Making Resolutions and Cabbage Soup

About author / Sarah Christine Bolton

Coffee addict; professional food writer; food fusion. Her slow cooker recipes go above and beyond your normal crockpot fare.

New Year’s Eve always comes so quickly, with a breathless, in-your-face reality check that another year is gone. I’m always a bit saddened, but am also glad and ready for a new year, a fresh start.

When I was younger, I made elaborate and lengthy lists of New Year’s resolutions. I followed them passionately for at least a month before they slowly slipped away, one-by-one into resolution heaven.

Since then, I’ve made a resolution to not make any resolutions. Or at least not so many.

Over Christmas, I flew to visit family in Albuquerque. Anyone who has flown in the past five years knows that airports and all that goes along with them make up an early stage of hell.

I always arrive at the airport with a feeling of hope, but by the time I’ve paid to check my bags, stripped down and unpacked for security, walked on germy floors in my socks, repacked everything (after occasionally getting yelled at for nose hair scissors or some other weapon of mass destruction), been packed into a seat the size of a cell phone, and overcharged for stale peanuts and a sip of water in a plastic cup, all hope is gone.

According to my high school French teacher, the English word travel comes from the French verb “travailler,” which means “to work.” She also told me that in the “old days,” travel was so difficult that it was more work than leisure. I want to ask her if she’s traveled recently in these non “old days,” because travel feels like work again.

Getting to your destination is often such an ordeal that you need a vacation after your vacation. I’m just ready for the day when you can e-mail yourself to wherever you want to go, minus security and overcharges for everything.

At travel’s darkest moments, though, I have to remember that, compared to how most of the world has traveled for most of the world’s history, travel today isn’t all that bad. We get where we need to go, quickly, and relatively safely.

Now, how does all this ranting apply to crockpots? For me, and I imagine many others as well, cooking can become travailler, work. If your life is anything like mine, then you are lucky to have groceries in the fridge and one free night a week to have a real live sit-down meal. I enjoy making an event of a meal, but all the work that goes into it sometimes means that I’m more likely to open a can of soup than make lasagna.

So, even though I’m hesitant to really and truly make a New Year’s resolution, maybe I’ll call it a New Year’s attitude adjustment. Instead of stressing about the number of meals I eat while driving, standing or studying, I’ll focus on the few that are spent sitting at a real dining room table, with plates and forks and knives and someone I love enjoying it right along with me.

Because, just like travel, cooking today is pretty easy and convenient. I don’t have to go out and kill something to eat it; I can just open my freezer or run to the grocery store. I don’t have to tend fields for months and months to get fresh vegetables. And cleaning up afterward doesn’t require a river or even boiling water.

And who knows? Maybe if I can change, then air travel can change for the better.

Yeah, right, who am I kidding?

Serves/Makes: 10

• 1/2 pound turkey bacon, coarsely chopped
• 2 1/2 pounds shredded green cabbage
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 5 cans (16 ounce size) chicken broth
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• salt and pepper, to taste
• grated Swiss cheese