After ringing in the new year last Friday — attending a party full of friends and going out at midnight to pop champagne in front of the Estonia Opera House, where Estonia’s official 2011 kick-off celebration was taking place — we took the rest of the week easy. No jumping into exercise routines or making extreme changes, just a lot of hanging out on the couch watching old episodes of “House”, which was fine by me.
The time around Christmas and New Year’s is so hectic and exhausting that I’m unable to be introspective about the past year, but now that the craziness is over I’ve been able to reflect on 2010 and formulate some goals for the next year. Last year’s (food and blog) goals were to make a custom header (did that!!) and cook from my cookbooks at least once a week. The latter didn’t happen, but I think it was unrealistic. I did still try a lot of new recipes, both from books and from the internet, and I will try to focus more on my cookbooks this year (I have two beautiful Jamie Oliver books now!). These are the food-related goals I came up with for this year:
- Cook from my cookbooks.
- Eat dinner at the table at least twice a week. I know this is terrible, but J and I often eat dinner in front of our respective computers, or while watching TV. Our kitchen table becomes a gathering place for clutter. No more! We should keep the table cleared and actually use it for eating.
- Try eating vegan for at least 5 days and raw vegan for at least 3 days. I don’t intend to adopt either of these diets permanently, but I’m interesting in the challenge of coming up with a menu and also want to see how they make me feel. There are some cool raw recipes I’ve always been curious about, so this will motivate me to try them.
- Visit at least six new (to us) restaurants/bars/cafes in Tallinn. J and I don’t go out too often, and when we do we tend to stick to places that have cheap beer or certain favorites of ours on the menu. There are plenty of interesting places in this city, and we need to branch out!
This isn’t a topic I usually address on my blog but I wanted to mention it briefly: this is the first year in memory that I haven’t made a weight-related resolution (you know, to lose the proverbial “last five pounds”). I lost a bit of weight this year (thank you, half marathon training) and I don’t know if it’s age, metabolism, lifestyle or all of the above, but I’ve stayed in a place that I’m comfortable with and it’s really refreshing.
Here’s to another year of baking, running, experimenting and exploring! 
I know I promised you to write about my raw vegan adventures. Sadly I haven’t been able to get online in the last while now that my computer is broken.
Great to see your interest has been sparked. You can even make it one of your goals this year to join us and some other vegans for a vegan/raw evening. We know this guy who has a nice place in the old town and he does food and chat evenings every so often. So if you’re interested I am sure there’ll be an invitation.
Head uut aastat teile meie poolt!
I’ve missed your posts! Too bad about your computer
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I’d love to join you for a vegan/raw evening sometime! As long as nobody minds that I’m still an omnivore most of the time.
Head aasta jätku teile ka!
Those evenings are all about getting to know new alternative foods – noone is categorized by the way they eat at home – so no worries, only an open palate of taste is required
(not that anything strange is served – it is always vegan and includes lots of different raw foods)
OK, that sounds great! I’m definitely open to trying everything.
Very fine resolutions!
Mindful eating (NOT in front of the PC) is something I work on currently.
I think raw vegan is great for cleansing when doing it for a limited time. If you do it for longer, you need to have some solid nutritional background and know what you need and where you get it from to avoid malnutrition. I’m looking forward to reading how you feel with it! Things like that always interest me.
As for the restaurants, have you tried Kompressor? It was my favorite restaurant in Old Town while I was living in there. Delicious and cheap!
Yes, I love the pancakes there! I haven’t eaten there in a long time though– it would be fun to go again soon
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Tere Marika,
I´m looking forward to trying those pancakes at Kompressor. Everybody says it´s so worth it! So I have high expectations on the restaurant.
Sofia from Portugal