Jan/Feb Filmfest

Naturally you all remember this, but back in December I began a quest to watch all of the movies on the AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies lists (both original and 10^th anniversary editions).  In that month, I made it through five movies and gave a small review of each.  Since I was gone from blogging through all of January, there was no movie review then, so this set of five is from Jan/Feb, and starting in March we’ll get back to five per month.  Again, these are ranked from my least favorite to most.

5) The Searchers (1956) – Two months in a row with Westerns at the bottom might actually indicate that I just don’t care for this genre.  It’s now been one each with the two big names of Westerns, Clint Eastwood and now John Wayne, and I didn’t like either.  As little sense as this might make, every time John Wayne spoke, he sounded like Ryan Stiles’ John Wayne impersonation from Whose Line is it Anyway, which I always assumed was exaggerated and cheesy.  Well, it kind of was, but apparently that was also how John Wayne acted, and it just made me laugh.  Plot-wise, pretty simple: John Wayne is out searching for his niece that was kidnapped by Comanches.  Aside from the whole Cowboys vs. Indians stereotypes, it was pretty long and drawn out, and it seemed that almost every problem was solved by John Wayne’s character having a lot of money and buying his way out of trouble.  On the plus side, the desert scenery was fairly pretty.

4) Bringing Up Baby (1938) – If they made this movie today, I have the awful feeling it would star Ben Stiller.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Stiller (in small doses) but he does have an almost trademarked style of movie: every thing that can possibly go wrong does go wrong for the bumbling protagonist.  It ends up being a lot of screaming and running around and not much real story or depth.  Cary Grant stars this time as more meek than bumbling, per se, but he runs into Katherine Hepburn and all sorts of crazy things start happening, mostly centered around a “tame” leopard.  There are funny parts and clever lines, but there are a lot of groaners too.  I really wanted to like it, since I like Hepburn and Grant, but it was just kind of tiring.  I shouldn’t give this movie too hard a time, since it was probably a pioneer in the genre of “screwball comedy” but a lot of the material seems a bit tired now.  It’s okay, but definitely not a favorite.

3) Do the Right Thing (1989) – On the flip side, this one surprised me.  Clicking over to the Wikipedia page shows the very corny looking movie poster, which for some reason reminded me of all sorts of bad comedy covers.  However, aside from some minor characters for comic relief, this is actually a serious movie, about serious issues.  It’s set in a multi-ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn, and explores racial conflict during a summer heat wave.  Spike Lee wrote and directed the movie, and I think he does well balancing the different viewpoints – there aren’t really “good guys” or “bad guys” (except the police, who seem a bit caricaturelike to me, but may have been accurate for that time and place), there are just the residents trying to go about their lives, as tensions simmer up to a boiling point.  I liked the pacing as things built up, I liked the filming and the unique color effects used to convey the heat.  Some of the characters were a bit cartoony or one-dimensional, and I really wish Lee had not cast himself as the main character.  As good a director as he may be, he doesn’t seem to be a great actor.  It’s a good movie, but probably would have been better with some minor tweaks.

2) Blade Runner (1982) – Here’s another one that I thought for sure I’d like, but it ended up not fully living up to its potential.  Blade Runner combines so many things I like, a film noir feel, a science fiction setting, ethical ambiguities, impressive visuals, and an almost antihero reluctant protagonist.  The downfall for Blade Runner was the extreme length and need to draw everything out.  Granted, we’re talking about Ridley Scott here, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it ran long, but I felt this could have been a great movie if he’d livened things up a bit or added more convolution to the plot.  Most of the developments of the story were pretty transparent, so we weren’t puzzling over what would happen next, simply waiting.  That said, I did like this movie, so the pacing wasn’t a fatal flaw, just something I wish had been done better.  It was beautifully filmed, and raised some interesting questions about what it is to be human.  And at the end, you’ve got a movie featuring a young Harrison Ford hunting rogue androids while contemplating the morality of it all – hard to go too wrong there.

