Feed your creativity: noodles and doodles with Amy Nolan

Lunch: Spicy peanut butter noodles

Hi, I have something a little different for you this week… I am so pleased to welcome Amy Nolan from The Doodle Dabbler in the first collab about interesting things you could do on your WFH lunch break other than make and eat food. But of course, there is also food.

Amy is an illustrator who loves sharing her love of doodling. She is a huge advocate of injecting some creativity into your life and the benefits it can bring and thinks that doodling is an amazing tool with which to do it.

When we had a chat a few weeks ago, one thing she said really grabbed me:

“It’s not about the penguin”.

In its literal context, it might seem an odd thing to say — arguably, if you’re drawing a penguin, the penguin is quite important. But actually, this penguin has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re doing. Your picture doesn’t even have to look like the penguin, at all. It’s about you, sitting your bum down for five minutes and engaging in the creative practice of looking, responding, thinking, feeling, imagining, processing and pushing some lines around on a piece of paper.

Here, she shares three lunch-break-sized creative prompts so you can feed your creativity as well as your hungry belly. Over to you, Amy. I’ll be back further down with this week’s lunch.

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To be clear, if you have conjured up some lunch out of nothing you have already been creative. Where there was nothing before, now there is something, which is a lot like doodling really.

Once you’ve eaten these lovely noodles (see This Week’s Lunch below) why not take a slightly longer lunch break than usual and make some doodles – a lunch break that’s deliciousness for your stomach and brain – what’s not to love?

1. Pick one of the ingredients from your lunch and doodle it, try and fill the page, don’t make it too tiny. Try and take your time looking carefully whilst you sketch. Relax your shoulders and enjoy the process of looking and sketching. If you make mistakes, just let them be there, embrace them and see what you can learn for next time.

2. Take two ingredients and draw them as cartoon characters. The easiest way to do this is draw the outline and then add googly eyes and a face. What conversation are they having? Doodle yourself some speech bubbles and make them speak to each other. Ignore any boring grown-up inner dialogue telling you that this is a frivolous waste of time. It isn’t.

3. Pick some ingredients, set your timer for 3 minutes and draw what’s in front of you in a continuous line. Without taking your pen off the paper. That was fun, wasn’t it? I bet there’s strong Picasso vibes coming from your doodle. Now do another one immediately!

If your inner grown-up needs a reason for you to be doodling this lunchtime, tell them that 15 minutes lost in flow and trying something different is good for your brain. It also gives your lovely brain a break from the screen and the news and all that jazz. So basically, by having doodles with your noodles you are being really very sensible and brilliant.

Let me know if you have doodles with your noodles!

— Amy Nolan

Rustle up

Spicy peanut butter noodles

A bright bowl of noodles to go with your doodles

Once you’ve done all your chopping and prep, this one is super quick to cook. I’ve chosen store cupboard ingredients for the sauce, but you could lift it with some fresh herbs or crunchy toppings.

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 1 pack straight-to-wok udon noodles

• Spring/salad onion (scallions)

• A selection of finely sliced stir-fry vegetables of your choice (I’ve gone with red cabbage, red pepper, carrot, and kale)

• Oil suitable for stir-frying

For the sauce

• 30g natural crunchy 100% peanut butter

• 1 tbsp light soy sauce

• 1 tsp honey

• 1 tsp sriracha

• 1 small clove garlic, finely grated

• Some finely grated ginger

• 2 tbsp warm water from the kettle

To make

1. Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl. Give it a whisk/stir to mix it all together into a sauce. Set to one side.

2. Heat a wok or large frying pan on a medium heat. Add your oil and stir fry the veg until it’s cooked to your liking.

3. Next, add the sauce and then the noodles to the pan, stirring to coat the noodles and the vegetables in the sauce as they heat through.

4. Carry on cooking the noodles for the length of time as recommended on the packet, adding a little more water if needed to keep the sauce nice and silky.

Optional extras: fresh coriander or fresh mint, peanuts, sesame seeds or black sesame seeds, crispy fried onions, tofu…

Tips: If you want to get ahead, all the veg can be prepped in advance, either in the morning or the night before. Even the ingredients for the sauce can be prepped and measured out, maybe don’t add the water. Like any stir fry, you’ll want to chop the veg small enough so they’ll cook quickly but not overcook.

I’ve also tried this with soba noodles and it didn’t work as well as they soaked up the sauce too much.

Big thanks to Amy for contributing to this week’s edition !

Not feeling the love with this week’s lunch?

How about jam jar noodles, soy & garlic noodles, or creamy coconut ramen?