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.
Are you a fellow food writer or recipe developer?Here are three resources just for you!
November 1, 2026, is the first annual National Buy a Cookbook Day!
Jenna Helwig designated November 1 as National Buy a Cookbook Day (it’s registered here) as a way of celebrating and supporting the entire genre. The goal is to encourage all of us to buy a cookbook or two (or three), something I need no encouragement to do but will happily take the excuse for
I will be buying two books:
Anna Vocino’s latest book, Eat Happy Cocktail Hour. I’ve been dying to get my hands on this book since its release a few weeks ago but we haven’t been in a place where we could receive packages. Today we’re traveling to Colorado, where we have plenty of addresses to send things to. 🙂
Baking and The Meaning of Life by Helen Goh. This book has been on my wish list for a really long time and this is just the excuse I need to finally treat myself to it.
If you want to join me in jumping headfirst into this delightful excuse to buy a cookbook, I have a few recommendations for you!
Also, just a reminder that a paid subscription to this newsletter, which is $35 a year, comes with three free digital cookbooks. The books are not insubstantial.
Let’s Get Lost Vol. 1 includes 143 recipes with full color photos spread throughout 325 pages.
Volume 2 includes 92 recipes, also with full color photos, spread across 124 pages.
And The No Recipe Required Cookbook includes 47 recipes that are more of an idea than a formula and perfect for all of you throw-it-together people.
Does a $35 subscription that comes with three cookbooks count on National Buy A Cookbook Day? Yes, I think it does.
Here are 10 other cookbooks to consider. Happy cookbook shopping!
One and Two
I’m starting with the two books I’ve had the longest and STILL cook from on a regular basis: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan and Roasting by Barbara Kafka. These were among the very first cookbooks I ever owned and were an education that I still rely on to this day.
And by the way, Stephanie’s husband is also an author, and the two of them wrote a fabulous novel with recipes that you might as well throw into your cart at the same time: The Moon Tavern by Stephanie Hansen and Kurt Johnson. It includes recipes, so it counts.
Untamed Mushrooms by Lisa Golden Schroeder. This book has won awards for both content and design and once you get it in your hands, you’ll understand why. The book is a fascinating tutorial about mushroom foraging but you don’t need to head out into the woods to cook the many mouthwatering recipes.
Seven
Art of The Pie by Kate McDermott. If November isn’t the perfect time to buy a book all about pie, I don’t know what is! This gorgeous book is an education in pie baking that will not only have you dreaming of the perfect pie but give you the confidence to bake it.
Eight
Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean. This gorgeous book is the culmination of a remarkable career and is filled with Claudia’s favorite recipes from France, Greece, and Spain to Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco. Buy it for the recipes but then devote an afternoon to reading the stories.
Go down the rabbit hole of Mark Thomas’s journey to cook his way through a massive cookbook collection, one recipe at a time: Cook The Books
New Road Food Recipe: Chickpea Salad Sandwiches
Whether you’re heading across the country, across the world, or simply across town, this series of recipes is made for life on the move. They’re easy to make, easy to pack, and taste just as good hours later as they do fresh from the kitchen. Perfect for road trips, picnics, hikes, airplanes, potlucks, packed lunches, busy weeknights, and anywhere else you need to go.
When I was a child in elementary school, I remember my mom packing sandwiches of bread, lunchmeat, cheese, and mayo into my lunch box. Or sometimes just cheese and mayo, which I honestly preferred to the ones with lunchmeat. My sandwich was not unique. Most of the kids in my class brought something similar.
I can’t be sure of the exact timeline, but I’d guess my mayo and lunchmeat sandwich sat at room temperature for roughly five hours. And it is only now, in retrospect, that I wonder why we didn’t all have food poisoning?
I can’t be the only one with memories like this.
These days, we are advised to never leave mayonnaise at room temperature for longer than an hour, two at most. Anything longer is taking our lives into our hands. It’s a rule I follow religiously. Anything with mayo must be eaten right away or refrigerated immediately. No exceptions.
Except… that’s the advice for practically everything. Even mayonnaise that’s made without eggs or dairy. It’s like a blanket rule of food safety. Everything, we are told, is a Petri dish of dangerous bacteria if it spends more than two hours in an environment over 40°F.
My friends, I have only had food poisoning twice in my life, and both times it was terrible. I would not wish it for you and hope to never experience it again. In both instances, it was after a restaurant meal. Not once was it from the sandwiches in my lunchbox, or the leftover chicken that sat out on the table for several hours while we were engrossed in conversation with friends, or from the pot of beans that I cooked in the morning and forgot about until midafternoon.
And yet, I do not want to eat anything that includes mayonnaise if it’s been sitting out at room temperature for longer than an hour or so. The two-hours-or-less messages are enough, apparently, for me to disregard the years of experience to the contrary.
One time, I packed chicken salad sandwiches for a long travel day and when I pulled them out of the cooler they didn’t feel cold enough to me. I was suddenly certain that the lunch I’d made was guaranteed to poison us both and tossed them out. We ate truck stop food instead, and as I type this, I am aware of how irrational it was to think that the food inside a truck stop was somehow ‘safer’ than the sandwiches I’d made myself and kept in a cooler with ice.
