Adam Stoner

This is a story about how one of the US’s most iconic writers created a recipe for one of the most iconic US meals.

My quest for this recipe has all the hallmarks of a Hemingway novel packed full of mystery and is set against the backdrop of war. And it all began with a single question. What’s the best burger ever?

I emailed Hemingway Home and Alexa got in touch with me…

So as we know, Ernest Hemingway is a well-known American author. But beyond that, he was an adventure seeker. He was a war correspondent. He tried every type of sport, fishing, boxing, checked out bullfighting, traveled all over. He really lived life to the fullest.

I’d found this burger recipe online, supposedly one from Ernest Hemingway.

Atlantic Constitution. 12th February 2014. Boston. Associated Press:

Materials from the Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban home were available to researchers for the first time at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The collection includes car insurance for a 1941 Plymouth station wagon, a license to carry arms in Cuba, bullfighting tickets, and even a recipe from his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, for Papa’s favourite hamburger.

The recipe is in the archive of the JFK Presidential Library and one of the archivists, Stacey, was kind enough to answer my questions:

You know, Hemingway spent a lot of his life divided between different homes. He lived in Cuba at this home, La Finca Vigia, from about 1939 to 1960.

Hemingway shot himself in 1961. Relations between the US and Cuba weren’t too great at that time and his wife, Mary, needed help getting back into Cuba to reclaim some documents, some papers, some memorabilia. -

(Alexa) Yeah, so like the story I’ve also heard to piggyback on that was she had to make a deal with the Cuban government, like give me the contents of our safe and I will give you the house.

(Stacey) Hemingway’s widow, Mary Hemingway, needed to get back to Cuba to get all of Hemingway’s stuff out. He’d left his manuscripts, his correspondence, his book collection, a lot of his material was there. And the Kennedy administration actually helped her get a special visa to get into Cuba. She was able to kind of strike a deal where she would take as much as she could from the Finca, their home there, in exchange for donating the house and what was left in it to the Cuban people.

This recipe was among the documents left behind.

I was searching for something in their voice, in the voice of Ernest or Mary Hemingway, something that told me that this was their recipe rather than just something that they owned and used. And then I found it.

Mary, his wife, wrote that they ate the hamburgers to fortify them for tramping through the sage-bush after pheasant, partridge or ducks in Idaho or Wyoming which they visited every autumn. She typed this recipe out for the Women’s Day encyclopaedia of cookery whilst Hemingway was still alive.

It’s a long and complex process, as you might imagine, featuring red wine and piccalilli, capers, and a bit of chemistry to mix up some discontinued ingredients. But it’s not hard to imagine, tucked away in his Cuban home and sheltered from the harsh sun, Hemingway and his wife and his young staff, all of whom called him Papa – that’s where the name of the recipe comes from – tucking into these burgers.

(Stacey) It’s kind of a unique recipe, but also it’s just such a way to humanise this person who can seem really sort of untouchable and how much the legend and myth has sort of overshadowed the man. And like, here’s, you know, he ate hamburgers like everybody else. So I think people find that really interesting and the recipe itself kind of makes you want to try it.

These are the best thing I’ve ever eaten. And I am not kidding.

This recipe, this burger, captures his journeys around the world, his ritzy personality, and the context in which it came to be, abandoned in the middle of a war-torn country, is incredibly Hemingway.

So whilst Stacey is right, Whilst these burgers humanise a man who’s become a legend, even the most mundane aspects of his life, like what he ate for dinner, have helped turn Hemingway into an icon.

He was a master storyteller. And this unassuming sheet of yellowing paper is, in some weird way, yet another of his stories…

THE RECIPE

From experimenting. Papa’s Favorite Hamburger

There is no reason why a fried hamburger has to turn out gray, greasy, paper-thin and tasteless. You can add all sorts of goodies and flavors to the ground beef — minced mushrooms, cocktail sauce, minced garlic and onion, chopped almonds, a big dollop of Piccalilli, or whatever your eye lights on. Papa prefers this combination.

