The Sunday Dinner Project Begins...

Every year, on January 1st, millions of Americans make New Year's Resolutions that they hope to stick with through out the coming year. Many of those pledges are forgotten by the middle of February. Very fortunate people, like myself, have a second chance at those same resolutions. As an educator, I make what I like to call "New School-Year Resolutions."

I am still a newcomer to the field of education. In fact, I'm not a teacher, but a speech-language pathologist working in the school setting. At the beginning of my second full year of school, I found myself making a list of things I hoped to accomplish for the year. Of course, many of these goals involved my work with the kids. My personal goals are what I would like to keep track of here.

Now at the beginning of this school year, I started off with many personal goals. There was a pretty wide range: completing a chore every night of the week, exercising regularly, and learning to cook new things (particularly because I'm such a picky eater, I could cook the same 4 things every night and be content). The first two weeks of school were pretty successful...I followed my cleaning schedule, worked out on the elliptical, and cooked like crazy. But somewhere in the middle of week three I started to slip. The chores have slipped back into weekend duties and the extent of my exercising includes running around my school building (in heels) hunting for kids that forget to come to speech. The cooking was the only thing that I stuck with.

I decided to be reasonable and work on one totally new meal every week. On Sunday, to be exact. Sunday was always an important dinner day in my family. Each week, after church, we would go to my grandparents house to eat Sunday dinner. It wasn't necessarily about the food back then...it was more about the family. Being together, eating, enjoying each other. It's an important part of my memories of growing up. Aside from that, my mom was also an excellent cook. Because she passed away when I was only 17, I feel that I never really had the opportunity to pick up all of her cooking skills. That's why the Sunday Dinner Project means so much to me. I want to be a good cook. I want to bring people together over food. I want to be a great cook like my mom.

My husband Jason (of more than 3 years now!) is my Guinea pig. I learned early on that it's not always a great idea to try out a brand new recipe on company. My hope is that this blog will serve as a place for me to keep track of my successes and failures, get tips from other people, and chronicle my progress as a cook. In the next few days, I will catch you up on my first few attempts of Sunday Dinners, and then keep current from here on out. Bon Appetit!