1) Pulp Fiction (1994) – I made a bit of a mistake watching this one, but I’ve seen it enough times that it didn’t bias my judgment.  I recorded this off of AMC, which meant a lot of editing.  It’s not like it makes my day to hear 50 F-bombs in the course of two hours, but clumsily removing them really messes with the flow of the movie.  But like I said, I’ve probably seen this a dozen times, so I knew what was going on.  Pulp Fiction is Quentin Tarantino’s only great movie, and has allowed him IMO to pass off a lot of junk as quality filmmaking.  This one is full of brutal violence, like all his films, but it’s balanced with a witty script that makes me laugh aloud even today, knowing the lines that are coming.  Weird as it might sound to say for a movie about gangsters, hitmen, drug dealers and users, this is actually a lot of fun.  I’m not sure there’s enough depth of character or story to really count as a great film, but if it’s on I’ll probably watch for at least a while.

Next month I get back on track with the following five movies.

95(2) – The Last Picture Show (1971)

94(1) – Goodfellas (1990)

93(1) – The Apartment (1960)

93(2) – The French Connection (1971)

92(1) – A Place in the Sun (1951)

Kitchen Zink - Chocolate Sauced Filets

Missed a day, but it was just leftovers, so it’s fine.  Hey, it’s my blog, and I’ll contribute when I feel like it!  Actually, there’s really only 3 to 4 meals per week that are worth commenting on, so my earlier estimate was perhaps a bit ambitious.  Not that we really hold high standards around here, but something akin to “Tonight we boiled water, cooked pasta, and poured sauce on top” isn’t exactly riveting content.  Regardless, we did have one meal in the interim that was awesome, so today I’ll write about that.

I’ve never really been much of a steak person, until I learned that it’s safe to eat it rare.  As Stacia (who worked in a meat locker) informed me, for a full-muscle piece of beef, the E-coli danger resides in the surface, so once the outside is cooked, the inside should be fine.  It’s the same concept that makes steak tartare edible.  Note that this doesn’t work for ground beef, since the inside and outside of the cuts are all mixed together, or for white meat, where parasites and salmonella are the main threats.  Pretty much anything else needs to be cooked through, but I’ve come around to letting steaks bleed a little, and now usually shoot for medium-rare.

Medium-rare steaks are usually pretty awesome, but as an eco-conscious guy, I do try to only eat beef every other week.  The fact of the matter is that it takes a ton of land and resources (energy, grain, water) to raise beef, and a socially-minded fellow can’t feel good about eating it too frequently.  Last week featured no red meat, so when it came up in the meal plan, I thought let’s go nuts and have something great.

We ended up selecting the tantalizing Beef Tenderloin with Rosemary and Chocolate from Ellie Krieger’s great book The Food You Crave.  Ellie is way cool, and has a very similar food philosophy to my own, perhaps warranting its own post sometime in the future.  There was some broccoli lying around in the fridge, so the side dish became a Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Pecorino, from Fine Cooking Annual.  Very fancypants, but hey, we can splurge every now and then.

Now, a beef tenderloin is a big piece of meat, and Ellie called for 2 ½ pounds of it in the recipe, which obviously wasn’t happening.  As a substitute, Stacia somehow convinced me to get two filet mignon steaks (6.99 each at Gateway!) which are actually the same piece of meat, just cut into smaller pieces.  While we were there, we picked up a piece of actual Pecorino cheese, instead of being lazy and just using Parmesan, so we were all set.

With a modified set of ingredients, the recipe needed to be reordered a little, so we started with the sauce.  Sauteed shallots, carrot, celery and garlic formed the aromatics, into which some beef stock, rosemary, and cheap red wine were added and cooked down until the whole sauce was reduced.  While that was going, we started the broccoli on a cookie sheet in a 450 oven, and began searing the steaks.  Once the sauce finally reduced, it got poured through a fine strainer to remove the veggies (kinda sad but they were pretty used up by that point), and added a little bit of cocoa powder.  Tossing the broccoli with some lemon juice and shredding the pecorino on top meant that both the sauce and broccoli were ready to go.

The steaks were the star of the show, so cooking them right was imperative.  I feel like such a badass because we got it almost perfect, using a trick restaurant kitchens use and presumably few home cooks know about.  The secret is to only cook the steaks on the stovetop to sear the outsides, then move the whole pan to the oven to cook the rest of the way through.  Apparently it takes a lot longer to get the heat in through the pan only, so you end up overcooking the meat to get the insides done right, whereas the radiant heat of the oven cooks it from all sides so the interior can remain juicy.  Or something like that.  I’m just a cook, not a food scientist – all I know is that it works.

