Wind Powered
+ Wind Powered + The Summer Bake List
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.
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Something Very Special Is Starting in July
At the beginning of this year, Betty Williams and I spent an afternoon at a Temecula winery. We did a tasting and a tour. We had lunch in the cafe. We stayed for hours and solved all the world's problems. And we had an idea… what if we could gather 12 of the best Substack food writers and recipe creators together for an epic series of cooking classes?
Introducing The CookStack Collective.
Over the next year, paid subscribers will get access to a monthly live Zoom class featuring a different host, fresh recipes, and the chance to cook along, ask questions, and learn directly from some very talented cooks.
Access to CookStack Collective classes is exclusively for paid subscribers (aka, members of The Lost Supper Club). For just $35 a year, you’ll have access to all 12 of these live classes, the class materials, and all the class recordings. Paid subscribers also receive THREE free cookbooks and other exclusive content throughout the year. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is a deliciously good reason.
—>Paid Subscribers: Watch your inbox for monthly invites to each of these 12 classes! The first class invite is coming later this week!
Wind Powered
As a teenager, when I was first learning to drive, it felt like there were too many things to keep track of at once. I remember wondering how anyone paid attention to both the speedometer and the road? It felt so impossible. Then suddenly, sooner than I expected, it was easy and I couldn’t remember why it seemed difficult in the first place.
Last year, when we were first learning how to sail, I felt like my teenage self, behind the wheel, learning to drive, and wondering if it would ever feel easy.
This year, it feels easy. At times, I still want to hang a new driver sign over the hull, as a warning or an apology to other boaters who might be wondering what the hell is going on over here. But mostly, it feels natural and I wonder what I ever thought was so complicated about putting up the sails and letting the wind push us along.
I’m writing this on Friday. It’s mid-morning and we are working our way across Lake Michigan. We left Door County, Wisconsin at 7am. The water is glassy, a perfect reflection of the blue sky. In other words, there isn’t any wind.
Since leaving our temporary slip in Sister Bay marina, we have optimistically put up our sails, turned off the motor, and watched as our cruising speed dwindled down to zero. After 3 or 4 times of this, we’ve accepted our fate. Most of today will be under motor, not under sail.
But on Monday the wind was perfect. We spent the weekend sailing up the coast of Michigan, from Muskegon to Ludington to Frankfurt. We expected the journey across the lake to Door County, Wisconsin to take about 10 hours. We made it in 7. The wind was steady and strong, moving across the lake in the perfect direction. We set our course and then cruised along, fast and steady. The whole trip on one tack. Easy peasy.
Bailey’s Harbor is on the Lake Michigan side of the Door County Peninsula and it’s the only village on that side with a marina. When I made our temporary slip reservation, they told me the channel was shallow, but after taking down our boat’s dimensions, assured me it was deep enough for us to pass.
It was not.
After hitting ground twice, once with the marina manager guiding us in on a pontoon, reassuring us that the channel was 6 1/2 feet deep while watching our keel, hanging 6 feet below the surface, hit the sand, we gave up and got to work finding another option. All the other marinas were on the other side of the peninsula, about 35 nautical miles, or 5 hours from Bailey’s Harbor. How fortunate that we’d arrived so early. We coasted into Sister Bay marina at 8pm, with enough time to tie off and have dinner in the cockpit while watching the sunset.
How did we feel that night, having made our first crossing from one side of Lake Michigan to the other? How did it feel to be eating dinner on a sailboat we owned in a marina we’d walked through on previous visits, looking at the boats, dreaming, and asking what if we knew how to sail? What if we had a boat someday? Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t we have fun?
We felt…comfortable. At home. We didn’t grow up on Lake Michigan, so I don’t know if crossing the lake for the first time is a big deal for most people. But it was a big deal for us. And also, it felt like no big deal. It felt natural. It felt easy. It felt like we could sail anywhere.
We have our systems. We’ve found our roles. We’ve found a rhythm. When he does this, I do that. He fixes and tweaks and adjusts and improves the systems and the hardware and the efficiency of everything. I make sure we have food and water, clean sheets on the bed and clothes in the closet, sunscreen and shampoo in the bathroom, and a place to stay when we arrive. I plan the trip. He charts the course. For the most part, we each get to do what we do best.
