Sunday Dinner - Pot Roast

My January submission for cooking and following a new recipe:

Pot Roast!



It took over two hours to make in my lovely Dutch Oven, smelled great (sitting in a combination of beef stock and red wine plus seasonings) and tasted pretty good. I just hope my pot will get clean after soaking overnight!

Happy New Year!

It’s time for the ubiquitous New Year’s resolutions post. I’m going to try to keep it realistic, short and sweet!

In no particular order of importance, I vow to:

• Blog at least once a day. Now, I know I’m already a day behind but a part of this blogging statement will be linked into the amount of posts I produce. I won’t beat myself up if I miss a day and I also will try to provide multiple posts when inspired. So in the end, I want to end up with at least 365 posts for 2009.
• Visit one place I’ve never been to. This doesn’t have to be some sort of grand trip to another country but it also can’t be a new town in New England.
• Be healthier. Who doesn’t want to be healthier? I need to stay committed to eating healthy and exercising more often (as it’s hard to stay motivated during the cold weather). I just need to keep in mind how good I feel about myself when I am healthy – it’s not about how much you weigh, but the fact that you feel energetic and positive about yourself.
• Learn to cook. I know the basic tenets of cooking and I obviously know how to follow a recipe due to all the baking I do. For some reason, I’m intimidated by cooking actual meals. I can never think of good meals to make. I will tie the specific action of cooking one new dish each month of 2009 to spur me into action.

In terms of more specific resolutions, I decided to pick a few little things to accomplish within a specific time frame:

• In One Day – Trek over to Target in Framingham (again!) to return the floodlight I bought last week and get it in the right size. And make sure Andrew installs it (heh, heh!) So think of this a joint endeavor. Poor guy tried to replace yesterday and was the one who found out that I bought it in the wrong size.
• In One Weekend – Organize my winter clothes in my closet by color and material weight. This makes it so much easier to pick an outfit for each day. In this process, I will also sort clothing that I no longer wear and donate it.
• In One Week – Cancel my TiVo service (my box is just too old and doesn’t work accurately anymore) and get a Comcast TiVo DVR. Anyone that knows me knows how much I hate having phone conversations with any type of service provider. I always feel frustrated and taken-advantage-of at the end. I can only cancel TiVo by phone and in the past, they’ve convinced me to stick with it by replacing my TiVo box with a refurbished box (actually, they promised me a new box and sent me a refurbished one instead, and I was too weary to argue this any further). Then I have to find time to trek to a Comcast distribution center and exchange my current cable box for a new one during business hours. Ugh, I’m already dreading this.
• In One Month – Organize my financial situation. I’ve already saving a decent amount to my 401(k), I’ve upped the amount I’m saving each month with automatic transfers from my checking account into my savings, and I’ve signed up for Mint, a free financial management service that tracks your spending and your financial worth. I just need to use some of this information to build concrete goals to be working towards and actually change my spending habits.
• In Six Months – Clean the attic. I literally haven’t been up there in a year. And I think there’s black dust everywhere from roofing work that was done in 2007. Yikes!

This is all that came to mind for the moment. I hope to be writing a post one year from now that catalogues my success with these goals.

What resolutions did you make for the New Year?