I’m a bit late to the New Year’s Resolution game. Or at least I am late in writing about it. I do have some things planned. Several personal goals. A few things I’m participating in. Some garden attention. There will be a lot going on in addition to waiting-on-pins-and-needles for my Dad’s liver transplant.
1) Get My Business Launched. I am in the process of starting a business doing edible garden design and helping people with backyard chickens, wildlife habitats, and pollinator gardens. I mentioned I had something up my sleeve back in August so it has been in the works for a bit now and I’m about ready to launch! Sometime in the next month I’ll fill you in more on this, beg for you to spread the word, shamelessly ask for business, and spill my hopes and dreams. Stay tuned! Woot!
The robins love the berries
2) Run a Marathon. I’m signed up to run the Seattle Rock n’ Roll Marathon June 23rd. Yes, I’ve run marathons before. I ran Seattle twice and Sacramento once. Plus the marathons at the end of each Ironman triathlon, but those are separate in my mind from the marathon as a unique event. They are more intended shuffle than run. If you add it up though, that makes 5 marathons. I like to run, what can I say?
I need to exercise. I crave it. And yet, I’m not doing it. Sure, there are reasons. I have a really hard time not thinking of them as excuses because I am trying to be more mindful of context in my life. While not insurmountable, context does matter. Sick Dad. Soul-sucking job. Parenting. Partner with mystery illness during and post PhD process. Wrist surgery, a herniated disc and subsequent healing process. It all adds up and, eventually, something goes. For me it was exercising. I fell out of the exercise habit.
I have had some unsuccessful attempts to get my groove on, but what I know is that nothing gets me back in the mode better than signing up for an event. An event just difficult enough that I can’t blow off training. On impulse one night I signed up. Eeeps. Yep. Marathon pre-training starts Monday.
Ice on the plum tree. I hope I still get fruit.
3) Lose Weight. I so hate putting this on the list. It is such a typical new years resolution that I just inherently balk at it. There is such a tyranny of (and obsession with) body size and weight in this country. I am no weight freak. Just because someone is super skinny in no way makes them healthy, nor is someone a bit heavier necessarily unhealthy.
Other than a time about 10 years ago when I rather quickly gained, and then lost, a chunk of weight, I have been roughly the same baseline weight (±10 pounds) since early high school– at least 25 years. I’ll never be a string bean nor do I want to be. However, I am 100% certain that at my so-called baseline weight, a weight some would say I could stand to lose 10-15 pounds (or 20), I am in much better shape cardiovascularly than most anyone.
The bottom line for me is that I feel better at my pre-pregnancy weight. And since the Babylady is now 4 it seems it isn’t going away by itself (damn it). Postpartum things got away from me. I was pretty lax. I knew I was training for an Ironman triathlon and was breastfeeding. I just assumed the weight would just fly off me. I mean really? How could it not fall off? I was breastfeeding and everyone tells you lies to you that you will drop all your weight that way. I was exercising approximately a bazillion hours a week. Except, it didn’t fall off. Sure, I dropped some during training, but it came on again after training was done. So, here I am, at a weight that feels really uncomfortable to me. With more excuses that I care to list about why it hasn’t changed.
I know how to do it. I know I will do it. Up till now I’ve lacked commitment and consciousness.
However, know that I won’t stop drinking, restaurants/take out when I want, give up pizza, bacon, butter, or full-fat cheese. Puh-lease. There will never be any fat or sugar substitutes, or mystery snacks here. It is all the same good stuff people. You know, just a little less if it.
Cool lavender
Which brings me to cooking challenges. You may think such things to be against the idea of weight loss and exercise. And you are wrong. Totally untrue. The more you cook at home, the more you control what is in the food you eat. The better you get at preparing things, the less tempted you are to go out. The more prepared you are to make awesome things, the more likely you are to make awesome things.
Cooking. It is key.
Icy, feather grass
4) Can and Preserve More. I was on a canning streak doing Tigress’ Can Jam in 2010. I learned a lot. Made some amazing things (and some awful things). I carried the seasons through the year. It was great. And then in 2011 I didn’t can much at all. Tomatoes, for sure. But not much else. No relish. No chutney. Sad. This year I’m going to review the end of the month round ups by Tigress (you can see the list of the monthly round ups on her side bar), as well as the lists I made of things I wanted to try. I’ll pick something and preserve it.
Perhaps even more important to me with the Can Jam though was that I got connected with some really fantastic people (and you peeps know who you are) that I’ve come to love and respect more than most people I know ‘in real life.’ It is a fantastic community and I am grateful to those I know. Internet love.
unhappy bamboo
5) Grow it Cook it Can it: Do it! Caroline realized that in making her kitchen resolutions she had the perfect year-long project of activities to become more accomplished at doing. At the end of last year she put forth a challenge of “a year of twelve different skills, mainly centered around making foods from scratch that I may not currently be doing, or that I want to do more of, especially thinking about those last few ingredients that I still buy at a store.” Sounds pretty great right? First assignment is Pasta. Which is about perfect as it is about top of the list of things I want to perfect. I always have fresh, likely-still-warm eggs on hand. Flour and salt. And a pasta machine. All that I lack is the confidence to bust it out more often. I want to get good enough to avoid completely destroying the kitchen in a flour cloud.
Robin love
6) Tea and Cookies Cooking Challenge A few days ago I noticed that Tara at Tea & Cookies is doing a cooking challenge too. It is similar, yet different from the one at Grow It Cook It Can It. This challenge focuses more on things like pie crusts, soufflés, and croissants. I am excited because I have some weird cooking hang ups. For a long time I would not make things that called for cooking milk. Which is ridiculous, but it seemed so finicky. Of course, it wasn’t. I am the same way about pie crust. I say I can’t make one because it sounds hard. But really I haven’t ever tried. No more avoiding things I know I can do. First challenge is sourdough, the Ladyfriend’s favorite bread.
7) The ongoing adventure to grow more of what we want and need. Erica at Northwest Edible Life just posted a spreadsheet she did to help her planning on how much to plant. I am excited to give it a try and not my usual methods of “Oh just put in as many tomatoes as we can!“, “Let’s grow some completely inefficient use of space corn because it is fun!“, and “I think we should devote a lot of space to eggplant that only I eat just to see if we can grow it!“
Those are the biggies for 2012!
Mountain Mama checks out the snow and ice
