Food ambitions for this year:

• get a second crop and harvest of peas – one in the spring, one in the fall
• prepare and freeze more pesto
• make a hard cheese – cheddar or gouda
• make blackberry jam
• make apricot jam
• put up a roasted red pepper spread
• and a tomato preserve
• come up with a scheme that will allow me to purchase pastured chicken from the farmers’ market and store it so that I can use it in small portions without cooking the whole thing and then freezing the bulk of it (which makes for yucky chicken)
• put up a comparable quantity of tomatoes as last year
• experiment with an alternative onion storage technique, and store more onions
• research grain mills with an eye toward being able to grind my own whole wheat flour; bonus points if the mill is electric but retrofit-able for hand grinding
• freeze some broccoli
• freeze more corn
• do the math for the economics of making my own butter
• dry more celery
• look into making mayonnaise; this is especially interesting if I can do it in small batches or if it keeps well
• find Caitlyn a replacement for her “nut covered raisins” breakfast cereal, something that doesn’t have corn syrup or hydrogenated stuff in it
• read up on making pasta – not likely to be something I do regularly but it would be good to know how to do it
• harvest more of the “fringe” berries – the huckleberries and lingonberries – in the yard
• experiment with more of those good-for-you veggies like beets and turnips, both growing and eating

Other ambitions:

• attempt making soap
• sew more of our clothes; especially see if I can extend the life of things Caitlyn outgrows by lengthening or repurposing
• complete some more quilts, especially some of those that have been waiting in the cedar chest for proper backings or those I’ve been intending to make out of old t-shirts
• write more regularly, even if it’s blogging
• balance my reading diet of fantasy fiction with serious fiction and non-fiction
• find some non-neighborhood volunteer activity; I’m infatuated with the idea of helping out on a farm
• laugh more
• get myself sufficiently extricated from neighborhood association stuff that I’m interested in doing stuff with the broader community (tackling the anti-clothesline rule or teaching sewing or something)
• add a new client or two to the roster
• bring in more money each month than it costs us for Caitlyn’s preschool
• worry less, especially about The State of Things – all I can do is prepare as best I can for the space I’m in and worrying isn’t going to change what happens, or make it happen faster or slower
• find a better balance between what I want to do and what Caitlyn wants to do
• go for more hikes
• come to some decision about what comes after preschool
• get more exercise
• organize the garage to better use the space
• let go of useless stuff I’ve been hanging on to, like all my notes from my college courses; I probably have all my AP US history notes from high school around here somewhere, too