Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Best-Laid Plans of 2013


Well, I certainly didn’t intend to disappear for quite so long. I certainly didn’t starve over the last few weeks, so I should have had something comestible to talk about. There should be some post-holiday health food I’m totally into, or some kind of food- or cooking-related resolution for the new year that I’m hoping to stick to. There ought to be recipe with citrus or celeriac or some other seasonal ingredient that I’m just crazy about. The most creative thing I’ve put together in a few weeks, however, is a stove-top macaroni and cheese with some spicy sausage and leftover caramelized onions thrown in. (It was quite delicious, by the way.)

I must admit that in reality my whole life (not to mention my kitchen) is horribly disorganized and slightly confused. Not in a negative or depressing way. Just in an exhaustingly messy way. I suppose my New Year’s resolution should be to achieve a particular level of organization. I’m sorry to say, unfortunately, that I don’t even know where to start!

Perhaps I should drop everything and try the orange pound cake recipe I have my eye on, or a grapefruit or cranberry cocktail. How about the quinoa and chickpea casserole with the squash topping or a southwestern chicken soup? I’ve got all these best-laid plans written down as a sketchy future menu along with a fish sandwich with pineapple slaw and a broccoli-orange-chipotle stir fry.

I’ve also got new cookbooks to dig into and plenty of neglected old ones to get know better. I’ve still got my good ol’ pile of magazine clippings, a slew of internet bookmarks, and some ideas of my own. Even if you aren’t as overwhelmed as I am at this point, you’re probably able to recognize that it’s not only organization but priorities that need better definition in my cooking life (and probably beyond!). And so I suppose I need a plan, a method of action, a scheme if you will. Alas, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley,/An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,/ For promis’d joy!” *

Robert Burns may have been correct, but so was my grandfather who often said, “You gotta eat something.” Much of this blog is really about just that, and until I figure out a good direction to face when improving my organization and my priorities and my cooking, I suppose it will continue to be so. We’ll just have to see what messes I come up with in the coming year!

  

* The whole poem “To a Mouse” is here.

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