Ingredients

Some of these ingredients have been discontinued, so…

What to do

Serve in a brioche bun with salad, pickles, and sauce.

I have Andy Warhol: Polaroids on my shelf.

Andy was obsessed with celebrity, he used to take photos of people all the time. As I was flicking through this the other day, I stumbled across a photo of Pelé, the footballer, who died at the end of last year.

I don’t really know why but I thought that they lived in entirely different time periods. Maybe it was because Andy died younger than most or that Pelé simply lived into my own time period – or that I wasn’t expecting the world of an American artist and Brazilian footballer to collide on the pages in front of me.

Warhol would take these pictures and later turn them into portraits. He said of Pelé that instead of having 15 minutes of fame, he’d ‘have 15 centuries’ of it.

When he was 7, Pelé purchased a radio and it was on that radio in 1950 that he heard the World Cup final. Brazil lost to Uruguay. Pelé’s father cried and Pelé promised him that he would win a World Cup.

Eight years later, Pelé scores in the ninetieth minute. Brazil win the World Cup.

Pelé’s love for the beautiful game inspired his legacy which lives on in the form of statues, documentaries, and in museums. You can see that radio set – perhaps the very thing that set him on his journey to becoming ‘The King’ – in Museu Pelé in Santos, São Paulo.

‘Polaroids’ is a time capsule, these photographs half of an incredible diary that Andy Warhol kept. The other, phoned in to his assistant every day for just over a decade.

For over a decade, I’ve kept an audio diary – a journal – in the Voice Memos app on my iPhone. I’ve captured the voices of friends and family, of relationships past and present, of people no longer alive, of places that no longer exist, moments of frustration and genuine joy too.

Keeping a journal is an amazing form of delayed gratification. You get very little from the process as you actually create entires – in fact, I probably look like an absolute nutcase, blabbing some thought into the record as I stroll down the street or waving my phone in front of people’s faces – but the magic comes from the legacy you leave yourself.

This past month, I’ve been moving all of my journal entries from Voice Memos into Day One. They now carry the weather and their location, paired with photos and videos too. Now I’ve got a multimedia diary – audio at its core – spanning the past ten years; a map of my life over the last decade.

As much of an achievement as diarising a decade is, I know the contents of those entries are probably of very little relevance to you. Pelé’s got a museum to commemorate him, Warhol’s got the same. This is a museum of the self – a personal time capsule – and listening back to these entries, there’s a theme.

Diversity. Action. Adventure. Growth. Perhaps the most important theme is love. I can hear where I was years ago and experience again pure, innocent love for the life I lead and the incredible things I get to do…

Like this month, I’ve been on private tours of the Musical Museum in London, the Oxford Castle and Prison, and the Story Museum too. I’ve been to a football game, I saw the latest Avatar film, and gone climbing in Bicester as well.

On October 1st 1977, Pelé retired from football. Andy Warhol was at that game. Towards the end of that diary entry, he says this:

Pelé played on one side, then on the other. When it started to rain, they passed out raincoats to the VIPs. And it was nice in the rain, it made it more exciting. 75,000 people there.

Minutes after the final whistle, Pelé stood up in the Giants Stadium in New Jersey and gave his farewell speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to be here with you in this greatest moment of my life. I want to thank you all, every single one of you. Love is more important than what we can take in life. Everything pass. Please say with me, three times — Love! Love! Love!

January

I launch Mission Transmission – a project to send a radio programme to space. The UK KIDZ BOP Kids cover Coldplay’s My Universe – which has since been streamed 1.2 million times. Tim Peake lends his support to the project.

I’m interviewed by countless journalists across the nation as they cover it and thousands of children head to the Fun Kids website to send us their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future.

The 1975 and Greta Thunberg give us permission to use their song in the project which we intertwine with children’s voices…

February

I write a piece for The Week Junior’s Science+Nature magazine all about multiverses and whether this universe might be one of many.

In an event at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, six kids, KIDZ BOP, a host of Fun Kids presenters and astronaut Tim Peake slams a big red button and we send that radio programme to space.