Like I said, the message from the experts has sunk in.
When I pack sandwiches and salads made with mayonnaise on travel days, it’s always in a cooler packed with enough ice to practically freeze the contents.
When packing a cooler filled with ice isn’t practical, I rely on a homemade mayonnaise that uses aquafaba in place of eggs. Aquafaba is the liquid in a can of chickpeas, which is just one more reason to make it when preparing chickpea salad.
Now friends, is the storage advice any different for egg-based mayo and non-egg-based mayo?No, it’s not. Two hours max, the experts say.
And still, I feel much better about packing a sandwich made with egg-free mayo and chickpeas if I’m not going to be fastidious about keeping it on ice. Hence, this recipe for chickpea salad sandwiches made with egg-free mayo.
If we are bringing these on a road trip, I still pack them into a cooler, but feel that an ice pack, or a ziplock bag with a handful of ice cubes, or a few cold-from-the-refrigerator cans of sparkling water are enough to keep the temperature inside the cooler to something safe.
But I would absolutely pack these in the morning for lunch, with or without an insulated container. I would also pack these into a backpack for a hike, or for a picnic lunch without feeling any pressure to hurry up and eat.
You should not, my friends, take this as any sort of authoritative advice. As my friend Betty Williams often says: You’re an adult. Do what you like.
But if you also feel less nervous about packing a meat-free, egg-free meal when you know it will not be consumed within two hours, this is a great recipe.
The egg-free mayo is creamy and delicious and takes about 5 minutes to make using a food processor.
The chickpea salad comes with plenty of options, of course, so I encourage you to play around with the ingredients and the amounts until you find a combo that makes your heart sing.
Eat the chickpea salad in between slices of bread, with crackers or flatbread, stuffed inside a pita, or rolled up in a wrap.
The day I made the sandwiches you see here, we had some marinated feta in the refrigerator, so I cut the cubes into thin slices and laid them on top of the chickpea salad. The combination was delightful.
If you’re a radish fan, a few thin slices will provide a delicious crunchy, bitter contrast to the creamy chickpeas. Or add some chopped nuts, celery, bell pepper, or even halved grapes. If it sounds good, it probably will be.
One final note to all the bakers in the room: If you have a morning at home and fancy a sandwich made from fresh baked bread, this is my go-to recipe: Homemade White Bread. I’ve been baking it for 30 years. If you have a stand mixer, the hands-on time is, like, 20 minutes because the mixer does all the work.
Sometimes, as I did in the bread you see in the photos here, I swap out some of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour. Or sometimes I make this Honey Whole Wheat Bread. Both options will elevate your sandwich and give you toast the next morning that’s guaranteed to get your day off to a great start.
Here’s where you’ll find this recipe and every Road Food recipe:
I also sometimes lick the spoon even when there are raw eggs in the batter. 😱
New recipe: Pistachio Muffins with Pistachio Streusel!
These pistachio muffins are made with ground pistachios and creamy pistachio paste so you get so much rich, nutty flavor in every bite. Pistachio paste and sour cream are the secret to their soft, super moist, creamy texture, while cardamom and almond extract bring out the nutty flavor.
But the best part of these muffins, in my opinion, is the pistachio streusel.Oh, friends. This streusel is so delicious that it’s almost impossible to describe. It includes chopped pistachios and pistachio paste, and bakes into a thick, crumbly topping that melts on your tongue and makes these muffins feel like something special from your favorite bakery. No pudding mix or artificial food coloring required. Just pure, buttery pistachio flavor in every bite.
25 Delicious Leftover Chicken Recipes (Plus Plenty of Sides)
As far as I’m concerned, this is officially roasting season. I started last week by roasting two chickens at once, side by side in one pan. On Sunday night, we filled our plates with mashed potatoes, and brown buttered carrots, and juicy slices of roast chicken, the skin crispy and crackling underneath the knife, then settled onto the couch to dig into the latest season of The Diplomat.
Later that evening, I picked the rest of the meat off the bones to use in different meals later in the week.
This is pretty much how I’d like every Sunday night to go from now until summer. There are few things I appreciate more on a Sunday night than a roast chicken dinner, and opening the refrigerator to find leftover chicken the rest of the week is a delicious bonus.
It’s not much more work to roast two chickens instead of one. If your family is large and your oven can handle it, roast three or four. Eat one for dinner that night and then use the leftover meat to make a creamy soup, a bubbling casserole, cheesy enchiladas, or a pot pie crowned with biscuits.
So, here are 25 of the best ways to use cooked leftover chicken plus sixteen side dish ideas that just might steal the show.
To all my paid subscribers: This newsletter would not exist without your generous support. The CookStack Collective classes and the new Road Food series are exclusively available to you. They are two ways for me to say thank you.
Join me for the November CookStack Collective class on Tuesday, November 10 where Kerry Faber will show us how to make one of her favorite cozy fall dishes: Cabbage-Wrapped Chicken Parm Meatballs! Here’s where to get more information and register!
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You know how I feel about roasting!