Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2018

Only so-so on my goals for 2018.

1. Backlog — Spent next to no time on the stacks in the cookbook area. Have spent some time clearing out the "in-tray" stacks in the office and elsewhere. Occasionally to frequently, I pick up a small handful from an in-tray, toss ruthlessly, and move the keepers into the spreadsheet. Small progress.
2. Veg/fish meals — Averaged more than three vegetarian or fish meals per week. Not bad.
3. Cookbook — Did well with this and enjoyed it. One of my ideas for doing this, though, was to use books that might be candidates for recycling. Did a bad job of that (only one recycled), but found some new favorites cookbooks and cooked from old favorites.
4. Pasta — Did very badly at this, especially in the last half of the year when the counter was serving as pantry for mouse-vulnerable food. (Have made spaetzle a time or two, but I don't suppose that counts, since it's so simple to do.)
5. Bread — Made bread a couple  of times, but not enough. Briefly had a sourdough starter going, but it quickly got moldy and had to be tossed.
6. Guests — Did a bit of this.

Kitchen goals for 2019

I toyed with the idea of stopping with the kitchen goals. In the end, I decided to go ahead with them, keeping the same ones and adding one for the year. Too ambitious, or what?

1. Backlog — Spend time every week clearing out recipes from stacks and/or sorting through the stacks in the cookbook corner.
2. Veg/fish meals — Cook at least three vegetarian or fish meals each week. 
3. Cookbook — Choose a cookbook each month and cook at least one meal a week from it. Concentrate on little-used books that are candidates for recycling.
4. Pasta — Make pasta at least once a month.
5. Bread — Make real bread (non-ABM) once a month. Doing the Craftsy bread course would be a plus.
6. Guests — Have one or more people over for a meal once a month. Guessing I shouldn't count Cath (or Bill) any more.
7. Project — This year, do at least one of my kitchen projects (see OmniFocus). Current list, in no particular order and probably not inclusive, includes finishing the Craftsy bread course, making elderberry wine or cordial, making a rijst vlaai, making corned beef, cooking tongue, making mozzarella from kit, making a simple goat cheese, and following the Craftsy pasta course.  

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2017

I didn't do especially well on my kitchen goals for 2017.

• Backlog — Managed a brief spurt of work on this in the late spring and early summer, then fizzled out. Have been fairly ruthless clearing out assorted stacks all over the house, but need to get more done on this. Did get a second "ingredient" folder, so I have one for veggies and another for fruit. That has helped some. But muc more tossing and organization needs to be done.
• Veg/fish meals — Again, I averaged three vegetarian or fish meals per week for 2017. Have done better, but three meets the goal. 
• Pasta — Did better than last year, but still only managed to make pasta in nine of twelve months. Lack of energy this year. The mixing, rolling, cutting is fun, but the clean-up is a drag. As is clearing the counter beforehand since this is where things accumulate in the kitchen. Although making pasta once a month ensures the counter gets cleared at least that often.
• Bread — No good here again. I did re-start the Craftsy bread project yet again, but didn't get far. Really want to get to this now that I have a mixer with a dough hook.

Did somewhat better than 2016, I guess, but still not too good.


Kitchen goals for 2018

I think for 2018 I'll just keep with last year's goals. But, I'll add a couple of "bonus" goals, that I'll consider to be of lesser importance.

• I want to try concentrating on cooking from a single (or several related), relatively unused cookbooks perhaps for periods of weeks or a month. That means cooking at least one meal a week from the current cookbook. That might or might not include posting to Cookbook Countdown, which is fun but a bit time-consuming. 
• I want to have someone round to dinner once a month. This is a bit stressful since I can't depend on Ed for help, so all the organization and execution are for me. But it's nice for two old fogies to be a bit sociable once in a while.

This make six goals, four major, two minor, altogether. Maybe too ambitious, but we'll see how it goes.

1. Backlog — Spend at least one hour each week on reducing my recipe clipping backlog and working out how this can be contained. Stacks and notebooks all over the house (living, dining, bedroom, office, anyplace else) should be reduced to a single, maintainable, usable system. My weekly menu planning routine should include reference to the backlog.
2. Veg/fish meals — Still aiming for at least three vegetarian or fish meals per week.
3. Cookbook — Cook from the cookbook-of-the-month at least once per week.
4. Pasta — Make fresh pasta at least once a month.
5. Bread — Make real bread (non-ABM) once a month. Doing the Craftsy bread course would be a plus.
6. Guests — Have someone over for a meal at least once a month. (I don't think this includes Bill or other people who come to stay, but we'll see.)

