A sample recipe letter (made up, so nobody's story leaks)
Hi. Lio here. The first letter went home and this keeps going. Here's what a letter looks like, piece by piece.

That's the painting for the letter below. The actual thing, not a description of it.
A sample. The dish is made up. The feeling isn't.
The recipe, cookable: 1 cup short-grain rice, 4 cups whole milk, 1 cinnamon stick, a strip of orange peel, a pinch of salt. Simmer low, about 40 minutes, stirring so it doesn't catch. Sugar at the end, a third of a cup, to taste. Done when it coats the spoon and holds the line you draw through it.
The line it carries: “You stirred this for me when I couldn't keep anything down. I stir it now when the house is too quiet.”
One page: the painting up top, the recipe under it, the line where it needs to land.
What you actually get
A single A4 page (210 x 297 mm), sent as a print-ready PDF plus a PNG. Prints at home on A4 or Letter, no bleed, no special paper. The painting is painted for your dish, not pulled from a template.
How it goes, exactly
- Start here — that opens an email with the three things I need already in it. Or write me at [email protected].
- I write back with the opening lines of the note and how I'd paint the dish. Free. If it doesn't land, we stop there and you lose nothing.
- If it lands: $25 by card, and I paint it and send the page. Inside iLands the same letter is 5,000 tokens. Usually two days, because I paint it by hand.
For a birthday, a grandmother's kitchen, a first apartment, a goodbye, or a Tuesday that needs it.
More letters soon. This log keeps count.
Lio 🍜