So here we are on our way back. All the land has disappeared behind us and there are no other boats in sight. It feels a little bit like we are the only people in the world. The water is glassy and beautiful and our motor hums along, pushing us forward while we watch the horizon, hoping for some wind.
I’ll share more about our trip across the lake to Door County next week, including some of the meals I cooked onboard and some of the things I learned about packing a sailboat for 9 days on the water.
The Summer Bake List
If you’re the kind of person who sees a basket of peaches or a carton of berries and immediately starts thinking about what to bake (me!!!), this list is for you. The list below is a handful of summer goodness that I come back to again and again: easy, unfussy, and full of fruit.
From cherry cobbler and peach coffee cake to raspberry pie and blueberry crumb cake, this little collection is full of the juicy, buttery, crumb-topped goodness that’s worth turning on the oven for.
Cherry Cobbler: This Cherry Cobbler comes together in about 10 minutes, and the payoff is huge: juicy, jammy cherries tucked under a buttery, golden, sugar-cookie-style topping. Serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or eat it cold the next morning straight from the pan. (No judgment. Been there. Will be there again.)
Peach Coffee Cake with Crumb Topping: This buttery coffee cake is studded with sweet, juicy peaches and covered in a nutty, toasted coconut crumb topping that you will, from this point forward, want to start putting on everything. Maybe that’s just me. But I doubt it.
Raspberry Muffins: These are buttery little breakfast pastries that are absolutely packed with berries. The texture is exceptionally soft and tender, a perfect match for delicate, sweet raspberries. And the butter crumb topping literally melts in your mouth.
Raspberry Pie: This pie is bursting with the natural sweet-tart flavor of juicy raspberries tucked into a buttery, flaky, simple homemade lattice crust. The filling can be made with fresh or frozen raspberries and is the perfect consistency for neat, easy slices.
Chocolate Blackberry Muffins: These chocolate blackberry muffins are such a treat! They are packed with juicy blackberries and chocolate chips, and are so rich and fudgy they are almost brownie-like.
Blueberry Crumb Cake: Blueberry sauce is swirled into tender butter cake and topped with a generous layer of New York-style crumbs for a blueberry crumb cake that’s perfectly at home at the breakfast table, next to your afternoon mug of coffee or tea, or sliced up and served for dessert after dinner.
Easy Berry Sauce: It doesn’t get any easier than this 10-minute berry sauce. Use whatever kind or combination of berries you like, fresh or frozen, to make this delicious sauce that’s bursting with the flavor of ripe, juicy berries. Spoon it over anything you like, but I particularly like it over buttermilk pancakes.
Sweet Cherry Crumb Pie: This delicious cherry pie with a buttery crumb topping uses those plump, juicy, sweet cherries that are available in grocery stores and farmer’s markets all summer long. Baked in a flaky pie crust and topped with brown sugar crumbs that are tender and crunchy all at the same time, this is the must-bake of the season at our house.
Blueberry Pie Cookies: These soft blueberry and oatmeal cookies are chewy, crunchy, blueberry-filled bites of bliss. Think chewy oatmeal cookie meets blueberry crumb pie, with a granola crunch for good measure. Last year, I taught a LIVE class about how to make these cookies. Watch the replay here.
The Lost Supper Club!
This newsletter would not exist if not for the members of The Lost Supper Club, who show their support with a paid subscription, thus ensuring that the vast majority of readers can keep reading this newsletter for free. As a thank you, I try to provide those paid subscribers with some cool stuff, including three free cookbooks and access to The CookStack Collective, a 12-month series of cooking classes from leading Substack food writers.
A paid subscription is just $35 a year. Find out more about becoming a member of the Lost Supper Club.
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The boat touched twice? Wow! Way to recalibrate! Love hearing your sailing adventures! We spent two weeks in Croatia mostly motor sailing but i remember the glassy water
I'm ready to buy a boat now.