2010 resolutions

This year, instead of making vague statements, or trying to *not* do things (which is really difficult), I made bunches of little objectives across a number of categories which are important to me: Food, Work, Fun, Nature and Personal. The idea is that all these little tasks added up will hopefully shape life more in the direction I am trying to go.

Food

This year focusses on going back to basics: growing, foraging, killing, cooking and eating.

1. Grow and eat 2 kinds of vegetable or fruit in the garden.
This doesn't sound that hard, but I am a terrible gardener. I only have mint, thyme and chives (almost dead) in my back garden because Dog and I just could not kill them, despite our best efforts using claws, drought, biting, urine and neglect.

2. Forage 3 new wild items and utilise them for food (or chutney, soup etc.)
Two high points of 2009 included picking sloes from inside the M25 and the resulting sloe cachaca, and also an amazing wild blackberry crumble. So more of the same this year.

3. Kill and eat 3 different species of animal.
There is nothing more satisfying than catching your own dinner. I hope to maybe catch/eat a couple of new types sea fish (bass?), or maybe a rabbit.

4. Build 6 new food/drink items from scratch.
Last year I set the wholly unrealistic goal of only eating scratch built things (e.g. no bought ketchup, no coleslaw, etc). This year I will try a few new things like beer, jam, tonic water, jelly or a gala pie.


Work



My theme for work is building things with long term value, and generally being freer - getting more control of my time and more control of what kind of work I do.

1. Abelha
has gone well in our first year so me and Hal are mega-excited about the future. We started with the theory that booze makes people happy, and henceforth the more booze we move, the more we get people to spend time happily chatting, chilling, flirting, dancing and who knows what else. So far we are up to something like 17800 of these man-hours of Abelha-fuelled fun. Our resolution is to further increase the peace around the UK and world.

2. Work freelance less, and more on developing own projects.
(about 1:2 ratio of freelance to own projects)

3. Get the wheels going on one new product or service with long term potential.

4. Do about 165 days of work in 2010.


Fun/Art



This is the easy section. I think it's really important that we try to bring lots of moments of beauty into other people's lives (as well as our own). For me this means craft, sort-of-art, events, and general silliness.

1. Make the Goat Race bigger and better this year.

2. Do another installation piece in a gallery or festival.

3. Develop our multi-touch screen into new useful object.

4. Build a piece of art that has ongoing development/usage potential.

5. Do our jousting party bigger and better this year.

6. Make the DogBox club into a regular self-sustaining thing.

7. Build three hats that I designed ages ago but still haven't made.

8. Make one sustainability-related project.


Nature



I sometimes get an awesome sensation of peace and awe in beautiful natural surroundings - mountains, sunsets, lunar eclipses, etc. I knew when I got Dog that I wanted to spend more time outside, exploring; also, being a bit of a nerd I've always had a keen interest in nature too. I want to spend less time on the Internet too, and just to slow down a little.

1. Observe and sketch the 12 Zodiacal constellations.

2. Observe and sketch 10 Messier objects (e.g. galaxies, star clusters).

3. Pick/sketch/photograph 12 UK wild flowers.

4. Catch a falling leaf.

5. Observe and sketch common cloud types (if I ever have a kid, at some point they will ask about clouds, and I will feel like a bit of a cunt if all I know is that the wispy ones are good and the big grey ones are bad).

6. Mark the equinoxes with some kind of cool sculpture (this is the goal I am least keen on, and to be frank it sounds a bit druidic, but I like the idea of building a modern stonehenge).

Here's to 2010!

New Year's Resolution - cooking only scratchbuilt stuff

I haven't had a microwave for a couple of years now. Our last one broke and I made a point of not getting a new one. I wasn't sure what the point was exactly, but I really enjoy not having one now.

One thing I really missed was microwave popcorn, so a couple of months ago, someone showed me to make popcorn from scratch for the first time since kindergarten. I'm now really obsessed with it and eat it all the time (3+ times per week), to the point where I can make it consistently, quickly and easily.

The point of all this is that the other day I ate microwave popcorn again for the first time in months. Without meaning to be snobbish, it's very, very bad in comparison to pot+fire+oil+heat+butter popcorn. It's on the same level of difference as a microwave burger (e.g. Rustlers) to any kind of real burger. So I tried to give the unwanted microwave popcorn to Dog, but he turned his nose up at it, at which point I realised that (a) that's the first microwaved thing he's ever been given and (b) that it must be really, really, bad.

There is also the point that microwave popcorn is 3-4 times more expensive than real popcorn, even after you factor in the butter costs.

I've also recently been inspired by Tristan's homemade drinks and syrups, which I've been trying out, and seeing that often, the only difference between store bought and home made is a load of industrial processing and flavouring.

So my resolution is:
For cooking food at home, I will only use scratch-built ingredients. This applies to anything used in the quantity of more than a few dashes.

For example, I will only use scratch-built ketchup and mayo, but I am not going to ferment my own soy sauce or balsamic vinegar. It does not apply to drinks, and I also exempt bread, as I love crusty white bread and refuse to entertain the thought of frequently running out of it.

If I eat out or take out, it's anything goes.

This shouldn't be too hard, since I usually cook very simple stuff, and don't even cook very often, perhaps 3-5 times a week. It also gives me an excuse to make more stuff, which over winter, tends to be spent more in the house and kitchen rather than shed or park.

Things I commonly use/eat in my kitchen that now need to be scratchbuilt or scrapped:
Frosties, Paté, Coleslaw, Jam, Walls Vienetta (joke), fish fingers (F*#K!!).

So there we go. I'll keep updating on new things that I make from scratch, stuff that turns out very tough, or more things that I exempt myself from.

I also have other resolutions like cut my hair, stop spooning the dog, get some proper adult clothes, and stop being a wastrel, but those are all boring.