Welcome to Literature and Lentils

Hi y’all!

I’m Rae (they/them), the human behind Literature and Lentils.

I started my Instagram account 5 years ago while in grad school for my MA in Literature. It was not a stellar time for me: I was spread thin taking grad classes while working side jobs, Covid shut everything down in March, and I was desperate to connect with people.

I had also fallen out of the habit of cooking for myself since coming to college and missed being in the kitchen. My family still tells the story of when I snuck up to the kitchen as a child to make mashed potatoes by myself for a mid-day snack. I look back on it and laugh at 6-year-old me using an immersion blender (that I wasn’t supposed to touch without supervision) on baby potatoes. But even at that young age, I loved being in the kitchen and was excited to work with flavor and learn new techniques.

I’ve always loved food – but somewhere along the way, I lost it.

So, I started lit&lentils as a way to commit to cooking for myself: to take better care of myself during grad school, to reconnect with my love of cooking, and then to have a project to focus on during lockdown.

Over the years, lit&lentils has grown from basic recipes and shouting out local restaurants to more complex recipes as well as book content as I’ve rediscovered my love of reading. Instead of sharing books I’m reading for graduate work, now I share reviews of books I read for personal learning and pleasure.

I was extremely burned out after grad school, and it took several years to rediscover my love of reading. For the past 3 years, I’ve steadily increased the number of books I’ve read each year, becoming more intentional about joining book clubs and carving out time to read instead of mindlessly scrolling.

While I don’t miss academia, per se, I had missed engaging critically with literature and pop culture. As I expanded into more bookish content, I realized that writing thoughtful book reviews scratched a bit of that itch. It’s been particularly enjoyable to review ARCS, especially from queer authors, in the hopes that my reviews might help those books find their audience.

So, Why Substack?

With the changing social media landscape, I realized that now is the right time to invest in longer form content. I think we’ve gotten too used to bite-sized content that demands simplicity, lacking nuance and depth. This simplification of content for the sake of pleasing the algorithm leads to lackluster posts that don’t properly engage with the content matter.

On Meta in particular, the algorithm also favors negative engagement, rewarding posts that get comments regardless of the sentiment behind the comments. This has led to the proliferation of engagement or rage bait, low-hanging content that exists for engagement farming instead of genuine creation and connection. It’s time to shift towards content that does better: content that engages deeply with the subject matter, embracing nuance rather than baiting the audience into engaging for the sake of likes, comments, and clicks.

Lit&lentils has always been a mishmash of content, making it hard to find the right audience in an algorithm that wants us to be easily categorized. Stubbornly, I’ve refused to focus on *just* food or *just* books.

The specific types of content I enjoy sharing also struggle to gain traction on IG. Bookish friends and I have discussed how difficult it is for thoughtful reviews to gain traction on IG. Food content that isn’t perfectly polished also struggles, but I prefer sharing recipes that feel accessible and achievable to make on a busy weeknight. This has definitely hindered my growth on IG, but I’m glad I stayed true to the actual content I wanted to share because it’s brought me a lot of joy over the years.

At its core, lit&lentils has always been about sharing the things I care about so I can engage with my community. Since it’s increasingly difficult to do that effectively on IG, I want to find more avenues to connect with people – as well as new places to expand my content.

What Will Be Here?

A little bit of everything! And I’ll adjust based on what people are most interested in. I’m planning on sharing some of my weekly meal planning thoughts to share how I shop for the week and how I build meals (some planned in advance, some whipped up on the fly). I’ll share some recipe guides as well as links to other creators’ recipes that I make and enjoy.

I’ll also share longer form book reviews, ARC reviews, monthly reading wrap-ups, themed recommendations lists, and more. If I’m feeling inspired, you might even catch me tapping into my academic roots and musing on queerness and pop culture!

One of the cuter TikTok trends I saw go around was the Weekly REPORT: Reading, Eating, Playing, Obsessing, Recommending, Treating. I’ll definitely be giving that a try as a weekly post!

Sounds Fun!

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I hope you stick around! I’m looking forward to connecting with everyone more and finding new ways to share my thoughts on food, books, and more.

XOXO,
Rae