2010 review and resolutions

Whilst it may seem I've been somewhat slack catching up with posting after Christmas, the main reason was because in the background I was creating this beauty - a table of every meal we ate last year, arranged by the amount of times we've eaten them:

(click on the table and use your arrows to move down the list)



Weirdly this was the original reason why I started the blog (other than being bored), to try and keep tabs on which dishes and recipes we liked, and which didn't quite make the cut.

It's also interesting to see which dishes have stood the test of time, and I'm amazed how few new dishes appeared in the Top Ten for 2010. I was convinced Jill Dupleix's sesame chicken would be right up there, but we only had it four times, ditto the Waitrose spinach and chick pea curry which we only had three times.

Having said that, whilst it's comforting we have so many old favourites, it's equally good to see we've got a few new dishes which have joined our pantheon of go-to meals: Mediterranean Salad was the top 'new' dish, followed by the tomato and creme fraiche tart and, weirdly given Ana's hatred of aubergine, Indian-spiced Aubergine. In fact we tried 48 new recipes last year, and I reckon most of them I'd try again. Apart from vegetable stew with dumplings, which will never darken my kitchen...

Resolutions
This is slightly later than I planned, (but the table took cocking ages), but I/we do have a few resolutions for this year:

• More fish in our diet. We're doing pretty well so far I think;
• Vegetarian January for both health and financial reasons. I think this went fairly well, if you don't count garnish-style chorizo/pancetta, with only five meaty dishes;
• To eat more as a family, particularly over the weekends;
• To cook more with Milo;
• General site upgrades. I'm going to try and redesign the site (Tom? Tom? Tom? Tom? Tom?), better SEO JUICE (urgh!) and at some point I'll get a search box going to make it easier to find recipes.

Let see how it works out this time next year.