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2016

Well, I finished my Foods of the World project, enjoying much of it, but did fairly abysmally with the rest of my 2016 goals.

• Backlog — Started out okay with this, but rapidly ran out of steam. I need to either get busy or get tossing before we're buried in recipe clippings. I have picked up random handfuls of recipes from stacks around the house and thinned them out severely, but need to work on the stacks and binders by the cookbooks most of all.
• Veg/fish meals — In 2016, I averaged three vegetarian or fish meals per week. Have done better, but three meets the goal. A bit handicapped for this year since Ed was prescribed to eat more beef to get his hemoglobin up.
• Pasta — Only made pasta once this year. 
• Bread — No good here either. I did re-start the Craftsy bread project, but didn't get far. One more time with that.
• Foods of the World — Yay! Finished this 3-year project.

After saying I wouldn't, I've joined another only cooking group where I have to write posts frequently. This rather conflicts with a life goal of spending less time at the computer. I've used Cookbook Countdown to help with finishing the Foods of the World projects. Now I can move on to other cookbooks, so it might be useful to continue. My posts are usually minimal.

Another issue is whether to continue with this blog at all. Since I haven't come up with a better way of recording what I've been cooking, I'll muddle on for another year. Last year I stopped getting printed copies of the blog, and got PDFs instead. These are searchable, so they can be quite handy.

Kitchen goals for 2017

I think for 2017, I'll just keep with last year's goals, except for the Foods of the World. Participation in Cookbook Countdown is optional, but fun and useful.

1. Backlog — Spend at least one hour each week on reducing my recipe clipping backlog and working out how this can be contained. Stacks and notebooks all over the house (living, dining, bedroom, office, anyplace else) should be reduced to a single, maintainable, usable system. My weekly menu planning routine should include reference to the backlog.
2. Veg/fish meals — Still aiming for at lest three vegetarian or fish meals per week.
3. Pasta — Make fresh pasta at least once a month.
4. Bread — Make real bread (non-ABM) once a month. Doing the Craftsy bread course would be a plus.

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2015

Another year where I haven't been cooking as much. Maybe this is a trend as I get older? Still enjoy tasty food though.

• Backlog — Started out pretty good with this, but ended up terribly. This really needs some focus. I could take the approach of tossing everything, but there are some goodies hidden in those piles. I have made progress on my bedside stack of recipes. Occasionally I pickup up a handful and either toss or get them them filed into the "system".
• Unused —I managed this about half the time and more in the first half of the year than the last half. Should do better. 
• Grains — I did surprisingly well on this without, I have to say, paying it much attention.
• Veg/Fish — We averaged just over 3.4 vegetarian or fishy meals a week. Slightly up from last year.
• Pasta — I've done abysmally here, making pasta only four times this year. It's not that it's hard to make, but it costs time and energy. And I don't enjoy the clean-up after. But do enjoy the eating thereof. 
• Bread — And I seem to have made (non-ABM) bread only once. Boo.
• FotW — Plodding along with this. Have had to adjust the schedule several times, but still working at it. Both the reading and the cooking have been fun. It's just my general cooking lethargy that slows me down.

Not the most successfulf of years altogether.

Kitchen goals for 2016

For the next year, I need to cut back and be less ambitious, i.e., more realistic, with my goals. Working in general on reducing our Stuff, I need to focus seriously on clearing out my backlog of collected recipes. If I can't make some progress this year, next year I need to start tossing them fairly indiscriminately. Counting the number of times I've made vegetarian or fish meals is good; it would be nice to get the number back up a bit. I'd really like to get back to making pasta regularly, and get started making bread regularly. Should be finishing my trip through Foods of the World in 2016. Think I'll keep with the those goals but drop the grains goal (since I did ok but not good) without any real focus at all; and the unused cookbooks goal,which I can get back to when Foods of the World is complete. So we're left with:

1. Backlog — Spend at least one hour each week on reducing my recipe clipping backlog and working out how this can be contained. Stacks and notebooks all over the house (living, dining, bedroom, office, anyplace else) should be reduced to a single, maintainable, usable system. My weekly menu planning routine should include reference to the backlog.
2. Veg/fish meals — Cook at least three vegetarian or fish meals per week. Should be easy. 
3. Pasta — Start making pasta at least once a month again. 
4. Bread — Make real bread (non-ABM) once a month. (Shh! I also want to get back with the Craftsy bread course I started, but want to sneak up on it.)
5. Foods of the World — Should finish this project in 2016. I've adjusted the schedule so there's a month and a half for each remaining book, with no overlap. Hope that helps with the "down" periods that seem to happen in August and towards the end of the year. extends for six weeks, so I need to be sure to count in the proper month.

