About Rebecca Blackwell
Rebecca Blackwell, a recipe developer, food photographer, passionate people watcher, and chaser of new experiences. She and her husband 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.
Q. Hello Rebecca. Can you please tell us a little about yourself and your substack publication?
Rebecca: Hi there! I am a recipe developer, writer, and food photographer. I own two recipe websites where I’ve been publishing since 2013, Of Batter and Dough and A Little and A Lot.
In early 2020, my husband and I sold our home in Colorado and moved into an RV. We have been traveling around the country, living and working from our home on wheels ever since. In 2025 we added a sailboat to our collection of homes-that-move. My Substack newsletter, Let’s Get Lost, is a way for me to share stories and recipes inspired by our life on the road.
Q. Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with you and your family?
Welcome to my cozy 7x4 foot kitchen!
Rebecca: When we first moved into our RV, I was nervous about how I would continue to develop and photograph recipes in such a small space. I was used to a large kitchen and a separate photography studio.
Much to my delight, working in a small space hasn’t hindered my work at all. Sure, it gets a little crowded in here when I’m doing a photoshoot for a recipe, but if having to step around camera equipment to get to the bathroom is the worst of our problems, it’s a pretty good day. 😂
I love to cook for other people and have continued to entertain since moving into our home on wheels. We even hosted Thanksgiving one year for over 30 people!
If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that nature abhors a vacuum. For me, the only way to “need” less of anything is to limit what’s available. That plethora of kitchen appliances, pans, and dishes that I had been collecting (and really, really needed!) over the years…. Turns out I don’t miss them at all.
I have also devised some creative storage solutions. For example, we added a sofa and ottoman with storage. Underneath our sofa cushions, you’ll find a stack of baking dishes, a pasta machine, and an assortment of beverages, and most of my baking supplies reside inside our ottoman.
Q. What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?
Rebecca: As you can imagine, we are focused on maximizing every inch of space, so while it’s not really a gadget, this wine rack and wine glass holder that my brother designed and built for us is one of my favorite things in my kitchen. The rack holds 8 bottles of wine and 6 glasses, all nestled in felt-lined compartments that keep them secure and protected during travel.
He also built a spice rack to fit perfectly on the half wall next to the oven. Before he built this for me I had all my spices piled into a basket! It was a mess!
As a baker, I could not live without my KitchenAid stand mixer and am happy to give up some counter space for it. I’ve also made space for a food processor, Vitamix blender, and an instant pot in one of our cupboards.
We installed an outdoor kitchen with a Blackstone griddle and a smoker and while I don’t use it super often, I do love cooking outside when we are parked in beautiful places!
Q. You describe yourself and your husband as full time travelers who live in a 5th wheel RV. How did this come about and what has been your biggest adventure so far?
Rebecca: We decided many years ago, when our youngest was still in elementary school, that by the time our kids were grown and on their own, we wanted to be in a position where we could work remotely. In 2019, as our youngest was preparing to leave for college the next year, we had made that dream a reality.
Our initial idea was to rent Airbnbs for a few months at a time in various locations. In late 2019 we got to test this idea when some friends of ours asked if we would house sit for them for 2 months while they were in Europe. They have a lovely home in southern California and while we LOVED living and working from a new location, we realized that we didn’t enjoy living in someone else’s home.
We weren’t sure what we were going to do until we met up with some old high school friends and learned that they lived in an RV. We knew instantly that this was our answer and within 6 months we’d sold our home and moved into a 43-foot 5th wheel! The first night that either of us had spent in any kind of camper, we’d already sold our home and bought our RV! We were all in! It’s a good thing we like it!
Since then, we’ve “lived” in 38 states and seen parts of the country we never knew existed. We’ve stayed in big cities and extremely remote areas, like this rocky bank on the edge of the Flaming Gorge.
We’ve parked ourselves on ocean beaches, next to rivers and lakes, in forests, and on open plains. One of our most memorable adventures was pulling our RV to within a few feet of the edge of a canyon in Utah where we stayed for a couple of weeks. From our windows, you could see straight down to the canyon floor!
Q. As a recipe developer, food writer and photographer, how much of a role does your kitchen play while traveling and writing for your ‘Let’s Get Lost’ Substack newsletter?
Rebecca: Since launching my Substack in February 2024, I’ve published 100’s of new recipes here, many of which are inspired by the places we’ve visited, all of which were created and photographed in my tiny kitchen.
My entire workday is spent either in the kitchen or sitting at my computer at our dinette. When we’re not outside exploring a new area, you’ll almost always find me in the kitchen!
Q. As you travel around in your RV, are you able to find fresh food markets, or farmers markets? What has been your favourite?
Rebecca: This is always an adventure! I never know what I’m going to find when we arrive in a new area. Sometimes we are close to cities with large chain supermarkets. But often we are in remote areas and I have to learn quickly how to shop like the locals.
A lot of what I make and publish is determined by what ingredients I had access to in whatever area we happened to be in that week.
I have also come across some of the most, shall we say, unique people in grocery stores… such as the grown man happily pushing his cart around the grocery store while wearing a Superman cape, and the man in a full Spiderman costume perched atop the grocery store sign as I turned into the parking lot. And no, it wasn’t even close to Halloween.
