Nick Murway Mailer 003

This is a previous issue of Nick Murway Mailer. If you’re into it, sign up here to get the latest mailer once a month.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope it was a good one. We’re going pretty food heavy in this month’s mailer, so I hope y’all aren’t too tired from the holidays. Better yet, if one of your resolutions was to cook more at home, you’ll dig this month’s haul.

Enjoy,

Nick

New Work!

It was a beast to edit, but I finally got the CRUX Midwest Tour portfolio together.

I also added a handful of Road Food photos to the portfolio.

Articles Worth Sharing

“An Insanely Organized Person Helped Me Overhaul My Kitchen” by Meryl Rothstein

Perfect for the new year, yeah? If you’re as OCD as I am, this will likely lead to a nice little tune up in the kitchen (I particularly like the spices tip, which I’ll hopefully be implementing soon). And if you’re starting from scratch, you’ll love this.

“A Burger Manifesto” by Sean Brock

“Burgers are a very personal thing; it will only be the perfect burger to you.”

I’m partial to thin patties, smashed and scraped in a cast iron skillet, with melty American cheese on a potato roll with fry sauce. Oh, and some tasty bacon for sure doesn’t hurt. I’ll be working on perfecting my burger at home and follow back up in the next mailer.

In the meantime…

Spot Recommendation

Schoop’s Hamburgers (Locations) — I finally got around to trying a Schoop’s burger on the way to Ohio for the holidays, and boy, are they good!

A Must Have Cookbook

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt

“A grand tour of the science of cooking explored through popular American dishes, illustrated in full color.”

My girlfriend got me this for my birthday and I haven’t really put it down since. I’m sure this is relatively obvious, but I’m super into cookbooks and am constantly working on my collection. This is the first book that has gotten me to slow down and learn how to cook at home, which has been uber rewarding.

A Podcast I Enjoyed

Death, Sex, and Money — Life is a Mystery

I gave this a listen on my way out to a shoot early one morning and almost had to pull over, it was so emotional. It’s an interview with a young woman named Elizabeth. Elizabeth lived in Australia and chronicled her two plus years of colorectal cancer treatment.

“I mean, there’s intellectual acceptance,” she said. “And then there’s the really solid, ‘No, now I know my life is ending.’ This has sort of shifted it into a new gear.”

The episode immediately made me think of one of my favorite Seneca quotes:

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.”

Her life wasn’t long enough, and this is a great reminder to not take anything for granted.

What I’m Reading

2016 was my slowest reading year in quite a while, but I did finish with three amazing reads that I can’t recommend enough.

Despite “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi being uber popular, I think this book is actually underrated. I finished in an afternoon and had to wipe some tears away. “At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live.”

“Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss is the collection of all the distilled notes and info from one of my favorite podcasts, The Tim Ferriss Show. “What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details. This is reflected in the questions. For example: What do these people do in the first sixty minutes of each morning? What do their workout routines look like, and why? What books have they gifted most to other people? What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field?” Perfect for the New Year.

“The Dark Net” was a super fun read and shines some light on a world I knew nothing about. “Bartlett reports on trolls, pornographers, drug dealers, hackers, political extremists, Bitcoin programmers, and vigilantes — and puts a human face on those who have many reasons to stay anonymous.”

Have something I should be covering? Let me know!

See y’all next month,
Nick