Coming off of a great year of reading (who would have guessed, 2019?), I’ve been keeping up the momentum with a list of books to start with in 2020. Having a reading list helps me make decisions about getting in quality reading without falling into decision making slumps. I aim to have a large percentage of my reading written by women, POC, and international writers. I typically make a list, request books from the library a few at a time, and then will supplement or swap as I find reading that calls out to me.
A few notes and observations:
Audio Books: yes, I definitely count audiobooks as reading. I process information better when on my walks and runs, and thus prefer listening to memoirs or non-fiction this way. It’s also easier for me to stay engrossed and follow along while I’m moving physically.
Don’t forget FOOD! Last year I read almost zero food memoirs, literature, or history – some of my favorite topics. So I made this one of my kitchen resolutions this year!
The library is your friend. Grabbing things off the Speed Read Shelf is my jam. I aim for one a week. Not two, because I can never finish two in 7 days and will get fined. (Plus, if I have a list, I can reserve things in advance.) Still working my way through my list of Personal Leadership Development Books, and the BBC Big Read.
Here are some of my next reads (vaguely categorized):
YA fiction
VE Schwab – Villains Series
Tomi Adeyemi – Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha)
S.A. Chakraborty – The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy)
Leadership / Business:
Marshall Goldsmith – What you got there won’t get you here
Dr. Spencer Johnson – Who Moved my Cheese?
Danny Meyer – Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
Tom DeMarco – Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Bill Aulet – Disciplined Entrepreneurship
Mindfulness / Brains:
Dr. Oliver Sacks – Musicophilia
Nicholas Cook – Music, A Short Introduction
B.J. Fogg – Tiny Habits
Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score
Jenny Odell – How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Louise Aronson – Elderhood
Bill Bryson – The Body, A Guide for Occupants
Audio Books:
Ann Patchett – The Dutch House
Dr. Jen Gunter – The Vagina Bible
Kate Moore – The Radium Girls
Casey Cep – Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
With our year coming to a close, one of my favorite cozy winter activities is to snuggle up with a mug of coffee spiked with eggnog, my 2019 calendar, and my phone’s photo album, and sit and review the year coming to an end. I work to make a list of the things that were meaningful, and then do a deeper dive of the things that I’d like to improve. Without posting the entire novel, here’s a little bit about how I went about doing this:
I start out with general buckets to note things in:
My year in fitness: any races run, programs taken, favorite classes, PRs.
Favorite movies, tv, and books.
Favorite podcasts (Dolly Parton’s America!)
Review my reading list: how diverse was the range of authors and thinking?
Favorite Eats: restaurants, recipes, and purchases (I’m looking at you bucket of Maldon and Rancho Gordo Bean Club)
Review of Travel: in 2019 relived highlights from Disney in March (that JIKO tasting and Safari! Dole Whip!) Turkey in June, Stratton in July, Houston in September and New York in October.
Creative Dates: my weekly journey into culture – museums, plays, and more.
What I learned (courses, projects, etc.)
Fun Random Things
New Things Tried
What didn’t work so well, and low points
People I met / re-connected with / spent time with
This year, I had two fun “consumption” goals – rewarding myself for relaxation that I got quite a bit of satisfaction out of. I set my Goodreads 52 books goal, (surpassed!) and 52 new to me movies. (This year I’m also planning on tracking my TV watching – it seems to improve my overall quality of choice when I write down what I consumer. I also plan on tracking my music listening with a focus on albums.)
Because this is theoretically a food blog, here were some of the highlights of my year in food, done middle school yearbook style:
A deeper dive into food superlatives of 2019:
Favorite Takeout: Shan-a-punjab butter chicken, Cava, Wegman’s California Rolls
Best Cookbook: Alison Roman’s Dining In (my cookbook of the year)
I’ve been wrapping up the last week of the year with reading, cooking, work (yes, we have some incredible things in store for us at Ompractice), at least three miles a day outside for my Race Menu Winter Warrior challenge, and more.
{Meals of Note:}
Chinese Tomato Eggs: soft scrambled eggs with shaoxing wine and sesame oil; with some smoked salmon. I wanted Chinese/Jewish/Turkish comfort food and this is what I came up with.
Pulled Pork with Arugula Salad: with cucumbers, lime juice, and a side of nectarines. I was going to have some baked beans with this, but I forgot.
Vietnamese Ginger Chicken Thighs: a great recipe from Melissa Clark’s Dinner: Changing the Game, over arugula salad with cucumber (sense a trend?) A good reminder that marinating meats overnight is always a good idea! Looked like this:
Refried beans with Chicken: a forgotten staple. This is one of my favorite comfort foods. (All it could have used were some HEB tortillas… but I’m due for another trip to Texas since I’ve eaten my freezer stash.
