Monday, January 4, 2010

New Year's Food Resolutions

As we have turned the page to a new calendar year, a variety of cooking and food websites have asked of their readers, or suggested to them, their resolutions for personal growth in the kitchen and at the table. In the spirit of this blog, I have my come up with my own conscientous cooking goals -- along with strategies to acocmplish them -- for 2010. The full list is after the jump.
  1. Know your farmer. Knowing your farmer also means knowing what goes into your food. My strategies for fulfilling this resolution include joining a CSA, and also shopping at my local farmer's market, especially for local fruit. Visit LocalHarvest.org to find farmer's markets and CSA farms near you. This also means attempting grow my own food. I've tried gardening in the past -- quite unsuccessfully -- but I will give it another chance this year on a more limited scale. In particular, I hope to grow my own herbs so I can only pick what I need, as I frequently use herbs in small quantities. For the same reason, I'm also pondering purchasing one of these herb saver contraptions. My apartment complex has a community garden, so if I plant my herbs there instead of in my window sill, I may also try for some tomatoes, zucchini, and other vegetables.
  2. Hunt and forage. There are patches of raspberries growing wild behind my apartment building, and fish stocked in nearby creeks and canals. I plan to eat from both this year. More ambitiously, I hope to go mushroom hunting. Hunting and foraging will never be the part of my diet that it is for some, but where it is either convenient or an adventure itself, I hope to give it a try this summer.
  3. Eat less meat. Following the model of others, my goal is to be down to 5 meat meals per month this year. That will take some time, but by focusing on making vegetables delicious, I hope to wean myself from a meat-centric diet.
  4. Eat better meat. As noted in my first post, I have sustainable producers of meat and poultry in my immediate area, and I hope to make the most of their products -- and stay away from the meat counter at the supermarket -- this coming year.
  5. Eat better seafood. Several different organizations offer guidance on what seafood is most sustainable. For some years, the Monterrey Bay Aquarium has offered seafood guides online. Now, the Blue Ocean Institute offers a FishPhone service for instant advice on what to eat. For me, eating this goal means eating more mussels, sustainably farmed shrimp, smaller fish, and more frozen fish relative to other seafood options. And it probably also means eating less seafood all together.
  6. Eat more greens. Enough said.
  7. Eat more beans. In particular, beans bought dried rather than in cans. They're cheap, environmentally friendly, and when combined with wheat, rice, or other grains, form a complete protein.
  8. Eat whole foods.  I have a significant Diet Coke habit I'd like to break (or weaken), and while I do not eat too many pre-processed foods, where possible I'd like to try making my own. That includes cereal (hot and cold), pretzels, and occasionally even bottled tomato sauce.  Whole foods (lower case) also means whole grains. I tend to eat whole grain pasta and brown rice already, but I want to more fully explore the broader spectrum of whole grains, including barley, oats, farro, wheat berries, and so forth. Finally, I also want to eat less refined sugar. While substitutions for baking may be a tricky feat, I hope to use fewer sugars and artificial sweeteners, replacing them with maple syrup, honey, and other unrefined sweeteners
  9. Waste less food. In addition to what goes into my kitchen, I need to work on wasting less. In the past year I've thrown out more than I would like to admit, mostly fresh vegetables that I did not use before they went bad. In order to accomplish this goal, I've reorganized my refrigerator to make sure fresh food is out of the crisper to be more visible (bottles of beer have taken their place). I'm also trying to adopt at FIFO (First In, First Out) approach to meal planning and keeping lists of what's in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. Moving FIFO menu planning beyond just 'refrigerator soup' is one topic I hope to cover in coming weeks.
  10. Compost food waste. When I do have to throw food out, I hope to take advantage of the compost bin in my apartment complex's community garden. That probably means getting some smell-proof container to hold plate scraps, vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds, and other compostable waste before I have a chance to take them out to the garden bin.  
What are you doing to cook more conscientiously in 2010?

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