- I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a new year’s resolution kind of person. Even as a kid, I’d spend December 31st writing down all of the great things I wanted to do in that soon to be new year’s newly dedicated diary. I still do this in some way. Read more, write more, run more, do more, eat less, eat better, make more money, visit five new states, Cowboys (please!!!) win the Super Bowl, and on and on with, quite honestly, various levels of success. But even with that, I still love the sentiment of the new year, with all of the new ideas and new adventures it may bring. I love the optimism, and the idea of becoming better in some way. “New year, new you!” Sure, it’s kind of corny, and yes, maybe January 1st is a bit of an arbitrary date to start anew (why do we wait for a new calendar page?!), but I still like it and I probably won’t ever stop setting new year’s goals.
Yeah, okay. But why am I bringing it up now? Six months into 2018? Well, mostly because I started this blog so late, and really because I’m halfway through my year of #52things. And so far, so good.
Really, really good in fact!
No, I’m not the first person to come up with a numbered list of things to do. There are others who have certainly done 52 new things in 52 weeks, or 100 new things within a different time frame—and I say more power to all of us!
The theme of my #52things (and yes, it must have the hashtag) was and is pretty simple: to do 52 things I’ve never done before. In truth, I will have done many more than just 52 things as some of my things involve multiple things, like making a new recipe every week from a cookbook I already own, and trying five foods/drinks I’ve never liked in a new way. And no, not all of my new things are food and drink related, but a lot of them are. 82 things in fact, if you include all 52 recipes, the beautiful thing that will be pizza cake, making bitterballen, several food quests, my own dirty martini, many of the things on the not initially planned #52thingsextra list and so on and so on…
Now, I didn’t really set out to create so many food-related new things, but let’s face it, I love food.
“Duh,” says you, the food blog reader. 🙂
- Garlic shrimp with lemon & parsley made by me. This beautiful recipe from week 24 needed no filter.
And so have I learned anything six months into a year of trying new things, getting out of my comfort zone bit, choosing oh, so many recipes that seem to require oh, so much cutting into tear-inducing onions? I have, actually. I’ve learned that many recipes do indeed require a crazy amount of onions, that having a dutch oven is an important thing to have in the kitchen, and that life is meant to be tasted, and tried; it’s meant to be fun and silly, and that not all adventures are created equal. Some taste better than others, and some are worth tasting again.
XO
Here’s to the next six months of my #52things. (Up next: pizza cake!!! Stay tuned for that blog post.)
