apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love the one about trying new recipes from your cookbook collection. In the past, I've had success with dragging each book down from the shelf and putting a post-it on the pages of the stuff I'm dying to cook. That way you're a bit more focused when you're trying to decide what's next.

As for your dinner parties, try having something else to focus on besides the food. For example, I've thrown a dinner party for a friend that was moving out of town and thrown a dinner party disguised as "game night." In both instances, you have something to focus on other than the food and it takes pressure of guests and host.

My goal for this year it to get my website up and running. There, I'll have my blog on food. I'm currently hard to work figuring the details out and buying the domain.

My goal is to have a day in the week where I boil beans, cook rice and bake muffins. After my beans are cooked, I'll prepare them, store them and freeze them. Also, with my rice I'll cook a large batch and freeze half. I'm a vegan college student, and it's very difficult to have time to cook. I want to bake muffins so I have them in hand when I'm running late.

Also, I want to experiment in making my cats their food.

For all things food and drink: less quantity, more quality, and local consistently.

I'm trying to cook from scratch more and buy less processed food: good for both the wallet and the waistline! I'm also planting a container garden and looking forward to enjoying fresh veggies in season and frozen ones after. I'm starting to compost so that less waste goes to the landfill and I won't have to spend as much money on fertilizer.

Use one new vegetable ingredient every-other month. So I don't get stuck in a rut.

Clear (by consuming) the contents of my pantry in Jan/Feb.

Waste less food.

Bring my lunch to work 3x week.

Maybe - cook more Chinese food.

Make my own bread (I don't eat too much so I think it will be managable) with my own home-made starter.

Have friends over more to feed them.

Compost. Sort of related.

Great list! I can't wait to see how your pasta turns out.

Mine are mainly impacted by the strict budget I have put myself on for the year. No more $100 grocery store trips to buy all the ingredients for a menu I've decided I must make on a whim.

So, planning meals ahead will be a big one.

Discovering more delicious budget wines.

We usually have a dinner party a season as well, and my goal is to keep each one under $100.

I'd like to become more skilled at making bread.

Eat from our winter garden and plant our spring garden (hopefully with more success).

Start composting.

We've already started one. We asked for a Brita for Christmas and are refilling the roughly 10 plastic bottles we have. Good for the environment and our wallets.

I'd like to clear my cabinets and pantry of everything by supplementing with fresh produce. I'd like to slash my grocery bill to about $30 or less a week. I'd also like to find somewhere in my community where I can recycle things like tin foil, non "recycle" plastic, and things like paper cartons, etc.
Good luck everyone!
Nancy
http://testkitchenette.wordpress.com

Great list. In addition to trying to cook new dishes on a regular basis, I'm hoping to keep a cooking/kitchen notebook where I record what I've cooked, how the dish turned out, how it might be improved, or what substitutions might work.

I'm going to bring my lunch in to work as much as humanly possible.

I'd also like to have people over for food and drinks more often.

I should learn how to make good pie crust. I haven't yet tried the vodka pie crust recipe that's been making the rounds.

Yes to homemade pasta! I've been making my own for some time now, but rolling it out by hand is a major PIA. Over the holidays I finally bought a pasta roller attachment for the KitchenAid and it made things so much easier. But either way, there is no comparison between store-bought and freshly made pasta.

eat more fruits and veggies! i'm replacing bacon with black beans in the morning with my eggs and adding orange slices as a garnish. pretty and nutritious!
not get stuck in a rut. in the winter i find myself making the same things almost every week. it's pretty economical, but it also gets boring. i'm trying to find new things to do with the same ingredients.

http://threadtrace.wordpress.com

- waste less
- stock my freezer with homemade stock
- organize my spices and bulk foods so i know what i have to use
- keep better records (actually measure and record ingredients, photograph)

-use more local produce: I can sign up for a local box program
-bake more bread
-compost
-get back into meal planning
-I like someone else's idea of trying one new veggie a month, or at least making a point to use some I don't use too often more often (like Kale, I recently had it in soup and I like it but rarely use it)
-Remember some of the recipes I've tried and loved but forgotten about.
-Blog about my food http://good-life-eats.blogspot.com/
-Try at least 2 new recipes a month (we like variety)
-Expand from last years garden - last year we just did herbs, I'd like to do a few fruits and veggies this year.
-Make goodies more often with my 4 yr old since he's getting into baking.

my resolution this year is to conquer eggs. right now, my egg repertoire consists only of: scrambled, fried, omelette (sort of), and quiche. oh, and hard boiled.

so at minimum i want to at least *attempt* the entire egg section of one of my cookbooks by the end of the year.