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2014

I didn't seem to focus much at all on cooking last year, don't know why. We ate OK, but I seemed to spend way too much time making my weekly plan and didn't do too much in the way of imaginative or challenging cooking. So how did I measure up to last year's goals?

• Cookbooks/IHCC  — IHCC came up with Nigel Slater as guest chef, so I changed to that for 6 months. Did reasonably well on this goal, missing only 7 weeks, not counting a week of vacation. Being uninspired with writing, I didn't make a separate post for all of my Slater dishes, though. Also, the goal was unclear with whether or not the Foods of the World books counted in this goal, so I was probably inconsistent in my counting. (They are clearly in the "unused" category, but have their own goal.)
• Veg/Fish — We averaged about 3.25 vegetarian or fish meals per week, slightly down from last year. 
• Pasta — I did reasonably well on this, missing only two months, but still haven't made a filled pasta.
• FotW — When I made the goal, I thought I might skip December. In fact, it was August that got skipped, and I've planned that into next year's schedule also. I've done fairly well reading and cooking from the planned books, and have gone back to make further recipes from books that have passed. This has been rather fun and I look forward to continuing with it. 
• Bread — I've made real bread (non-ABM) only twice this year. Too bad for me. 

Overall, not too bad, except for bread making. Again.

Kitchen goals for 2015

Continue with goals, yes or no? I think so. It seems to help me keep focused on some things I want to do. Could be a problem to keep from attempting to do to much. And how can I manage to make myself time to do some bread making? Keep trying

There's one thing I want to work on, not strictly a cooking goal, but related, so I'll include it here. I'd really like to clear my backlog of recipe clippings waiting to be made. I have three big binders and many many stacks in various states of organization around the house. I cook no more than seven meals a week, but must collect 15-20 recipes a week. By the end of the year, I'd like to have severely reduce my backlog and get (and keep) what's left better organized for use. (Informally, I've started saving the recipes I collect in the kitchen from magazines and going through them periodically to toss ones that aren't still appealing before I move them into my standard piles. Maybe I can regularize and extend this.) I've already started with first baby steps here, just need to continue. For the start, I'll just spend at least an each week sorting and tossing and figure out what to do/measure when that part is done.

I won't join any web cooking groups this year, but will focus on using unused cookbooks. I'm hoping this will eventually help me clear out cookbooks I don't need. So I have space for more. :-) 

Also wanting to focus more on cooking whole grains, especially having read recently how healthy they are.  

I'm going to keep counting vegetarian and fish meals, just to be sure I don't go off track. Not likely, but to be sure. 

Three monthly goals, making pasta (the filled kind one day, maybe), making break, and cooking from the Foods of the World continue.

Part of my dealing with my recipe clipping backlog right now involves getting my bread clippings organized, and then more visible. I'll make a sheet in my menu plan spreadsheet just for breads and try to plan in break-baking regularly. And I want to re-start the Craftsy artisan bread baking course and follow it through. (Started this last year, then got diverted by something and never got back to it.)

So we've got four weekly goals and three monthly ones. Hope this isn't too much.

• Backlog — Spend at least one hour each week on reducing my recipe clipping backlog and working out how this can be contained. Stacks and notebooks all over the house (living, dining, bedroom, office, anyplace else) should be reduced to a single, maintainable, usable system.
• Unused cookbooks — Cook at least once a week from a rarely used cookbook (i.e., one I've cooked from two or fewer times). And Foods of the World don't count.
• Veg/fish meals — Cook at least three vegetarian or fish meals per week. Should be easy. I only miss this in odd times where we're eating out a lot or have company.
• Grains — Serve a meal using a whole grain at least once per week.
• Pasta — Continue making pasta at least once a month. 
• Bread — Make read bread (non-ABM) once a month. (It really would be nice to do this weekly or twice a month, but let's be real.)
• Foods of the World — Continue following my Foods of the World schedule, making at least one dish a month. The period for each book extends for six weeks, so I need to be sure to count in the proper month.

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2013

This was the year when the hardest of the kitchen renovation happened, so the kitchen was a bit of a mess during that time and cooking focused on getting food on the table rather than doing anything interesting. So how did I do?

