The Challenges

Before posts about New Year's Resolutions start popping up in blogland, I wanted to mention some of the "resolutions" Sam and I have been working on for a little while (non-new-years-related).

One has been to include a handful of new recipes each time we plan a menu. You know how you seem to eat the same handful of meals over and over (and over) again? We want to get out of that rut. Plus, we like trying new things. And we have some cookbooks that have fabulous stuff that just need to be put to use, you know? AND we love food, so why not, huh?

Some fun new dinners we've tried:

- California Black Bean Burgers (there's a reason I listed this first--they were SUPER SCRUMPTIOUS!!)

- Broccoli enchiladas

- Rice noodles with peanut sauce

- Tempeh stir-fry with yogurt peanut sauce

- Pita fajitas

- Spanish tortilla

- Cheese & rice casserole

We mostly try to find meals that are different from the usual, and we're also exploring more vegetarian-style meals. Not because we're "converting," but because we want to eat less meat and more veggies and whole grains.

We only take a few minutes to rummage through the cookbooks and plan a menu with a complementary grocery list about once a month. We really only plan 8-10 meals, throwing in 2-3 newbies. It's amazing to me that 8-10 meals last almost a whole month for us--due to leftovers, eating at a family member's home, or something else that I can't seem to think of at this moment. Anyway, we've been pretty consistent about this since we moved to Salt Lake.

Another thing we do to help us with the new meal thing is to take pencils and write in our cookbooks. We will cross out a recipe we don't like and don't want to try again. We'll write in what we had to modify due to what ingredients we have or don't have. We'll circle and star the ones that we will for sure have again. You get the idea.

And the other little resolution is to do situps, pushups and lunges and/or squats every day. 20 situps center, 20 to the right side, 20 to the left side, 20 pushups, and 20 lunges and/or squats (sometimes my knees can't handle 20 of just squats, so that's why I vary this part). I've done something similar in the past, but never really put down exactly what to do and how much of it. At first I wanted to do it for 100 days (there are 100 total exercises), but I decided to first award ourselves if we do it daily until January 1st. We'll see how to modify at that point.

Oh, and I'm still trying to find a good reward...any suggestions?

One day I might blog some more about the yummy new meals with photos...but then again maybe not. Cute Winston always takes the blog's limelight--not much room for food photos, too. :)