Roasted Fennel

I tried out a recipe for roasted fennel today because it is not a vegetable that we cook or consume ever.

I searched for a recipe video on YouTube that was simple and required ingredients I already a had in the house. So, I gave this one a try. 

Fennel has a black licorice taste to it, and I am not a fan of black licorice. Give me a bag of Cherry Nibs and its a completely different story. The roasting process is supposed to sweeten the fennel and add a little nuttiness. The recipe also included a simple honey, white whine vinegar and orange dressing that paired well with the fennel.

The photo on this blog is of my own attempt, and I think it turned out pretty good. There is still a little licorice taste to the fennel but like roasted brussels sprouts, this is the only way I wan to eat it form now on.

As we are trying to eat a healthier diet this might be a welcomed addition once a week to change things up a bit. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

Last night I was a bit short of reaching my goal of 2665 words. The scene of the story I was writing ended with me still needing an additional 150 words. But it felt like a good palace to leave it so that today I could just carry on. Not really a big deal. It just means I need to write a little extra today. I finished up last night at 3am which was something I was trying to avoid. Needless to say, I didn’t get out of bed until 9 am this morning.

I sat down at the writing computer by 3:30 pm today to make sure that I am not up so late chasing my word count. I’d prefer to end my evening tonight watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and then getting a bit of reading done.

I watched week two of the Mindset course from WGM. Which gives me a second day streak for watching writing courses. You only need two days to be able to call it a streak. *grin.

This is blog number 119. Kind of blows my mind how quickly these add up when you commit to doing it everyday. You might be getting tired of me talking about the power of streaks, but the proof is in the pudding.

Same goes for the writing challenge I am doing this year. Twenty-six days into it and I have already written approximately 47,000 words. 49,000 by the time the day is over. To put that into context, I only wrote 48,250 words all of last year and the month isn’t over yet. Streaks and challenges seem to be working for me! Maybe they could work for you too.

One thing I would like to add to my writer-life is to create a group of like-minded people. Writers who want to improve and have egos that can handle criticism, particularly if it isn’t the kind they wanted to hear.

I am thankful to have a six-month mentorship with a person who has a lifetime more knowledge and experience than I do. But she is in Las Vegas and in another four months or so the mentorship will end. I think about well know people who were part of a successful groups like the Impressionists, the Group of Seven, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Even my writing mentor and her husband, also a successful author, both met at the first iteration of the Writer of the Future classes. And they only knew about the classes because of their relationship with other well-known writers like Algis Budrys.

I have two friends and colleagues I met working in animation. They are both smart and talented artists who have also written stories or books. We have had some interactions regarding writing, but there isn’t a weekly video call or a monthly coffee meeting. Without the consistency we can’t really spur each other on. And granted, the other two have plenty of other things going on that might be more important to them than talking about writing.

The BYOK writing device I backed on Kickstarter just released a software update that should allow me to sync to a Google account. This is a great addition to the product. Syn of this sort just makes it easier to get work done across multiple platforms. I start going back to the studio in February and I had hoped I could get my hands on the device to test it while commuting back and forth on the train. Maybe even getting a few hundred words at lunch time. That is the downside of Kickstart, sometimes you have to wait, and wait and wait to get your hands on the hardware.

Okay, time to do something else.

Cheers!