Eat more!

Worry less!

Happy New Year!

Wishing all my Gardenweb friends a Very Happy New Year.

All the best for 2013.

~Ann

Happy New Year All the posters in the cooking forum!

Teresa, I wish you the best in remodeling your kitchen.

Silvia

Happy New Year CFers! Hope 2013 brings tasty new experiences to your lives :-)

Alexa

Our New Year's Cooking Resolution is to get our kitchen back and cook our first meal in our reconstructed home. That should happen in 4-6 weeks. You've no idea how anxious we are!

Happy New Year everybody! Hope 2013 brings health, prosperity, and good eats to all.

/tricia

'Health, prosperity and good eats to all'

I'll take that and pass it on to all!

Happy New Year's everyone!

jude

Happy New Year to all my GW friends. Keep cooking!

Nancy

Happy New Year CFers!

Sue

Happy New Year to all my cooking friends!

Mine includes a partial kitchen redo also...new flooring and counter.

The choices are endless. Have laminate floor picked out and is going to be installed in a few weeks. The difficult part for me is picking out the counter. We have gone with quartz.....dark or light, busy or safe. Then comes the backsplash. We are not good at this, but if it was moving trees or building a new garden we could do it in a blink of an eye with no problem at all. We have white appliances which are about 3 years old and really dont want stainless....this creates a different look when going from dark colors from a mostly all white kitchen except for the oak cabinets!

Good luck to everyone with the New Years cooking resolutions!

Looking forward to all the new ideas on cooking, which I learn from the friends on this forum!

I wish all CF's a happy New Year. I decided last week to make at least one new dish per week. I have way too many dishes on my try list so good time to get started. Last week it was Martha Stewart's braised short ribs and spaetzle, not sure about this week yet see what looks good at the store. Patty

I need to cut back on the amount of food in the freezer. Any time I open it to take something out, something else falls on me. I also have overflowing cabinets of spices, pots and pans, plates and glasses. So the first resolution is not to buy any more stuff. And the second is to de-clutter.

Cheryl

1. To re-focus on simpler, healthier, everyday cooking. Fewer big events, less deep-frying, less fat and less meat. More vegetables, legumes, and fish. Steamed fish, not roast pork belly.

[edit] 1a. To be less wasteful, more economical, more humble in the kitchen. The amount of trash and recycling that went out in our bins in the past month was repellent.

2. To lose 15-20 lbs of fat, add 8-10 lbs of muscle, and improve my flexibility. Do a couple more century rides. I intend to enter my fifties this year in better shape than I was for most of my forties.

3. To take the first, irrevocable step on my kitchen remodel. I don't know when it will ever be finished. But something has to be torn out, and something has to be built, in 2013.

This post was edited by johnliu on Tue, Jan 1, 13 at 16:58

Happy New Year CF Friendssize>color>

Ditto Jadeite/Cheryl. TMS so I started in December thinning out food in the pantry and utensils/pots in the cabinets.

Also, being more selective on what I buy for the freezer and try to Poof more meals.

I had a very frustrating holiday cooking experience with very dull knives. (long story)

I can't understand (may be I can) why people spend hundreds of thousands $ for a kitchen, cookware, food , recipes------ and put up with dull knives.

My resolution is to convince people how easy it is to have the plessure of sharp knives.

dcarch

Wishing you all a happy 2013, filled with good food and good friends!

For most of my adult life, each year I have selected a cookbook whose recipes I'd like to explore during the year and a food or cooking technique I'd like to learn more about and use (2012 was incorporating more fruit into savory dishes).

For 2013, my book is The Art of Dining - A History of Cooking and Eating. It's more of a history book than a cookbook but does include recipes at the end of each era's chapter. So I hope to be reading about and cooking my way through British food from medieval through Edwardian times.

Last year, I got a mint condition vintage bean pot at an auction so this year's cooking goal is to use it more often and try some new varieties of baked beans or bean pot dishes.

Ruthanna - I love your new year resolutions! I will be following you in your experiences, it all sounds so interesting to me.
I don't think I ever saw a vintage bean pot, beans are one of my favorite dishes. And the cooking book,wow!

Silvia

Mine is also to try at least one new recipe every week and also to try more ethnic cusines. Last year, I fell in love with Vietnamese foods just because I love Pho and wanted to make something else Vietnamese. I've even got my very "American meat and potatoes" hubby asking for Pho now!

Teresa, hope you get your kitchen remodel done quickly and without any hassels. My number one cooking resolution is to cook healthier meals and to eat more at home. Another is to get a really, really good 8" Chef's knife. Decarch, you reminded me that I've wanted this good knife for some time. Happy New Year, everyone and I hope you succeed in your resolutions!

Like Cheryl, I have too much in the freezer, and so I have resolved not to buy as much and use up what is in the freezer to make that space easier to use. We did a major clean-out of the fridge last week, which we had meant to do earlier in December but were interrupted by our emergency travel. I am also going to try to be more conscienscious about labeling, especially what goes into the fridge, so that I can easily use what I have. Right now I have way too much pasta and need to use that up, which is going to take a while. I have a lot of chicken stock that needs to be used - I guess I don't use it as much as I used to, and so perhaps I'll try to make more soups. Last night I put three two-serving containers of gumbo in the freezer, and so that did not help the freezer situation. For now, we're just going to have to eat gumbo more often!

Lars

I just told Bob today that I need to start labeling left overs in the fridge, which for the most part seems to be sauces or dressings of some sort that tend to look alike. I tasted a little of one and decided it was something with horseradish in it.LOL Now, how sad is that!

Cook more, take out less. Buy some better cookware.

One resolution I started a while ago and have been sticking to is to waste less food. When you are cooking for one, that is easy to do. Fortunately my son, AKA the human vacuum cleaner, comes by to eat up whatever is there. I just have to be sure to prepare things from whatever is in the fridge so he can scarf up what I don't eat.

Jude, when we cleaned out the fridge, I had three jars of Vietnamese dipping sauces, all of them different, to be used with spring or summer rolls. They keep for a long time, but I need to use them up. I also had three different Thai marinades, and I should have used the old ones instead of making new ones. I have horseradish root in the fridge, and I need to make a sauce with that as well.

Pam, when Bernard comes to do landscaping in the fall, he helps me clean out the fridge by eating leftovers. Maybe I can resolve to make smaller portions. I bought smaller plates so that we would eat less, but that strategy has not been working that well. When I make pasta, I only make just what we can eat at one meal (unless it is lasagna or fresh ravioli), but that is one of the few times I cook just what we can eat. Another is fish - I only buy enough fish for two servings at a time because it is expensive.

Lars

Cook more....eat out less.

The only resolution I've made
That I have been able to keep
was made several years ago.
Is not particularly kitchen related.
It is simply "I will not make any more resolutions!"

I haven't broken it yet,
And don't intend to start now!

:>)

Rusty

Lars, I am trying to do the same - only buy what I can eat in a short time. I made beef stew yesterday and it is enough for an army. I'll be eating it for every meal for three days. Send Bernard over here!

Hi Teresa_mn: Great thread. My cooking resolution is to cook, eat healthy, and be jolly. Cooking is a way to nourish one's soul and spirit ... it said in the Bible that one's body is the temple of the God ... why destroy our temple with fast food when we can cook something nourishing? That's my new-year resolution, to eat natural foods that God made, rather than stuff coming from the factories.