homecooking.jpgMany people we know have made new year's resolutions that sound vaguely like the ones they made last year, and many have to do with food and/or losing weight. Our food resolutions this year may ultimately result in losing a few pounds, but they're really just about being more conscious about what we eat. Here they are:
1) Eat local foods as much as possible. For us this means making the greenmarket our first stop for grocery shopping and then supplementing our list beyond that.
2) Cook more and share with friends. Living in New York makes it easy not to cook. With wildly varied dining and take-out options for every budget combined with busy schedules, cooking often seems too daunting at the end of a day. Every time we do take the time to cook, we realize that not only does it take less time than we think it does, but we often have enough for lunch the next day, saving us a little cash. It's also easier in some ways to cook for more than one person -- so we plan to invite guests over on a regular basis. And we cook some pretty tasty dinners too - stuffed tomatoes, roasted zucchini, and seared scallops atop squash risotto, pictured at right.
3) Eat less cheese. Okay, this is a big weakness for us. In order to cut calories, we've decided that cheese does not need to be added to sandwiches or salads willy-nilly. If we're going to eat cheese, it should be high quality, and low quantity. A little goes a long way.

4) No mindless eating/eat purposefully. We find that we sometimes eat not because we are hungry, but because there's food in front of us. No more. This year we will eat with purpose. There is no need to nibble on snacks at a party when we've already eaten dinner, and certainly no need to finish a dish we don't like.
5) Exercise portion control. This is another tough one for us. Eating out equals large portions, or at least portions that are more suited to six-foot-tall, two hundred pound men. Resolution number two should help a little with that one, but when eating out, we'll try to share an entree or take some leftovers home.
6) Taste something new. It's not all about limits and restraint here. This year, we want to continue to widen our palate, whether that means trying something unique that we haven't tasted before, like the magnificent uni and monkfish liver dish at Soto, or attempting to develop a taste for something we think we don't like. In 2007, we made some progress on the goat cheese front, thanks to some aged cheeses from Stinky Bklyn.

Got any food resolutions for 2008?