Welcome to ingredient 2.0
A few little changes to my three year-old newsletter.
As it’s now August, I know you’re expecting me to check in with this month’s ingredient. But I’m not going to, because after lots of long thought and deliberation I’m changing things up a bit around here: welcome to ingredient 2.0.
Since I launched this newsletter just over three years ago on a little-known here in the UK (at least amongst food writers) platform the landscape has changed a lot, and it’s been incredible to see so many talented writers coming over here and taking control of how they publish: I can barely keep up with all the content I want to read and recipes I want to cook.
When I launched ingredient, my research told me I very much needed to have a product in mind: a core theme and a set offering, and for many Substacks I adore such as
’s , my friend ’s and the brilliant ’s do just that, and do it incredibly well. But my inbox is also bursting with more brilliant newsletters than I can count with looser offerings, with writers who pick their themes based on how they’re feeling on any given week yet still manage to share fantastic stories, essays and recipes that leave us all feeling inspired. As other social media platforms have become more and more hostile to content creators, especially content creators for whom creating content is their full time job (I’m looking at you Instagram!!) Substack has become a place where people can post and create in a less structured way similar to blogging before that became all glossy and professionalised in the 2010’s. That type of blogging is how I got started, and it’s what I’d love to get back to.And do you know what? I think you, ingredient’s readers want me to, too.
Over the past few months, as my changing work schedule means that I’m finding it harder and harder to keep to the current structure of this newsletter (which is only natural: I’ve been blogging and publishing content online for 15 years - my offering has always flexed around my life as I went from teenager to student started my career and ultimately quite to write about food full time) and I’ve noticed that the posts you’ve enjoyed the most, reacted to the best and the recipes that you’ve actually loved the look of enough to go off and cook are the ones that are the least structured, more natural, with real-life phone photography rather than something taken with my professional camera and edited until it’s perfect. They’re the ones I’ve most enjoyed writing as well.
I think you want this newsletter to better reflect real life, and that’s what I, as it’s author, want too.
So, what does this mean for ingredient?
Well, I still want to do the same things. I want to tell you in depth ingredient stories, share the foods I eat on my travels, interview interesting people in the food space, and share plenty of ingredient-forward recipes. But I also want the chance to colour outside the lines a bit, sharing menus from dinner parties I’ve thrown, farm shop hauls, fridge forages and chat about what I’ve loved making recently from my ever-expanding cookbook collection. Pretty much if I come across something to do with food which I think would make a great story or recipe (there will still be plenty of recipes!) I want to be able to share it without wondering how it is going to fit a certain theme or category.
If you’re a free subscriber, for now, you’ll still be getting the same amount of posts from me: at least a free piece of writing either on a specific ingredient or on something else, and recipe a month, plus my Nibbles monthly roundups that are not going anywhere! And of course there will be some extras thrown in for good measure.
If you’re a paid subscriber as well as the free content you’ll also still get two more paid pieces of content a month. As I said, these mostly will still be recipes, but sometimes you might get something a little bit different. We’ll see. My Kitchen Cupboard interviews are on pause for the moment whilst I adjust to a new work schedule with a few new contracts and clients coming my way for the autumn, but they’re still part of my long term plan for ingredient.
Of course if you’re a monthly paid subscriber and you’d have preferred things things to stay how they were, you can unsubscribe in the top right hand of the page. If you’ve paid yearly and you want your money back for the rest of the year email me and of course I’ll see what I can do. But I hope you’ll all stick around. Because I’m really, really excited for the next phase of our ingredient journey!
Rachel, thank you so much for sharing!! I've found myself reflecting more on this too, focusing less on what my newsletter "should" be and instead listening to my intuition and what energizes me, because odds are, that will come through in the writing and be more exciting to others! As a reader, I love the looser kind of writing you mentioned. I think it reflects the humanness of this and helps me to see the beauty in life and to take things less seriously! Thank you again for your vulnerability, and I'm looking forward to what you have for us down the road! [I also must say your melting courgette & chickpea salad is at the top of my to make list!]
I support the broader scope, too!