Saturday, September 3, 2011

Thing A Week*

(*With a nod to Jonathan Coulton, who rocks. Seriously. Check him out.)

This time of year, I always get inspired to start something new. September is the start of a new school year at home and work (I work at a college, plus the orchestra season begins again in September) and my birthday falls in the last days of August. It has always been a time of turning over a new leaf for me. One year for my birthday, I was given a journal. I was never much for writing in it, except around my birthday. Each year, I would make a list of goals for the next year, as well as the next 5 years and next 10 years. (I'm a textbook Virgo.) It's interesting to go back and look at how I've changed (or not changed) over the years.

OK. It's been 2.5 weeks since I started this post. It is now 9/19/2011 and I'm finally getting around to what I wanted to say. This year, I want to make as much of my family's food from scratch as I can. As part of this project, I would like to try to make one new "thing a week". I plan to try to blog about each thing, but so far, that hasn't happened. I blame life. My life is such that I barely have time to try a new thing, let alone write about it. BUT! So far, I have made some new things. I will quickly list them here and hope to add more details in a later post.

Things I've now made from scratch that I'd never made before:
Pizza dough (I've now made this every week since. It is awesome.)

Pizza Sauce (I have an actual homemade jar in my fridge.)(Can't find the link!)

Birthday Cake (For myself)

Cake Frosting (Orange flavor. For above cake.)

Bread (The jury was out on the recipe. Trying again soon with a different one.)

Chicken Stew (Insert Home Simpson drooling sound here.)

That's six (6!) things and we are only in week 4. So! I think, given that I've been working overtime at the library due to no assistant, the start of school (at home and at work), and the fact that I've had emergency dental work and a cold in the last week, I'm off to a pretty good start. I'll try to dig up some more recipe links for these and will be better about keeping track of that. I'm looking forward to expanding my repertoire and maybe even getting my picky eater (I'm looking at you, Thing 1!) to try a few things. Here's to a yummy new year!