This year

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! 🙂

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Blog resolutions

I’m one of those people who likes to make several new year’s resolutions, so that at the end of the year I know I’ll be able to cross of at least some of them. I made some food- and blog-related resolutions two years ago, but last year I apparently didn’t bother to make any. Oops. This year, the first blog resolution that comes to mind is that I will learn how to make and post a custom header. I’ve wanted one for the longest time but don’t even know where to start. But it can’t be that hard, right? It seems like everyone else in the world has one. My other blog resolution is to post at least twice a week. I don’t have the best track record for posting consistency, so we’ll see how that one goes.

For food-related goals, one that I have set for myself is to cook from my cookbooks more. Specifically, that each week I will try one new recipe from one of my cookbooks. Sometimes we fall into food ruts at dinnertime, and usually if I want to try something new, I’ll search for the recipe online. So rather than deciding what I want to try first and then finding a recipe, I’m going to turn to my cookbooks for both inspiration and instruction. I don’t have a whole lot of cookbooks, but the ones I do have are practical and fun. Here’s the list:

• Jamie’s America, Jamie Oliver
• Estonian Tastes and Traditions, Karin Annus Kärner
• 2, 4, 6, 8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds, Rachael Ray
• 1000 Italian Recipes, Michele Scicolone
• Poole tunni road, Pille Enden, Raili Mikk (an Estonian book of half-hour dishes)
• Totally Cocktails, Maria Costantino (I am totally counting the cocktail book as a cookbook! :-))

Then I have two books on entertaining that include recipes:

• Eesti perepeod (Estonian Family Celebrations), Harri Ilves, Lia Virkus, and Tiina Väljaste
• I Like You: Entertaining Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris

And a few memoirs that include recipes:

• Mediterranean Summer, David Shalleck
• A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg

I’m hoping that this “project” will help to expand my repertoire and prevent us from getting boring in terms of what we make at home. I’m off to a good start– the past two weeks I’ve tried recipes from my new Jamie Oliver book, and this weekend I might try to make an easy bean soup from the Estonian half-hour meals book. I might not update about my new cookbook recipe every week, but I’ll definitely share if I discover something outstanding.

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