Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with friends and family, lots of good gifts, plenty of tasty food.

I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions, but in the name of accountability, I wanted to gather up a few of my cooking- and home-related goals for the year and share them here. Any resolutions for you?

First, a friend gifted me some whole wheat sourdough starter, which inspired me to pull a very neglected copy of the Laurel Kitchen’s Bread Book, apparently one of the bibles of whole grain baking, off my shelf. I really, really want to work on my bread-baking this year, from pizza dough to big round crusty loaves–and hopefully I won’t kill this starter!

Speaking of cookbooks, another resolution I have is to actually cook from some of the books that are starting to pile up around my apartment. I received an incredibly beautiful Polish cookbook from a great (in relation and value) aunt and am excited to try to make pierogies and pazckis; some of the salads look stunning as well. Plus, the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, and a few vintage cookbooks I’ve picked up recently deserve just as much love as the food blogs and cooking websites I usually rely on.

On the “home” front, I have three sad bare walls that need some art love, and plenty of art that is collecting dust in my closet. I want to create more of the prints and canvas photo transfers I did earlier this year and create at least one gallery wall in my office (which has also become somewhat neglected of late).

I also would love to build a shelf for either my kitchen or living room. I’ve seen some pretty neat tutorials that seem plausible for someone with one drill, a hammer, and zero major power tools.

Finally, just to reflect back a bit on 2012, and where this cozy little online space began, here are four personal favorite recipes/projects from the past several months:

Gazpacho–I cannot sufficiently explain how I am longing for tomato season right now. Also, that was probably the first recipe I’ve ever really created on my own and was able to reproduce pretty accurately to share here.

Pickled cranberries–My family may not have loved them as much as I did, but these were my first, and so far favorite, pickle project during my canning bonanza this summer and fall.

Pie crust–I loved this because it seemed so representative of how my projects usually go: something goes majorly off course, but I manage to learn a ridiculous new skill, and still end up with a pretty tasty end product. Reminds me, I need to make another pie soon…

Canvas-printed photos–These turned out to be great Christmas gifts, happily enough, but now I need to make more for my aforementioned bare walls!

Here’s to a great new year!