Recipe for Sleep

Episode 13: Bread Making and Bread Baking to fall asleep to.

This is Recipe for Sleep, a podcast where we dust off very old cookbooks and let them lull us into dreamland. Happy 2025, I’m so glad to be back in your ears after a short break for the holidays. I’m Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller. If you’re new to the podcast, I read old cookbooks, mostly from the late 1800s and early 1900s, softly and sweetly until you fall asleep. I launched this drowsy little project in 2024, weekly, but in fits and starts.
We’re changing things a bit for 2025…we’ll have a new episode out every other Wednesday evening. This will give me more time to get more of my own recipes up on ThankSalt.com, and I’m brewing up another sleepy idea you’ll hear more about soon.
Meanwhile, I’m so excited to start this year with the humble and delightful Bread Making and Bread Baking by Minnie E. Brothers from 1915. This cookbook is perfect to fall asleep to…there are so many wonderful basic tips for baking, all perfectly practical for the home cook, cozy, and unsurprising.  She moves on to savory things, but I think tonight we’ll just get through her baking section. I feel like it’s been a bit since we just listened to baking recipes, and I find them the most soothing.
Here's the original text, which has some totally delightful graphics I encourage you to peek at when you’re not trying to sleep. For now, snuggle into your sweet covers and let the recipes of Minne E. Brothers send you to your dreams.

Episode 12: More Literary Yule Recipes for the Longest Nights

Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where we dust off very old cookbooks and let them lull us to dreamland. I’m Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller, and I’ve got a library full of old recipe books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and in this podcast I read them to you to give your mind an easy, sweet place to spend some time. And if you fall asleep mid-recipe, all the better. Tonight we’re tucking back in to 1906’s Books and My Food (With Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day in the Year).
I chose this book to get us through all the holiday season, (although I think it would take us all of January too to get through the whole thing,) because each recipe is coupled with a literary quote from an English author. It’s not always Dickens, but sometimes it is, and it’s just right for cold days and long nights. We left off in April last week, but I’m going to skip ahead to November. The recipes are cozier, and because we’re releasing this episode the week of the Winter Solstice, it feels right to hear about all the rich dishes and spiced wines.
Let’s open the worn cover of “Books and My Food,” and flip through the butter stained pages so we can begin in the middle.
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 11: More Sleepy Yule Recipes

Tonight we slide right back into “Books and My Food,” a curious cookbook that couples literary quotes and recipes. We started this book last week, in honor of the season, and the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, or Yule Book Flood, where families exchange books on Christmas Eve, and spend the rest of the evening reading together. So this whole month is our own cozy homage, with a cookbook inspired by literature. Luckily this book has 365 recipes, plenty to put us to sleep for the whole month.
The recipes are particularly poetic, which makes them the perfect thing to fall asleep to.
 
I hope you can snuggle in to this cozy tome.
 
Host: Erin Brindley
@recipeforsleep
 
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 10: Sleepy Yule Recipes

 
Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where I read you old cookbooks until you fall asleep, and for the rest of this holiday season we have a special theme. There is something so quiet and soothing about the idea of cozying up under a blanket on a dark night, reading silently with people you love, each in your own world but together.
As I was looking through all the old cookbooks, trying to find the perfect, seasonally themed one to read you to sleep, I found “Books and My Food”. A curious cookbook written by a pair of friends in 1904. There are 365 recipes, one for each day of the year, coupled with a literary quote, primarily from English authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. The recipes are barely recipes at all, and they read a little like poems.
We’ll spend the next few weeks in our own little English “jolabokaflod,” the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books on Christmas eve, and then spending the rest of the evening reading them.
So, turn the lights out, put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers.
There is a particularly long, meandering introduction in this book, so if you’re the sort that wants to get right to snoozing to recipes, you’ll find they begin at around minute six.
And if you’d like to read the original text, you’ll find it here: Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Episode 9 - Dreamy Dinners Part III: Holiday Menus

Recipe for Sleep is a podcast where I read to you from very old cookbooks until you fall asleep. The holiday season can be both a time of wonderful recipes, and sleepless nights. So this week we slide back into Fannie Farmer’s 1914 tome “What to have for dinner.” Two episodes in, and we still have eight more menus to go in the Family Dinner section. Tonight, in honor of the holiday season, I’m going to skip ahead to page 101 where we’ll begin Dinners for Occasions. How much has Thanksgiving changed in the last hundred and ten years? A little. There’s turkey, for sure, but the pie is mince instead of pumpkin. The theme that survives the centuries is a shocking amount of food…would we have it any other way?
So, turn the lights out, put away anything you were doing, and snuggle deep into your sweet covers. 
Hosted by Erin Brindley
Additional recipes and stories by Erin at ThankSalt.com
Original text here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000114596871&seq=136

Dreamy Dinners Two: More Culinary Lullabies

This week’s episode of Recipe for Sleep, a podcast where we read you to sleep from very old cookbooks, we dip back in to Fanny Merritt Farmer’s vivid recipes.  We’re still in the first section of  "A Book of Good Dinners for my Friend, or, What to Have for Dinner.” Tonight, we continue to read from the first section, family dinners. Like good stories, each menu has a beginning, middle, and an end. From Huntington Soup, to Mashed Sweet Potatoes served in their shells, to Cheese Salad, (the best kind of salad, in our humble opinion, to Orange Tartlets with Meringue.
Place your worries in their rightful cupboards, yesterday’s for what has already happened, and tomorrow’s cupboard for what’s going to happen tomorrow, and close them up. You’ve reached that sweet, quiet time of day where all you have to do is close your eyes and listen Erin Brindley read you old cookbooks.
 
Evan Mosher is our sound engineer
 
You can find the original text here: What to Have for Dinner
 
You’ll find Erin’s own recipes and stories here: Thank Salt

Dreamy Dinners: A Culinary Lullaby with Fanny Merritt Farmer

Welcome to this week's episode of "Recipe for Sleep," where Erin Brindley, a chef and storyteller, reads from timeless cookbooks to gently lull you into dreamland. Join our community at thanksalt.com for more recipes and stories.
This episode takes us on a culinary journey through "What to Have for Dinner" by the legendary Fanny Merritt Farmer. This century-old cookbook is divided into three sections: family dinners, dinners for occasions, and company and formal dinners. Today, we'll delve into the first section, exploring multi-course family dinners that evoke the charm of yesteryear.
Imagine a serene kitchen in your mind, where old recipes unfold like gentle lullabies. Let go of the day's worries as Erin reads menus featuring delightful dishes like tomato soup, rib roast of beef, and apple charlotte. Embrace the cozy atmosphere and drift off to sleep, enveloped in the warmth of culinary nostalgia.

Attractive Menus to Fall Asleep To

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

Episode5 The Magic Way to Fall Asleep

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.

Episode 4: 300 Tested Recipes to Sleep to from The A.A. Cookbook, 1895

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.