Happy New Year!

My New Years resolution is to shop less. What? not surprising? Having been inspired by Maria's bombardment of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping: What Would Jesus Buy?, I get the point.

In my defense, I actually do not shop as much as people think. I'm not a bargain basement shopper-I do not and will not ever scour the Internet searching for deals. It's just not me. But I also don't buy a bunch of crap. I like to save and buy something expensive and really nice. For example, I have one winter scarf-but it's a Burberry. I have at the most 8 sweaters but they are cashmere. Two beautiful purses I use daily but they were gifts. I'm all about quality-I have much less volume in my closet than I used to but it's filled with nice, well-structured, expensive pieces that will last and I can hand down to Elise.

So there you have it-last year it was the cooking goal and this year the shopping. I really feel I have cultivated my cooking skills over the year and turned out some truly delightful dishes. Last night I received the stamp of approval from Mike (one would think he's obligated to say nice things but he is surprisingly frank) that I was, in fact, now a fantastic cook. I perfected my roasted pepper, garlic and tomato sauce simply by using the veggies in the crisper that were about to expire. I added shrimp and whole wheat pasta to the mix and it was exquisite. Mike's philosophy about what makes a good cook is "to use what you have and make something extraordinary". Indeed.