, and did not want to, do this job anymore. What had been so for me in past years, simply was not for me anymore. It was almost like the job had given me the ick, and something we all know is, there is no going back from the ick. I am oversimplifying - there were, of course, real reasons for the impetus to change. I see children in my crystal ball future. I want to leave some kind of tangible effect on the world. My ‘work’ suddenly felt meaningless - I started from zero every day, busted a gut, rushed through the day, and my ‘work’ would disappear in the space of 20 minutes of munching. It felt fruitless. I didn’t have the space or freedom to do anything with intention - I always felt ‘up against it’, and that I was chasing my tail. This wasn’t the job’s fault - it was me. I no longer fit. I needed to make a change.
I remember sobbing on the phone to my parents whilst pacing up and down the dock. I was honestly, an absolute mess. I wanted a ‘normal’ job. I wanted to be at home, to be near friends, family, to not have to pump out food all day long from a stainless steel kitchen. I remember saying to my dad, should I go back to university, and study nutrition? At this point, I had not thought it through. I was clutching at straws. But he immediately thought it was a good idea, and hearing him say it back to me, in his reassuring, steady way, made it turn from an idea, to an actual solid thing, that might actually happen.
Subsequent events lead to a full time, year long MSc in Nutrition at King’s College London. I went back last week to graduate. Spending those days in London gave me the chance to reflect on the whole shebang. These are some of the lessons I learned along the way.
Caveat: I’ve tried my hardest to make these a) not too clichéed, b) not too cynical and c) not too nauseating.
It’s never too late to follow a dream/passion/do what you love.
As an 18 year old undergrad, there was a flat in my building for ‘mature students’. The average age was probably 26. They were worldly, experienced, cool. They drank red wine, we drank rosé. They had purpose, we were coasting.
Choosing to do something later in life usually means you’ve put more thought into it. Had I done a masters straight after my undergrad, I would have come out of it just as confused and rudderless as I’d been going into it. At King’s, I was amazed by how many people had decided to do this after long and successful careers elsewhere. There was a doctor, who wanted to better help her patients going through menopause. There was a women’s health physiotherapist. An interior designer. A professional hockey player. People with great jobs, who decided to make a change, and do something positive.Birds of a feather flock together.
The best thing to have come from this year are friendships with people that I feel lucky to have met. It is rare to meet people who inspire you, who you learn from (hopefully mutually), and who enrich your life. I’d felt jaded and disheartened in my past job, all too often surrounded by people with completely different values. I am a porous rock, highly sensitive, and the whole ‘you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,’ rings incredibly true for me. I’m not saying that I want to live in an echo chamber, or surround myself with carbon copies of myself, but who you spend time with has a profound effect on your entire wellbeing. I got to spend a year with curious, kind, deep thinking people, and it made the biggest improvement to my sense of belonging. The disquiet I’d felt previously was gone.Forget, ‘You are what you eat’. Instead, ‘Everything you eat ends up coursing through your veins and then gets stored in your liver.’
A year of studying nutrition left me with a deep(er) understanding of the nuts and bolts of things. What actually happens to the food we eat? Where does it go? What even are nutrients? Where do they go? What do they do for us? It was entirely fascinating, felt relevant to everything, and so entirely fundamental that I really wish it was taught in schools, alongside the different phases of the moon and how to grow cress.It’s not what you know, it’s how you prove it.
One of the biggest thoughts I was left with, was, how incredibly hard it is to actually prove anything in nutritional science. Drug trials have placebos. The real drug is given to one group. An identical pill, without the active ingredient, is given to the other. We can see, as clear as day, the effect the drug has. In nutrition, an identical placebo doesn’t exist. I worked on a trial that gave one group almonds, and the other group pretzels. Pretzels! You can’t give one group almonds, and the other group almonds-but-without-all-the-things-that-make-them-almonds.
Another thing that makes observations difficult are that confounding factors are plentiful. Lots of different behaviours are linked to good health outcomes. Eating quinoa is linked to good health outcomes. But people who eat quinoa are more likely to be many other things. They could be well educated, have a high income, and engage with other healthy behaviours, like exercise, good sleep, cook all their food from scratch, and eat other healthy foods. So, is it the quinoa that makes them live long and well? Or is it one of the gazillion confounding factors? How do we tease out the effect of the quinoa?Never stop learning.
There are many, many things in life that do not interest me. Annoyingly, with the more practical, useful things, like how to change a tire, how to do simple DIY, or fix simple things - I am inept. When people start talking about cars, the economy, football teams, politics; my brain switches off and the topics just ricochet off the surface of my skull. But talk to me about the human body, maternal nutrition, pregnancy, childhood nutrition, anything to do with women’s health, and I am all ears. A year of doing a deeper dive into the things I find fascinating was so great, that I am full on nurturing a dream to do a PHD one day (in the distant, distant future). It would be beyond cool to play a small part in research that furthers knowledge around, say, nutrition and fertility.
And in the meantime, if you have a nutrition itch you want to scratch, here are some of my favourite ways to keep in the know.
MyNutriWeb is an incredible free resource, full of webinars that count towards your CPD hours. They get the biggest names in to speak about research in their field. It is honestly such a good education platform, I can’t quite believe it’s free. A few podcasts that get great guests on are Zoe, The Food Medic, Feel Better Live More. IHCAN is a monthly magazine that delivers the latest in nutrition research, and is kind of anti-modern medicine, in a good way. Gut by Giulia Enders gives a great overview of the entire digestive tract, in a simple, easy to understand way.