Thursday, October 1, 2009

VeganMoFo III: Expect the Unexpected

Here we are yet again!  The third edition of MoFo is totally gonna rock your pants off your butts (I totally stole that line from Jimmy Fallon, but it's true).  First up, I had a wonderful time reading blogs this afternoon and you can see what I'm talking about on the official MoFo Blog.  As I said in my previous post, I am moving away from doing nonstop decadence this year and I'm super excited about it.

For my first post I wanted to do the vegan palate challenge, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.  This day has been beyond stressed, so I decided to start slow and give a few tips on how I kept my mofo experience last year stress free.

1. Expect the Unexpected-Let's face it: life happens.  If a recipe fails or you run out of time to make something new, blog about it.  Talk about how you added baking powder instead of soda.  We'll all share a laugh.  Tell a story about your favorite food experience or the first time you cooked for yourself.  This month isn't solely about recipes and food porn.  Some of the true gems are the stories.

2.Themes Aren't Everything-Sometimes it's easier to just wing it.  The only reason I have every single day planned out is because I'm really neurotic and obsessed with lists.  You can ask my mom...she'll tell you.  Besides, I'm sure you really have a theme and don't even realize it.

3.Take a Break-My mind went to mush towards the end of the month last year.  It's okay to not sit at your computer for 5 hours reading blogs.  Get up and walk around after an hour or so.  Too much vegan awesomeness has been known to harm.  True story.

4.Plan Ahead-Even if you have no plan, spending five minutes to think about tomorrow's post really makes things easier.  That way you can do totally awesome things like read blogs for 5 hours!

5.Don't Over Do It-Remember there is no award for the person who veganizes the most omni monstrosities.  Try to switch up the types of food that you make so that you won't feel all sickly at the end of the month.

6.Have Fun-Seriously.  Have fun!  Think of it as a bunch of friends blogging about food.  It shouldn't be work.  I mean it's work, but it's kinda awesome.

Okay.  I totally plan for a legitimate post tomorrow.  It will be like a double post!  Oh, and another new thing I'm doing this year is giving a quick rundown of what to expect for the week.  It will be on every Sunday post from now on.  But for now...

Coming up this week: the ultimate vegan palate challenge, apple mojitos, and a little Epicurious fun!

10 comments:

Kelly said...

Ooh, fantastic tips! I'm new to VeganMoFo, so I'll have to keep them in mind. I'm pretty much planning on winging it, since October really crept up on me, but normally I'd be the neurotic plan-everything-out-in-advance type too. :)

Veronica said...

These are great tips! This is my first year mo'foing, so I'm going to have to keep these things in mind. Yeah, I would trade in my grade point average to sit on the computer and stare at food porn all day whilst blogging about it if it, you know, didn't impact my post-graduation career and/or life, so, I'll be taking it slow. :)

Anonymous said...

Wow...thanks for sharing this. I've spent hours (let's not discuss the details) making my first Vegan MoFo post. If things continue to go like this, my children won't have a mother, LOL! So really...thank you for sharing. I will return to this post from time to time, whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed. It helps to keep things in perspective.

Now it's 6:20am, and I've gotta go get some sleep. I can't believe it's already time for post #2.

Faith

Bonnie said...

Thanks for the tips! I'm looking forward to seeing the things you planned out :)

Vegan Epicurean said...

Good tips to not drive yourself crazy during October.

Thanks for sharing!

Alicia

Anonymous said...

great tips! My biggest problem is that I get sooo hungry reading everyone's blogs that I can't do it for very long!

laura said...

oh, you'd absolutely make yourself crazy if you tried to keep up with all veganmofo posts. i did a silly thing and imported all the feeds into my reader. so. much. vegan. food.

Jen Treehugger said...

Great post Mo. This year MoFo is gonna be HUGE. As soon as I'm done reading a blog there's another 10 that takes its place.
YAY for MoFo'ers!

Anonymous said...

Great great tips- thanks so much. Definitely will be helpful to a Vegan MoFo newbie!

Zoey said...

Wait, I am not supposed to spend 5 hours a day reading blogs? It is so hard to resist during vegan mofo!!