Not Believing Our Own Bullshit
+ Recipes for Citrus Lovers, Creamy Mushroom Pasta, Homemade Mushroom Pizza, Crispy Avocado Tacos, Citrus Drizzle Cake, and BBQ Chicken Nachos
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.
This issue is a reheat
If you’ve ever listened to the podcast The Sporkful, you know that when they re-release an episode, they call it a “Reheat”. I love this and am stealing it. :-)
I’ll be on vacation in Europe through must of April and so am re-publishing a few of the most popular past issues while I’m away.
This issue was originally published in February of 2024. It contains a lot of my favorite recipes, ones you may have missed if you subscribed at some point after then. I hope you enjoy!
Not believing our own bullshit
“I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim.”- Virginia Wolf
This time last year, we were camped on the Texas gulf coast, parked right on the hard packed sand of Crystal Beach with the sound of ocean waves as our constant soundtrack. We had intended to stay for 2 weeks and ended up staying for 7. (If you’re curious about what that was like, I wrote about that experience here.)
The first week there I got up early and went for a morning walk just as the sun was starting to rise over the water and got caught in a conversation with another camper. I shared that conversation with some folks back then and wanted to share it with you now because it taught me a lesson that I am currently still trying to learn. Here’s what I wrote last year…
While on my morning walk today, a man camped on the beach started a conversation with me. “Conversation” is probably not the right word. More accurately he talked AT me for a few minutes while I contemplated my escape.
He railed against the world for all of its ineptitude while simultaneously telling me all the ways in which he was smarter, tougher, and just generally better than “all those sissys” who can’t get their shit together. I determined that there was no polite way to escape this encounter (and honestly, why did I even care about being polite???) and just started walking away.
As I did, I said, “It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Too bad you’re surrounded by a world full of idiots.” He shouted after me that he doesn’t have it all figured out and the good lord teaches that we should show love and kindness to everyone and that’s what he’s “TRYING TO DO GODDAMMIT!”
Love and kindness wasn’t exactly the vibe I was getting from him. The problem is, he believes all his own stories and tells them on repeat. And for the rest of my walk, I thought about the one important lesson this man taught me:
Freedom is realizing you don’t have to believe your own bullshit. Or anyone else’s.
So here I am a year later still trying to not believe all my own bullshit. Dang, it’s hard.
Our thoughts are not the truth of things. They are not facts. A lesson I must continue to learn is that I do not have to believe all my own thoughts. This is different from ignoring them or trying to hide the most difficult thoughts in some isolated corner of my mind in a futile effort to pretend they’re not there.
In fact, the best way I know to deal with painful, difficult thoughts is to bring them fully into awareness. To shine a spotlight on them and not only acknowledge their existence, but allow them to take center stage.
In doing so, it is sometimes possible to see the thought for what it is - as just a thought.
Likewise, the narrative of who I am and of who I think others are is not the truth. They are just stories, constructed in my mind.
What I’m trying to say is, we’d do well to hold the stories we tell ourselves loosely.
On that note, let’s talk about food.
Recipes for citrus lovers
I keep a huge bowl of citrus fruit on the table from around October through May and in addition to eating it straight from the bowl, I juice it and add it to everything from salads and tacos to cake.
In this issue you’ll find two recipes that include crispy panko crusted avocados - one for tacos and one for salad, both including slices of juicy, sweet CaraCara oranges. And also, the most delicious, sloppy, sticky orange drizzle cake.
Here are a few of my other favorite ways to make the most of citrus season:
Creamy Mushroom Pasta
Love is the way I feel about this plate full of creamy, cheesy, saucy, perfectly cooked pasta and roasted mushrooms topped with plenty of cracked pepper and fresh herbs.
Just to be perfectly clear here, when I say I love this plate of pasta I am not speaking metaphorically. I love and adore it with each and every silky, creamy, earthy mushroom bite.
And I promise that all of you all you fellow pasta and mushroom lovers will also fall head over heals for this dish. I know because I am you.
Homemade Mushroom Pizza
My oh my. This homemade mushroom pizza is a stunner. It deserves your complete, undivided, wholly devoted love and adoration. This will not be difficult or a sacrifice, believe you me.
It’s the kind of thing you make when self care means an evening at home tucked in with rich and cozy, deeply comforting, simple-meets-decadent, cheesy, saucy mushrooms on a soft and chewy homemade pizza crust dripping with truffle oil and roasted garlic.
Crispy fried avocado tacos
If you’re an avocado lover, you’re probably going to want to add these tasty little tacos to your plan for the week. This is the kind of recipe that you can easily scale to make as many tacos as you need, from two to twenty. And the combination of crispy panko and creamy avocado + cheese + all the bright fresh flavor from orange slices, quick pickled onions, and salsa verde is just plain dreamy.
Ingredients:
Corn tortillas
Vegetable or canola oil
An avocado or two - or however many you need for the number of tacos you want to make
Chili powder, salt, and pepper
For the breading: Panko bread crumbs, all-purpose flour, an egg or two
Cheese: Cotija, Queso Fresco, Machego, or Oaxaca
Orange slices (I used CaraCara oranges): use a sharp knife to cut the peel from an orange and then cut each segment away from the segment wall (seperate the fruit from its “skin”)
Salsa verde - We like Herdez
Brush the corn tortillas with a little bit of oil and stack them on a microwave safe plate. Cover with a damp paper towel and set aside.
