Happy 2013!

New Year's Eve: fireworks from our window

I gave up making New Year's Resolutions some years ago.  At the time I thought it was because I was finally wise and sensible enough to implement life changes whenever they were required and no longer needed the impetus of a number ticking over on a calendar to encourage me into better habits.  Ha.  In retrospect however, I think I was going through a blissful (but sadly finite) period of everything in my life being sorted and satisfactory to the degree that I didn't really need to make any changes, or if I did need to change things, I was sufficiently in control of the general situation to be able to do so with little real effort.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, I'm now thinking that this year a 'Return to Resolutions' might just be in order.  And while there are many areas of my life that could do with some attention (health: drink less, get more sleep, eat regular meals instead of holding out until ravenous and then devouring whatever vaguely food-like substance is lurking at the back of the fridge; money: try to be sensible with; work-life balance: get one), this blog is devoted mainly to my interest in food -- cooking, eating, learning about, experimenting with.

So, here are a couple of Foxe's Foods resolutions for 2013:

1. Try something new foodwise once a week -- a new recipe, ingredient, technique, or restaurant, or even a new dish at a favourite restaurant where I usually always order the same thing.  I'm always reading about exciting and novel food ideas; time to test some of them out!  If I have 50 new food experiences in 2013, my life will be that little bit richer and by the end of the year I might have some interesting stories to tell...
2. Update this blog once a week (on average!)  I've noticed that Foxe's Foods is starting to get a tiny trickle of traffic that isn't just me looking up how to make one of my own recipes.  Welcome, new readers!  I will try to make this a more interesting place for you!  Having a new food experience to post about every week will probably help with generating content -- though given the backlog of review and recipe posts I've got lined up, finding time and motivation is just as much of an issue.

I'm pleased to report that in Week 1, I have managed to do two things that satisfy Resolution #1: on New Year's Day I tried sous-vide cooking for the first time (rib-eye steak, as the main course of a special dinner), and the following day we went to Hunan, a restaurant I've been eyeing up for some time but not got round to visiting previously.

More details on both of these at some point perhaps, but for now I'm going to fulfil Resolution #2 just in time for the end of the first week of 2013 by hitting the Publish button!