I too want to have friends over for dinner more often. I have to get over my dinner party anxiety. So what if I have a small house... 2 or 4 more for dinner shouldn't be too bad... after all..... they're friends!

Yes... JenPDX... you are right on the ball! Like you my pantry has accumulated exponentially. I just organized it so now I need to cook my way through my cache. I 'm going to plan meals for the week...(leaving a little wiggle room). I figure I'll use the pantry and I'll waste less too.

oh... and cinnamon rolls (with cream frosting... not sticky buns). I have a weakness. I conquered pizza a few years ago as a resolution so I know it's possible.

It's not much of a resolution, since I've been working on it for most of December, but I'm trying to use much less meat this year. As part of that, I'll be trying to branch out into new dishes.

I want to conquer something with yeast. Not sure what I'll try first, pizza dough, focaccia, bagels, english muffins. But first I'll have to go back to eating carbs! (just kidding. I'm eating carbs, just sparingly!)

And the second is to meal plan more often. That is the best way to save money. If I plan 4 meals before I go to the grocery, I'm less likely to go back to the grocery in like 2 days.

I cook a lot, but there are still things I either never done and would like to try and some kitchen fears/traumas I have to overcome.
On the "to cook" list:
- more Greek food
- more Vietnamese food
- cook more Brazilian foods that I grew up eating and remind me of home

On the "kitchen trauma" list:
- pancakes. Mine are just plain alwful

Oh, and I also want to make a St Honore cake

I'm super busy, and I don't have the time to eat at home a lot. But I'm trying to eat at least one meal at home every day.

I love to cook but have never tried making my own bread... I'm terrified, almost phobic...

I bought a bread machine years ago, when they first came out, but I returned it... I was too afraid to try... isn't that so sad? :(

This year - I will bake my own bread :)

Prepare bento lunches for myself and the kids.
Expand our kitchen garden--tomatoes, Swiss chard, garlic, kale....

Add me to the list of people who want to confront their fear of yeast and start baking bread. I tried once and the results were marginal - my husband ate the bread and my polite neighbors swore it was good, but my husband will eat anything and my polite neighbors would rather die than say anything less-than-laudatory. I know I can do much better. Bread, dinner rolls, pizza dough, bagels, garlic knots... here I come!

I also resolve to NOT start a blog about my cooking.

Is there something wrong with blogging about your food?

Many of the recipes I love, I have found on others blogs and I find them to be a great resource.

Personally, I am blogging about food in our family (and extended) so I can create a blurb book (blurb.com) to give as gifts to family members who would like a collection of all our families recipes.

I have a huge list of things I hope to make this year but homemade pasta and wontons top the list. In addition, I would like to be able to get through a year (or even a month!) of not having to throw away rotting food from my fridge - such a waste.

I would love to get rid of some of our canned goods by actually eating them so I have more room in my pantry. I am sick of pulling out unidentifiable mush out of my crisper drawers. So definitely stop wasting. I am also going to study up on what tomatoes I want this year before I hit the Mother's Day tomato sale so I don't buy any of the ones that didn't work out last year.

Just what I was thinking! I am going to try and master the (Aussie?) classics in 2009: pastry, pavlovas, pies, jam, sponge cake, whole chicken and baked ham! Now that I have 1/2 a new kitchen (see: http://www.charcoalandwhite.blogspot.com/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/charcoalandwhite/) I am terribly excited that there is finally room for a new mixer. Unfortunately the oven is old and has a 'hit and miss' attitude. Great blog thankyou!

Drink less alcohol, especially on weekends.

Move toward a more truly vegetarian diet by severely reducing consumption of fish. (I haven't eaten any other kind of animal meat, in more than a year.)

I already eat all-natural and organic, so that's not an issue.

Unfortunately, I am having to rethink my recipes and meals since I lost my hearing. Sodium is my cryptonite. As long as I keep the sodium low and ease my stress, my hearing should be back to normal within a couple of weeks. I ran through my pantry to find items with so much hidden sodium, I had no idea. Not to mention one of my favorite seasonings being sea salt. I'm an inventive chef, though...

I didn't realize how much salt is like sugar, in that you crave it once it's gone.

So my goal this year is to get creative without using salt, or other sodium-rich foods. :)

Hope everyone the best!

My resolution is to eat more ham and eat more greens.