Pork Tenderloin with Peperonata: (top photo) arugula salad with cucumber. I love Peperonata – stewed peppers, onions, and tomato, with a nice hit of red wine vinegar at the end of cooking. It’s versatile and can be made days in advance and only gets better.
Turkey and Cranberry Bean Fagiole with Kale:defrosted a batch from my freezer, and ate for several lunches in a row.
I’ll be finishing up the last day of the year closing out loose ends, but I’m ready and excited for 2020! Thanks for sticking around here, I appreciate you all!
One of the key insights of the past decade: if I write it down on a list, I’m more likely to do it.
Lists enable me to dream and achieve in ways that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. They are the structure that enables me to envision more and do more. I keep master lists, reading lists, home projects, work lists, and more. Some are written as a way to to plan, others as a way to acknowledge achievements – one of the highlights this year was my “movie consumption list” – my goal to watch 52 new to me movies! (I even have lists of lists.)
One of my favorite lists to come back to each year is my Kitchen Resolutions: my commitment to spending more time doing the things I love: cooking, reading about food, talking about food, and eating…. all of the food.
I’ve been writing these resolutions for more than a decade, and some of them pop up year after year – affirm doing good things that work – and a handful are new each year. You can take a peek through previous years here: (2012) (2016) (2017) (2018)
First, here are some of my previous resolutions I’d like to continue with:
My weekly meal planning process – this has gone through different iterations over the years – waffling back and forth between digital and paper, depending on mood. Currently it’s a revised template that ends up either in my Evernote or paper journal (which I then snap a photo of before heading to the grocery store.) Each week I sit down and assess the things in the fridge or freezer that need to be used up, plan out things to batch cook, and dream up my dinners, lunches, and snacks. Then I shop.
Bucket list restaurants – I can count the number of times I ate out on my two hands in the past year. While I’m all for home cooking, I’d like to continue to eat my way through some of the local gems we have in this area. (To that end, I use the Eater 38 as a guide.)
100(0) fruits, nuts, and seed to try – here’s my list; quite a few of these I’ve definitely eaten (but can’t actually remember eating…. hello aging) so I’ve left them on my master list to actually re-try for the record. A good friend is on a quest to fall in love and try new vegetables, so I might rope her in to some of them and see how we do.
Minimize the amount of stuff on the counter in my kitchen –I generally like access to “all the things” in my kitchen. That doesn’t mean that they have to all be on the counters everywhere. This year I added a handful of new pots and pans without getting rid of other stuff, and it’s clear that I need a better storage solution for everything. (I did however add spice racks to my kitchen, which was a good move!)
Cooking recipes from cookbooks – while I’ve never been one to actually cook recipes from cookbooks regularly (I usually read, learn, and adapt), Alison Roman’s Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes had SUCH great recipes that I cooked many of them this year, and will concede that sometimes it’s fun to let someone trusted “take the wheel”. I’ll make an effort to add at least one cookbook recipe to my weekly meal plans, and combine this with some favorite cookbook re-reads:
What other resolutions are on the docket for 2020?
Blogging my weekly Good Things: yup, back on the wagon. I’ll note that one of the biggest differences between writing each week and not writing each week (hello, crazy back half of 2019!), was that without the suggestion of public accountability, my meals got much more boring, and not in a good way.
Cookbook Dinners: over the past few years I’ve made some half-hearted attempts to form a cookbook club, but I think I’ll take it up again this year, even if it’s only me doing the cooking. The last one I did was Zahav, and it was a good time for all. (Despite the recipes needing more seasoning, but I digress.) My goal here will be a minimal and doable 3 times this year.
Revise my backup list: (a version of it here) even when I meal plan, some days, I just want comfort food that requires little effort and really only muscle memory. A bowl of rice with yogurt, a box of Annie’s macaroni and cheese, or gasp – TJ’s chicken nuggets. I’m going to peruse Dinner: A Love Story, because I seem to recall that she has good inspiration here.
Food memoirs and literature: while I made it through more than 52 books in 2020, there was NARY a food memoir or food history, and boy do I need to change that. It’s one of my favorite genres. To do this week: add a handful of these to my January reading list to get off on a good start.
Garden 2020: this year I made the effort to grow more in my pots and had ample fresh herbs. I also weeded and tended to the back plot – and grew some medium-happy potatoes (I’ll probably go for bigger ones next year), an outsized rosemary, lavender, and more.
Other notes: taking a new stab at a Kitchen Projects list, having people over for casual meals more often, cooking with my Turkish spices more often, making a batch of ice cream every so often, baking pumpkin chocolate chip cake.
Do you have any kitchen resolutions this year?I’d love to hear about them!
The Second Lunch is a (mostly) food blog by Sam Tackeff about recipes, food writing, ingredient hunting, travel, healthy living, fitness, and everything in between.
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