Recipe for Sleep
Recipe for Sleep – A Sleepcast is a cozy place to put your thoughts when it’s time for your mind to rest. We’ve got a library full of very old cookbooks, 1850-1925, at our fingertips and we’re going to read each one to you, sweetly and slowly, one recipe at a time. Recipes are simultaneously full of beautiful imagery, (particularly for those of us who thrill in delicious food,) and soothingly dull. Host Erin Brindley’s gentle narration and the nostalgic allure of Victorian simplicity create a calming atmosphere that eases you into a restful sleep. A perfect way to quiet down your busy mind as sleep rises. Please use this podcast as a sleep podcast, or meditation podcast. Your host Erin Brindley honed her somnolent voice while training as an actor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She later became the award-winning chef at Café Nordo in Seattle, WA. This podcast is the intersection of her two passions: Cooking and sleeping. For each episode she adapts a recipe for modern means and palates at ThankSalt.Com.
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Episodes
Wednesday Oct 16, 2024
Wednesday Oct 16, 2024
At Recipe for Sleep, we find old cookbooks to be a restful place to put our minds as we fall asleep. Not only do we get to peek into the kitchens of the past, but sometimes, like this week, we get to imagine a life completely different from our own. Where our greatest concern is how to create a menu for a fancy breakfast with our friends that does not bore, even without the help of a caterer or a maid. Attractive Menus by Harriet Warner, published in 1916 addresses these and other pressing issues, such as the importance of snow-white linens, matching flower arrangements to your menu, and proper placement of silverware. Let us lull you to sleep with menu ideas for a lovely party.
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer.
You can find the original text here: Attractive Menus
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Tonight, host Erin Brindley will read The Magic Way. The Magic Way was published by Magic Baking Powder and has a charming preamble before it gets to the recipes, lots of tips on baking cakes, and why Magic Baking Powder is the best baking powder. Really, sometimes you do choose a book by its cover, and this third edition, published in 1924, has the most darling cover, from the typeface to the flapper holding a chocolate cake. We’ll put a picture of it up on the Recipe for Sleep Instagram page, but don’t look at that now…I think you’ll remember tomorrow. Erin also has posted a wonderful recipe for Buttermilk Corn Bread at ThankSalt.Com, inspired by the recipe in this book. For now, turn the lights out, put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers. You’ve reached that sweet, quiet time of day where all you have to do is close your eyes and listen to me read you old cookbooks.
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer.
You can find the original text here: The Magic Way.
Wednesday Oct 02, 2024
Wednesday Oct 02, 2024
Recipe for Sleep is a sleep podcast in which we read to you from very old cookbooks until you fall asleep. In this episode, host Erin Brindley lulls you to sleep with the first section of The A. A. Cookbook by Miss A. Alden and Miss A. Adams, published in 1895. This tome contains 300 recipes contributed by “Very Good Cooks,” and each one reads like a little poem. Fall asleep imagining steaming griddle cakes, whimsical desserts like “Apple Porcupine,” and “Blanc-mange to Please the Children.” Erin has adapted one of the ginger snap recipes, “Alice’s Ginger Snaps,” which is unique and very molasses-y, perfect for a cookie sandwich, available here: ThankSalt.com.
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer.
You can find the original text here: The AA Cookbook.
Wednesday Sep 25, 2024
Wednesday Sep 25, 2024
In this episode, Host Erin Brindley is going to send you to sleep with dessert. Reading from the first section of 365 Desserts, published in 1900, you will drift to sleep to dream of tartlets, parfaits, pies and puddings. So many puddings. Chicago Pudding, Paradise Pudding, and Little Princess Pudding. But it was February’s Chocolate Soufflé recipe that inspired the recipe we’ve published at Thank Salt, a light as air and deeply rich dessert. You'll find that at ThankSalt.com
Published in 1900, the full text is available here: 365 Desserts
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer.
Wednesday Sep 18, 2024
Wednesday Sep 18, 2024
High up on the shelf of the Recipe for Sleep library is One Hundred and One Sandwiches, and we’re going to read from it, softly and sweetly, until you fall asleep. From giving butter a “violet bath” to making your own peanut butter “with a little sherry or port,” the recipes in One Hundred and One Sandwiches are an oddly soothing set. Host Erin Brindley will read you 101 variations on the sandwich, with themes of Fish, Egg, Salad, Meat, Sweet, Nut, and Cheese sandwiches. Published in 1901, author May Southworth’s details the nearly infinite variations of sandwiches. Inspired by the recipe for the Morrison sandwich, (chicken sandwich filling baked in a biscuit,) Erin has created an accompanying recipe at Thank Salt for Chicken in a Biscuit. Visit that here: Thank Salt
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer.
You can find the original text here: One Hundred and One Sandwiches
Monday Sep 09, 2024
Monday Sep 09, 2024
In this sweet and homey first episode, Erin Brindley will read you to sleep from 100 Good Apple Recipes, an expansive compendium of all things Pomological. Written in 1915. Published by the Agricultural College Extension Service of Ohio State University, you will fall asleep to cozy recipes for apple puddings, pies, cakes, sauces, and why you should use Ohio apples above all others. You can find the original text here: 100 Good Apple Recipes
Erin has created a recipe inspired by all the amazing apple recipes: Apple Custard Meringue. It has all the things: Buttery pie crust, firm apples, rich custard, and marshmallow-y meringue. You’ll find it here: Apple Custard Meringue at Thank Salt.
Evan Mosher is our audio engineer.
This episode includes a quaint intro all about apples. If you’d like to skip right to the recipes, they begin at 6:50.
A Note from Host Erin Brindley
The older I get the more tenuous a grasp on sleep I have. I’ve always been a night owl, never able to settle down before 2AM, but stress, health issues, and grief introduced me to true insomnia. Sometimes I’m not able to fall asleep, but more often I’m not able to get back to sleep after waking only a few hours in. The Sleepcast as a genre changed everything for me. Instead of trying to force myself back to sleep, (impossible, of course,) I try to immediately reach for a sleep podcast and give myself permission to simply lay there and listen. Sleep almost invariably comes. Audible published one episode that was Curtis Stone reading from Escoffier. It was perfect. As a chef it spoke to my happy place. I looked for more, an entire podcast dedicated to recipes instead of just one episode. I could not find it. I finally put it together that my years of vocal training (I am an NYU trained actor, although I haven’t performed in a bazillion years,) gave me the skills I needed to make exactly this. Coupled with my passion for historical food writing, Recipe for Sleep came together like all the best things: obviously and simply. I hope it puts you right to sleep.