Just to be clear, I'm not pretending to be like Julie in the movie Julie & Julia as I tell you about a little challenge I took this year... Especially because:
A. French cuisine looks kind of gross - other than the desserts, many of the foods in that movie made me want to gag
B. Julie lived in New York, and had access to whatever she wanted for cooking, and
C. I failed to post progress through the year so I probably won't remember most of what we tried and you won't hear the stories of taffy that wouldn't pull or upside down cake that didn't fully cook.
That being said, my New Year's goal for 2012 (yes, I said "goal" - a little less binding and sure to fail than a "resolution"), was to try at least one new recipe every week. Even with trips to Thailand, Ethiopia, and all around Zambia (essentially putting us away from home for 8+ weeks), I can say we tried well more than 52 new recipes this year. Some weeks, that's all I made! Leaning on a stack of cookbooks, the good ol' Internet, and a few fun recipe apps on my phone, I set out to keep hubby well-fed while not making the exact same meals week after week.
Was it challenging? Sometimes. Finding substitutions for ingredients is always an interesting experiment. Unexpected power outages didn't help much either. More than anything though, it is probably one of the few tangible things I could cling to through some rough patches of emotional blah this year. Add to it our weekly "alphabet date nights," themed around a letter of the alphabet, and we've eaten some fun, usually tasty (with a few flops), and creative meals. Luke and I will probably disagree on our favorites, but in the following posts, I'll provide some of the "best recipes of 2012" - at least in our minds.
Dig in!!
(pictured: ratatouille-stuffed pepper halves, a recipe that I wasn't even going to try to feed Luke, but I absolutely loved it!!! )
A. French cuisine looks kind of gross - other than the desserts, many of the foods in that movie made me want to gag
B. Julie lived in New York, and had access to whatever she wanted for cooking, and
C. I failed to post progress through the year so I probably won't remember most of what we tried and you won't hear the stories of taffy that wouldn't pull or upside down cake that didn't fully cook.
That being said, my New Year's goal for 2012 (yes, I said "goal" - a little less binding and sure to fail than a "resolution"), was to try at least one new recipe every week. Even with trips to Thailand, Ethiopia, and all around Zambia (essentially putting us away from home for 8+ weeks), I can say we tried well more than 52 new recipes this year. Some weeks, that's all I made! Leaning on a stack of cookbooks, the good ol' Internet, and a few fun recipe apps on my phone, I set out to keep hubby well-fed while not making the exact same meals week after week.
Was it challenging? Sometimes. Finding substitutions for ingredients is always an interesting experiment. Unexpected power outages didn't help much either. More than anything though, it is probably one of the few tangible things I could cling to through some rough patches of emotional blah this year. Add to it our weekly "alphabet date nights," themed around a letter of the alphabet, and we've eaten some fun, usually tasty (with a few flops), and creative meals. Luke and I will probably disagree on our favorites, but in the following posts, I'll provide some of the "best recipes of 2012" - at least in our minds.
Dig in!!
(pictured: ratatouille-stuffed pepper halves, a recipe that I wasn't even going to try to feed Luke, but I absolutely loved it!!! )