Well, I want to change some things. I used to be be a great cook, but I lost my "cooking mojo" over the last month- now I'm back with fresh energy and ideas. I want to waste less food and use everything up I bought. I plan to bring my own lunch to work and to clean up after every cooking...
I started this week and I'm still very motivated (today I took the rest of a nice noodle soup I made yesterday night to work)
Plus I want to try more new recipes an use less processed food.
And I want to make my kitchen a beautyfull and usefull room again. My old kitchen was my favorite rom in the house, but We moved one year ago and I`m still not that happy with my "new" kitchen. I have to change a lot to make it work for me...

All these comments made me feel pretty good about my intentions and habits...

-I bag lunch EVERY day at work
-I spend about $25 a week on food ($50 combined with my boyfriend)
-I usually bake a big loaf of bread every other week. (It's easy people!! just try it - and homemade english muffins are to die for!)
-I adopted the Brita method 3 years ago and never went back.
-I've managed to get my grocery trips down to once every two weeks and NO MORE PLASTIC BAGS :)
-I'm still eating fresh squash from the CSA that I've kept in my (unbearably cold) pantry since last summer.

Not that those things are that awesome, it just feels good to actually do good by your own intentions.

HOWEVER:
I've had "make a wine journal" on my to-do list for about 6 months now....I WILL DO THIS!

Also, I've made pasta plenty of times and decided that for the effort and time I put into it, it's better to just buy the homemade stuff at my local italian eaterie for about $3. But I will make homemade papperdelle one of these days since it's harder to find premade.

liverwurstontoast -

just a warning, once you make wonton soup from scratch, you will NEVER settle for takeout chinese again!

Good luck

The two more exotic projects I'd like to try at home this year: doughnuts and sausage (healthy, I know). I have my grandfather's old meat grinding attachment from his old Kitchenaid mixer and I'd like to have a go at a nice lamb sausage and then a traditional British banger. The doughnuts...I don't really deep-fry stuff, but I'd like to try it just once.

Otherwise, a lot of repeats from other posts. More eating from the pantry, more beans and smart economy cooking. Less meat, or rather really GOOD meat once or twice a week. And I love the one-dinner-party-per-season idea.

For all of you aspiring bread-bakers, I can't recommend highly enough the Steve Sullivan recipe that Mark Bittman wrote about in the New York Times (you can Google "Bittman bread" to locate the recipe). I spent YEARS trying to make decent bread at home only to be rewarded with a series of doorstops and bland, unsatisfying loaves. The Sullivan bread, made with a very wet dough and baked in a Dutch oven (I use a big oval LeCreuset) is shockingly easy and produces a wonderful, rough country loaf, perfect for sandwiches, crostini, toast, etc. I make a couple of loaves a week and haven't bought bread in ages--it has literally changed my life!

I love reading all these resolutions. My first one is a little different:

Cook LESS. Keep it simple!

I spend too much time on this as I really have other things to do! But here are a few things I want to try in 2009:

>Finally master buttercream frosting. I can make a nice icing, but frosting? Hopeless.
>Try making an angel food cake. Target date: Valentine's Day. (It's a Saturday, so there's hope.)
>Buy an ice cream maker and try making ice cream! I have wanted to do this for years, and I hated being on the sidelines during Ice Cream Month, but somehow I can't justify the $, storage space, time (see Cook LESS) on something I can easily purchase ready-made. Not that I begrudge the $, space, time, and effort on anything else! Do I have an inner Puritan who is triggered by ice cream machines? They're on sale! Why can't I buy one?

Health/weight conscious:
--up the fruit and veggie volume
--cook with less olive oil (I swear I sweat the darn stuff)
--bring my own lunch every day
Money conscious:
--eat all my leftovers! (it's hard cooking for one!)
--clear out pantry items by consuming
Flavor conscious:
--master LASAGNA
--make my own salad dressings

I think the kitchen is the only area of my life that is satisfactory. Ehh, I suppose I could stand to reorganize the pantry. I want to do more slow-cookery (we're supposed to launch a lot of missions this year) and the cooking-day idea is a good one. But this is all stuff I've already started... don't know if that counts. So, the pantry.

Most of my food efforts are taking place on the balcony: feeding my container citrus more often, planting some herbs early so they don't keel in the heat (damn nurseries have *nothing* now even though this is the best season to plant in my part of the world.) I just planted seeds for bunching onions, and my grandmother gave me an awesome shiitake log for Xmas (got three-inchers already) which I need to soak every two weeks. So my resolution is better garden maintenance, but the real test of that is in summer, when it's 90 degrees at seven in the morning.

