apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Eat more fish and be judicious with saturated fat. But I'd also thought about starting a cooking club. Any chance you guys could do a feature on how to get one off the ground? I want to use it to meet new people (at work and around town) and to taste new things. I specifically need advice about how to make sure the group is stocked with convivial food enthusiasts rather than food snobs or food n00bs, and how to set it up so that it can accommodate those with kitchens that couldn't handle multiple people cooking at one time.

i'm absolutely stealing the small dinner parties resolution. i can do two or three folks easily, and there are enough friends that won't require spring cleaning before they come over.

i think 2008 may be the year of the biscuit as well. can't keep being skeered of the baking part of cooking. There are biscuits in my future, many biscuits.

KG - my dad's biscuit recipe to start off your year of the biscuit:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup shortening
shy cup milk

Combine dry ingredients, and mix in shortening with your fingers until crumbly and evenly distributed (don't worry about overworking the dough here). Add milk and stir with a fork just until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl. Turn it out onto a floured surface and kneed only a couple of times - if the dough is wet, you can add as much flour as it'll suck up. It should feel springy, dense, and pliable. Pat down to about 3/4 of an inch height and cut out rounds with a cutter or a small glass. Bake 475 for 10 minutes, and top with Duke's mayonnaise, sliced tomato and salt and pepper for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

(PS: Every year ought to be the year of the biscuit)

I want to cook at least three new recipes a week, to get out of the dinner rut that I often find myself in. (First up - polenta) I also want to be more diverse with the ingredients (especially vegetables!) that I use. I'm a bit intimidated to cook some of the more non-traditional veggies - turnips, rutabaga, kale, and so forth. I need to get over that intimidation and take advantage of the deliciousness that these veggies offer.

I also want to master at least one new skill/technique in the kitchen. Last year was the year of perfecting homemade pasta (my spinach leek ravioli could make you weep tears of joy :) ). I'm still trying to decide what technique/skill to work on this year.

I don't make resolutions very often, but this year I am going to make a commitment to use the items in my pantry and fridge (leftovers, veggies and all that rice I have)

The first and most immediate resolution is to not eat sweets for one month. My husband and I are totally addicted to cookies, ice cream and cake. They are excellent and delicious, but we need to be more judicious. So one month sans sweets and then we'll see how we bring them back in.

The second resolution is to redo our kitchen. I'm scared witless, but we can figure it out. It's not that big - it can't be that hard, right? (Yeah, right).

Otherwise, it's the same as always - work on feeding my husband and little boy good, healthy food every day so that we all keep healthy and happy.

I have two things to think about. First, I borrowed my mom's crock pot a year ago and haven't used it once--I need to give that a try or dozen. Second, I signed up for a CSA box for a family of four. Since my boyfriend, dog, and I can't eat all of that, I need to learn more about food preservation.

To (successfully) make sticky pecan cinnamon rolls. Long history of yeast dough failures & any help will be appreciated!

brittanykate,
Signed up for a CSA box for the first time last year (though only a half-share) and it completely changed my cooking opened my eyes to the variety and possibilities of locally-grown food. It's quite a sharp learning curve, but a really educational one. Good luck with it and your other resolutions.

Make bread and pasta.

a few resolutions:
a. weekday crockpot meals
b. sunday afternoon stews
c. keep easy-to-make salad stuff in fridge
d. learn how to make risotto and frosting

i am going on a diet - but will not settle for being unhappy/unsatisfies with the food in my diet. i will make it possible to eat healthy and lose weight, but do it by eating well. which means much more cooking and testing. :)

Incorporating more leafy greens like kale, swiss chard, and collard greens.

Include vegetables in every dinner. I know it's a little pathetic, but I have a really bad habit of "forgetting" the veggies.

My main resolution is continuing from 2007--to cook with ingredients I've never used before. So far, these have mostly been veggies from the local farmers' market. I'm having a lot of fun with the challenge and have created some delicious dishes! Generally, I want to incorporate more veggies into my menus, trying to compose half the meal of veggies.

I also want to paint the opposite wall of my kitchen and figure out a better storage/organization system for all my kitchen supplies.

Mine is the same as above - to cook with ingredients (mostly veg) that I haven't used before. Parnsips are high on the winter list.

JEP - for cinnamon pecan sticky rolls...there is a cinnamon roll recipe in Cooks Illustrated "QUICK RECIPE" book that is most excellent and it is not yeast-based. It is a butter-milk biscuit based recipe and my friends rave about it every time i make it. I usually add pecans to my rolls, too.

I want to get my kitchen better organized. I've only been in my place for a few months and I still haven't figured out where everything should go to make things as functional as possible. I also want to try one new recipe per week.

