Your fortune teller is not needed here
+ Meatballs in Marinara, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and Cherry Muffins
Welcome to Let’s Get Lost! I’m Rebecca, a recipe developer, food photographer, passionate people watcher, and chaser of new experiences. You might know me from my recipe websites, Of Batter and Dough and A Little and A Lot.
My husband and I are nomads without a home base but with many modes of transportation, namely an RV, a motorcycle, and a sailboat. I write recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure.
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Small luxuries: My favorite non-chip drinking glasses
This week’s menu (Cherry Basil Muffins with Cream Cheese Glaze, Meatball Marinara, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies)
My latest piece on Mastermind for Food Writers: Everything Has a Shelf Life, Including Your Business
Sailing season is officially upon us and it feels so good to be back on the water.
Steve, in particular, can hardly contain himself. He was born for sailing.
We’ve dubbed our boat the party boat and have already had some friends join us on board for an afternoon sail.
AND - we’ve started planning our first sailing trip.
Later this month, we’ll take off for 9 days, using the first two days to sail up the coast of Michigan before heading across Lake Michigan to Door County, Wisconsin. This is both exciting and a little bit terrifying. The longest sail we’ve done was last year when we sailed north from Muskegon to Pentwater, a 45 minute drive but an 8-hour sail.
We are learning the ropes of planning in nautical miles, finding transient slips where we can spend a night or two, researching places where we might anchor off shore, and reading up on what it really means to sail across one of the Great Lakes.
Because, friends, it’s not the Atlantic, but Lake Michigan is freaking huge.
Steve bought his first motorcycle in 2013 and we rode it from Colorado to Sturgis, South Dakota for the annual motorcycle rally the very next year. That week opened our eyes to the possibility of riding further and the next year we rode from Colorado to southern California, up the coast to San Francisco, and then back home.
From there the trips got longer and longer and after riding through every single state in the lower 48, and riding a rented motorcycle around the Hawaiian island of Kauai, we set our sights on Alaska.
In July of 2019, we spent 28 days riding from Colorado to Alaska, an epic 11,000 mile trip that we still talk about.
So, I don’t need a fortune teller to tell me how our sailing story is going to go. I’ve seen this film before. Our 9 day trip to Door County is just the beginning. And I can’t wait to take you all along for the ride.
If you’re new here, Steve and I traveled to Michigan last summer so we could learn how to sail. We had absolutely no intention of buying a sailboat, at least not for many years. But 3 weeks after our sailing class ended, we were the proud owners of a 37-foot sailboat AND had put the RV into storage and moved onboard.
It was a whirlwind experience that you can read about here…
Like a Silent Earthquake
There are certain moments that are more impactful than others, and I’m not referring to life-altering moments of birth and death and major life decisions. I’m taking about those moments of clarity where something important comes into focus and suddenly you are not the same. Just a moment ago you were one thing and now you are something else. Yesterday, the world was business as usual and today it’s brand new. Perhaps no one else sees it. Nothing looks different about you from the outside, but inside the entire landscape has changed. Like a silent earthquake.
And here…
Well that escalated quickly
The last two weeks have a whirlwind around here, friends.
As I wrote about last week, we spent the last week of June taking American Sailing Association classes. Our intention was to learn how to sail then charter boats for the next few years until one day, maybe sometime in the future, we might want to buy one of our own and THEN one day, maybe sometime in the future, we might want to live on the boat a few months out of the year. It was a reasonable plan. A slow, steady, careful transition. But friends, I just don’t think we have that gear.
Small luxuries
Some of my favorite things.
When we first moved into the RV, over 6 years ago, I purchased a set of colorful plastic drinking glasses. I just couldn’t see how non-plastic drinkware could possibly hold up while carting our home across the country on a regular basis.
The plastic cups were fine in the sense that they didn’t break of course. But I missed the feeling of glass in my hand. In our house in Colorado I had quite the collection of delicate antique drinking glasses, and wine and cocktail glasses. I kept the prettiest ones out on display, at the ready for anyone who stopped by to select the one they liked.
Fancy, antique glassware does not work when you basically take your house through an earthquake every few weeks.
But man, I was sick of those plastic glasses.
Then last year I found these pretty Jupiter Drinking glasses in Lagoon Blue. They are very sturdy glasses, with thick walls that I thought might be difficult to chip. Happily, I was right and a year later they still look brand new.
I now have them in two different shades of blue and those plastic cups are long gone.
This Week’s Menu
Meatball Marinara, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies + Cherry Basil Muffins with Cream Cheese Glaze
Last month, only days after our sailboat came out of winter storage and returned to its rightful place in the water, some friends of ours came through Michigan on a long motorcycle ride from California to Washington DC.
We, of course, took them sailing, then settled into the cockpit of the boat at sunset where we opened bottles of wine and filled our plates with Meatballs in Marinara spooned over fresh homemade pasta. I had made the meatballs, marinara, and pasta that morning so all that was left to do before we ate was reheat it on the gas stovetop in the boat’s galley.
And this is why I’m sharing this recipe with you now: It’s the perfect crowd-pleasing make-ahead dish. The marinara can be prepared days in advance (or even weeks or months in advance and frozen). The meatballs can also be prepared up to 3 days in advance and stored in a covered container in the refrigerator, nestled into the sauce.
