As a follower of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, I know it is WAY past the date that I can wish anybody a happy new year. All I want to do is acknowledge, and I think that is allowable, that it is a new year and I have a couple wishes for my blog for the new year. I Dont call them Resolutions, but rather some goals I hope to achieve here in 2024.
First, I want to continue my steadily increasing number of posts to get it to 24 for the year 2024 and have the second or third best year for number of posts since the early years. If you can see how many posts I have every year, I had the most in my first full year of posting. It was still a lot for a couple years after that, but always a couple fewer. Until it went way down in the later teens down to the worst 3 for the year. Geez what was wrong with me?
One of the "good things" about covid was I got to writing again. I got to writing more posts and since covid my posts per year has steadily gone up. In 2023 I nearly got it to 2 a month to make it 24 for the year. But I missed it. For 2024 I want to hit that 24.
You may think that is rather shallow, to write to reach a goal, but it is more like keeping myself going on the task. My task has always been to document me taking care, or not taking care of, my daughters as they grow up. I have always thought that I did more than ordinary fathers and spent more time with them, but sometimes I did/do not. This might be one of those times as I am working in my store 5 or 6 days a week. Still I want to document that. It is like a public journal.
In that sense also, as I have said at least 5 times, and recently, but want to say it again, my writing is not really to entertain. In fact many times my writing will be boring and uninteresting to you or any reader, but that is ok by me. Because a journal is often boring and only interesting to the writer. If you want to read, great. Again, it is a public journal. I am not looking for numbers. I am aiming on documentation.
In that respect I think it is better to keep the task going and write more to document more. Twice a month is very reasonable. So, my first goal and probably a goal to keep me going is to get 24 for the year, hopefully at least 2 a month.
2. To add 5 more meals to my repertoire of suppers I can cook that my daughters will eat. This is more difficult than it sounds as my younger daughter is a very finicky eater at this time in her life. I have every hope that she will be better when she gets older because as my older sister reminded me, she too had been a very picky eater when she was young but is eating now as an adult well enough. Although she is nearly a vegetarian, she still eats meat and eats all the meals placed in front of her. So, I think my younger daughter will expand her tastes also. Just unfortunately for me, at this time, they are very limited.
I dont know if limited is the right word. Its not that she only sticks to a couple meals, its just that she doesnt like to eat a lot of things. Lets see, green vegetables, carrots, mashed potatoes, but not cooked or baked potatoes or french fries. Curried food. She likes some Thai spice foods but not others. She doesnt like any type of beans. This makes it difficult for Mexican foods. Although my wife has made a beanless chili con carne for her. She doesnt like chick peas which I have recently discovered not to mention no cauliflower.
My other daughter used to like my chicken wings, but not any more. Neither of
them want to eat pork meat dishes. That knocked my barbeque pork out of my repertoire. My older daughter objects to me making any Thai or curry dishes because it is "not in my heritage".
Both of them eat some but not other fruits. One daughter eats bananas, the other not. One watermelon the other no. Like that. And to cap it off, one doesnt like dark chocolate, the other doesnt like white chocolate. Go figger. They will both claim that if they eat the chocolate they dont like they will throw up.
So. You want to talk about a daunting task.
That said, I think there are some openings for meals. Hey, give me a break if they arent the most exquisite of meals, but... give me some leeway.
Sloppy Joes. I have always wanted to do this meal. I never really ate them when I was a kid although they were in my periphery vision. They were always around. I am very good with the sauce for this meal, so I think it will be a simple thing to transfer my spaghetti sauce to a sloppy joe.
Yes, some form of chili. I dont like to copy my wife, but in this case I have always wanted to make my own chili. My mother always made it and it was very good and she had no heritage for chili, and I really like chili so I would like to make it for the whole family.
I have in fact added a couple of Thai dishes to my own repertoire, like this one pictured, red curry chicken, but they were rejected by both my daughters. agh. I got these dishes from a cookbook written by an Austrian sportsman cook, so I dont agree that it has to be in my heritage for me to try. Therefore I think there must be something I can make to my liking that has thai spices such as curry or ginger and noodles and can be liked by my daughters. But havent discovered it yet.
There are a couple recipes sent to me by my sister she discovered in my mothers apartment in her recipe lists. I remember the dishes and would like to re create them. I dont think all of them will be accepted by my daughters, especially the stuffed cabbage, but those will be more a pride thing to cook what my parents cooked and what I remember from my childhood and may or may not have liked. I cant remember if I was thrilled with my moms stuffed cabbage, although by the time I was an adult I know I did like it.
If I am lucky I ll get four new dishes from the above choices. If not lucky... two.
We ll see. At any rate, I am up for the challenge. If they dont like something but it is still good or made well, then it is still somewhat of a victory as a new meal for me to eat and a feather in my cap of cooking.
I think these are reasonable and doable goals to have. Sometimes the point is to not put the bar up so high so in fact it is easy to jump over it. I am not one for making impossible goals, but rather possible goals.
Over and out for 2024. Please join me and read my blog when you can.
Thank you
There is a new wave of deep house on the circuit. On of my favorite labels for the new deep house who I think do a very good job of it is Bondage records. An awful name, but great music. Of the bondage stuff I am deciding that one of the best artists on the roster is Marcus Homm.
My younger daughter came to me with her list of music for studying and doing homework by and well, it was like McDonalds music. Tasty but without nutrients and not so great for the body. The Bondage label and Marcus Homm is not empty easy listening calories. There are so many good nutrients in this music. So even if you just want passive background light listening OR you want to be an active listener, both are possible with Bondage and Marcus Homm s album "After Dark"
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