The problem is...I know how to cook, but I need to cook more so I can take lunch to work. I tend to get myself all wrapped up in my latest DIY project after work, that I spend the night doing that instead of making myself a meal.

Therefore, my resolution is to spend less money eating out.

My resolutions:

General Concepts
-Learn more about wine types, regions, and most importantly, what's good and cheap.
-use my pasta roller
-use my kitchenaid mixer with each of the attachments I have
-understand my oven (its a death trap)
-clean my kitchen (HA!)
-learn to cook kale
-master the pressure cooker for beans and grains
-understand and use the silicone tagine (probably requires mastering the oven)

Specific Meals/Dishes to make
-Lamb or Pork shank Osso Bucco - its been a while
-different dumplings using Chinese dumpling wrappers
-ice cream
-lasagna
-chilled asparagus w/ some sort of sauce
-crawfish or shrimp salad in avocado
-crawfish gumbo or jambalaya
-burgers with blue cheese in the patties

Perfect a good whole wheat bread recipe for my stand mixer - and then make it often. (I'll be checking out that Bittman bread recipe!) My husbands resolution is to perfect his home made sausage making technique. Shop more at Kensignton Market. Go shopping more often but buy less food each time (we have a problem with "stocking up" and having fresh things go bad before we have a chance to eat them!)

I think that most blogging (excluding this site and a few others) is just glorified navel gazing, so I applaud JenPDX's decision to stay away from the scene. Do people really think that everything they do is of interest to everybody else? I'm all for cooking logs, taking pictures, wine journals, etc. for your own sake, but why is it necessary to publish it all? I'm especially irritated by people who shamelessly plug their blogs in every single comment.
My resolution is to maintain a bread journal (in a notebook!) and to drink more scotch.

i just want to learn how to cook!

Sheree--there's info all over the interwebs about the Bittman bread, but it's a very forgiving recipe. I've made it with a third or a half whole wheat flour and it's come out wonderfully. And dang--I need to develop a sausage-making technique!

In my efforts to cut the budget in order that my husband and I can live more fulfilling lives away from a desk we've agreed to make more of our food from scratch.

Both of us prefer the feeling of having worked hard to prepare a meal from scratch but there are occasional fall backs on things we know we can make ie: perogies!

We've ordered a form to make 18 at once and so it won't be such a daunting task and then freezing them up we'll have a stock for the rest of winter and maybe beyond.

I know this also brings us much closer in the kitchen which is never a bad thing!

Wow-what a great list of goals/resolutions/comments for the New Year. Like an earlier comment, the kitchen is one area where I feel satisfactory but there is always room for improvement. For me, I would like to master one or two recipes that I KNOW will be big hits for company. It doesn't have to be anything fancy but I do feel like I don't ever have any sure fire winners up my sleeve and oftentimes resort to a mixture of homemade and quasi-catered when serving guests. I would also like to be more of an impromptu cook and not always have to have a recipe that I get out of a magazine, cookbook or the internet before getting into the kitchen. And, like the author of this post, I want to utilize my great selection of cookbooks first before jumping on the internet for a recipe.

I want to start making jams and pickling things... start a garden... make more candy, particularly for gifts...

I actually blogged about my 2009 food-to-do list yesterday...
http://kitchenplay.blogspot.com/2009/01/food-to-do-list-2009.html

I plan to use this website more frequently. I like many of he new year's suggestions, such as making my own pasta. I have been thinking about doing this for a few months, and have decided to pursue home made pasta. Should I purchase the pasta attachments for the kitchen Aid Stand mixer or a different stand alone unit?

One of mine is to cook more often and try not to eat out as much. There is an article on Scott Common Sense that gives you tips on how to become an organized cook so that it is easier. We will see how it goes! http://tinyurl.com/8l3bw5

Become more DIY in the kitchen! I already prepare a majority of my meals from scratch, but I would love to start fermenting more foods. I've been making my own saurkraut and kombucha for awhile, but have an interest in making yogurt, miso, tempeh, injera, dosas, wine, beer, mead and cheese in my own kitchen.

Since the new year I've also began meditating every morning, which I hope to make a daily practice. It's only been a week and I can already feel some of my work related tension melt away!

I started a list of things I want to do before I turn 29 so they're sort of my resolutions.

The cooking related ones are:
1) bake a loaf of bread
2) make thai curry from scratch
3) Make a bowl of pho (my bf is vietnamese and loves it)
5) cook something from every cookbook I own.

And also (although not on that list)
6) bring my lunch to work at least 3x a week
7) cook with my bf more. (he doesn't cook so well but he's learning)

I think I can do it :)