What a bargain!

With nothing else scheduled for this morning, the Spawn and I were able to hit the farmer’s market where I spent all of $18.55. Just look at all that good stuff! From the top, we’ve got a bag of organic kiwis, two small heads of leaf lettuce, cauliflower, Swiss chard, fresh onions, a head of garlic, broccoli greens, baby artichokes (the first of the season!!!), onions, red potatoes, and broccoli.

I’ve already got plans for some of it…

* baby artichokes: these are destined for tonight’s dinner. We’ll have pan-roasted baby artichokes with pasta (and lots of garlic and oregano). We stopped by Dianda’s in the village for lunch and left with a loaf of bread and some Italian pastries for dessert as well.

* the kiwis will be eaten by the Spawn as breakfast throughout the coming week

* broccoli greens: I’d like to cook these like collard greens as a side at some point during the week

* fresh onions: bundle these up along with a bit of Serrano ham in some puff pastry and you’ve got a fantastic savoury treat.

The rest is just “staples” for the crisper; the cauliflower and broccoli may or may not end up in a soup. Who knows?

I haven’t made any New Year resolutions for many years now. I always found them to be just one more way to fail.

This year, however, I think I’ve come up with some resolutions that are achievable. There are only three on my list and none are terribly specific…no “quit smoking” (well, that wouldn’t be on the list anyway as I don’t smoke), no “lose weight”, no “start exercising”. No, these resolutions are much more approachable and I cleverly phrased them in such a way as to make them almost impossible to fail at:

1. Read more regularly.

For the past several years, I’ve taken to “reading” audiobooks and listening to podcasts instead of sitting down with a real book. In the future, I’d like to change that by adding reading back into my routine. I’m hoping that the classes I’ll be taking at the local junior college will help in that respect.

2. Walk the dogs more regularly.

I’ve already started on this one and the dogs think I’m a goddess. Talk about immediate gratification!

3. Try to make a pot of soup for dinner once a week.

This one will probably fall by the wayside once the hot weather is here but, until then, I think I can do it.

And there they are…my first resolutions in many years!