Right now, it’s just shy of six trillion miles from from Earth; a quarter of the way towards Earth’s next star.

It’s a programme about hope, about love, and about making a difference together. It’s a programme about being united, about making a change, about taking care of one another. It’s a programme about how amazing it would be if we found life somewhere else in the universe, about human accomplishment, achievement, and triumph against adversity.

That same night, Russia goes to war in Ukraine.

March

The US and UK announce a ban on Russian oil, while the EU announces a two-thirds reduction in its demand for Russian gas.

April

Podcast Mysteries of Science wins Best Science & Medical Podcast and Best Launch at the Publisher Podcast Awards.

May

I head to Copenhagen with Paul and Meg and spend three days in Malmo in Sweden for Radiodays Europe – my favourite talk from Jonas, the presenter of Songwriter.

I turn 27.

June

I move. The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee takes place. I watch a Whitney Houston tribute concert.

July

The British Podcast Awards swing into town and Activity Quest picks up bronze in the very grown-up sounding Arts and Culture category.

The first operational image from the James Webb Space Telescope, the highest-resolution image of the early universe ever taken, was revealed to the public. It shows thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of the universe – an area of sky with an angular size approximately equal to a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

Looking at that image, we look back in time. A wave from the universe – light only just reaching Earth – from four billion years ago.

August

I went to see Coldplay. I discover the work of Ryan Holiday and become engrossed in philosophy and stoicism.

September

Queen Elizabeth II dies.

We launch Mysteries of Science season four and kick off by chatting to an old pal, Tim Peake, and illusionist Derren Brown.

Liz Truss is appointed Prime Minister of the UK.

October

Rishi Sunak is appointed Prime Minister of the UK and inherits a burgeoning cost of living crisis.

I got to feed giraffes.

November

I got to pet a rhino!

The world population reached an estimated 8 billion people.

NASA launches Artemis, the most powerful rocket ever into orbit. The Orion capsule makes a close pass at the Moon, venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft.

James Webb looked outwards but Orion pointed home, capturing stunning photos of Earth from afar, our tiny blue planet suspended in the immensity of space. Like a grain of sand at arm’s length. Nothing but us.

You and me. And the largest family portrait ever taken.

The World Cup kicks off…

December

I go to so many Christmas lights trails that I’ve entirely lost count…

I take the technology we used to launch our radio programme into space in February and turn it into a business: sendamessagetospace.com

I write a piece on the abominable snowman and end up on the cover of The Week Junior’s Science+Nature magazine.

And I finish the year, right here, where I started it – home, with my parents, my family, full of gratitude (and food) and ready to go again.

The thing that I found so jarring about 2022 was the huge contrast between development and destruction.

But there are reasons to be cheerful too. Cooperation. I see it everywhere.

By working together, we’re able to create something that is much greater than the sum of its parts. By sharing scientific knowledge, we’ve been able to make incredible strides in our understanding of the universe, and by sharing technological knowledge, we’ve been able to develop advanced tools and machines that have made our lives easier and more comfortable.

Cooperation is essential for our survival. We are a social species. We depend on each other for protection, for food, and shelter.

By working together, we are able to accomplish incredible things and ensure our survival in the universe.

Reading the works of Ryan Holiday and hearing about stoicism has taught me that perspective and discipline is important. Priorities are important. You – I – am important.

Millions of years ago, the human experiment began. And here you are; a miracle.

If ever the world feels awful, if ever – like me – you get stuck in your own head, think bigger. The very molecules that make up your body come from the universe – the same galaxies that James Webb snapped, the same rock that Orion soared past… You are made of those.

We are all connected and together, we can achieve amazing things.

That perspective is important.

Remember that as we head into 2023.

I've been taking it easy in November (and will be doing the same in December) but that doesn't mean I've not been up to a lot.

I've mainly been working on Send a Message to Space which uses the same technology we used to send Fun Kids' Mission Transmission programme into space in February.

Get 50% off a message into space or a gift pack at sendamessagetospace.com until December 31st by using the code PODACST.