So we seared on the stove, cooked in the oven, rested on the counter, and finally were ready to plate.  I cut into my steak and was instantly worried that I had cooked it longer than intended: not quite pink enough in the center.  Then I tasted it, and realized that it was probably the best steak I’ve ever eaten.  Not sure if it was meat quality, cooking method, or what, but it was more tender and juicy than any piece of beef I’ve had before.  I mentally kick myself a bit that it would have been even more fantastic had it had been pulled from the oven a few minutes earlier, but since it was so awesome, I can’t complain too much.

The sauce was pretty neat, too; as advertised it didn’t really taste like chocolate, but just had a really great hearty and beefy flavor that really accentuated the meat.  The broccoli was the only disappointment in the meal.  Roasting it was supposed to really give it a distinct, sweeter flavor, but the difference was pretty subtle compared to the usual steamed.  I suppose it was tastier, but the recipe called for a bit too much lemon, and as far as I could discern, the Pecorino cheese was pretty indistinct.  But, sitting alongside the chocolate-rosemary sauced steaks, no side dish was really going to shine, so overall it was a phenomenal meal, one to repeat, just not really one we can have all the time.

Final note – taking pictures of food is hard, and mine seldom look much like the real thing.  So, this pic might not look great, but trust me that the food looked and tasted much better, and I’m still learning on the photography.

Kitchen Zink - Fish Tacos

This probably shouldn’t come as much of a shock, but I’m a fairly frequent Food Network viewer.  It all began with Iron Chef America during my college years, and I’ve recently become a big fan of Chopped.  However, there is one other show that I also like quite a bit, but don’t end up watching as frequently: Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  The concept is awesome – star chef Bobby Flay challenges a cook renowned for one particular dish at their own game.  So say, hypothetically, that you make really great chili; Bobby tracks you down, shows up one day and asks you to do a chili cook-off.  There are judges, and they do choose a winner, but it’s all in good-natured fun.

Now, bear in mind that Bobby Flay is a highly regarded, classically trained Iron Chef, so he’s not really an amateur at any of these dishes.  But the overriding idea is so good that it was my inspiration to learn how to make one thing “right” each month, back when I was making cooking goals in January.  I haven’t done one yet, and I’m not sure if it ever will, but if I had, the first one was almost certainly going to be fish tacos.  Well, fish tacos happened to be on the menu this Monday.  There ended up being much to learn, so I may have to do my research post-cooking, so that my next foray will turn out better.  The ones we had Monday weren’t bad, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t win the Throwdown against many other cooks.

Fish tacos are one of my favorite foods, and have been since the first time I tried them.  Stacia can tell you that I would be happy to eat Mexican food any day of the week, but changing the protein base to something so different really makes for a light, fresh take that I enjoy.  Every time we make them at home, and each time I’ve ordered them dining out (TGI Friday’s and especially Star Bar in Des Moines) has been a positive experience.  So, let’s head into the kitchen and see how they turned out this time.

A dish like fish tacos presents you with a lot of interesting choices.  Tortillas – crunchy or soft, corn or flour?  Fish – which variety, grilled or fried?  Toppings – Cabbage or coleslaw, fruit salsa, guacamole?  Like anything, this all comes down to personal preference, but in sampling many variations over the years, I think I know which I prefer.  The only ambiguous choice is the grilled or fried question, since I like each in its own way.  But at home we’ve traditionally done grilled, and I wanted a new challenge, so we went with the fried.  The plan became – BHG’s oven fried fish, using Hy-Vee’s “whole” catfish (don’t worry – no guts, just a tail and spine), served on flour tortillas and topped with BHG’s creamy coleslaw and our own home-canned salsa, which I think is too sweet for just snacking but should complement fish nicely.

The first step was hacking apart the fish into nice-sized chunks, which ended up not being gory at all.  It was a first time really filleting a fish, and I think we left a lot of meat on the bones, but I’m considering making fish stock with the rest if that’s even doable with catfish.  We modified the breading spices from the cookbook’s parmesan and dill(?) to cumin, cayenne and black pepper, coated the chunks with flour and the spiced bread crumbs, and threw them in the oven.  Making the coleslaw was supremely easy, just tossing one of those pre-packed slaw mixes with mayo, vinegar, sugar and celery seeds.

