Happy new year!
I quit making big life resolutions a couple seasons ago, but last January, I wrote about my food resolutions for the coming year. They were simple and straightforward and accessible, since they came from the space where I spend the most time-the kitchen.
As I compiled an eating wishlist for 2013, I thought about how I like to cook and how I like to eat - and what I’d like to cook and eat more and less of. Nothing too esoteric, I promise. Scroll down to see my food resolutions for the year.
Are you making any food-related resolutions? I’d love to hear in the comments.
**Food Resolutions to Make in 2013**
1. Host more dinner parties. Dinner parties are dead. Long live the dinner party. Either way, I love dinner parties - hosting them, going to them, watching the progression of the evening from slight awkwardness to complete ease. We have yet to add a dining room table to our small apartment, but guests never seem to mind perching their plates on their knees. Still, I find excuses not to host: people are busy, I don’t know which friends to pair with other friends, I’m tired. No more, not in 2013.
2. Eat more fish. Fish is probably what I order most at restaurants, but since sourcing great-tasting, fresh, sustainable fish can be a challenge, I don’t cook seafood at home as much as I’d like to. Yet with Blue Moon Fish selling ultra fresh bass, flounder, and tuna at the Grand Army Plaza farmers’ market, I shouldn’t keep making excuses when I crave pan-fried trout, cod cakes, or linguine with clam sauce. Here’s Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, which tracks the best fish to eat by region.
3. Cure. Armed with Ruhlman’s Twenty
and my mom’s advice about making gravlox, plus Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s words from two cookie swaps ago about how easy it is to make corned beef, I finally want to get to it. Imagine a hash like this one with homemade salmon, or a reuben with home-cured beef.
4. Waste not. From the half-used package of semolina flour in the the pantry to the lingering chili in the back of the fridge that I can’t possibly eat one more meal of, I sometimes want nothing more than to clear the shelves of unwanted food. But this year, I plan to throw away as little food as I can. Maybe I’ll even spend a week cooking delicacies only from what’s already in my pantry-even when I think there’s nothing in the house to eat. Rather than looking out, always cooking something new, I’ll look inward. You with me?
5. Go potatoes. It might sound nuts in our post-carb age to talk about incorporating more fingerlings, yams, and russets into my diet, but I love potatoes oh so much (as does Alex), and they’re such a nice break from bread. That means trying new varieties, plus making more hash browns (pictured), more tartiflette, and more gratins all year long.
6. Complicate things. With a wedding, grad school, and never-ending work and assignments, 2012 was a year of cooking simply. This year, I want to embark on complex cooking projects now and again: making dumplings from scratch (even the dough), following a recipe from the Momofuku cookbook, or fermenting vinegars or yogurts at home. Complicated cooking projects make a fun date, too.