Get 50% off at Send a Message to Space by entering code PODCAST at checkout until December 31st 2022.

I read the opening few words of A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder.

I've been reading it this month.

Mike's story is fascinating, charting his devotion to and escape from what has been variously described as a cult, a business, and a religious movement. A Billion Years also highlights the stories we tell ourselves about the way the world works.

I could have made this month's recap about all manner of things – Westminster politics in particular. But I've kind of adopted a new modus operandi, if you like – I'm focusing on what I can control. I'm not wasting my time and energy getting angry, outraged, or even amused by what's happening in with political leaders...

If it's up to me, it gets 100%; if it's not up to me, it gets 0%. 

So, with that said, I've been out and about for the Activity Quest podcast, visiting a brand new hieroglyphics exhibition the British Museum, checking out an [adventure playground at Stonor Park, and I even went out on a safari too and got to feed some giraffes... 

Take a listen:

• British Museum
• Stonor Park
• Woburn Safari Park

On Apple Podcasts, we've just turned on Plus, so you can subscribe for ad-free listening and bonus episodes. That's what I've been busy building out at work. Next month, I'm off to some Christmas lights displays for the show. 

And that's when you'll next hear from me – November 30th 2022. 

As I rushed out the front door of […] 37 Fitzroy Street in London and stepped into a beautiful June day in 2007, the only thing I was certain of was that I had to get away before anyone realised what I was doing. I left with only a briefcase containing my passport, a few papers, a thumb drive, and two cell phones. Had I attempted to take more, or had I tried to bring my wife and children with me, I knew it would make my escape impossible. I figured I would get them out once I was in a safe place.

I headed toward the nearby Warren Street Tube station, glancing over my shoulder to see if I had been followed. I knew if I ran, it might attract attention, so I resisted the urge until I rounded the first corner and ducked into a doorway to catch my breath. Although I had not physically exerted myself, my heart was racing as if I had just completed a hundred-meter sprint. I waited thirty seconds, saw no one, and stepped back onto the street, now walking faster, still acutely aware of my surroundings. I tried to maintain the appearance of a regular Londoner hurrying to the Tube, rather than a fugitive. I knew all the tricks they employed to track down someone like me—after all, I had done the tracking-down myself. I needed to get out of sight, remove the batteries from my phones, use only cash, and stay on the move.

The relief began to flood my body as I descended the long escalator. I stopped at the bottom and surveyed the few people behind me. Still no familiar faces.

I stood on the platform, back against the tiled wall, and waited for the train to pull in. When it did, I stayed put until all the other passengers had boarded, jumping on at the last minute while glancing down the platform to see if there were any other last-minute riders. There were none. As I sat down and the train pulled out of the station, I breathed long and hard and tried to calm myself. I had a couple of hundred dollars, but nowhere to stay, no clothes other than what I was wearing, no car or job, and no idea what I was going to do or where I was going to go. I knew only that I had to escape the madness my life had descended into. I hoped I could gather my thoughts and figure out a plan. I had no choice: my only other option was to return to the organisation and lamely turn myself in. That was unthinkable.

Those, the opening few words of A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder. I’ve been reading it this month. Mike’s story is fascinating, charting his devotion to and escape from what has been variously described as a cult, a business, and a religious movement. A Billion Years also highlights the stories we tell ourselves about the way the world works.

I could have made this month’s recap about all manner of things – Westminster politics in particular. But I’ve kind of adopted a new modus operandi, if you like – I’m focusing on what I can control. I’m not wasting my time and energy getting angry, outraged, or even amused by what’s happening in with political leaders or foreign wars.

If it’s up to me, it gets 100%; if it’s not up to me, it gets 0%.

So, with that said, I’ve been out and about for the Activity Quest podcast visiting a brand new hieroglyphics exhibition the British Museum, checking out an adventure playground at Stonor Park, and I even went out on a safari too and got to feed some giraffes…

Take a listen:

On Apple Podcasts, we’ve just turned on Plus, so you can subscribe for ad-free listening and bonus episodes. That’s what I’ve been busy building out at work. Next month, I’m off to some Christmas lights displays for the show.

