NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo.  Every year for the past six years I have done this crazy thing where I try and write 50,000 words in 30 days.  I’ve only won twice in this time, but it’s not about the winning for me, its about being part of a great community.  I love that I can use November to nourish my creativity.

Of course that means I will be busier than usual in November.  To write 50,000 words in a month, you need to write 1,667 words every day and I find that takes me about an hour to an hour and a half.  Which means I need to find 30 to 45 extra hours for the month, without sacrificing my work, study and enough of a social life to maintain my mental health.

In past years I have really let cooking go and spent the month of November eating junk food and take-away.  I justify the fact that I am working so hard writing, I deserve to eat an entire packet of Tim Tams.  But this is self defeating, I fill myself up on junk and send my blood sugar sky high rather than making a health meal, which would give me the energy and nutrition I need to focus and be creative.

So I am going to be relying more and more on seven minute recipes during the month and hopefully be sharing lots of recipes.    If you’re also taking on the Nanowrimo challenge comment and let me know how you maintain your health over the month.

Why moving house has driven me to experiment with make mayonnaise from scratch

I am moving house next week and because of the move I have been trying to run down the contents of my pantry so I don’t have to throw out a heap of food.  But now I am totally out of some of the basics like mayonnaise. This has pushed me to experiment with making sauces and toppings from scratch, I have a few sauces I can make from scratch, for example the cheese sauce I used in the broccoli and blue cheese sauce recipe, which is great for the days when I’ve been really lazy with the shopping.  I have been trying to expand my skills to making mayonnaise over the past few weeks.  After a few spectacular failures I can now reliably make mayonnaise from scratch and it really only does take a few minutes, for example, see recipes here or here.  What I didn’t manage to so was make a batch that was reliably a serve for one to two people.  I hate having to throw food out, but since mayo has raw eggs in it, it cannot really keep.

I am going to keep experimenting with modifying some of these recipes to be more suitable for cooking for one.  Expect to see recipes featuring homemade mayo soon, hopefully before the move next week.  Next time I am going to try this recipe, where apparently you can add all of the ingredients in one go, rather than having to add the oil a dash at a time.  It looks too easy to really work, but I have thought that a lot about of things since I started playing around with cooking more.