This post takes a different tact to usual, and will be a slightly self-indulgent piece (ok so maybe not too different) looking at this newsletter’s plans for the next year and mixing that with a peppering of motivational life-guru type inspiration. So if you love self-help, or Sam’s Good Stuff, or just need to procrastinate from doing something more important, then by all means stick around.

Sam’s Good Stuff in 2023

The key tenants of Sam’s Good Stuff global domination plan in 2023 are as follows:

Content of posts will be increasingly tenuously linked to the recipes, as frankly I’m not that interested in writing about particular foods (which is problematic for a food writer).
However since my thoughts mostly end up in food, there will still be a lot on the subject and posts will still contain a recipe.
I will also be raising another baby and should have a thing or two to say about the world of parenting.

Is That It?

Ok now we’re ready for the big change.

Sam’s Good Stuff in 2023 will be recommitting to video content.

Diversification is king my friends, and I feel video is actually a better format for specifically cookery related content. Plus I can show off my winning smile.

Original Sam’s Good Stuff vide content from 2020

And… A Surprise

There will also be a surprise technological slant. However it’s in development, and - well - it’s a surprise.

Sam The Life Guru

Let’s get into the motivations; the why, the raison d’etre, the je ne sais quoi (probably not the right term) that has led to this revamped effort and what I hope to become of it all.

1. Getting Good At Something

There’s the old adage “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” however I’d take this even one step further; “don’t let good be the enemy of doing anything.”

A study from the pedagogical world tells of a cohort of ceramics students split into two groups. The first is told that they will be graded only on the quantity of pots they make, and the second only the quality.

The grading was simple; the first group would get an A if they could produce 50 pots, and the second would only have one submission graded, getting an A if it had the lovely, symmetric potty-like form of a perfect pot (sorry I don’t know how to describe a good pot).

You may be able to guess the results given my gist here; it was the first group that not only produced the most pots, but that also produced the best pots.

I’d like to get good at producing content. I fully suspect the first videos I make will be shit (am I selling them to you yet?), but if you go to the first videos of any YouTube channel, you’ll often find crusty starts.

Conversely when writing a piece every other Friday last year, I felt the pressure each deadline to produce something perfect. 2023 instead heralds the year of continuous writing, where I just write in the evenings and what I produce is what I produce, hoping along the way I may too produce some of those beautiful pots (metaphor… see good writing in action already).

2. Gaining Prestige

My groundings as a biology student has kept me convinced of one thing; we are little more than status seeking primates, only playing at a far more sophisticated game.

So imagine this: Sam’s Good Stuff ends 2023 with 1000 subscribers.

Oh what status would be conferred upon this ape! I would be adorned at dinner parties the world over, I would be the King of Glastonbury (again!), I would be refusing VIP invitations left, right and centre, everyone wanting to sponge off my oozing status through mere proximity.

That’s a joke, kind of. But part of getting good at something is also to get some god-damn respect, and it would be dishonest not to mention that.

3. Making The World a Better Place

Ok this one is actually just a joke.

4. 35 Year Old Man

My friend told me that this is the age that Jung claims men to have a spiritual crisis over their place in the world. This right here is my crisis.

It’s is also a time where I feel a huge amount of energy to apply myself to something. Sam’s Good Stuff gives a channel for that. It makes each day a potential source for inspiration, where any conversation or article I read becomes something I can synthesise into a post. It makes me engaged with life.

For a while now I’ve woken up everyday spinning ideas, never knowing what will stick. However this project, while definitely not the savviest investment of my time, seems to be the one I can’t seem to drop.

At a certain point you simply just have to stop seesawing and decide what you are going to do. Then you have to commit.

Consider this my statement of commitment.

(Until the second child is born and fucks up all my plans)

5. Fun

And to lighten things up here, I’m hoping that I’m going to enjoy myself.

Help Me To Help You (but really just help me)

Ultimately the thing that makes me want to do this is you.

So a big thank you to everyone who’s replied to posts, or said sweet things about Sam’s Good Stuff in person. I’d like to give a particular thanks to those who have left comments (please leave more, they make me very happy), even if it’s just to school me on my C-rate literary criticisms.

Gaining new subscribers makes me feel like I’m - surprisingly - actually creating something of value, so please share with whoever you think would enjoy this too.

And finally, if some of these motivations may inspire you for your own plans for 2023, I’d love to hear about it.

Recipe: The Structure of a Rice Salad

Starting 2023 as I mean to continue, this is the kind of recipe I’ll be sharing in both posts and videos. They may not look the prettiest, but do not be fooled by the cover of the book. Not only do these kind of dishes make wholesome meals, but they are versatile, like templates, which you can use to make something good of whatever you have lying around.

The idea of a rice salad is to clear out your fridge, and do it both in easy and flavoursome style. The best rice salads contain something fatty (tinned or smoked fish here is hard to beat, though olive oil alone will work too), then some spiky flavours like capers and spring onions, and some kind of boiled vegetable too; carrots, green beans and cauliflower all work well, individually or as a team.

The rice should be cooked then spread out to cool with a good lashing of extra virgin olive oil (or vinaigrette) mixed in. If using olive oil rather than vinaigrette, you may want to add a splash of vinegar or lemon juice to inject some acid (and so sharpness).

In the above example, I cooked the rice following my usual method (soak 1 cup of rice in water for ~20 minutes, drain, put in pot with lid and cover with 1 cup of water, put on lid, bring to boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for ~10 minutes or until all the water seems to have evaporated and the rice is cooked).

Spread the rice in a wide dish, drizzle generously with oil, and mix it up. I then chopped some spring onions, capers and smoked mackerel, and folded that into the warm rice with rocket and some lentils I’d cooked the other day (they were boiled simply with salt, a few whole garlic cloves and a couple of bay leaves).

Seasoned with salt, pepper and the juice of half a lemon, and served to a very happy wife.

References

Pottery tale is from Art & Fear. It’s actually an anecdote not a study, but let’s not allow scientifically approved fact to get in the way of a good story.

Sam's Good Stuff

Motivations