Cut the avocado in half, remove the peel and the pit, and cut each half into 1/2-inch thick slices. Spread the slices out on your cutting board and sprinkle them on both sides with chili powder and a generous amount of salt and pepper.
Add about a cup of panko bread crumbs to a plate, dump a couple tablespoons of flour onto a separate plate, and crack an egg or two into a bowl. Add a teaspoon or two of water to the eggs and whisk to combine.
Working with one avocado slice at a time, dredge each slice in flour, dip it in the eggs, then coat with panko bread crumbs. When coating with panko, use your fingers to really press the bread crumbs into each slice so you get a nice thick layer. Lay the breaded slices out onto a plate.
Pour enough oil into a large skillet to come up the sides of the pan about 1/4 of an inch and set it over high heat. When the oil is very hot, use metal tongs to add the breaded avocado slices to the pan. (To test that the oil is hot enough, dip one corner of a breaded avocado slice into the hot oil. If it sizzles, the oil is hot enough.)
Cook the avocado slices in the oil, turning them every once in a while, until they are a rich golden brown. Remove the slices to a paper towel lined plate.
Place the plate of tortillas in the microwave and heat for 45 - 60 seconds to warm.
To serve: lay a couple of tortillas on a plate and add some cheese. Top the cheese with a couple of fried avocado slices, then a couple of orange slices, some pickled onions, and a spoonful of salsa verde.
Recipe notes:
There is no need to try and keep the avocado slices warm. The tacos are perfectly delicious at room temperature.
You can skip the flour and egg and simply season the avocado slices before coating them directly with bread crumbs. The downside is that the avocado slices will not be as firm after they are fried. In fact, they get kind of mushy. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer the firmer texture of the slices that have been breaded with flour and egg.
The point of brushing the corn tortillas with oil and then microwaving them is to soften them so they don’t break in half when you fold them over into a taco. You can also do this in the hot oil left in the pan after frying the avocados. Simply keep the oil over high heat and use metal tongs to dip the tortillas, one at a time, in the hot oil, flipping them over after 2 or 3 seconds, then removing them from the pan to drain on a paper towel.
Not sure what I’m talking about when I say to cut the fruit from it’s skin? Here’s a video of someone doing exactly this.
Crispy fried avocado and citrus salad
We loved the crispy fried avocados in the tacos above so much that I made some more the next day and added them to a salad. Here’s how to make this salad:
Whisk up a quick citrus vinaigrette. Check out last week’s issue for a basic vinaigrette formula and a couple of hacks for getting all the ingredients to come together a they should. For this salad, I used lime juice, a diced shallot, honey, about a teaspoon of mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil.
Follow the instructions in the taco recipe above to bread avocado slices and fry them in hot oil until golden and crispy.
Use a sharp knife to cut the peel from an orange and then cut each segment from the segment wall (the “skin” around each segment).
Add salad greens to a plate and drizzle the greens with vinaigrette. Lay a few slices of orange and a few crispy avocado slices over the greens then top with toasted, salted pumpkin seeds.
*To toast pumpkin seeds: add the seeds to a skillet along with enough olive or canola oil to coat the seeds. Sprinkle the seeds with salt and then cook the seeds over medium heat, until about half of them are brown. Stir often while the seeds are cooking to prevent burning.
Orange drizzle cake
This orange drizzle cake is so rich, buttery, and tender you might actually call it creamy. The cake includes a few whole oranges stirred right into the batter and a generous drizzle of orange syrup. But don't think the drizzle means it's overly sweet. This cake isn't anywhere near the neighborhood of cloying. It's just bright orange flavor and sunshine on a plate.
BBQ chicken nachos
This was one of our kids favorite meals growing up. I almost always made it following a trip to Costco where I would purchase chips, grated, cheese, BBQ sauce, and a rotisserie chicken.
After getting everything from my Costco haul put away, I’d throw together a large tray of these nachos which, thanks to the precooked chicken, only took a few minutes. Who wants to spend a bunch of time in the kitchen after a family-sized grocery store run? Not this girl.
Now that it’s just my husband and I, I don’t make these nachos nearly as often. But every now and then they hit the spot. There is an endless number of ways to top these simple nachos, but I prefer to keep the whole thing pretty simple - just chips, cheese, BBQ chicken, and onions. Here’s how to make them:
Coat some pre-cooked chicken with your favorite bottled BBQ sauce. This is a great way to use up leftover chicken, or follow the super easy method for cooking chicken in Issue #1 to cook a package of boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs. You can also just use a rotisserie chicken.
Heat the oven to 450 degrees F and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Spread some tortilla chips out onto the baking sheet (I usually made my own because it’s easy and they are so freaking delicious - here’s how to make homemade tortilla chips).
Scatter BBQ chicken over the chips and then add a generous amount of shredded cheese (cheddar, Monterey jack, pepper jack, or a grated Mexican blend).
Pop the baking sheet in the oven and cook until all the cheese is melted and bubbly.
Remove the baking sheet from the oven, scatter some quick pickled onions over the top of the nachos, then just dig in.
A great alternative to pickled onions is to cook a sliced red or yellow onion in some oil in a skillet until they are caramelized to a rich golden brown.
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Life lesson, never fully learned 💕 Thanks for the reminder, Rebecca—and have an amazing time in Europe!
Have an amazing trip! Adding those BBQ chicken nachos to my list too—yum!!