And that’s when you’ll next hear from me – November 30th 2022.

She reigned for over 70 years and earlier this month was reduced to a box on a plinth.

How humbling those images were. A figure larger than life and so ingrained into the public psyche, suddenly startlingly small; a Standard covered coffin adorned by her subjects. Adorned by the living.

Make no mistake: This is the fate that befalls us all.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Queen or a King, a saint or a sinner, a celebrity or a civilian – we all die.

To carry a sense of the inevitable with us in the hope that it makes us remember and cherish and encourages us to make the most of every minute bestowed upon us can surely only be healthy. Meditating on mortality is only depressing if you entirely miss the point.

You’d be forgiven for thinking – given the way the Queen worked throughout her reign, right until her final day – that death is something that suddenly happens. You’re alive one day and gone the next. But that’s untrue. You’ve been dying since birth. You die every day. You’re killing time by reading to this right now.

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman writes that our being is totally, utterly bound up with our finite amount of time. To be a human is to exist temporally, in the stretch between birth and death, certain that the end will come but unable to know when. We speak about having (or not having) time but in reality, we are time.

You happen to be alive. There’s no cosmic law that says you are owed that. You happen to be here and you can happen not to be here at any moment, be it through accident or a betrayal of your own body.

Your time is a non-renewable resource but it’s our lack of it that is precisely what makes us human. The finite nature of our lives create meaning, purpose, priority, and urgency.

I’m not religious or a monarchist but Queen Elizabeth II was, as so many commentators said the night she died, a constant – her role imposed upon her by quirk of ancient constitution – and a reminder that even the mightiest and most God-ordained, die.

Elizabeth was born April 21st 1926 and died September 8th 2022. She was 96 years old. She got 35,205 days.

Today, September 30th 2022, I am 9,995 days…

Memento mori.

Secondary school. Some time during secondary school.

I don’t know when, exactly, but it’s a year group school assembly. I’m sat on one of those green, uncomfortable plastic chairs. The ones that lock together on the side, with a hole in the back. Joe is on my left, Tom on my right. Mr Thompson’s the Head of Year and talking, as one does in an assembly.

I’m pubescent, it’s early, I’m not paying that much attention – and, I’m sorry, I don’t remember every school assembly I ever had. But one word from this one assembly somehow manages to lodge itself so deeply into my brain that I can recall it well over a decade later.

Perhaps it’s because this is the first time I’ve ever heard this word or because, somehow, my brain knows that at some point in the future, I’ll need it.

Stoicism.

Marcus Aurelius was an Emperor – he was Emperor of Rome. His son was an asshole, destroyed most of Aurelius’ work but his diary remained.

Here’s one of the greatest leaders of one of the greatest Empires writing not for longevity or legacy but therapy.

Marcus Aurelius is one of the most famous stoics. He was also a lot of other things. But his Meditations – his diary – is a beautiful bit of literature that, even 2,000 years down the line, is still wonderfully modern. I recommend the Gregory Hays translation.

Nowadays, stoicism or ‘to be stoic’ means somebody who remains calm under pressure, or someone who doesn’t swing between emotional extremes but that’s really an English bastardisation.

It’s a lot more than that. It’s philosophy of thought that I’ve found hard to put into words.

Ryan Holiday seems to be the modern day thought leader in stoicism. He’s not an academic – I don’t think he’d describe himself that way – but he does write about stoicism and about the stoics. He runs The Daily Stoic, and there’s a book by the same name. I’ve been reading that recently.

Stoicism isn’t abstract, it isn’t theoretical. It’s something you actually do. It’s something you apply.

Embodied within stoicism are a whole load of other really important ideas too.

Those of you that know me will know I’m a fan of silly, interesting or intricate time pieces. Mr Jones Watches in London makes The Accurate; its face is mirrored metal, the second hand a bright red arrow and it’s a memento mori – the hour hand says ‘Remember’, the minute hand says ‘you will die’.

Memento mori is one of those stoic ideas. Dwell on your mortality so you can live the short existence we all have to its fullest. Amor fati – a resignation to, or love of one’s fate – is another.

