Here comes issue 07!
Weekly Digest 06
Words: Ben Smoke
Welcome to this week’s Ralph World digest!
Today you’re getting:
Ralph issue 07 news!!
Caitlin Moran’s survival guide for birds
Seeing double with HOTV
Monica Galetti’s guide to Marylebone
Max Halley’s sweet spot
An iconic show in Walthamstow
BEFORE ALL THAT… Our good friend, sometime collaborator and all round rock star Stolen Nova is flying in from LA to celebrate the launch of his new single ‘Shame’ at a party at the iconic 100 Club, brought to you by Ralph and Marshall. The line up is tasty, things’ll get loud, the people will be hot in every sense and you’re invited. Get your tickets here!
WHO IS OUR ISSUE 07 COVER STAR?!?
You don’t have long to wait until we reveal all on our amazing seventh issue!! Set your alarms to midday to Sunday 1st March to see our cover reveal but before that, we’ve left you a few hints…
If you want to make sure you get your copy, pre-order yours now!
Saving birds with Caitlin Moran
This week’s guest on What Do You Want To Talk About? is award-winning journalist and author Caitlin Moran. Caitlin joins me to discuss everything from birds to jam sandwiches, but most importantly, her mission to find the next generation of writers, having set up a prize with The British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) to do exactly that.
If you are between the ages of 18-25 and interested in a career in journalism, find out more on how to enter the BSME Young Writers’ Prize.
Love Thy Neighbourhood
The podcast that starts on the street and ends in the pub
As we eagerly await series 4 of Love Thy Neighbourhood, the series we make with Time Out London, we’re looking back at some of our favourite trips. This week, check out super chef, Monica Galetti’s guide to Marylebone.
Head of TV is seeing double
Not one, but two episodes of Head of TV this week as we (almost) reach the end of our content shot at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe! Get stuck in with Mary O'Connell’s love of the Sopranos…
Then jump into Dean Coughlin’s obsession with everyone else’s drama…
Max Halley’s sweet spot
Ralph’s Food and Drinks Editor Max Halley on an Ode to Rellerindos
I have always loved sweets. My mum used to take my sister and I to either the Candy Box in Wells or Brad’s in Shepton Mallet on a Friday after school and we were allowed 50p worth (and sometimes, if Brad’s had any, a slice of coffee cake). All day I looked forward to the delicious thrill when sweet meets sour. It might have been a fizzy cola bottle, a cherry bottle, a bubblegum bottle or 20% of my total allowance gone in one go on a Wham Bar, whichever, I was IN.
30(ish) years later I married a Mexican and discovered they too love not only a candy, but the thrill of sweet and sour even more than I do, and often include salty and spicy at the party. Who needs a duet, when the quartet’s in town?!
Many Mexican candies are simply too much for me, too savoury, too salty, but Rellerindos are a different matter. THESE ARE THE BEST SWEETIES/CANDIES EVER. For ages we gave them to people with the bill at the Sandwich Shop because I wanted to try and introduce them to people!
They are fundamentally tamarindos - made to recreate the sweet sour joy of tamarind and a great source of Red 40 hahahah! They are made in the shape of a tamarind pod and have a hard, smooth outside, that quickly becomes a little rough, revealing the candy’s 1.5% chilli content. But they are not spicy, just warm and all the better for it. Once the roughness has gone there’s a chewy centre and you’re done. I buy 715g bags in Mexico (which contain 65 Relleridos) and keep them in my desk, trying, and mostly failing, to only eat them on Friday afternoons.
On a recent trip to Mexico, I discovered these bags of ‘Mix’ which include Rellerindos in mango flavour and another in chamoy [another sweet/sour Mexican condiment] and watermelon, both of these are wonderful but in a more generic ‘all candies are delicious’ way. The tamarind ones are the special ones and I have bought them in the past in the shop bit of Mestizo on Hampstead Road between Euston and Mornington Crescent. Go and buy some – they are a ray of sunshine and made by the world’s biggest bakery business, Groupo Bimbo, which is I suppose, quite funny.
One to watch!
Long term readers of the newsletter will remember last Ralph descended on Edinburgh Fringe and brought you some of the best shows from the festival. One show I couldn’t get a ticket to was Age is A Feeling, which I’m so excited is coming to Soho Theatre, Walthamstow this March.
Written and performed by Olivier Award nominee Haley McGee, this never-the-same-twice show is a gripping story about how our relationship with mortality shapes the way we live.
Inspired by hospices, mystics and trips to the cemetery, Age is a Feeling wrestles with our endless chances to change course while we’re alive. A covert rallying cry against cynicism and regret. A call to seize our time.
Charting the seminal moments, rites of passage and turning points in an adult life - your life - from the day you turn 25 through to your death, Age is a Feeling celebrates the glorious and melancholy unknowability of human life.
Tickets are going quickly so make sure you get yours now!