It's now 2011, and all of the recipes I made in 2010 have been photographed, eaten, and blogged about.
I got a late, slow start on my 2010 resolution to make a new recipe for every day of the year. I knew I wasn't going to be disciplined enough to make a new recipe on every single day, but I was okay with making 2 one day if I skipped another. Plus, I wasn't able to begin cooking until January 3 or 4, a natural hazard of traveling for the holidays. I only made 19 recipes in that first month, and stayed at a relaxed pace through a 22-recipe February. From the beginning, though, I vowed to make those recipes up.
I played catch-up little by little throughout the year, but November and December were the months where I did the best, particularly when you consider that I spent much of those months traveling. I was on hiatus for a good part of a week over Thanksgiving, but I still managed to make 33 recipes in 30-day November. What I'm most proud of, though, is the 38 new recipes I made in December - the last of which I made on December 25. While I didn't get to make that many new recipes for any given holiday - most people I talked to considered Thanksgiving to be the perfect time to try out new recipes - I caught up mostly by deciding that almost everyone on my Christmas shopping list was getting a food gift basket. I've made a goodie basket for my extended family for the past few years, but I think I gave out 10 goodie baskets this year.
In any case, all of the holiday baking and candy-making brought my recipe count up. I had actually only planned to make an even 365 recipes, but I ended up just looking up a few recipes in my Mom's cookbook for old favorites (pecan pie and chocolate chip cookies) that I usually would have usually used a different source for. Toss in a mid-month marathon weekend in the kitchen to make up for a week that I didn't feel up to cooking as much as I wanted, and that's how I made 38 recipes in 25 days.
I've been chronically behind on my blogging for the majority of the year. A few times I caught up on recipe reviews, only to fall behind again. Normally I wasn't more than a week behind, until I was so busy cooking in December that I fell behind by 3 weeks!!
One more thing about this year. People often think I should have gained weight this year. For the first half of the year, I didn't (and neither did my husband) - I must have balanced my meals and my fun cooking and baking pretty well. For the second half of the year, I started an intensive exercise program, which helped me actually lose a few pounds. I can't think of anything I made just because it was healthy, and I'm glad to be able to say that cooking and eating delicious food doesn't always mean weight gain.
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I've been looking to seeing what the most popular tags on my site were:
Baking: 110
Veggie: 78
Dessert: 61
Chocolate: 60
Breakfast: 52
Fruit: 52
Bread: 50
It's no surprise to me that baking is so high on my list. It also seems obvious that chocolate and dessert (which actually doesn't include everything sweet, I don't think) are so high on the list. I'm surprised that Veggie is so high on my list, but I suppose it's not surprising when you think that a lot of dinners that I made also had a heavy vegetable component. The sourdough starter I got from my friend gave me incentive to make lots of bread, including hamburger buns a few times, although the Bread tag includes lots of quick breads as well.
I've also made 28 cookie recipes, 23 sourdough recipes, 19 cakes or cupcakes, 17 soup recipes, 14 batches of brownies (plus the brownie bake-off), 14 pancake and waffle recipes, 10 pies, and 10 kinds of scones!
Starr says
Congrats on an awesome year of recipes! Do you have any goals for this year?
Leo says
Thank you!! I do have some goals. They'll be articulated better later, once I'm actually able to survey my kitchen again - but general goals for 2011 are in a separate post!