What happened, as best I can remember it

+ Salmon bowls, Almond cake, and sunny San Diego

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.

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When our son was a freshman in high school he played on the junior varsity golf team. Corey had been playing golf since he was a toddler, thanks to my Dad who made him a tiny set of clubs and took him out to the back yard to show him how to swing.

My mother in law has a video of Corey and his little sister Kate, not two years between them, hitting golf balls in their front yard with Corey’s tiny set of golf clubs. Corey had a knack for it. Kate did not. Corey, a very serious little human, cared that he had a knack for it. Kate, hair flying in every direction and a smile on her face, did not.

Corey did not go to traditional high school. He attended Connections Academy, an online public school program that was originally designed for child actors and such, kids who required a normal high school education but who were spending their days doing less than normal things.

School through an online program takes up a considerably smaller portion of your day and Corey could usually get through his day’s lessons in a couple of hours. This left a lot of time for golf, guitar playing, and video games, his three favorite things.

So, as a freshman on the junior varsity golf team, he was pretty good. To secure a spot on the varsity team, you had to challenge one of the varsity team members to a game. The winner either retained or stole the varsity spot.

One day after practice Corey announced that he was going to challenge one of the varsity players for their spot. I asked him what I thought were natural follow up questions about how he’d been playing and if his scores for the past few games were as good as the varsity players.

No, he said. But, I still think I can beat him.

Today is Corey’s birthday. He should be turning 30. But the last birthday he ever celebrated was 24. And I have been trying, for weeks now, to piece together memories of him that tell me something new about who he was.

One of the things hardest to deal with when you’ve lost someone you love, is that there are no new memories. There are no new discoveries about who they are and what they think. In so many ways, at 24, we were just getting to know him.

For my daughters, my two living children, memories have a different purpose. I piece them back together in my mind to better understand who they are now. To know them better now. I bring the memories up in conversation and listen to how they remember it. All clues to the inner workings of their mind and what it’s like to be them.

I cannot do this with my son. I put him back together in my mind for my sake, to remember what it was to be me, back when I was a different person, back when I was a mother with a son.

Who was I, that day he came home and told me he was going to challenge someone for a varsity spot? It’s frustratingly hard to remember the specifics. I try to remember what it was like to see my son through my past self’s eyes, but I am reconstructing her too. I don’t remember her with accuracy. I remember her through the lens of the current moment and the current moment includes everything that came after that day.

I remember that he impressed me, my son. The audacity of it. I thought he was brave and bold and fearless. I don’t think I cautioned him. I think I encouraged him to go for it. I have always been impressed by boldness. I love a good story of the underdog. I light up in the face of those who don’t ask for permission or wait for the perfect moment and just go for it.

So, when he told me he was going for a varsity spot, it’s likely I approved. It’s likely I saw his actions through the veil of my own attitude towards fearless action.

But is that the truth? Was he fearless? Was he bold? Or did I just assign those attributes to him? Did I observe his actions and then decide who he was?

Probably. Almost certainly.

Memory is like building a vision board. We flip through all the moments of our past, the ones our brains saw fit to encode, and cut out pieces, pasting them to the board, bits and pieces from other moments, other scenes, other circumstances, all in mid-action and mid-conversation, all out of context. Then we stand back and say, “yes, that’s how that was.” But was it? I don’t know.

If the person is no longer around to tell us the truth, does it even matter if we remember them accurately? They are no longer the author of their life. We are.

Here are things I don’t know for sure about the moment Corey told me about going for the varsity spot: I don’t know where we were. In my mind, we are in our house. I am in the kitchen and Corey is across the counter, having just come home from practice. This doesn’t make sense because as a freshman he wasn’t driving so how did he get home without me? Perhaps he told me in the car. Perhaps he didn’t tell me until we got home. I don’t remember.

Were we the only two people in the room? I think so. But again, I can’t be certain.

