Hello! I hope all is well! Happy New Year! I’m so pleased with outcome of my holiday festivities, Christmas with the family was great, exchanging gifts and having fabulous dinner’s with my closest friends was amazing! I couldn’t have ended it any better than with a NYE trip with my family! It was a blast and although ending 2010 is bittersweet, I’m anxious and excited to see what the new year will bring!
I’ve thought long and hard about my New Year’s resolutions (see my previous post) but I just couldn’t help giving myself a challenge for the new year…and boy will it be a challenge…for me at least! If any of you have seen Julie & Julia (its fabulous, so if you haven’t please pick it up on your next movie night!) you know what sort of challenge she gives herself to actually finish something, for once. Although I don’t ever have issues with finishing things I’ve started (I’m pretty OCD about commitment, so this part is easy for me) I do find it challenging to be creative with our dinner meals AND find it challenging to cook more often rather than dining out. With a full-time job, completing my bachelors degree, being a full-time mommy to adorable weenies, and saving my world, as if I’m some modern cooking-challenged super hero, it’s hard to find time to cook…like for real cook, not “cook” as in heating up a Marie Callender’s meal (although those are delish!). You catch my drift.
If any of you know me, you know that I’m a HUGE Rachael Ray fan, I’m pretty obsessed, I own almost every cookbook, kitchen gadget, magazine subscription, even her knife set. I even try to talk like her in the kitchen and use her nicknames for everything (GB, spoon-ula, etc)! I’m only missing one thing….I don’t COOK like her! Lol, so with a little inspiration from Julie & Julia, I found myself brewing up a personal challenge. Drumroll Please….I, Natalie Valdemar, will challenge myself to cook one recipe per week from her newest cookbook, Rachael Ray’s Look and Cook Book! I hope to increase this challenge by cooking two or even three recipes a week, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves! I plan on documenting my journey right here on my blog and channeling a little Rach in the process…lol, who am I kidding, she’s amazing and it will take years for me to reach her caliber! I promise to document, the good, bad, and the ugly. I have a pretty curious food pallet but just by flipping through a few pages, there are some foods that I find quite intimidating to cook!
Wish me luck! Here goes nothing, I’ll be shouting “Yum-O” in no time! 🙂
Verbiage By Valdemar 