Do-able New Year's Resolutions

About author / Christine Gable

Culinary enthusiast; kids cuisine and slow cooking; magazine recipe developer; professional writer. Her simple recipes are great for family dinners.

Well, it’s the New Year. Are you ready for it? Is it a fresh start or just another day, another week? Well, judging by the attendance at Times Square, and all the dinner reservations and night-out New Year’s Eve celebrations, quite a few of us embrace this as some sort of new beginning.

And that’s really why so many of us love the New Year, right? It gives us a much-desired chance to start over. Fresh and new. A clean slate. Of course, it’s just as easy to fall off the wagon when there are too many expectations brewing in our heads. That’s why I naturally like to keep the whole level of New Year’s resolution-making to a low hum. Sure, I like to make a fresh start, but I’ve learned that it’s more satisfying to include things on my list that really are do-able in my daily rounds.

And when that comes to New Year’s resolutions for the kitchen, I try to stay away from sweeping statements that are guaranteed to go down the drain once the rubber hits the real-life road. So instead of resolving to “Eat no red meat,” “Eat only healthy foods,” or “Never again buy another package of lard-fried potato chips,” I like to make smaller, more manageable plans. Things that you can jot down on the calendar. Things that the kids and I can actually do in our day-in and day-out life together.

Things like:
• Buy brown rice the next time we go grocery shopping.
• Make a fruit protein shake tomorrow for breakfast.
• Clean out the refrig on Saturday.
• After it’s cleaned, make room to store the low-fat yogurt on the 3rd shelf for snacks.
• And then keep all the leftovers on the 2nd shelf.
• Buy local turkey and fresh vegetables on Tuesday at the farmers’ market.

These are all fresh starts that I consider do-able. And they’re all things that could be considered healthful habits, but they’re little bite-sized tidbits, not huge elusive hard-to-get-your-hands-around-‘em plans.

While grand sweeping change-your-life plans sure sound good, they’re the biggies that can fall by the wayside when push comes to shove—or if you’ve just had a rough day. And as you well know, life with a family and kids, life with responsibilities and—yes, breakfast, lunch and dinner to prepare daily—is the real nitty-gritty. Making our lives with our families and kids more manageable and fulfilling comes by setting realistic goals.

So now I don’t have to tout to my kids—much less anyone—that “we’re gonna start eating healthy this year.” Instead, we’ve got six concrete ways that we’re actually going to start doing that. And to clean up some of those vegetables in the crisper drawer to help with that refrig cleaning-out on Saturday, here’s a roasted vegetable dish that cooks long and slow. It also helps make the house smell wonderful. So after the refrig is sparkly clean and ready to face a new year, you’ll have a delightful vegetable dish that’s all ready to pair with soup or sandwich.

Serves/Makes: 6

• 2 pounds medium white button mushrooms, sliced in half
• 3 small onions, sliced into 1/2-inch wedges
• 4 large sweet bell peppers, red/orange/green
• 6 medium turnips (or other root vegetables), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons garlic, minced finely
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper