IRL. But with magic.

+ Creamy Mushroom Chicken and Rice, Homemade Honey Wheat Bread, and Brown Butter Citrus Shortbread Cookies

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.

Get every issue and recipe directly on rebeccablackwell.com.

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Last week I attended a Food Writer’s Retreat in Pennsylvania. After returning home, I posted a note about it here on Substack and Nicole Hernandez, a visibility coach and former publicist, commented that “IRL is where it’s at these days.”

I started to reply with words of earnest agreement, exclamation point capped of course! And then had to stop and walk away from my computer for a bit to consider the absurdity of my mind treating IRL as some kind of new, trendy thing, like it was a bandwagon I wanted to jump on.

In Real Life.

It’s the REAL part of that phrase that’s tripping me up.

What’s real right now: It is 9:56 am on Thursday morning. I am sitting on my sofa, my feet propped up on the ottoman, laptop on my lap. We are at an RV resort in San Diego, California. It is sunny and 66 degrees and the windows are open. You are reading these words from somewhere else… Maybe you are also on your sofa, or standing in your kitchen, or sitting on the toilet. Or, perhaps you are in your car, or standing in line at the grocery store, or laying in bed. It might be early morning or late at night. Perhaps your windows are also open. Perhaps not.

Once I’ve written what I want to write, I’ll click a button and within seconds, these words will be distributed to you and a few thousand other people scattered all over the world. This is magic.

I LOVE magic.

This kind of magic has existed for a while. Long before digital screens. It existed in the pages of books, and in oral traditions that moved stories through great distances of space and time. Long before we could watch actors on a screen, we were watching them on a stage.

Storytelling is the backbone of humanity and we haven’t restricted ourselves to first hand experience or a believable narrative. We have always gravitated towards fantastical tales of supernatural happenings, often as a way of understanding our real lives.

And also magic isn’t real. We know this and it’s why we have an abbreviated short hand to communicate when something is, in fact, happening in real life vs our magical, digital reality.

What is real, is how the magic hits us. How it makes us feel. How it changes our perspective. How it is powerful enough to alter our behavior and change our course.

I wonder… if we’ve gotten too wrapped up in the magic and now need the reminder that its effects are experienced, for better or for worse, IRL. Perhaps we’ve gotten a little bit confused about which part is the story and which part is the moral of the story.

Humans tend to behave worse when we are anonymous, when we forget that the things we create in our magical digital reality have an impact IRL.

What is real is the real person behind the magic.

At 51 years old, most of my life up until this point existed in a world without the internet and smart phones. We didn’t have an abbreviation for in real life because our digital lives did not exist.

And yet, I can’t remember how I ever got around without a digital map to guide me. I have no idea how I stayed in touch with anyone outside the walls of my home. How did we make plans? How did we spread important information? How did we find each other when we ventured out into the world to meet up?

I am being dramatic. AND ALSO even those of us who grew up in a non-digital world would have a hard time functioning if all that technology suddenly went away.

But at the retreat, I carried my phone around with me but didn’t use it except to check the time. I didn’t post about it. I didn’t check in with my husband. I didn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t physically there, in the flesh.

This wasn’t a concerted effort. I didn’t put myself on a digital diet. I just did it. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a sacrifice. I wasn’t giving anything up. I just really wanted to be there.

When I returned home, I felt a bit disoriented. Like Pinocchio after he’d been turned into a real boy, some of the digital people in my world had been made real. I wanted to ask, “did that really happen?”

There’s a weird commentary there that deserves further examination, that a few days spent offline can feel disorienting.

For the past couple of years I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the days when we didn’t walk around with the whole world in our pockets. When the phones were on the walls and stopping to ask directions was a normal thing to do. But, feeling nostalgic for another time is not the same as wanting to go back to it. I feel nostalgic for the days when my children were small but I don’t want to relive them.

Technology has made a lot of things easier and better for me. It’s opened doors to a life that might not have been possible otherwise. A life I love. All of the work I do offline is recreated and distributed around the world in a way that is accessible to most anyone who wants it. This is magic and like I said, I love magic.

For that matter, the Food Writer’s Retreat started online. Every single one of us met here before we met there. And I think that’s maybe the point. This morning I read words on a screen, “IRL is where it’s at these days”, written by someone I’ve never met and did not know existed before she clicked send. I clicked on her name and read about her life and her work and then returned back to a digital page and a blinking curser where I’ve been trying to work something out about what it means to be a real human in a digital world made of magic so that I can click a button and send the words over to you where you will do with them what you will. In your real life.

Like magic.