• IHCC/Cookbooks — During the year, IHCC moved from Madhur Jaffrey on to Ottolenghi and now to Donna Hay. Ottolenghi was pretty good. I don't know Donna Hay at all and have been a bit bored with writing posts like that every week, so I'm not participating this time around. I've also participated a bit in Cook Your Books, but not very consistently. I've done fairly well with this goal, 41 of 52 weeks, not great, not bad.
• Veg/Fish — We averaged about 3.5 vegetarian or fish meals each week. 
• Pasta — Missed two months this year and still haven't made a filled pasta. But I did made spinach pasta for the first time.
• Bread — Got a book, got some gear, but still not doing well with this one. I managed to make bread only 6 of 12 months. Sigh.

Overall, not as bad as I thought I'd done. Getting going with baking bread is really a problem area.

Kitchen goals for 2014

Again, and every year it's a good idea to consider this, do I want to continue the game with goals? It does seem to keep me focused a bit, so I'll blunder on. The trick will be to not overreach.

• Focusing on unused cookbooks is nice. I might find a new cooking friend, or I might find a book I can pass on (making more room for other books). 
• If IHCC were to come up with a new challenge, someone I really want to cook with, then I might participate. That would start in April or October. (Nigel Slater is the only chef I think I'd do this for.)
• I want to start cooking my way through the Time-Life Foods of the World series.  I thought this would be a fun thing to do with a group; to this end I've started a little Facebook group for interested people. There are about 20 people signed up right now, but I'd be surprised if there were more than ten who will be active. We'll have overlapping six week periods, starting on the first of each month, to read a book and cook a meal. I've already started reading the first book. This is a project that will stretch out well over two years. 
• I want to continue counting the veg/fish meals, because it's nice to be sure I'm still on track with meal planning.
• I want to continue with the monthly pasta making, just counting it off makes it more certain this doesn't fall to the wayside. And, yes, I'll aim yet again for making a filled pasta. 
• I've enrolled in Peter Reinhardt's bread baking course at Craftsy. I will follow that, and hope that will be an inspiration to continue with baking. I'll still aim for baking once a month, but I think it might be an idea to count how many times per month I bake bread, just on the off chance that I might bake several times. 
• We eat the most repetitive lunches in the world, ham sandwich anyone? Could I make a goal to have something else for lunch at least once a week?
• Another thing I need to do is to clear out my stash of recipes to make. There are two big binders and stacks all over the house. This really needs to be reduced. Hard to think of a measure for this.

These are too many goals, so I need to narrow down a bit.

• Unused and little used cookbooks, yes, posting for Cook Your Books if I feel like it. If IHCC should come up with a can't-refuse chef, that will take over this place.
• Foods of the World, already underway.
• Counting veg/fish meal. Just a count, not much action
• Pasta once a month, and filled pasta. 
• Bread. Think I'll give this another year and give it up next year, if I don't make some kind of improvement here.
• Lunches? Maybe next year.
• Stack clearing? How to measure. Maybe next year.

So, we're left with five goals, one more than last year. Will give this a try.

Kitchen goals old and new

Kitchen goals for 2012

Well, I can't say I've done all that well overall with my goals for 2012. Here's the round-up:

• Cooking from unused cookbooks — 32 of 50 weeks. I did pretty well with this for a while, especially while when Cookbooks Sunday was happening. Lately, though, I've been focusing on Madhur Jaffrey at IHCC, and this goal has fallen into the background. 
• Bread  — 25 of 50 weeks. Not too good. I intended to work through some of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, got started reading it, and then put it aside. I've made some bread, but nothing regularly. Santa did bring me a baking stone this year, so maybe that will be a bit of inspiration to do more baking.
• Soup  — 26 of 50 weeks. Slightly better than 2011, but still not too good. Sigh.
• Midday — 25 of 50 weeks. That's a surprise, almost half the time we had at least one midday meal a week. Mostly those were restaurant meals, I'd guess. I still think this is a worthy goal, but it just doesn't go with our daily routine very well. When we eat out it's frequently at midday and occasionally we need to eat our main meal at midday because of an evening commitment. Otherwise, it just doesn't work for  us.
• Veg/Fish — We averaged over 3.5 per week. Didn't have this as a real goal, just intended to count. This is the way both of us prefer to eat. We like red meat, but not too often. Counting helps keep that in focus.
• Pasta — 9 of 12 months. Boo. And, I didn't get a stuffed pasta made.

Overall, not as good as I'd have liked. Probably there were too many goals, but this may also reflect my bad mood for much of the year.

