So Mayo!

Today I wanted a turkey sandwich on some of the lovely French bread Dave made. Then I realized we didn’t have any mayo. I complained to Dave: “boo no sandwich for me, we don’t have mayo.” He suggested I make mayo. I immediately sprung into action. The back story is that I have made mayo once before. It was scary, scarier than piecrust, but I followed Julia’s instructions exactly and it turned out perfectly. It was so easy, I used the food processor and felt very proud. The only downside was that it was a huge batch and it doesn’t keep very long and we don’t have much use for 2 cups of mayo. Also, it was kind of shocking for me to see that it is just egg yolks and oil; it is possible the whole experience of making it from scratch just made mayo (which is already kind of gross) way too real for me.


But today I had reason to make it. I had fresh eggs in the fridge and a use for the mayo - some homemade blue cheese dressing (ingredients – blue cheese and mayo) would be great in a couple days. I think I became over-confident. I couldn’t bring myself to make a whole batch. So instead of 1 egg plus 2 yolks I just used one egg, cut the dry ingreds, and figured I would only add oil until it was thick. It never got thick. I re-read the whole 3 pg essay on mayo and realized that the whole egg makes the mayo thinner. Yikes. Julia provides some trouble shooting tips about the use of mustard from the store blah blah that I didn’t follow. Instead I took a yolk, some more dry mustard, and a spoonful of my destroyed mayo, and beat them together. It was pretty thick so I slowly added it to the mayo. It got thicker and tastes fine but is still runny compared to how I want it. How it should be. How it was last time. I took a picture and discovered mayo looks yucky and can’t be made to look appetizing.

After re-reading this story I imagine it probably won’t make a lot of sense to someone who hasn’t made mayonnaise before. If you eat it – make it. Follow Julia’s instructions, not mine.