Or the checker who gave me an uninterrupted NPR-style monologue of current events while scanning my groceries, and the checker who held up the line for several minutes so he could marvel at a package of mushrooms in my cart and finally exclaiming, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a new kind of mushroom around here.”
Or the somewhat embarrassing experience of the checker holding up the line and calling her coworkers over to gawk at “the biggest order they’ve every seen” after ringing up my $300 worth of groceries.
Also, the items on the shelves of a store is a window into the town. There’s a store in Crystal Beach, Texas called The Big Store that is not very big in size but has a tiny selection of literally everything. I shopped at a grocery store in Wisconsin with three full isles devoted to frozen pizza and a store in South Dakota with an impressively large meat selection and a produce section not much bigger than my refrigerator. I shopped at a store in Oregon with an ice cream counter and nearly every single person shopping there was pushing their cart with one hand and holding an ice cream cone with the other.
I have also shopped in stores where the end caps are filled with locally made jam and jelly rather than big brands who paid the highest stocking fee. And I’ve stuffed my refrigerator and freezer with meat and produce from local farm stands sold by people who know what real food is.
Over the years, Steve and I have had many conversations that go something like this, “We would have never discovered this place if we didn’t live in an RV.” And that, more than anything, describes why we do it.
Q. Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?
Rebecca: Soon after moving into our RV we remodeled almost every inch of it to turn it into a space that’s perfect for our life. So, for the most part, everything in my kitchen is there by design. The one thing I would love to change is to swap out my gas oven for an electric oven.
I love having gas burners, but the temperature in my gas oven fluctuates more than I would like it to. When I’m testing a recipe I use a digital oven thermometer to constantly monitor the temperature, adjusting as necessary, to ensure I’m giving accurate temperatures and timing in my recipes.
An electric oven isn’t always practical – especially if we are parked somewhere remotely and relying on solar energy to power our electricity needs. So, my gas oven will have to suffice. But if I could figure out a way to switch it, I would!
Q. What tips can you give anyone traveling in an RV that will help keep their kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?
Rebecca: Clean as you go. We don’t have a dishwasher and I don’t miss it. When you’re working in a small space, you simply don’t have the room to allow dirty dishes to pile up. But honestly, no matter what the size of your kitchen or how many pots and pans and utensils you have, cleaning as you go is a more efficient way of cooking.
Q. How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?
Rebecca : It is difficult for me to express how much I love cookbooks. Before we moved into an RV I had stacks and shelves of them in every single room of the house except the bathrooms and the kids’ rooms.
When we decided to move into an RV, we spent months getting rid of almost all of our stuff and making really hard decisions about what we would bring with us. Out of all the things we sorted through, deciding what cookbooks to bring with me was probably the most difficult.
Steve (my husband) would argue that we have too many cookbooks in our tiny home on wheels. I would counter that in comparison to how many I want to have with us, I should be awarded a medal for Herculean self restraint.
Every time we move to a new location I have to pack them all away and then unpack them again and this never feels like a burden. I actually kind of love it. I feel inspired just by holding them and setting them on the shelf. Like somehow all the delicious ideas inside might be absorbed just by having them near me.
I counted how many I actually have with us - 48. Plus a growing number on kindle, which is not my favorite format, but I’m learning to live with it.
I have not published a cookbook (yet!) but have created three comprehensive downloadable ebooks for paid subscribers to my newsletter.
Q. Do you have a favourite recipe that you could share with us?
Rebecca: This is a difficult question because I have many favorites! So, I know it’s cheating, but I’m going to give you a couple.
This Sesame Chicken Salad is something I make all the time because it’s one of our favorite travel-day and lake-day meals.
I could eat Chicken Schnitzel and Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes every single day for the rest of my life.
This Creamy Mushroom Soup tastes like something you might have eaten at one of Julia Child’s dinner parties (I wish!) but in reality, it’s a soup for real, actual life.
And this Chocolate Buttermilk Cake is the kind of cake you bake when you want something really good but super basic, decadent and deeply chocolate, but requiring minimal time and effort.
Q. Have you had any kitchen disasters in your RV, that you can share with us?
Rebecca: Whether this is a disaster is up for debate, but it speaks to the potential hazards of a small kitchen!
Last year we had a group of friends over and I made a pitcher of pomegranate margaritas. This is a signature cocktail of mine and I put a lot of effort (and expensive ingredients) into crafting a large pitcher meant to last us well into the night.
After our guests had arrived, I set about filling their glasses. As I was also preparing dinner, there was precious little counter space, so I balanced the pitcher on the edge of the sink while I moved things around. As I turned around to respond to something someone said, I knocked the pitcher into the sink and every last drop of our margaritas poured down the drain!
In case you are worried, we opened a few bottles of wine and had a delightful evening even if no margaritas were had.
Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us, Rebecca Blackwell
Visit and subscribe to Rebecca’s publication ‘Let’s Get Lost’
All images are copyright of Rebecca Blackwell
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If you are a food writer and would like to be part of this Q&A Kitchen series, please email Lynn. Thefoodstak@gmail.com with the subject header Q&A Kitchen series.
So impeccably organized, spotless, and the very picture of sophistication. It's hard to believe an RV, and especially its kitchen and galley, could look worthy of a feature in Better Homes & Gardens! You might be just setting a new standard!
I have had the good fortune to be in this kitchen when Rebecca was in San Diego and I can vouch for its efficiency AND beauty!! Such a fun article, Lynn and Rebecca!