The Blueberry Issue
+ Road Food and some trivia about gift horses
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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A little housekeeping before we dig in
Last week I waxed poetic about how much I love my Ninja Creami ice cream maker and then promptly provided you with a broken link. 🤦🏻♀️ This is the kind of mistake I am known for and I’d like to tell you it’ll get better, but we are who we are and it will most certainly happen again. Here is an actual link that will work, godwilling.
ALSO! As I was checking, and double checking, and triple checking the link, I noticed that it’s on sale. Kismet!
The August CookStack Collective Class!
The CookStack Collective is a monthly live Zoom class featuring a different chef, fresh recipes, and the chance to cook along, ask questions, and learn directly from some very talented cooks.
Access to The CookStack Collective is exclusively for members of The Lost Supper Club (paid subscribers). If that’s you, you’ll see a registration link below for the August class and I hope you can join us!
If you’re not a paid subscriber but this sounds interesting to you, here’s where to find out more.
The Blueberry Issue
It's August, and I'm feeling both the abundance of the season and the sense that summer is slipping quickly through my fingers. On Tuesday morning, I made a quick trip to the local farmers market and came home with two bags of fresh veggies and a humongous box of blueberries.
We’ve had blueberry oatmeal for the last two mornings in a row and neither of us are mad about it.
Blueberries are my least favorite berry to eat fresh but my absolute favorite to bake with. I read somewhere that this hasn’t been a good year for blueberries. A late freeze and drought conditions in some of the country’s blueberry growing regions have made an impact. But the woman behind the blueberry stand here in Michigan told me they’d had a bumper crop.
So, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? If there’s a bumper crop in Michigan, I’m happy to take full advantage.
As an aside, there’s something about writing common phrases that makes me stop and wonder at their strangeness. This was my experience as I typed “look a gift horse in the mouth.” My fingers typed it and my eyebrows furrowed as I read it because what the heck does that even mean???
I paused in my newsletter writing to look it up. Here’s what I discovered: People used to check a horse’s teeth to uncover clues about its health, age, and other factors that might affect its value. If you were so fortunate as to have been given a horse as a gift and your first reaction was to inspect its teeth, that would be considered rude and ungrateful, I think for obvious reasons.
This is according to a group of people on Reddit and I won’t admit to how long I got sucked into their conversation about horses, and similar phrases in other cultures, and why giving someone a horse is actually a terrible gift because of how much it costs to keep one (very strong opinions there). I eventually emerged with that little piece of trivia which may or may not be true, but sounds right to me.
Anyhoo. Blueberries. I’ve got a ton of them and I also have several really great ways to use them, and that’s what I’m sharing with you today, starting with a brand new recipe for Blueberry Biscuits.
This is not the first blueberry biscuit recipe on the internet but it might be the first to include this many blueberries. Most recipes call for little more than a nod to the humble blueberry. These, on the other hand, are loaded with them. So much so that I named the recipe Loaded Blueberry Biscuits.
You’ll get eight buttery, flaky biscuits from this recipe layered with two full cups of fresh blueberries, an almost unreasonable amount, which feels like precisely the correct amount of blueberries to me.
Blueberry Pie
This is one of the most popular recipes on my baking website. I first published the recipe in 2019 and have since received many emails, comments, and messages that all go something like this…
"This is definitely THE Blueberry Pie recipe to bake. Look no further. I made this blueberry pie filling several times last summer, with excellent results and many, many compliments. I've saved it to my computer, a card for my recipe box, as well as a printed copy. Thank You so much Rebecca, for sharing this amazing, mouthwatering recipe. I am so thrilled to have 5 star Blueberry Pie recipe in my recipe box!" - Claudette
A few weeks ago, I asked my daughter Anne, a pastry chef at The Denver Convention Center who now takes many of the photos for my two recipe websites, to update the photos for this recipe.
I have not yet gotten around to adding those gorgeous new photos to the site (soon!), but I will tell you that she brought the remnants of that photo shoot to work with her, as she often does.
One of the other pastry chefs can always be counted on to offer (ahem) helpful criticism. This pie was the first recipe for which she had nothing but compliments. We were shocked and dumbfounded, and if that’s not a reason to make it, I don’t know what is.
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. If you're into things like buttery cookie dough, jammy fruit centers, and a snack that doubles as breakfast (and c'mon, who isn't?), these might just become your new favorite cookie.
Last summer, I showed you how to make these cookies on a Substack LIVE and you can watch the recording of that fun cookie class here.
Blueberry Pancakes: These vanilla, almond, and cardamom-spiked blueberry pancakes are thick and fluffy, melt-in-your mouth, and bursting with blueberries.
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.
Blueberry Corn Muffins: These blueberry cornbread muffins are tender and buttery, lightly sweetened with honey and brown sugar, and packed with blueberries.
