New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again! Time to start thinking about New Year's Resolutions.  And since this is a dual purpose blog, about my cooking and my crafting, I'd better make resolutions for both aspects of it.

If you have been with me since the early days of this blog, early in the summer, you will know about my personal Too Much Stuff challenge.  I kept that up all year, apart from a few treats to myself in the last couple of weeks (and one of those was a CD of designs to help me replace one of my Mum's favourite pictures, which she has lost, so I was buying that for HER really wasn't I?).

I've also take part in lots of bcraft challenges on various blogs, but many of them I've only joined in once or twice. I go back every week to look at the new challeges and admire the entries, but somehow I never quite finish my own entry in time.

So my 2013 craft resloutions are two:

• keep up with the Too Much Stuff challenge
• without buying lots of extra Stuff, join in more challenges and take part regularly

Now on to the food side of things. I have to confess that I tend to only blog about food when my husband is around because he is so much better at the photography side of things than I will ever be, so one of my resolutions is.... no, not to improve my own photography skills, but to remember to ask him to take photos for me, instead of doing my usual trick of looking down at my empty plate and saying "I was  going to ask you to take a photo of that.....".

More seriously, I plan to cut down on the amount of meat we eat yet improve the quality of it. We love meat, and will never give it up. There is an excellent butcher at the end of your road - and yet it is just too easy to buy a few special offer packs while in the supermarket and stick them in the freezer for later. Proper planning should mean I can get what we need at the butchers, and if the lack of special offers means I am paying more per portion, eating a couple of meat free meals a week will balance that out.

At the moment.  we probably eat an average of one meat free meal a week,  but it isn't a conscious decision to make it a weekly event, just a case of occasionally fancying something made with beans, or a mushroom risotto, an omelette or a stuffed marrow. Maybe we'll eat meat five days in a row - maybe we'll go without it for five days.

But, led by the contents of the weekly veg box, I plan to make AT LEAST one meal a week meat free, and ideally two or more. And my mouth is watering at the prospect......