What was I doing? Was I giving him my full attention or was I distracted? Was he seeking encouragement or approval or just offering information? Was he excited? Was he nervous? What did he need from me in that moment? Did I provide it?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I tell the story as a way of describing who Corey was, but it’s really a story about who I thought Corey was. It’s what I have. It’s all that’s left.

Earlier this week, Kate and I talked about the pointlessness of what ifs and what should have beens. It’s easy to go there. To say things like, he should be turning 30. We should be celebrating with him.

But there’s no such thing as should have. There is only what is. There is only what happened.

And here is what happened: 30 years ago I gave birth to a baby boy. I loved him.

I love him.

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The week in photos

1. We are in San Diego at a resort-style RV park where we can see the city skyline and the bay from our back deck.

2. Our site has a patio with a large propane fire pit and Adirondack chairs. I take my ipad with me in the evenings to read by the fire.

3. The park also has a cafe with a roof top patio that faces west and it’s a great place to have a drink, order dinner, and watch the sunset. In case you were wondering, living in a resort does not suck.

4. Several times a week, we get on the motorcycle and head to Coronado beach, which is only about 10 minutes away from our RV park. It’s our favorite beach and our favorite place to spend golden hour.

5. Hotel Del Coronado is a gorgeous hotel on Coronado beach built in 1888. Last year, I found this mug in one of the hotel gift shops and fell in love with it. The design is taken from some of the original wallpaper in the hotel and there’s something about it that captures me. Sadly, the mug broke a few months later but I was absolutely thrilled last week to discover that they still had some in stock and it’s back to being my favorite mug.

6. Steve and I have always stopped when we could to walk around marinas but now that we know how to sail and have a sailboat of our own, the experience is more meaningful. This one is in Oceanside.

7. We got to enjoy some time on the water last weekend on a sunset sailboat tour of the San Diego coastline. The boat had beanbags on the bow, a brilliant idea that we might steal for our own boat!

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This week’s menu

Salmon Bowls and Almond Cake.

Salmon bowls

These super simple, extremely versatile salmon bowls are the kind of thing I love to make when I want a meal that tastes decadent, feels virtuous, and doesn’t take a lot of effort. In other words, salmon bowls are on the menu all the time over here.

This is one of those meals that can easily be scaled up for a crowd. The recipe makes enough for two main dish servings. If you’re cooking for more people, simply increase the amount of rice, salmon, and veggies.

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Almond Cake

I’m not sure when I first made this cake, but it was many years ago. Most likely, it was after reading Thomas Keller’s book Bouchon, but it’s difficult to remember.

Regardless of the origins of this particular recipe, versions of this simple one-layer almond cake have been around for centuries. A quick internet search will turn up a wide variety of recipes, served plain or dressed up with whipped cream and fruit.

This particular recipe includes a generous combination of almond paste and butter, a surprisingly small amount of sugar, plus amaretto mixed into the batter and brushed over the cake after it’s baked.

The result is a decadently buttery cake that’s incredibly moist and tender, richly flavored with almonds, and not overly sweet.

We fell in love with it the first time I made it and it’s been a favorite in our house ever since. This is also a very simple and easy cake to make and will keep well for several days.

I’ve made it for every occasion you can think of, dinner parties, birthdays, work parties, holiday gatherings, and just because I was craving it. It’s one of those cakes that’s gorgeous in it’s simplicity and always the perfect thing.

I honestly don’t know what took me so long to share the recipe, but here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

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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. Find out more about becoming a member of the Lost Supper Club.

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The February Cooking Club!

Betty Williams joined me this week to co-host the February cooking club and friends, I’m telling you, cooking together is a fun way to get dinner on the table. We made Salmon Bowls (scroll up for the recipe). Betty showed us how to slow roast salmon to perfection, I demonstrated a super simple method for poached salmon, we made two different sauces and then enjoyed a delicious meal together.

The monthly cook alongs are exclusively for members of the Lost Supper Club (paid subscribers). Look for info about the next Cooking Club soon!

In the meantime, here’s this month’s recording.

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