New Year's Resolutions: Kitchen, Home, and Me

I admit it, I like the whole resolution thing. Here's how I did compared to what I set out to do.

Goal 1:


Maintain a healthy, half-budget grocery bill. According to Mint, I spent 92.5% of my grocery budget for the year. I had actually forgotten about this as a goal, updated my budget in Mint, and stuck to it. We did a meat CSA, veggie CSA, and split a cow from a wonderful ethical farmer.

Assessment: SUCCESS.


Follow-up for 2011: Drop another 10% from the monthly grocery budget, skip the meat CSA while the freezer is so full, plant a better garden.

Goal 2:


Target the top 3 food stress days. I think I did a moderately good job with this goal -- but toward the end of the year, I really fell off the meal-planning wagon and this goal suffered for it. I think having a few more meals in the freezer stockpile would help me keep on track here, but I'm also going to need to rethink my overall meal planning cycle in the face of the new job.

Assessment: Mixed Success and Failure.


Follow-up for 2011: Increase my thinking to a sliding two week window so that my plans are more resilient against busy weekends.

Goal 3:


Observe Kitchen Wednesdays. This one really fell apart by mid-year. My work-at-home day fell by the wayside with the new job, and that was the end of the goal.

Assessment: Pretty much a failure.


Follow-up for 2011: I still want to have special meal days. It seems like the only way to work this into our new lifestyle is to either spread the prep out over a couple of days or to target the weekend.


Oh...and no snowbound cookie challenge in 2010. So, January.