It started to become apparent that these weren’t Throwdown-winning tacos when the fish came out of the oven, and though cooked, weren’t really crispy.  Although we’ve had some success using the oven to replicate fried foods, these really weren’t the same.  In addition, the quantities for the spices that we’d guessed at ended up being far too mild, so I needed to add Cholula to spice up individual tacos.  With the fish not too zippy, just a basic coleslaw, and a salsa that was more sweet than spicy, the whole affair ended up being more of a fish wrap than a taco per se.

Don’t get me wrong – everything was fine, and between the two of us we ate everything we made, but for a food I love so much, I was really hoping for stellar results.  I know we have done better with grilled fish, and will certainly return to those in the future too.  But I want to be able to make the fried guys as well, and I’m already looking into better ways to get there.  My contention is that we need a deep fryer to really do the job, something that Stacia might be on board with now, so we may actually be allowed to buy one.

Finally, though catfish worked well for the fried variant here, I don’t think I’d go with it for grilled.  Ideal would be Mahi-mahi, but the foreign mahi fisheries aren’t well managed, and I can’t get US mahi in Des Moines.  Probably the best option is Tilapia, which is a “good alternative” if sourced from Central America.  That’s probably the most common choice in restaurants; they’re much firmer than catfish, which is really what you want for a grilled fish.

I don’t want to grade the results or rank them with stars, but I do think I would give this meal another try, with the caveat that I find a better way to fry or go with grilled next time around.  Ordinarily you’d now be able to see a picture, but we already ate all the tacos, so you’ll have to use your imagination ‘til next time.

Coming Attractions

I used to be a huge pack rat for most of my life, accumulating stuff, attaching sentimental significance to it, and refusing to get rid of it.  No joke, for a while I had, among other things I was keeping in a “memory” shoebox, receipts from purchases made when on vacation, to help me remember the trip.  When I met Stacia, she was the exact opposite, pretty much tossing anything into the trash after she was done with it.  It took some time for us to be able to understand each other’s viewpoint, but I think by now we’ve reached a happy medium – trying to live simply, but making a point to keep cherished items.

In that vein, I have two items at home that I really like, but don’t use enough.  So, to ensure they don’t become clutter, this post is about my goal to use them more.  The first is my digital camera (a simple point-and-shoot model), which gets used extensively on trips/special events, but spends most of its time just sitting in a drawer.  I also have an old SLR, which I know how to use, and might like to use more, but photography is such a rarity that I feel out of the habit.  The second is my food journal (it’s not a diary, it’s not a diary!), a great idea of Stacia’s that I just never remember to use.  The concept was to make notes of the food we cook at home, and lessons learned, so that I can go back and see what progress I’ve made in the kitchen and not make repeat mistakes.  Sadly, I seldom remember to write things down in the remaining evening downtime after dinner.

So here’s the plan (evolving, as all good plans are) – use the blog to push myself toward using those tools.  Ideally, I’ll make dinner, take notes, take photos of the finished product, and then write up a post, complete with photo, the next day during my lunch break.  The whole idea, and the ambitious frequency of it, may not take, but it’s my plan for the moment.  Perhaps I could co-opt SJ’s weekly roundup style if it all becomes too much to do daily.  Sadly, I haven’t taken any pictures of food yet this week, so if I write one today it will be un-illustrated, but take heart, food lovers: tonight’s dinner should be quite photogenic!

I'm Back...

So it’s been a little while since I’ve been on here, as evidenced by that “1 month ago” next to the Zinkthink  title on Stacia’s (or others’) blogroll.  It’s been a pretty lousy new year, to be honest, with a big crisis during the first month, and then some blogging apathy through most of February.  Torn between writing about what had happened and not, I ended up just not writing anything at all.  But then motivation came from a surprising place, though thinking about it now, it really shouldn’t have surprised me at all.