Activity Quest, the podcast I make at the UK’s children’s radio station, Fun Kids, won bronze in the very adult sounding ‘Arts and Culture’ category at the British Podcast Awards at the end of July.

Activity Quest has also been nominated for a Heart of the City award at the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards. The ceremony is at Mansion House on the 27th – it’s a black tie affair – I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.

Either way – amor fati.

Earlier this month, I went to see Coldplay on their opening night at Wembley Stadium. There’s a sense of unity and sanguineness to a Coldplay gig; say what you like about their music – they know how to put on a good show. 80,000 people, every song is a hit, everyone knows all the words, awesome lighting and pyrotechnics too – they’ve still got those wristbands. I loved it. I’d go again in a heartbeat.

Chris Martin is almost definitely a stoic.

Staying on the theme of music, Panic at The Disco’s new album – Viva Las Vengeance – is good but I’ve really been playing a lot of modernlove. this month. Their debut EP, Oh My Mind, came out at the end of July. It’s sort of 80s synth pop/indie/garage, with a tinge of cheesy coming of age film.

Always surprising – The 1975. I look forward to their new album, out in October. Their single, Happiness, has been on repeat. I don’t doubt for a second that Matty Healy knows what stoicism is. The Sound – The 1975 – has this lyric:

It’s not about reciprocation it’s just all about me / A sycophantic, prophetic, Socratic junkie wannabe / And there’s so much skin to see / A simple Epicurean Philosophy

Epictetus famously said ‘some things are within our power, while others are not’ and Seneca said it is ‘ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future’.

The stoics believed you should be involved in politics and you should give yourself to public life but they also believed that you really shouldn’t spend too much time stressing over that which you cannot control.

In a few days time, we’ll find ourselves with a new Prime Minister at the helm of an energy, environmental, and cost of living crisis and facing heightening domestic and international tensions.

I make a poor stoic in this sense; over the past few years I’ve become positively anti-political but given that stoicism worked so well for one of Rome’s best leaders, maybe its key rules of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance could serve Rishi or Truss well…

Here’s the Met Office’s Chef of Science, Professor Steven Belcher:

I wasn’t expecting to see this in my career, but the UK has just exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for the first time. In some ways, of course, 40 degrees is an arbitrary figure because we see the impact of heat waves at lower temperatures. But for me, it’s a real reminder that the climate has changed and it will continue to change. Research conducted here at the Met Office has demonstrated that it’s virtually impossible for the UK to experience 40ºC in an undisrupted climate. But climate change driven by greenhouse gases have made these extreme temperatures possible and we’re actually seeing that possibility now.

The role of humankind in climate change is clear.

The consensus is settled.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil are making extreme weather events like heat waves hotter, longer and more frequent.

This is not about one or two uncomfortable ‘suck it up and get on with it’ British stiff upper lip summer days.

This is not ‘just summer’.

This is the start of fundamental ecological breakdown.

The Earth’s climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and our inaction will only worsen the consequences.

A 40 degree UK summer is indicative of a planet globally warmed by 1.5º.

Impossible, if not for human caused climate change.

One expert commission predicted that if we don’t change course, there would be up to 1 billion climate refugees in the balance of this century. – Al Gore

We have now gained enough information and knowledge to be able to begin safeguarding our living conditions and our wellbeing. – Greta Thunberg

This is the very last moment we have in which we can actually hope to stem some of these disasters. – David Attenborough

We’re facing the greatest existential crisis that humanity has ever faced. We’re facing the potential collapse of our life support systems, a domino effect as one Earth system pulls down the others until basically, the habitable space and the planet collapses into a completely different equilibrium state for which we did not evolve. – George Monbiot

So here’s a message to the future, a form of accountability that the people leading us seem to severely lack:

We know what is happening.

We know what needs to be done.

Our survival as a species depends on us acting on the knowledge we have with the tools we have.

We still have everything in our own hands and we can still fix this.

But only you, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whenever you are, will know if we have done so.