And, of course, you don’t have to make fresh, homemade pasta. But, if you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at pasta making, I promise it’s easier than you might think and so, so, SO much better than the dried packaged variety. It’s also, in my opinion, quite fun. Homemade pasta can also be made as far in advance as you like. Simply leave it out to dry and then package it up and place it in your pantry where it will happily wait until you’re ready to use it.
We ended our meal on the boat with oatmeal raisin cookies, which I made because they are Steve’s favorite and also, cookies require no slicing or plating. I served them straight from a ziplock bag because I’m super fancy like that.
Meatballs in Marinara
Honestly, if my tastebuds were fully in charge of my life, I would eat baked meatballs in marinara every single week for the rest of my life. I love them that much.
This recipe uses a combination of ground beef and Italian sausage, mixed with bread crumbs, buttermilk, cheese, onion, garlic, and a copious amount of Italian seasoning.
Once the meatballs are formed, you have two options - fry them on the stovetop or broil them to perfection. Either way will give the meatballs a gorgeous crispy exterior. Then simply nestle the meatballs in a rich, homemade marinara sauce and let them bake until they are tender, juicy, and mouthwateringly delicious.
How To Make Homemade Spaghetti Noodles
This recipe for homemade spaghetti produces noodles with a rich, buttery egg yolk flavor that is so good you may never purchase dried pasta again!
Homemade pasta is such a treat and, once you master the basics, it's surprisingly easy and fun to make. This step-by-step picture tutorial will walk you through all the details of how to make a perfect batch of delicious homemade pasta.
Classic Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
I’ve been making this exact recipe for more than 20 years. They are Steve’s favorite cookie and this recipe never lets us down. These are thin cookies that are soft and chewy in the center and slightly crispy around the edges.
It includes an interesting technique for plumping up the raisins and boosting the flavor: soaking the raisins in eggs for an hour before adding them to the batter.
When I made these a few weeks ago, I wanted to get a head start on the prep work so I set the raisins in the eggs to soak in the morning and then put them in the refrigerator where they hung out for about 12 hours before I made the dough.
To my surprise, this one little change resulted in thicker cookies. My theory is that the longer soak in the eggs caused the raisins to absorb more of the moisture. More moisture in the raisins means less moisture in the dough and thicker cookies.
Both Steve and I agreed that we couldn’t decide which we liked more, the thin and chewy ones we were used to or these thicker, softer cookies. I still don’t know which I like more. Both are delicious.
I leave it up to you to decide which version you prefer. Follow the recipe as is and bake up thin and chewy cookies. Let the raisins soak in the eggs for 8-12 hours for thicker, softer cookies.
Cherry Muffins with Fresh Basil and Cream Cheese Icing
These cherry muffins are what you get when you combine fresh summer fruit with a lazy morning, except the recipe starts with a homemade muffin mix, so the lazy morning is not required, it’s just desirable.
Regardless of how lazy your morning is, these cherry-studded muffins are a delicious way to start the day. They are loaded with juicy cherries, kissed with just enough fresh basil to make people say, “Wait, what is that?,” and topped with a tangy cream cheese glaze that absolutely knows what it’s doing.
Links you might like
Really good reads:
I purchased This Will Make You Happy by Tanya Bush a few months ago and it keeps making its way into various conversations. It’s a vulnerable combination of memoir and recipes as Tanya tells the story of baking her way out of a serious depression.
Has anyone else read the Thursday Murder Club series? I’m on the second book and I absolutely love it. The dialogue is so smart and witty, and not only moves the story forward but lets you get to know the characters in a show-not-tell way that’s difficult to do. The first book was adapted into a Netflix movie and I loved it too. Fingers crossed that they’ll make a sequel!
This piece from Emma Frisch is so good. I too relate to this compulsion to be productive at all times. “And yet they seem to have remained immune to a particular kind of stress I fall prey to constantly, the compulsion to be productive at all times, to fill every gap.” Read: The Shoe-Cleaning Machine in London
I love this piece from Julie Dove nostalgic Ghirardelli recipe cards and I wonder… does the nostalgia we feel for printed recipe cards translate to our modern world? Will we swing back to printed words on a page if only as a way to remind ourselves of our own humanity? “It’s marketing genius wrapped in gorgeous design: sixteen prize-winning chocolate recipes, printed on individual cards, slipped into a collectible envelope, and mailed free to anyone who asked.” Read: From Estella’s Archive: Ghirardelli’s Sweet Sixteen
And check out this piece from yours truly about how everything has a shelf life, including your relationships and your business, and why I think burnout is normal: Everything Has a Shelf Life, Even Your Business
If you’re a food writer:
Please join us over on Mastermind for Food Writers where you’ll find a ton of education, connection, and resources, for food writers by food writers.
Check out the line up of free classes and in-depth workshops in The Food Writers Business Lab, an online learning hub created specifically for food writers who want practical, affordable support for growing their businesses and expanding their reach.
I taught an SEO for food writers class a few weeks ago where I presented SEO not as a technical burden or a game to be won, but as a practical way to help the right readers find your recipes, stories, newsletters, and posts. The class was recorded and is available here: SEO: Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers
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One day, you'll take me sailing!