Book Review: Crying in H Mart

We’re walking it back a few years to a book both beautiful and poignant, one that rips you open and lets you peer into the reality of grief. Crying in H Mart is a memoir of identity.

Michelle Zauner is the only Korean American girl in her Eugene Oregon school, and right away you can feel her struggling and stuck between two very different worlds. One foot trying to belong to the youth culture of Americana, the other firmly planted in her mother’s Korean heritage. Zauner doesn’t sugarcoat her adolescence, there’s a sadness there, there’s emotional and physical abuse, there’s a solitary childhood and a longing for emotional support. You can feel the tension within her family and from a young age her relationship with her mother is fraught. It’s so full of cracks it sometimes makes you wonder if there’s any love at all.

But it’s in the aisles of H Mart where these feelings start to turn. At its core, this book is about the deep connection of food and how the preparing and sharing of ingredients can be the greatest form of generosity, especially when words fail. The hallways and store shelves in H Mart bring out the delicacies that would shape Michelle’s childhood. Pork belly with seafood noodles, kimchi, jolly pong, tteokguk with gochujang. For Michelle and her mother it is their shared sanctuary, and it’s the bond that binds them.

“Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem, constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations, I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she prepared.”

Preparing food for Michelle is how her mother was able to best articulate her feelings. And that also becomes Michelle’s immediate response upon learning of her mother’s cancer diagnosis. Having forged a path as a musician as a young adult, the news of her mother’s terminal illness causes her to immediately drop everything and move back home to Eugene to care and cook for her dying mother. It becomes her life goal to make sure her mom is getting enough calories as she recreates the food of her childhood, cooking the very things her mother cooked for her. There is a comfort in preparing food that takes the place of words. It fuels Michelle’s way to process grief and in the aftermath of her mother’s death all she can do is make inordinate amounts of kimchi, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Crying in H Mart is about the memories we take for granted, and those little moments that we can’t get back, but remember forever. And in the end this book is a tribute to all the ways Michelle’s mother truly cared for her, the words she never said, but the ways her food often said everything.

“In H Mart, I’m collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when my mother did. I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck: I’m searching for memories.”

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If you want to know in more detail about all the incredible Korean ingredients and dishes that are talked about in this book, Ars Nihil made an amazing glossary/zine that you can download for free.

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Outside of penning this beautiful memoir, Michelle Zauner is best known as the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast, a dreamy indie-pop band. Their first album Psychopomp was composed of songs written in the weeks after her mothers death.

Her music video for “The Body is a Blade” features recreated photographs of Michelle and her mother. It’s worth a listen and a watch.

‘Stay Fresh’ When should you crack the seal on your coffee?

It’s been baked into our brain. The fresher the roast date the better the coffee…right? If I just roasted and packaged some beans yesterday, you’d assume they’d be drinking their best in just a few short days? Well not so fast my coffee compadres.

More and more articles are being penned by roasters all over the world clamouring for coffee drinkers to wait three, four, even five weeks after a roast date to crack open their coffee. How can this be? Do we really need to let coffee rest for weeks to hit optimum taste profiles? Isn’t fresher always better?

The answer is a bit more complicated than that— and has more to do with how we define the term “fresh”. The fact is, the roasting process isn’t technically finished when you dump, cool, and package your beans. There’s still a lot of science happening in that bag of coffee that takes time to fully develop. As a roaster, you desperately need the excess C02 from the roasting process to essentially bleed off from the beans and fully escape the bag. That’s why most coffee bags have a built in C02 valve which allows C02 to leave without any excess oxygen re-entering the bag.

But it’s more than just bleeding C02, the timeframe can also depend on the way it was roasted. For instance, roasters that use hot air (like those roasted by yours truly) seem to benefit more from a longer resting time. Larger drum roasters powered by gas use conductive heat transfer. And according to science, conductive heat helps make beans more porous, develops them quicker, and essentially can allow for less resting time. But as with so many conundrums in the coffee world, this isn’t a hard and fast rule either. Light to medium roasts benefit the most from a longer resting time as the C02 and flavour development need some extra time on the clock (2-3 weeks and sometimes as long as 8 weeks!), but darker roasts where you’ve presumably taken the beans to a more porous and fully developed state need substantially less resting time (only 4-6 days).

Even still, understanding where a coffee was grown adds another important element in deciphering when you should pull out the grinder. Typically higher altitude coffees in Kenya, Guatemala, or Columbia can stand to rest longer than a lower altitude coffee from Brazil. It’s generally known that it takes longer for that C02 to fully release from a higher altitude coffee and therefore they can stand the rest.

One thing is certain, it’s due time that we change our perception of what fresh coffee truly means, and use the roast date as just one indicator of when coffee can be best enjoyed. Paying attention to how it was roasted, where it was roasted, and what style it was roasted to is just as important as when it was roasted. Factoring in all of these variables helps unlock the complex and delicious flavours in your coffee. So give it a rest!

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lose

Cymbals Eat Guitars was a really good band from New York. They were coming up on the scene when Pitchfork was actually a worthwhile website. In my opinion “Lose” is a really good album from start to finish. It feels nostalgic to me. It has those wailing almost tectonic vocals that whirl around high energy guitar riffs. There’s some controlled chaos there, and I like that. I can almost imagine slamming my door and turning up the volume on this one after losing an argument to my roommate in 2010.

Here’s a fun fact for you… the name Cymbals Eat Guitars is from a Lou Reed quote describing his thoughts on the Velvet Underground’s sound. To be honest, I never really understood The Velvet Underground. But hey, it’s a good band name.

Brewing Tips

Parliament Roasting uses high quality Guatemalan beans imported through Common Goal and certified Fair Trade and
Organic. When you start with a good product, the rest is just experimentation to find out how you like to drink your coffee. Your preferences might not be mine, and I’d love to know how you prepare yours. Send me a message at andrew@parliamentroasting.ca

Here is how I prepare my morning coffee each and every day.

I like to grind my coffee right before I brew it, to the consistency I’m looking for (a coarser grind for French Press) and only grind what i’m going to immediately use. The goal here is to preserve the integrity of the bean and it’s flavours, and as soon as you grind it down the clock starts ticking on your coffee’s shelf life. I tend to start my day with a French Press of medium roast, because I need a cup right away and more for my thermos on the way to work. For French Press with a burr grinder, I like to set it to a coarse grind at about a level 8/10 on my grinder.

I use the following ratio when I’m making a French Press:

• 5 cups of boiling water

• Slowly poured onto 5 tbsp of coarse ground coffee

• Stir well and let that sit on a 4 minute timer before plunging.

• If you like your coffee a bit stronger adjust that ratio to 5 cups of water to 6 tbsp ratio. 

• I also like to wait 2-3 minutes before drinking, let the temperature come down a bit and let the flavours settle.

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Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.