So after a long hiatus from blogging, I think I’m back. I’m at the point where I feel like I’m doing this for myself, not for an audience, so if I’m sporadic at best, that’s OK! And if no one is reading, that’s OK too!

I am not really big on New Year’s resolutions – my thinking is that if you want to make a change in your life, why not start right away?  That said, I read a book on January 2 that caused me to have a revelation about my relationship with food. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks is an amazing book.  I’ve always enjoyed cooking, and this book made me realize that there is no reason I shouldn’t be cooking for myself regularly.  As a busy single gal I’ve fallen into the trap of fast food and convenient processed food.  If you check out my Books Read in 2012 list you’ll see that I’m starting a new chapter in my life full of wholesome, organic, responsible/sustainable food.  I’ve always tried to buy organic over conventional, but now there will be more purpose in what I’m doing.  A side effect of this will be a healthier lifestyle, and hopefully I’ll finally get my weight under control (though that is not the purpose of this lifestyle change – it’s not a new diet, though I have lost 14.5 lbs since New Year’s).

So, when I feel like it I’ll share here on my blog. For instance, dinner last night. Homemade steak and French fries – delish! Made with grass-fed, organic sirloin and organic Russet potatoes.  I still need to work on my steak cooking skills (flavor was great, but it was a bit overdone), but the French fries were a keeper! I recently took a cooking class in town and learned how to make French fries from scratch – like, starting with peeling the potato. I knew essentially what it took to make French fries, but it never occurred to me that making them from scratch takes about the same amount of time as making them from a bag in the freezer section. I also decided that it would be healthier to bake them instead of deep frying them, and there had to be a way to get the flavor of deep frying without the frying part. And I was right – these little crunchy buddies were just as tasty as the fried deal, and they weren’t greasy at all! Note the absence of a veggie – I’m trying REALLY hard to learn to eat fruits and veggies, but last night was an exception as I bought fresh green beans to go with this meal and then proceeded to let them get brown in the fridge before I cooked them (and I didn’t realize it until the steak was done and the French fries were browning). Oh well, tonight’s a new night