A summary of April (no Tuesday Tip)

Yay, it's May!  This means I no longer have to cook new recipes in order for them to count!  I still want to try and cook something new at least once a week, but it's nice to be able to repeat things.  To celebrate that, I made almost exactly this meal (also from a Tuesday) -- Korean-style potato pancakes and braised greens and mushrooms.  The only difference was which greens I used -- I had dandelion and beet greens this time.  I still haven't made anything with the beets, though.  Silliness.

Looking back on my month of cooking, I'm glad I decided to do it, even though I only made 18 different things in a 30-day month.  It still feels like a success, though.  I tried a bunch of new things, including molecular gastronomy, cheese, and lots of things with mushrooms.  I've also started menu planning regularly, which has been rather useful.  Plus, and this was the original goal, I've started getting in the habit of cooking as a default.  I think I mentioned this a couple of posts ago, but I've even started looking forward to cooking again when I don't do it for a few days!  So, despite the fact that I didn't cook anywhere close to every day in April, I feel like the goal of giving my cooking a jump start has been achieved. 

Now that I've gotten going with this cooking thing, the goal is to continue doing it on a regular basis.  3-4 days a week seems like a reasonable goal for most weeks, so that's what I'll be aiming for.  As I mentioned, I want to try to cook something new weekly, just to keep things interesting.  The next few months are gonna be a little hectic -- conference, move to SF for the summer, and another conference -- so we'll see how feasible it'll be for me to stick to this. Certainly, I won't be cooking while at conferences.  In SF, though, we'll have a kitchenette.

Anyhow, all that is in the future.  For now, I have a dissertation proposal this week, and then it's time to wrap up the semester!