I know that very few people read this blog, which is fine with me.  If I wanted mass readership or side income, I’d write about something with mass appeal instead of what I ate for dinner last night.  Either way, one of my faithful readers is my older brother, who just spent the last two weeks in India with my sister – the trip of a lifetime, I would imagine.  We haven’t even really caught up yet about that trip (I suspect most of it is better told with pictures, so I’m okay with waiting til I’m home next), but he sent me a text the other day asking about the blog, with an accompanying frowny-emoticon expressing disappointment that I hadn’t written in a while.

That actually meant quite a bit to me.  I mean, he’d just been to places most of us will never see, immersing himself in a new and unique culture.  Compared to all that, my blog seems like one of the most insignificant things I can imagine, and yet he was anticipating reading it.  In some ways, it is a way for us to keep in touch, living some 400 miles apart, so I guess I can see why he’s interested, and I do really appreciate it.  Corny as it may sound, it really felt nice to know that people actually do read this for some reason, and I figured I better kick my ass into gear and write something.

It’s not going to be about the crisis in January, though.  I’ve thought it through, and though it might be good for me, I don’t think the people involved would appreciate it; not to mention how damn hard it would be to write.  In that vein, if you know about things, I appreciate your thoughts, but I think it would be best to keep them out of the comments for this post.  Maybe someday that will change, but everything is too recent right now.

The monthlong absence from blogging does give a good opportunity to think about what I want this space to be, a topic I frequently debate with myself.  Initially, it was an outlet from my very logical and orderly job, with the thought that I might one day want to write a story or even a book.  Then I came upon my love of cooking, and decided to put some time into that, including frequent corresponding blog topics.  The mix seems good to me right now, and more importantly, it’s still fun to write the blog.  When I was trying to write a story, I was almost literally banging my head against the wall, and just felt frustrated.  If I let myself be okay with this blog not being the orderly and polished product I frequently wish it were, it can be enjoyable for me, and maybe even for some of you.

I’m shooting for two posts per week, which is ambitious given that I’ve almost never reached that mark in the nine months I’ve kept the blog, but I’m keeping open-minded about it.  Previous post-goals left me feeling let down if I didn’t write enough times per week, so it’s just a target, which I’m okay with missing periodically.  One will be food or cooking-related, so if you don’t like those posts, you’re really in the wrong place.  The other will be more along the lines of what I started with, thoughts about life and what I’ve been up to lately.

The old movie project is going to continue, though I certainly didn’t see all the planned films in January.  Hopefully I can catch up this month, and get the next five watched before February ends.  I’ve already seen two, and have one on the DVR, so it seems doable.  I’ve also started a new reading project, which I may or may not bring into the mix here.  For a guy who ended up being an engineer, I always loved English class, and felt like there were so many more works of classic literature that I had yet to read, so I’m working on that now, too.  By time I’m done, I should be a bit of a Renaissance man.  J

In essence there probably won’t be much of a change around here.  I’ll still write every now and then, mostly about the weird cornucopia of my interests, from home cooking to car racing, from yoga to old movies.  In one way, this is a relaunch of my blog after so much time away, but I like to consider this quote attributed to Buddha, and just accept and appreciate today’s blog for what it is, without worrying about tomorrow’s entry or what the overriding point of the whole thing is.

“Each morning we are born again.  What we do today is what matters most.”

Well, this is what I did today.  It might not seem like much, and certainly doesn't matter “most,” but at least it does matter to me.  Be sure to check back and see what I do with a new morning.

All That Jazz

Throughout my entire childhood, I never had a single pet.  That can happen, pretty easily, when your dad is allergic to cat and dog hair.  Right there, most of the typical animals are ruled out, and you’d have to imagine that any more obscure mammals would induce a similar reaction.  So you start to look a little lower on the food chain.  My brother had a few gerbils at various times, and my sister currently keeps a rather charming rat, but I never really had much interest in the rodents.  There were also the times we kept Praying Mantises, and the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, but it’s hard to really make a connection with an insect.

When I was in my pre-teen years, I decided that I wanted an aquarium.  There was no way fish could bother my Dad’s allergy, and I figured a few fish would be pretty interesting to have.  I asked for an aquarium for my birthday, and I distinctly recall making a sign that said “Aquarium coming soon!” but for some reason or another it never happened.  Not sure if it was concern with water spills, fishy smells, me being responsible enough, or something else, but regardless, I didn’t end up having a fish.  Or any other pet, for that matter.