Here’s what I want to say about these last four blueberry recipes…
Last week, I kicked off a series called Road Food. These are recipes that are 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.
Blueberry muffins and blueberry loaf cake are shoe-ins for this category. I mean, what’s more transportable than a muffin? And slices of loaf cake are standard around here for any kind of packed lunch.
Here’s the secret to that: Keep a few individually wrapped slices of loaf cake in your freezer. Right now, our freezer contains:
Several slices of Dori Greenspan’s Miso Maple Loaf (my favorite recipe in Baking With Dori). This was one of the first things I baked at the beginning of the summer just so I could pull out individual slices to bring on sunset sailing trips and that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Two lonely slices of lemon olive oil loaf cake, likely to get eaten this weekend.
And now, thanks to Tuesday’s trip to the farmer’s market, 6 slices of blueberry loaf cake, which you will see proudly represented in the photos of this week’s Road Food recipe for dippable paprika chicken and veggie bites.
It’s all finger food and super easy to make ahead and take with you wherever you go.
Sour Cream Streusel Blueberry Muffins: These are light and tender, can be made with either fresh or frozen blueberries, and laced with the flavors of vanilla, almond, and a touch of lemon. But my favorite part is the handfuls of buttery, crispy, brown sugar streusel they are topped with.
Crumb Topped Blueberry Lemon Muffins: When our oldest daughter was a teenager she said she wanted to build a shrine to these muffins and worship them. And, earlier this year, I made these for a food writers’ retreat and a bakery owner in attendance said they were the best muffins she’d ever eaten. So I think that’s all you need to know.
Blueberry Zucchini Muffins: These are for those of you who have been blessed with an abundance of blueberries and zucchini. These have been topped with an almond and oat streusel because I love me a streusel topped muffin.
Blueberry Loaf Cake: This simple loaf cake is quick and easy to make, can be made with either fresh or frozen blueberries, and has a delicious soft and tender crumb that practically melts in your mouth.
Road Food: Good food that travels well
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, boat days, beach days, picnics, hikes, airplanes, potlucks, packed lunches, busy weeknights, and anywhere else you need to go.
Paprika Chicken Bites
I have been making versions of this recipe for many years. I’ve used bone-in and boneless chicken, thighs, breasts, legs, and wings, grilled and baked, served hot, at room temperature, or even cold, spooned over rice or onto a sandwich, sometimes with yogurt sauce, or with a dipping sauce like ranch or Caesar dressing.
In 2019, Steve and I rode from Colorado to Alaska on a motorcycle, then we rode all over Alaska in the week we had to spend there before turning the bike towards home. One day we found ourselves in Valdez and were so awestruck by the beauty we found there that we didn’t want to leave. Valdez is a small town and this was the middle of July, so there wasn’t an empty motel room to be found. But we desperately wanted to stay for at least one more night, so we kept searching and found a tiny house for rent on Airbnb.
At the time, living our lives in an RV or on a sailboat was not on our radar, so the novelty of a truly tiny space was great fun. We’d been on the road for a couple of weeks by then and I decided that what I really wanted to do was make dinner in that tiny kitchen that we could eat outside, on the little porch, next to the gurgling stream that ran through the property.
So, we went to the local grocery store and piled ingredients for the night’s meal into the back of the bike. What did I make? Paprika chicken. I don’t remember what I served with it, I just remember it being the most obvious choice: just a small handful of ingredients, one pan, and a home-cooked meal I knew we’d love.
Now that we live our entire lives on the road, I’ve come up with ways to make our old favorites more travel-friendly. That’s what this recipe is.
This recipe requires about 5 minutes of prep time and can be served hot, at room temperature, or cold. It’s one of my favorite things to take on travel days, boat days, or picnics. Pack it in to-go containers, pile them into a cooler, and off you go.
This also makes an excellent packed lunch. If you’re shuttling kids to sports practices, dance lessons, or other extracurricular activities, it’s an easy way to feed yourself, and everyone else in the car, a high-protein, home-cooked dinner with less effort than a trip through the drive-through.
If you want some veggies to go with your protein, cut up raw veggies or a simple tossed salad are both great options. I also sometimes like to boil veggies just until they are crisp-tender in heavily salted water or really flavorful broth. Drain the veggies, let them cool, and then pack them in their own to-go container. If you’ve salted the water well enough, or if the broth contains enough seasoning, they won’t need any additional seasoning.
And slices of loaf cake are standard around here for any kind of packed lunch. I do my best to keep a few individually wrapped slices in the freezer. Thanks to a recent trip to the local farmer’s market, we have more blueberries than we know what to do with, so we now also have slices of blueberry loaf cake in the freezer. There are certainly worse things.
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