Issue #7, The most beautiful birthday gift

Let's Get Lost, April 6, 2024

In this issue

+The BEST birthday gift and the last couple of weeks in pictures

+ What to Make This Week

+ Two New Recipes! Fettuccine with chicken and tomato cream sauce and Honey cornbread muffins

+ No Recipe Required: Chickpea and harissa soup

+ One Useful Thing: Cooking beans

+ Featured Cookbook: A recipe for Black eyed pea and veggie stew from The Blue Zones Cookbook

+ April Bake Club Challenge: Raspberry Muffins!

+ 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.

→ Read more about me what this newsletter is all about

I turned 49 last month and our daughters flew to Oregon to celebrate with me. They gave me the most beautiful birthday gift - a book of photos from the past 4 years.

The first pages of the book include a message they wrote to me about why they decided to only include photos from the last 4 years. This is an excerpt of that message:

“In the last 4 years since Corey died a lot of things have become very clear to us. How easily families can be devastated and hurt by one person, how important family is, how precious time spent with one another is, and how important it is to say I love you when you have the chance to say it.

But the loss of Corey shook all of our foundations and colored our lives in a way that would only be understood by someone who lost what we lost. And it should have been something that broke us. Splintered the family in a way that shouldn’t have been put back together.

Except you and dad held onto us tightly and we knew it would be ok.

In this book, Annie and I put all the pictures we have of trips we have taken and family events we have gone to in the past 4 years, not because we want to forget Corey or ignore the past, but because of the happiness we have managed to reclaim and hold onto and thrive in.”

Since our son died, I have often thought of our family as broken. But what our girls reminded me of is this: We are still a family. We are still whole. We’ve just been formed into a different shape.

Also, check out the book’s title. When I was turning 44, I told the girls I was forty fucking four and it stuck. They say, in their minds, I will be forty fucking four forever. 😂

The last couple of weeks in photos

Our campsite in Winchester Bay, Oregon.

After 4 weeks on the coast of Oregon and 9 months in the Pacific Northwest, we said goodbye to the Pacific Ocean and started making our way to Zion National Park in Utah. To break up the 16 hour drive, we spent this week at Washoe Lake State Park in Nevada.

Washoe Lake State Park, Carson City, Nevada

We arrived in Nevada late in the day in a snowstorm. Rather than try to remove the motorcycle from the RV and get parked and set up in the dark in a snowstorm, we found a Hampton Inn in Reno with enough parking for our rig and spent the night in a warm, dry hotel room. The next day it was still cold but bright and sunny - much better conditions in which to get situated.

Our time at Washoe Lake State Park has been mostly cold, windy, sometimes rainy and snowy, but we did have one warm-ish, beautiful day so we got out to walk around and explore. In the middle of a field next to the lake is a wooden maze. I have no idea why it’s there, but we were enamored with the odd whimsy of it. The maze mostly just goes around in circles, but there are a few fun little obstacles like the swinging plank Steve’s walking across in the photo above.

I am still obsessed with the Arugula Pesto from Issue #4, and making it on a weekly basis. Earlier this week we ate it over roasted cauliflower and couscous and tonight (Friday), we’ll polish off the rest of it with a pot of Arugula Pesto Pasta made with homemade fettuccini noodles I hung to dry a couple of days ago.

I spent quite a bit of time this week shooting photos for recipes that will be in upcoming issues of this newsletter and thought I’d give you a peak behind the scenes of what it looks like to take photos inside an RV. Every surface is occupied. You can’t see the sofa, but it is also being utilized to its fullest extent. 😂

And this poor little snail hitched the wrong ride. We found him in the bed of the truck after driving from the wet Oregon coast to the Nevada desert. I plopped him in the dirt at our campground and wished him luck.

Today we are traveling from Nevada to Utah to spend a few weeks boondocking around Zion National Park. (What’s Boondocking? Here are some FAQs about camping off the grid.) We’ve spent time in the rest of Utah’s state parks but have not yet visited Zion and are super excited. I’ll have some hopefully sunny pics from there in next week’s newsletter.

Until then, I hope you find some new recipes to try from this week’s issue. Wishing you a fantastic week, friends. ❤️

---

What to make this week

Happy April! 🌸

I am writing this on our one warm afternoon here in Nevada. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and all the windows are open. I LOVE having all the windows open. I am in the mood for light, fresh flavors and recipes that are quick and easy. If that’s you too, add these recipes to this week’s meal plan.

New Recipe: Loaded Vegan Nachos

These vegan nachos are meaty-without-the-meat and cheesy-without-the-cheese and piled high with so many good things that every single bite is like a little party.

Salty, crispy tortilla chips are loaded up with vegan taco meat, black beans, vegan nacho cheese, crunchy diced veggies and jalapeños, salsa, and creamy vegan sour cream. Best nachos ever.

Recipe: Loaded Vegan Nachos

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

If you have some pre-cooked chicken, these will only take about 15 minutes to make. I always make enough for us to have them again later in the week because they are so good we don’t mind eating them twice. Two meals in roughly 15 minutes? Yes, please.

If you have leftover chicken in the refrigerator, use that. Or, pick up a rotisserie chicken. Or follow this super simple method in Issue #1 for poaching chicken.

Recipe: Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

These chicken enchiladas also rely on pre-cooked chicken and take about 15 minutes of prep time before you put them in the oven to bake. They also reheat well, so you know what I’m going to say here, do yourself a favor and make enough for leftovers.

Recipe: Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

Spaghetti Puttanesca

Rumor has it that spaghetti puttanesca originated in brothels as a way to lure in customers with its rich aroma. All I can say is that I hope the ladies saved some for themselves. Goodness knows they probably needed it more than their customers. 😉

Origins aside, spaghetti puttanesca is one of my all-time favorite pasta dishes. It’s the kind of thing you can whip up in 30 minutes or less with ingredients entirely from your pantry.

Recipe: Spaghetti puttanesca

This is especially delish with homemade spaghetti noodles, of course. I generally make the dough a couple of days earlier (10 minutes), roll it out into noodles a day or two later (15 minutes) and hang them to dry. When the noodles are dry, I pack them into a ziplock bag and they are ready to cook when I am.

For the bakers

Even if you’re not a big fan of white chocolate, these white chocolate chip cookies are hard to resist. They are made with brown butter which makes them soft and chewy with a rich toffee flavor that just melts in your mouth. Add some dried cranberries and/ or macadamia nuts if you like for white chocolate-cranberry-macadamia cookies.

Or go a different direction and make these giant white chocolate raspberry cookies instead. If you’d rather, they are just as delicious with dark chocolate chips.

And speaking of raspberries, have you tried these raspberry muffins yet??? They are soft and tender, and covered in butter crumbs, so you really can’t go wrong here. Also, they can be made with frozen raspberries because I know it’s a little early in most places for sweet fresh raspberries.