After Stacia and I met, that didn’t change, initially.  Living in the dorms, or in a college-town apartment just didn’t seem conducive to keeping an animal, and I personally didn’t have any fond memories to hearken back to, to make me want one.  Things started to change one time while we were visiting Edgewood, Stacia’s hometown.  We were spending some time out on her Dad’s land, where there were some cats roaming around.  (Apparently this is commonplace on farms – non-pet cats just roam about the place, fending for themselves and whatnot.  I know, I had no idea either.)

Well, this really cute farm cat wandered up and started acting like he/she (?) wanted attention, so I started petting it, and eventually picked it up and held it in my lap.  He/she purred and acted so sweet and content, that Stacia’s Dad offered to send the cat home with us.  Aside from the fact that we didn’t know anything about it (health, spay/neuter, pests, etc), we also decided we weren’t ready to keep a pet.  We declined, but the seed had been planted.  Over the next several months, we made surprisingly frequent trips to the local pet store to look at the adorable kittens, and I started to come around to the idea.

We did all our internet research on keeping cats, and decided we should adopt one from the Animal Rescue League.  We even made a spreadsheet of all the cats at the ARL, to help us choose.  Then, over the long Labor Day weekend (1 year, 4 months ago, making this a very dated article), we stopped by to see a calico cat named Ivy, and fell for her.  She was so timid, even hiding beneath the shelves at the store when we let her out, but very cute.  We filled out the paperwork and took her home.

It soon became clear that Ivy wasn’t really a fitting name for this cat.  We got her home, let her out of the carrier, and allowed her to become accustomed to her new home.  Unlike the shy, reserved cat she had been at the ARL, she methodically stalked through the rooms of the condo, acquainting herself with everything without any fear or significant hesitation.  That first night she did keep us up a bit with some yowling and meowing, but thankfully it didn’t last too long.  Soon, demure little Ivy was a thing of the past.

In short order, our cat was transformed into an assertive and confident but fun and kind of crazy little animal who knew that she was the real head of the household.  For a while we struggled with an appropriate name, but ended up hitting the nail on the head.  Roxie, the spunky, poised entertainer from Chicago would be our cat’s namesake.  Our Roxie is fun, but definitely doesn’t take crap from anybody.  And she certainly is entertaining.  She’s a great cat that makes me glad we got a pet.

One small problem.  Our little girl has recently become, well, not so little.  It’s one of those things where, if you see something every day, you don’t notice small changes, but someone who only sees it at larger intervals sees the change right away.  For example, I never know my hair is getting long, since it grows so little each day that it seems the same as the last day.  But all I need to do is go home ;) and someone will surely point out how shaggy I’ve become.  In a similar manner, Roxie put on 4 pounds in a year.

When we found this out, we made some quick changes to try to reverse the trend.  We started decreasing the amount of food Roxie got, then all-out switched to a weight-loss food, but nothing seemed to work.  She maintained her weight, didn’t get any bigger, but she couldn’t seem to work off what she’d gained.  What to do?  Well, we knew she was pretty lazy during the day, just sleeping and eating, and we don’t always have time to play with her as much as we should in the evening, so she probably wasn’t getting a ton of exercise.  But we could change that… with a kitty treadmill!

Just kidding.  I hope those don’t exist, but you never know.  In reality, the solution to our cat problem is to get another cat!  With someone new to play with, Roxie should theoretically be more active during the day, and if nothing else, she’ll have more stimulation and company while we’re gone.  As I write this, we are getting ready to head out to the ARL to bring home the little black-and-white cat we’ve had our eye on.  Her name is Rachel, but we’re going to call her Velma.  I think the show will be better with two.

From G's to Chefs - Taking Stock

I came by blogging in a rather roundabout way.  It all started about four years ago when Stacia heard about David Bach’s finance book Smart Couples Finish Rich, and decided we should read it.  We did, and we became interested in getting a better hold of our money.  That led to different books, a mini seminar at the bank, and eventually, personal finance blogs.  We followed these religiously for a few years until we both simultaneously but separately decided we’d heard it all, had absorbed some good money habits and would move on.  I started my own blog about nothing, added cooking later on, and have been pretty happy since.

