2015 Food Resolutions

Food is a big part of my life.  I'm kind of obcessed.  I often enjoy writing, making, eating & talking about food more than almost anything else.  It's so fun & rewarding to try new places, whip up old family favorites, share new recipes & compare notes with others.  In the spirit of always staying inspired, I've come up with a few Food Resolutions for 2015.  

1. Make Veggies & Fruits a Staple, not an Afterthought.  Eat more Organic. 

When planning what we'll be eating & cooking for the coming week, I often think about produce dead last.  I carefully decide the proteins we'll be grilling, which pasta to serve & what soup to simmer, but more times than I can count, I end up scrambling over my list a second time to add veggies to dinner or completely forget about putting fruit on my grocery list & spend far too long in the produce section pondering what fruit we might eat.  That needs to change.  Vegetables can be a wonderful addition to any meal & I need to put more focus on them.  Fruit too.  For a long time now, eating a banana in the morning is about as far as we've gone, but I plan on adding in nature's candy to all of our meals, not just in the morning. 

And while we're on the subject of produce, I'll be ever-striving to buy mostly organic fruits & veggies.  Right now, I'm pretty good about picking out organic lettuce & berries, but want to make an effort to fill my cart up with more organic goods than not.  There are several resources about buying organic, but the easiest & most reliable I've found is the Dirty Dozen/Clean Fifteen List from Environmental Working Group.  I won't worry much about picking up organic if it's on the 'clean fifteen' but if it's on the 'dirty dozen' list, I'll go above & beyond to get the organic version.

2. Crack open a Book.

I have a beautiful & bountiful collection of cookbooks in my kitchen that I don't look at often.  With the age of Pinterest, iPads & blogs, it's easy to never even think about pulling a book off the shelf when it's time to make dinner.  I've been known to use Pinterest as my own personal google for double-checking a method, cooking time or oven temperature for my go-to meals. 

While I deeply love & will continue to use blogs & Pinterest for inspiration & ideas, I want to make a big effort to rediscover my cookbooks.  In my opinion, cookbooks make for really fun nighttime reading.  There's nothing scary, stressful about reading recipes, there are gorgeous pictures to fawn over & it makes for a really peaceful way to wind down for bed.  Also, if I start making more cookbook recipes & feed him the tasty results, I can totally justify new cookbook purchases to Andrew. : )

3. Explore Austin.

Fortunately for us, we live in Austin, land of the delicious restaurant.  There are also gobs & gobs of new restaurants.  I seriously think you could eat at a new place every day & never run out of options.  We try new joints every once in a while, but this year, I really want to step it up!  There is still a long list of newbies I wanted to try in 2014 but never got around to, which makes me & my taste buds a little sad.  No 2015 restaurant regret y'all.

4. Mix up those lunches.

Lunch is always hard for me.  I'm either starving or completely not when the clock hits noon.  Working across the street from a Starbucks has also made it very easy to have a latte & dark chocolate covered graham crackers my midday meal.  That's not good.  On better days I bring leftovers or a sandwich, but it can get very b-o-r-i-n-g.  This year I want to get more creative, healthy & tasty with my lunches.

5. Spice It Up!

Are you fearless in the kitchen?  I am definitely not.  Cooking new types of food, including using spices, veggies & proteins I'm not super-familiar with scares me.  I'm afraid that I'll totally screw things up.  But that's silly.  Worst case, it's terrible & we order pizza.  Best case, it's awesome & I get to share it with y'all.   I want to play around with trying some of our restaurant favorites at home, getting gutsy with making more exotic food & maybe even giving it a go with tofu.  YOLO, right?

What are you wanting to tackle food-wise this year?