New Year Resolutions

I hate making resolutions because I know I will never keep them – after all if you really want to do something you’ll do it anyway. Won’t you?

But the lull between the manic stress and overindulgence of Christmas and the juiced up New Year festivities can be a time to think about the year that’s passed; and the one to come. My life changed somewhat dramatically last year having had little choice but to take redundancy from a job that I had loved and move on to new things. Having spent the summer relaxing in the belief that I had secured another job to start in September I had a sudden reality check when I was made redundant from that job before I had even started! Who said the recession was over?

But what has that to do with food, diet and cooking – and Ottolenghi? Well firstly I had to get a tight grip on my finances. Signing on whilst trying to kickstart my freelance career as a genealogist and with only a small pot of statutory redundancy money (local council!) meant I needed to reduce my spending on everything – food included. I cancelled my monthly payment to Ocado as I now had time to shop locally at Aldi, Lidl, Asda. Then I discovered www.approvedfood.co.uk and became somewhat obsessed with saving money by buying out-of-date or end-of-line foodstuffs that I would never normally buy. And whereas I had been wanting to switch to a low carb diet in an effort both to lose weight and feel more energised I was now stocking up on pasta, bread, and potatoes because they were cheap. So I’ve reached the end of the year feeling bloated and exhausted and with my cupboards full of cheap but carb-heavy foods.

But salvation was at hand:) I had asked my sister for an Ottolenghi cookbook for Christmas – I had several times borrowed Plenty and Jerusalem from the library and regularly read his Guardian column or sourced recipes from www.ottolenghi.co.uk  . For the last few years when I wanted to cook something special Yotam Ottolenghi has been the man I would turn to. The recipes can look daunting because they have often feature a dozen or more ingredients but in general the techniques are simple – and the resulting flavours are simply terrific. And whilst he isn’t a vegetarian he does some amazing recipes with vegetables at the fore and not simply as an aside. I am not vegetarian (although I didn’t eat meat for over 20 years) but my daughter has never eaten meat and my meat-loving son has recently renounced it so I am often seeking inspiration when providing for either of them.

So imagine my delight when I was presented with not one, but two, Ottolenghi books on Christmas Day: Plenty and Plenty More. As I drooled over the pictures and mentally devoured the recipes a plan started hatching in my brain. I want to use these books as the inspiration to get my diet back in gear:

• to eat healthily
• to reduce meat consumption
• to eat seasonal fresh vegetables
• to decrease my carb intake
• to source ingredients as locally as possible
• to reduce food waste
• to rekindle my love of food and pleasure in cooking

So maybe I am avoiding the SMART resolutions that possibly I should be making but I hope I’m setting myself up for success rather than failure. And I’m blogging about it because it will be a record for myself and I will be able to chart my progress throughout the next 12 months.