out with the old...

Well it's that time of year again- the end of the year.  Everything feels sloppy.  I have been a bit twitchy lately just thinking about all that could be improved upon around here. The days of my Christmas Tree are definitely numbered!

Do you make resolutions?  I tend to be fairly idealistic- and so yes, I do.  Do I keep them?  Well that is another situation entirely.  Being idealistic is different from being realistic.  Usually, like everyone else, I over commit and lose steam somewhere along the way.  By July I cannot even remember what I set out to change way back in January. 

Last year, my New Year's Resolution was to become more organized.  This is an area that I really struggle with.  Filing and sorting do not come naturally to me.  Piling and stacking do.  So, last year I made a concerted effort to become more organized.  I tackled some pretty big projects and kept a day planner.  I did pretty well- if I do say so myself.

With some general success last year, I have been thinking about what my aspirations should be for this year.  I plan to share several of them with you in the coming days.  Perhaps some accountability might be nice.  Please refer me back to this post come July.

One of the things that has become VERY sloppy around here is our diet.  I was telling my dad over the weekend that I felt like a hypocrite.  I have what I would consider to be a decent amount of knowledge in the subject of nutrition and yet I really struggle to put it into practice.  We had this conversation while I was frosting cupcakes.  See what I mean?  I talk a big game about local, organic, unprocessed, whole foods...but when it comes down to it- I eat Top Ramen for lunch too.

This is what I did the day after Christmas.

I threw out all of the cookies, candy, corn syrup laden, hydrogenated fats filled, yucky-yuck food in our house.  It felt so good to get it out of the house. 

* I would like to keep foods like this out of the house in the coming year.

* I would like to make every effort to avoid sugar and refined flours. 

* I would like to experiment in baking more with alternative sweeteners (by this I mean natural sweeteners like brown rice syrup and honey- not Splenda!)

* I want my children to eat more green things.  This alone is quite a challenge!

* I would like to eat less meat.  Hormone/antibiotic free meat is so expensive!

So after throwing out all that food, naturally we needed more:

I made a menu/grocery list using my favorite resource Everyday Food. I would say that 95% of what I cook comes from this magazine.  I love it!

Ta-da!  In with the new.  Healthy food for a week.  Back on track.  Only 52.5 more weeks to go.  I can do it.

Tonight's dinner: Chef Salad. A great way to use up that left-over Christmas Ham. (I looked for the recipe online, it wasn't there.  It came from the September 2007 issue, page 94.)

Hey, where did that garlic bread come from?