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A few photos from the Food Writer’s Retreat

1. The retreat took place at this gorgeous house in the Pocano mountains of Pennsylvania.

2. Jenn Sharp, the retreat founder and organizer, is the hostess with the mostest and I mean that in every sense of the phrase. She thought of everything, attended to every detail, and created a truly magical experience.

3. I got to take my youngest daughter Anne with me to the retreat and it was wonderful having so much time with her. I also love that she got to meet all of the incredible, talented, generous food writers in attendance.

4. I’ve been working with Sarah Pilley for over two years (she’s done all the artwork for this publication) but the first time I met her in person was when she came bounding out to greet me wearing a Let’s Get Lost t-shirt with her own design on the front.

5. Jen packed her car with her own china and crystal and drove it from New Orleans to the Pocanos, and then laid out a table with candles and hand cut boughs of evergreen.

6. All the meals at the retreat were cooked by those of us in attendance. Jenn divided us into meal teams with the instructions to come up with a team name and a menu. My group was the Badass Breakfast Bitches and we did our best to live up to the hype….

7. … The kind of breakfast you get when the Badass Breakfast Bitches cooks it for you.

8. I got to teach a photography workshop! I was very nervous about this and honestly would have backed out at the slightest opening, but ended up having an absolute blast.

9. I was also super nervous when Mindy Crosato said she was going to lead us in some improve exercises. Once again, the worry was 100% unnecessary because the games were an absolute riot and almost made me want to join an improve group. (not really)

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This Week’s Menu

Creamy Mushroom Chicken and Rice, Homemade Honey Wheat Bread, and Brown Butter Citrus Shortbread Cookies

Creamy Mushroom Chicken and Rice

This one-pot creamy mushroom chicken and rice is the kind of comforting meal that can solve anything. Or, at the very least, it will take your mind off of the day and make you feel a little bit better about the world.

Tender chicken, rice, caramelized mushrooms, sweet onions, and a splash of cream come together into a meal that’s generous without being complicated, luxurious without being fussy. The recipe includes instructions for using raw chicken and rice, but it’s also a great way to use leftover pre-cooked chicken and rice. You’ll also find instructions for how to make this dish dairy free.

I first developed this recipe as a way to use up leftover French onion soup. It was back in the days when our kids were young and they gobbled it up with such enthusiasm that I realized I couldn’t wait for leftovers before making it again.

Cooking some onions until golden brown and then adding a packet of dry onion soup mix to the broth was an easy substitution to French onion soup. And including some caramelized mushrooms added a gorgeous earthy flavor that felt both elegant and homey all at the same time.

As you might imagine, I made this dish many, many times over the years. It was a family favorite, especially loved by our youngest daughter who requested it frequently.

This is a one pot meal that’s easy to prepare and can be cooked entirely from scratch. But it’s also a fantastic way to use up leftover chicken, or rotisserie chicken, and leftover rice. You’ll find instructions below for making creamy mushroom chicken and rice with both raw chicken and rice and cooked chicken and rice.

I hope your family loves it as much as we do.

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Homemade Honey Wheat Bread

Just like my favorite homemade white bread recipe, two loaves of this simple Honey Wheat Bread will be ready to eat in about 3 hours, with only about 20-minutes of hands-on effort.

Thanks to a touch of olive oil and milk, this bread has an exceptionally soft and tender crumb. The loaves are hearty and substantial, but not heavy, dry, or overly dense.

Lightly sweetened with honey (or molasses), each slice is slightly nutty and supremely comforting, like only homemade bread can be.

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Brown Butter Citrus Shortbread Cookies

Nutty brown butter shortbread and the the bright, sunny flavor of citrus come together in these irresistible cookies that are so tender they literally melt in your mouth. When properly chilled, these shortbread cookies retain their definition when baked, so cut them into whatever shapes you like. Drizzle them with sweet tart lemon icing and just try to not eat them all yourself.

Shortbread is a simple combination of flour, sugar, and butter. And what’s not to love about that? But shortbread is also the perfect base from which to showcase other flavors... like nutty brown butter, bright citrus, and a generous amount of vanilla.

Brown butter and citrus is an enticing flavor combination. The earthy, nuttiness of brown butter seems to ground the bright, dazzling flavor of citrus. The combination reminds me of something from a romantic comedy, where a fun character who’s prone to flights of fancy meets a reliable sort with a tendency to get stuck in their ruts, but together they bring out the best in each other.

Not only are the flavors in these cookies a match made in heaven (or Hollywood), the texture positively melts in your mouth, which is exactly what I want from something made with a delightfully exorbitant amount of butter.

You too? Then put on an apron and pull out the butter because this just might become your new favorite cookie recipe.

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