Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Summer Done - Prepare for Vegan MoFo

Well, without much notice or planning, I took the summer off from blogging. In a way it was a nice break. I have had a busy summer. A little travel, a little work and a lot of laziness. This summer was really a different one for me. First, I ventured back into the world of being part of a monogamous relationship for the first time in half a decade. Never one to make things simple, I found a great guy south of the border, so all of a sudden I am spending a lot more time planning trips to the mid-west rather than countries I have never visited before.
My Summer Trip - Rocky Mountain Road Trip with Tony

This leads into the second weird thing this summer, I missed almost every festival in Edmonton and did not bother to take any solo trips. Normally I do one of two things in the summer.. I either stay home and go to every concert and festival I can get to or I go travel to see family friends or piss off to somewhere new. This year I made two trips to Minnesota and that was about it. I am starting to learn when you get older, if you don't fall into what people expect.. marriage, kids, ladder climbing or some sort of combination of that...blah blah blah, you sort of get left behind. I'm not saying at all that my friends and family abandoned me, but people just start to get busy with their own shit and my life doesn't always fit into that. It takes a lot more work to keep friendships going. I have never found it so difficult to see people. I don't know. Maybe it's me. So this summer, I spent a lot of time alone, pool side or home dryping (Think tequila + skype). It wasn't bad at all, but definitely different than other years.

Third, I got incredibly lazy in the world of cooking. This is actually a big part of the reason why blogging sort of went away. I got lazy. I stayed up late, I ordered way too much take out. I mostly cooked stuff I have done a million times before. A lot of days, I was just going to my own blog and cooking things I have done a million times before. To be honest, I'm a little disappointing in myself for it. I haven't made something that I was proud enough to post in a while. I was so into cooking over the past year, people were buying me cookbooks and sending me recipe ideas and I sort of fell apart in that respect.

One of the reasons for falling off the cooking/blogging wagon is that it is really tough to maintain a food blog when you cook for one. I make a dish and I am stuck with it for days. That is something I really hate. I like to have something different or at least different flavour profiles for every meal. Even though I am using that for a reason to not cook, it's not like I was getting something different every day. I would order take out and have the same issue.
RIP Little Gizmo (Left)

Now in September, I was hoping to get back on the wagon... both for cooking and blogging, btu this month has been a bit crazy and again, laziness on my part took over. Work started getting busy, travel started up again and most recently, my little guinea pig Gizmo went into kidney failure. all of this stressed me out just to the point where I stopped caring about food again. Looking back, I know there is never a perfect time to add something back into your day. I'll always have something else going on, not be home, have other things taking up my brain that I can't control. I figure I might as well just get on with it and just try.

So, I saw the posting to register for Vegan MoFo this year and figured, I should probably take it on. Like last year, I am going to be traveling for part of it, Thanksgiving is going to come into play. I am busier than every, but I figure why not eh?

I make no promises for the next month of blog posts, but I hope who ever reads enjoys it and if you don't, you'll tell me!


Some of the lessons I learned last year is that my work computer does not allow me to go on blogger.. makes it difficult when on the road! also, keeping track of pictures is not as easy as it seems. I remember struggling a lot with that and in the summer if I ever made something I could have blogged, I didn't have a camera with me. I am not exactly a professional. Everything I do is on the fly. So, I have asked twitterverse for help in some blog topics. If I have any readers left, I'll throw out the same ask. What are you hoping to read?  I'm not really expecting too much back, but anything would help get my brain going again.

Last year my approach was to post recipes daily and commit to a post a day for the entire month. I am planning to challenge myself again with a post a day, but I hope that I can focus on more than just recipes... especially when I'm out of town. There is only so much you can do recipe wise when you are living in a hotel and eating veggie burgers, french fries and salad every day.

So, with that, I need to start planning. One thing I am very excited about is that I get to make a vegan thanksgiving dinner. I will be spending the holiday weekend in Minnesota with my boyfriend and while not vegan, he has agreed (actually offered) to do a vegan weekend and allowing me to have Canadian Thanksgiving, vegan style at his place. Even his roommates said they would try it. Pressure is on... Americans take thanksgiving pretty seriously, so I cannot fuck this one up. I am going to be doing some mega research on what I am going to cook.. hopefully get it posted before thanksgiving and then follow-up with if My non-vegan taste testers have to call in back up KFC for dinner. I am really hoping I can beat out greasy chicken.