I feel that of all the years I’ve been tracking, 2018 has been the most consistent in achieving its objectives.

I’ve spent around 100 hours on cooking and updating the blog - I see them as facets of the same project.

What worked:

• focusing on a topic that is obviously needed: food, helped keep the ball rolling;
• having clear goals - such as cooking at least once per week - made it easy to see when things dropped off and pick it up again;
• posting all the recipes on the blog felt a bit of a chore at times, yet it underlined the commitment while also providing a secondary goal-tracking mechanism;
• I’ve built a good basis and learned a few tricks that should keep me in the business; I definitely want to continue cooking throughout the coming years.

What could’ve been improved:

• none of the explicit items I wanted to learn to make or make better have been achieved; I didn’t learn to make better breakfast mostly because I, we, don’t really eat breakfast; same with soup and with all the soups I made I was the one that ate them beyond the tasting phase; pasta sauce would’ve been an interesting endeavor, but with so many other recipes it fell to the wayside.
• went some weeks without cooking as the family may not have liked the recipe enough to have it more than once, so it was up to me to finish eating it and I was not going to make something new just to end up in the same place;
• I wish I learned more or really any “flavor theory” so that I can better understand why certain flavors work or don’t work together.

What am I bringing forward:

• the need to set and track clear goals;
• the discipline of writing about my progress;
• a reduction in dining out.