Welcome to 2009.
I’m big on New Year’s Resolutions, and last year, I made a resolution to blog regularly. We can all see how THAT worked out. Joshua doesn’t like making resolutions for the new year, because, as he figures, if you’re going to implement changes, why not just do it now? Why wait for some benign marker to do so?
He’s such a scrooge.
I was trying to think of what resolutions I could make that I could actually keep, besides “eat more pie,” which, although quite feasible, isn’t exactly a stirring challenge. I came up with a few things, and while I would like to blog more, mostly as a discipline to write something longer that 140 characters (twitter has ruined me), I’m not making it a resolution. So far, so good, with my anti-resolution, eh?
Here’s a few:
I have never made risotto. I want to learn to make risotto, and a damn good one, too. We rang in the new year with our dear friends Robin and Richard, who came to our house for dinner, a magnum of champagne, lovely conversation and games. Richard made a flank steak with a red-wine risotto, and homemade egg rolls with a dipping sauce. That Richard, he’s always raising the bar.
Speaking of Richard, he’s tried to explain to me the finer points of a hollandaise sauce, which I can’t ever seem to get right. I keep breaking the sauce. And yes, I’ve tried the blender - that just got melted butter all over the underside of my kitchen cabinets. So making a perfect hollandaise sauce is also on my list.
Friday nights here are generally pizza nights and we’ve been cooking frozen pizzas for quite a while. Now that Killian is a bit older, I want to make pizza with the kids each week. So that’s a resolution as well.
I’d also like to learn to make a few varieties of dim sum. i love me some dim sum, and I’m realizing my resolutions thus far are all culinary.
Every year, when Christmas rolls around, I decide I want to make stockings for our family, but come on - who has time AT CHRISTMAS to make stockings? So I’m making that a resolution to have done by Christmas for this year.
This past year, Joshua and I put a month’s worth of emergency fund into savings, which I feel is quite impressive considering we live on one income in San Francisco, with the second highest rental rates in the country after Manhattan. We had to dip into our fund a couple of times to get through a couple of months there, but I’ve got a much better handle on our finances now. I’d like to have another month’s worth put away by the end of the year. If we stick to our budget, I think we can swing it, barring any unforeseen surprises. So one of my resolutions is two-fold: to stick to our budget and save a month’s worth of basic expenses.
I miss you all, dear readers. I hope you’ll come back. What are your New Year’s Resolutions?
mine are on my site
i make damn good pie…
I like the risotto one. Mine are always about getting my photo website up but I never do. But I actually do better at resolutions near my birthday. That seems more like a beginning to me.
I think I want to drink more red wine.
Oh, but I like your “money” one. I want to do something like that. We’re kind of already doing it, but most of our “fund” goes to the PhD move.
My resolution was to be sane again……of course that’s assuming I used to be at one point.