But there was one thing that I liked a lot from the personal finance realm, and the season makes it even more pertinent – the new year’s goal.  PF bloggers are quick to point out that these are different from the commoners’ resolutions, in that they have actual measurable targets rather than obscure and often unattainable desires.  Whatever you call them, and as cliché as it is to start them on January 1^st, I thought I’d try my hand at making some goals this year.  Unfortunately, that also means you’re going to have to read about them.

Before I launch into what I want to achieve this year, let’s look back at last year to see what progress I’ve already made.  2009 was the first year of this blog, which I started in the hopes that I would someday become a creative writer.  I flailed at that, struggled to come up with post topics, until I realized that for me, writing was a secondary pursuit to cooking.  Once I started writing about cooking, it seemed I could churn out a post for every meal if I wanted to, and I never really looked back.  It surprises me to look at where I am, knowing what I want to do, and realize that it was only earlier this year that I even settled on cooking as a hobby, or more accurately a passion.

Other highlights of the year lie in a similar vein to that discovery.  I learned about sustainable food and put a new focus on shopping at the Des Moines Farmer’s Market.  I threw out my old inhibitions and found that there were many new dishes that I liked, from chicken curry to snails (deserving of their own post, which may be forthcoming).  I held back my initial squeamishness and learned new techniques, starting with such simple things as handling raw meat, and ending up cleaning sardines for a dinner.  At the end of the year, I don’t feel like much of an expert, but I look back at all that was new to me in the past year, and I can’t help but be a little proud.

New really is the key word in that last paragraph.  As I transitioned from prepared-food fan to Stacia’s sous chef to someone who actually might know a thing or two about cooking, each step required taking a deep breath, and trying something new.  And with so much more to learn, I plan to head into 2010 with the overarching goal to surround myself with as much new information or instruction as possible.  People often say the first step is the hardest, and maybe it was, but without taking other steps after it, you aren’t likely to get anywhere.  So here, finally, are the specifics of my goals for the year.

1)      Keep up the meal plan – Ok, this one isn’t new, but it is revised.  At the end of each week, I make a plan for the following week’s dinners, consisting of one each of: red meat, white meat, seafood (alternating oily and non-oily), vegetarian, and one wild-card from any one of the categories.  The rest is made up of leftovers, dining out, and occasional quick and easy prepared food.  In 2010 I plan to make a point to do this every week.

2)      Gain exposure to other new ideas – I’ve written before about my mixed feelings on dining out, but recent events have pushed me a bit toward the positive side.  The Des Moines Register put out a list of the top 100 restaurants in town, and I couldn’t check off more than a handful that I’d been to.  If these top chefs in town have new ideas or preparations that could inspire me, I should give them a try.  In 2010, I want to dine at one or more of the restaurants from that list each month.

3)      Learn new techniques – This is really the most important.  In Des Moines, the Kitchen Collage downtown and the Williams-Sonoma at the mall both offer periodic technique classes.  I took a knife skills course at Kitchen Collage and learned more about cutting and chopping than I had from any other source.  And the Williams-Sonoma ones are free!  If I work on knowing essential techniques, I am sure to become a better cook.  In 2010 I will keep abreast of the class calendars and go to as many offerings as possible.

4)      Learn to make something right – I know how to follow a recipe, and I know a few basic techniques.  But what separates me from a real cook is my inability to craft my own recipe-less meals.  Getting there requires a lot of experience, and probably just giving it a try.  But my plan to become less apprehensive about it is to choose one dish that I will research, find recipes for, find their common threads, and really learn how to make it from scratch.  In 2010 I want to do this for one “classic” dish per month.

That’s all I have formally for right now.  There could certainly be late additions, and if you have any suggestions, I’d be open to hearing them.  Naturally, I also plan to try new recipes at home and new menu items out as much as possible, but that’s more a mindset than a definitive goal.  Overall, I think these goals are manageable, and if I manage to achieve them consistently, I may be able to learn even more this year than I did last.  They are big plans, but they are exciting to me, and I can’t help but feel curious about what I’ll post next year at this time, as I keep moving forward.