JEP - I think that the secret is patience. The best yeast breads result from letting the dough rise slowly. Resist the temptation to speed up the rising process and instead find ways to slow it down.

My goal for 2008 is to be better about cooking recipes from all the cookbooks and mags I've acquired and bookmarked over the years. (this is really just the cooking aspect of my general "Be more organized" resolution.)

I have a few;

1. Eat dinner as a family more often. With my son and husband working swing shifts, I've let dinner as a family go by the wayside. Unfortunately, I think it has fostered a rootless feeling in my home that I don't like. I don't know just how I'm going to do it, but I need to have us eat together at least twice a week.

2. Have company over for dinner once or twice a month. We moved here about a year and a half ago. We now actually now some people and I'd like to get a more grounded feeling and I believe sharing a meal together in my home once or twice a month would help that.

3. I want to clean out my kitchen cabinets. I have things that I unpacked a year ago and never used. I know I could gain some valuable cabinet space if I just packed that stuff up and put it in the attic and then maybe when I'm ready, give it to someone else who needs it.

I just want to cook and bake more often-- I feel like I didn't do it nearly enough this year and especially during these past six months when I started grad school...

This Christmas I unwrapped three new cookbooks even though I already have several that I haven't even cooked from yet. So my pledge is to cook every Sunday dinner from one of my lesser-used cookbooks. (I chose Sunday so I won't be afraid to test recipes that otherwise might seem too long and involved for everyday meals.)

Let the ingredients drive what I prepare, not a recipe. Or, at the very least, become better at it!

I've been reading through the introduction of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and it's been very inspiring.

For me, 2008 will be a balance between spreading my wings a bit and trying new things (especially Asian dishes) and mastering some basic, but delicious, dishes.

Expand my cooking repetoire, with maintaining healthy eating.

oh and feel free to swing by Arthur Ave any time. I live here! I love it, its great. My mom just got me the Arthur Avenue Cookbook for Christmas.

My resolution: maintain the quasi-vegetarian lifestyle I began 3 months ago. I do eat eggs and fish (I love sushi) and, of course, tons of vegetables and fruits. Also, try to limit fish consumption to only twice a week and find protein through other sources.

On a side note: this lifestyle change has helped me lose 15 lbs in three months. It was all unconscious in that I didn't even feel like I was dieting at all.

My resolution: Breakfast.

To that end, I have a request, which I will post again in an open thread since it will probably get lost here.

I want breakfast recipes that are:
1) savory
2) healthy
3) QUICK
4) make-ahead (ideally, freeze-ahead)
5) and preferably, portable

I'm not going to cook in the morning. I'm just not. Don't even ask me to scramble an egg; on a good morning, I *might* be able to make toast. Energy bars and the like make me gag, and I don't much like sweet stuff in the morning. But give me ideas of yummy breakfasts I can make the night before or the week before, and grab and go, and it could change my life.

This past year I learned how to break down a chicken into parts and then use the carcass to make broth. I learned how to make a good vinaigrette - which seems like a little thing, but I've used that vinaigrette in a lot of ways (marinade for chicken, grated carrot salad, quinoa salad, and so on). I learned how to make refrigerator pickles (spicy garlic pickles are awesome). I learned how useful braising is (fennel, leeks, broccoli rabe ...). I've expanded my cooking repertoire significantly and increased my confidence. In the past, I tended to try out individual recipes and not learn basic techniques.

I think this past year I went from being an armchair foodie to starting to cook well. I'd like to continue that.

This year I'd like to learn how to cook fish. I'd like to bake bread more often, and I'd like to focus on bringing in lunches so I don't spend money on take out which tends to be unhealthy. I'm going to try to use good ingredients simply. If possible, I'd like to have a half share in a CSA box, but I'm moving to NY and have no idea which are good, which are available and who would share with me.

I live in the desert. Not a whole lot of vegetation here, so unfortunately, even our local farmer's market apparently trucks in some of their produce from Mexico and California, sheesh.
My resolve this year is to connect with our local farms directly and buy produce locally where possible, eat intelligently and be more informed of what we are consuming, and overall, live well this year.
Happy 2008, and all the best to everyone in their endeavors!

mjoe,
I can't say I know any quick, breakfast-specific savory recipes, but I did go through a phase when I detested anything sweet in the morning. My mom's answer to this (I was in high school) was to give me a smaller portion of lunch as breakfast. Btw, how portable do you need your breakfast to me?

mjoe
my sister-in-law makes frittata, but bakes them individually in muffin tins. Then my brother grabs one from the fridge on his way out the door in the morning. Customize your own recipe! Or muffins themselves, they'd work well.