In this issue:
+ Some thoughts about time our 2024 travel itinerary!
+ Two New Recipes! Healthy-ish cookies and Quick Spanish shrimp
+ No Recipe Required: Cheesy, super quick stuffed flatbread
+ One Useful Thing: An easy homemade vinaigrette hack
+ Featured Cookbook: Cod salad from How to Dress an Egg
+ New On The Blogs: Mushroom ragu, Red velvet muffins, Gluten free cheese crackers, and Peanut butter oat protein balls
+ February Bake Club Challenge: Oatmeal raisin cookies
+ Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations
A quick note before we get to it, the length of this post means it might be truncated in your inbox – just click to expand and read the whole thing or read it directly on rebeccablackwell.com.
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Time isn’t real
We have been in the Seattle area since last October and in Washington state since last July. It’s the longest (by far!) that we’ve spent in one place since moving into our RV in May of 2020 and both my husband and I thought we’d be feeling extremely restless by now. What a surprise then that we don’t.
I snapped this photo earlier in the week from our back deck. The fog rolling in over the lake that we are backed up to just captivated me.
I don’t know where I read this quote by writer Margaret Visser, but it impacted me enough to write it down: “Our perception that we have no time is one of the distinctive marks of modern western culture.”
Wowza. The idea of never having enough time has been a hallmark of my entire life, an element of our culture that I have taken to heart. I am positively obsessed with thoughts of not having enough time, of time running out, of not having taken advantage of the time, of not using time efficiently, and on and on to the point of tedium.
The kicker, as I am beginning to actually truly realize, is that it’s all made up. Our oldest daughter often says, “time isn’t real” and we laugh because it’s not really true but also because it is. AND, as if the universe wanted to validate the point, not two days after writing the previous sentence, I listened to a Short Wave by NPR podcast titled “Our Lives Are Ruled By the Illusion of Time” for which the entire point was to say that time isn’t real.
Message received.
Conceptually I do understand that having time and using time exist only as ideas inside my own mind. Time is not mine to posses and all strategies to control time eventually fail because everything is impermanent anyway. No state of mind or experience can be held onto or sustained indefinitely. It strikes me that all my striving to grasp the ungraspable is a rather insane approach to life, and one that has caused much unnecessary stress and suffering.
The folly is in believing that there’s something to manage and protect. In truth, everything exists as it is and I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
There is something about living as a nomad that is helping me learn these lessons and I must say, it’s about time. (Ha! Did you see what I did there? 😂)
I spend so many hours planning our yearly travel itinerary. The planning itself is a good thing and I’m always happy I’ve done it. It makes the year much more enjoyable than it would be if we were constantly scrambling to figure out where we were going and where we would stay when we got there.
But the whole endeavor is underwritten in part by the fear of not having enough time.
I know that it’s actually impossible to see everything there is to see and have every experience there is to have in any given place no matter how long we stay there. But it doesn’t stop me from trying.
As I worked on our travel plans for this year, I tried to remember that there is no such thing as the right place and the wrong place, the right experience or the wrong one. There is no such thing as wasted time or even my time. There is only this.
We have enjoyed being in one place for such a long time (which is kind of a lie because our RV has been in the same location but we have still traveled to visit family for the holidays and are heading out tomorrow for a vacation in Costa Rica because we are, perhaps, incapable of actually staying put.) And also I am looking forward to moving on.
If you want to see where we’re headed, here’s our 2024 Itinerary.
Also, a question we get asked frequently is, “what are the favorite places you’ve visited so far?” If that’s also something you’re curious about, we have a list! You’ll find it here: Road Trip Bucket List
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Healthy-ish cookies
These are soft, surprisingly addictive little cookies that contain no flour or additional sugar besides what’s in the ingredients themselves. After baking the first batch, I took a bite and thought they were ok… then I ate four in short order and had to stop myself from grabbing another. Make of that what you will but my husband did the same thing so when I say they are surprisingly addictive I think that’s actually exactly true.
Makes about 24 cookies.
Ingredients:
3 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup apple sauce - The same amount as one of those individual 4 ounce lunchbox containers
2 cups old fashioned oats (also called rolled oats)
1/4 cup unsweetened and unflavored almond milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt - I like quite a bit of salt in my sweet foods so I add a whole teaspoon, but you should add as much or as little as tastes good to you
1/2 cup chopped nuts - I like roasted, salted almond
1 cup (approximately) chocolate chips
1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper.
Add the bananas, apple sauce, oats, almond milk, both extracts, and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix until the bananas are well mashed. Mix in the nuts, chocolate chips, and shredded coconut.
The batter will be wet and goopy and you’ll think there’s no way it will bake up into cookies, but it will. Use a spoon to drop piles of dough onto the baking sheet, spacing the cookies about 2 inches apart. My cookies were slightly larger than a golf ball. Bake for 15 minutes.
These make a delicious breakfast treat, by the way.
Quick Spanish shrimp with crispy fried potatoes
This super quick method for cooking shrimp is adapted from a recipe in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. It can be modified in a multitude of ways by simply swapping out the spices. We love to eat it with crispy fried potatoes, but it’s also great over rice or pasta.
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