Cooking again

We cooked a fantastic meal last night – zucchini cheesecake. Zucchini, ricotta, parmesan, eggs, dill, lemon rind, spring onions, garlic and fetta. With rosemary sautéed mushrooms.

After doing way too much takeaway, I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to cook our own stuff. We often find we just can’t be bothered after a long day at work, but it’s actually quite relaxing, a good wind down.

While last night wasn’t exactly a good example, we’re gathering recipes that are quick and easy to prepare on the road with limited equipment, and getting ourselves back into good eating habits. Lots of fresh, market-bought vegies, plenty of legumes, that sort of thing. Obviously we’re not quite there yet, but it’ll happen.

One proper example was a stir fry we made a week or so ago – chick peas, zucchini, tofu, spinach/kale, etc. Very quick and delicious. It’s quite fun to picture cooking from our campervan, in exotic locations.

Got my mojo back

After quite literally months of painfully slow progress, during which I was seemingly unable to focus on anything PhD-related, no matter how long I sat and stared at papers, I seem to have suddenly discovered how to be productive again!

It was a conversation with Katherine that jump-started it – she was slapping me on the wrist for losing concentration during the day and finding myself doing other things for most of the day (replying to emails, fixing a variety of scripts/apps, etc). I knew the fundamentals – just concentrate, ignore the other things, but it wasn’t until the other day when it clicked: I just have to concentrate, ignore the other things!

So the next day I quit Mail and Twitteriffic, hid iChat and Adium and ignored incoming messages, and suddenly found myself reacquainted with an old friend, work mode.

It was euphoric! After so many months with no progress and nothing but despair when I thought about the dwindling months remaining until we ship out, it felt fantastic to finally be getting somewhere. The second day of activity, I’d finished the first draft of another chapter – on fire! Today’s no exception, with a full day’s good progress behind me.

What a damn relief – finally I can believe that I’m going to get this PhD finished by the time we leave in late June. Phew.