Adiós 2020!

I know I wrote a heartfelt “letter” to all my readers last week and may have even suggested I would not have another post in 2020, but I just couldn’t resist. Don’t worry, I am not going to do another reflection on this incredibly weird, sometimes very sad, sometimes infuriating year. Instead, I want to start looking forward to 2021.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I view them the same way I do dieting…I am only setting myself up for failure. However, I do want to set some goals for 2021 and beyond. These are going to fall into a few categories, so bare with me because it is not all about cooking, family or food…you know, the supposed point of this blog of mine.

First, as both a personal goal and a career oriented goal, I want to become fluent in Spanish. I began studying it seriously in May of 2020 because you know, I had some time on my hands. I feel like I have come very far in my learning, but I know there is a long ways to go. I may not reach the “fluent” point in 2021, but I hope to work hard toward the goal. Yo quiero aprender más español en el año de 2021.

Second, I would like to build my business more. While cooking and blogging about cooking are a passion, I do have my own business, and I had intended to make 2020 its year to grow and develop. But you know, I got a little sidetracked on that goal. So I am going be doubling down on that goal for the next couple of years. I don’t need it to get huge, but I want to work toward doing more of the projects I really set out to target and that requires a little work to develop.

Okay, now let’s talk about the blogging and cooking, because that’s what this little project is supposed to be all about. I started this blog in April of 2019. In 2019, I posted 43 blogs…okay, kind of weak, but I was just getting started. In 2020, I’ll have posted 94, which is better. However, my posting has been pretty inconsistent. I’ll post 3 blogs one month and 12 another. I’m not trying to make this a job, so I really just post when inspiration strikes, or sometimes when I remember to ask my “editor,” aka husband, to proof them. However, the blogging is so good for me mentally that I really want to do it more often. We should all allow ourselves to do the thing we enjoy more often. So my goal is to try to post at least one blog per week, other than the continuing Quarantine Life series, which is more of a running diary than a true blog post in my opinion.

Now, if I want to commit to blogging more consistently, I’m going to need things to blog about. I’m setting myself some cooking goals this year. I want to finally try cooking some things from that Russian cookbook I picked up on a lark at a used bookstore. I also want to try that whole Asian cooking thing again. I may not have shared this here, but my attempts at Southeast Asian cooking have been pretty dismal. I managed a good drunken shrimp dish once. Several other dishes have been a disaster. What should be the easiest part, the noodles, has somehow been my Achilles heel. They are underdone, overdone or just plain not right. I bought a huge wok and then realized said wok was totally impractical in my kitchen, or any home kitchen frankly. I really specifically want to focus on Indian and Thai cuisine to start. There are so many amazing Indian dishes that I love, and they are difficult to find without coconut products, which I am severely allergic to. So if I just learn to make them myself with substitutes, I can enjoy them anytime. Again, this goal may take me well into 2022 or beyond to actually master, but goals are about progress, not necessarily about the end. Also, it’s not like you can ever learn everything there is to know about a thing like cooking. That is part of what I love about it.

I also want to brave some dishes I have been holding off on but really want try making. For all my cooking, I’ve never done a rack of lamb, or prime rib, or homemade tofu! Yep, we don’t really eat that much tofu, despite have the vegetarian and vegan daughters, but it still looks like a pretty cool project.

I’d also like to develop more original recipes. Most of what I make are dishes inspired by existing recipes with my own little twists based on my and my family’s tastes. But this year, I did develop a couple, and I’d like to continue doing that. I currently have an idea for a vegan ginger snap cookie that I just haven’t tried because I seem to not actually keep ginger in my spice cabinet. I didn’t realize it until I came up with this recipe idea, so apparently, I do not do a lot of cooking with ground ginger. I do periodically buy ginger root, so it’s not that I don’t like ginger.

Okay, now I’ve delved into rambling. Also, this reads a lot of like New Year’s resolutions. I’m still going to insist it isn’t because most of my goals are much more long term than can be completed in 2021. I’m going to just call them future life goals.

Have a very happy New Year’s, and may 2021 be good year and full of happiness and love and prosperity!