New Year, New Meal Planning

It’s that time of year again. Our Christmas tree is starting to look a little worn out, silently pleading that I let her return to unadorned state and let her rest in her sweats until next year. Our gym is filling up with new workout gear and shiny optimism. It’s the new year and in true Badger Girl tradition I am going to share with you some new year’s resolutions.

Last year I was quite ambitious, I promised meal plans, a trio of athletic events (am proud to say I nailed two out of the three: a half marathon and triathlon), a new blog design (done), and reinstatement of some old series (not done). I am also proud to say I FINALLY started making dried beans versus canned beans. It’s a work in progress but I am way ahead than I have been in the last two years.

This year? 3 Goals.

1- Finish my nutrition certificate.

2- Have at least one post a month with blog-worthy, nice pictures, aka taken with my real camera, not my I-phone.

And the big one….

3- Share meal plans every week and devise my meal plans from my vast collection of cookbooks and magazines thereby exposing you to some new recipes and food writers.

The New Meal Plans

I have at least 100 cookbooks.

I have been collecting cookbooks since college. They have always been a weakness. Then when I started writing, it became research. Now I think it’s just an obsession.

About 70 of them are ‘healthy’ cookbooks that fall under the label of vegan, vegetarian, paleo, clean eating, or just plain ‘healthy’, in other words, cookbooks that I really do refer to on a regular basis. The others are specialty: cookies, baking, appetizers, juices, slow cooker, ice pops, and other random stuff that I found in checkout lines at the grocery store. Yeah, I’m that person. 

I want to be able to share these cookbooks with you and also justify why my office is filled with cookbooks and food magazines, don’t even get me started on food magazines….

Every week, I am going to plan all of my meals from either a cookbook or a food magazine series (Cooking Light, Clean Eating, Rachel Ray, etc). No doubt I will do some modifications because I can’t seem to follow a recipe to save my life (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not). At the the end of the week, I will tell you how the meals went and my overall impression of said cookbook or magazine. I may repeat some, and that would be a good indication that it’s a keeper.

Each week, I will also share with you what Baby G is eating. I am determined that we do not feed Baby G processed foods and I can already tell it’s going to be a challenge. Rice puffs- a processed food that we give children before their first birthday. How is this okay? There has to be something natural that dissolves in their mouth. I just don’t know what it is yet…We’ll figure out together, folks.

So, that’s the plan.

I hope you join me in 2014 and I would love to hear from you. What are your New Year’s resolutions?