The New Year Resolution

For those of you who don't know, I made a resolution to cook more this year. I'm not a big fan of new year resolutions, but it just so happens that the same time I was evaluating ways to save more money, was the same time a new year started, so it just kind of happened.

How am I doing so far? Pretty good, if I do say so myself! My original goal was to start with at least 3 meals a week, however I have done at least 4 a week every week, even stepping it up to 5 dinner meals last week plus breakfast every morning (and just so you know we aren't talking cereal, energy bar, fruit or things of that nature. Chris will only eat things like eggs, turkey bacon, potatoes, etc. for breakfast. Nothing sweet). Am I the best wife or what?!?

All that being said, why in the world during our first 5 years of marriage have I hardly ever cooked? Here are some of those reasons/excuses:

1.  We live so far out and I already have an hour commute, the last thing I wanted to do was cook for another hour when I got home.
2. I didn't know what to cook.
3. When I did cook it was usually things like chicken breast or some other meat and a vegetable and who wants that every night....boring!
3. I thought cooking other things, besides the above, would be to hard. I mean every recipe seemed to always have some out of this world ingredient I had never heard of.
4. I can't stand going to the store on my way home....I'm in heals and I've been walking in them all day. The last thing I wanted to do was walk around a grocery store looking for that strange ingredient that I had never heard of.
5. And last but not least, I didn't think that I liked it. Everytime I cooked I felt rushed, like I needed to hurry up and get dinner on the table so it wasn't enjoyable to me.

So how have I managed to overcome those reasons/excuses so far this year? I took the advice from the accountability chart at work...lol! I awknowledged reality, made a plan of action and am now follwing through on that plan...I know I'm a total cheese ball.

Pretty much all I needed to do was awknowledge yes, I do in fact have a hour commute home...who cares!!! Then I needed to sit down find some recipes I wanted to make for the week (perferably ones without strange ingredients), make a list of what was needed and go shopping all at once (not in heals). It was that simple.

But there was still one more thing to tackle on my list of why I didn't cook, the big one, I didn't think I enjoyed it. Oh well, I could live with that. As adults sometime we have to do things we don't like. However, the biggest surprise of this entire "resolution" is how much I do enjoy it!

The second meal I made I was rushing around the kitchen trying to hurry up and get dinner done. Chris asked me why I was rushing around so much, like I was in some kind of race. I paused and thought I don't know? That was really the best thing that could have happened. I had this time schedule I had made that said I have to have dinner on the table by 6 and all the dishes washed or in the washing machine by 7. Why? We didn't have to be anywhere, we have a DVR so I am not going to miss any of my "precious" shows...I really don't know why, but now that I have taken myself off the time schedule, I really do enjoy cooking!

So now I have tackled all of my, lets just fact it, excuses and am glad that I decided to make this my new year resolution!!

A couple of questions....

Do you believe in making new year resolutions??

If you do, did you make one this year?  How is it going so far??