Kitchen goals for 2013

First, I guess, is the question of Do I even want to continue this game? In 2011, it seemed to help me focus on things like making pasta regularly and preparing lots of vegetarian or fish meals. For 2012, it was not as stimulating somehow, although I enjoyed using unused cookbooks. After some consideration, I think I will continue, but with fewer goals.

• I want to continue participating in the Madhur Jaffrey theme at IHCC. This is fun because I already use her recipes a lot, and I've been expanding my repertoire a bit. If the next author is someone I'd like to cook with (e.g., Nigel Slater), then I might go on with that, although maybe not as frequently. Otherwise, I'll revert to cooking from unused cookbooks. 
• I'll continue to count vegetarian and fish meals per week, just to be sure this doesn't fall off. 
• After two years of making little progress on the soup and midday meal goals, I think I'll drop those both. They're both worthy goals, but neither are working well for me right now. I did find a Souper Sundays cooking group, where you cook a soup and post about it weekly, which was tempting. But I really don't want to increase the number of posts I'm doing.
• I had another goal in mind for this year, to cook a meal from each of the Time-Life Foods of the World books, but that will have to wait for another year. 
• I'll continue to aim  for making pasta once a month. A stuffed pasta would be a bonus. 
• Bread-making is the tough one. I've got the book, I've got the stone. I think I'll go on with the goal of baking at least once a week, even if it's just an ABM bread. Does pizza count? Of course, it has yeast in it. Or, better, I think I'll try to bake a real bread once a month. Ideally it would be more, but baby steps seem more in order to get me going.

So I've got one weekly goal, one weekly count, and two monthly goals. That will do for 2013, I think.

Kitchen goals old and new

This year's kitchen goals

So how have I done this year?

• Eating a vegetarian or fish (main meal) twice a week was easy goal, not too surprisingly, I suppose. There were only a couple of weeks in which that didn't happen. Unfortunately, I didn't keep the numbers, but I'm sure there were quite a few weeks with three or even four veggie or fish meals. Not sure if I'm ready to commit to three times a week. Instead, I think I'll just count the number of veg or fish main courses each week. Those numbers will help me decide on 2013 goals.
• Soup has been served just less that half of the weeks in the year, more often in colder weather than in warm. Think it's worthwhile to continue this as a goal, just to keep soup in mind.
• We've actually had our main meal at midday more often than I thought, again just less than half of the weeks of the year. This is difficult because of the way our schedules work. I still think it's worthwhile, since my tummy, at least, is happier eating a midday than in the evening. Think this will continue as a goal next year also.
• As for pasta-making, I haven't missed a month. But I must say that having this as a goal has kept me focused on making fresh pasta.

I do think that having goals was useful when it came to meal planning. In particular, I'm sure my pasta-making would slide if I didn't have that goal. But also, as I laid out plans each week (not that these plans get followed in the end), I checked against the fish/veg, soup, and midday goals.

Next year's kitchen goals

So I think I'll continue the goal-setting for another year.

• One goal, something entirely new, is to make something from a cookbook that I haven't used, or have rarely used, at least once a week. Just when I started thinking about this, not really sure whether I could commit to one per week, Cookbook Sundays came along, and I've already hopped on board. Doing this means a little more research into finding recipes, not from my stack of clippings and notes, but by picking an unused book and rummaging through it enough to find something I'd like to make. It also means an extra blog post every week. (So far, my posts are the least interesting of the participants, and I seem to be the only one making a deal out of the book, but I'll follow along, for my use rather than.)
• Around Thanksgiving, I was rummaging through my notebook of bread recipes and info looking for something or other, and thought I'd really like to get back to baking bread frequently, not necessarily with the bread machine. To this end, I asked Santa for Peter Reinhardt's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and have started reading that. Although making bread once a week seems a bit much right now, I think I'll aim for that. "Bread" being anything yeast-ridden (does that include a nice rijstvlaai, I wonder?), for the bread machine, from my notebook, from Apprentice, or from other bread books.
• I think I will continue the goal of making fresh pasta monthly, since I enjoy doing that but need the goal to keep it up. At least one of those months, I'll make a filled pasta. I still have a bit of a fear of this, since I've found it difficult before, but I expect it's a question of practice and I need the practice.
• Every week I'll count how many vegetarian and fish meals I make.
• Like last year, I'll aim for having soup at lunch or dinner (at least) once a week.
• Like last year, I'll aim for having our main meal at midday (at least) once a week.

This almost seems like too much, but I'll give it a try.