We’re almost through February 2012 and I have to say that this year has been really good for me so far.
I started out strong with my health and fitness motivation where Nick and I regularly visited the gym several times a week for a whole month in preparation of our upcoming 5K race. We’ve slacked off the last few weeks but our motivation is still strong so I’m confident we’ll be back in the swing of things in no time.
I’ve also been following through with my New Year’s resolution. The first new thing that I tried (twice, actually) was a pole fitness class which was so much fun that I’d love to do it again and again. I’m sure I’d be a great pole dancer! Another first, that I probably wouldn’t have done without setting my resolution, was to cook dinner for a co-worker who just had a baby and her family.
Now, I say that I probably wouldn’t have done this without the resolution because I’m very anxious about cooking for other people — I mean I want them to like it (obviously) — and not because I didn’t like or want to help this particular co-worker. She’s actually one of my favorite people to work with and don’t tell her, but I kind of want to be like her when I grow up! But sometimes, no matter how badly I want to do something, if it’s unfamiliar territory I’m easily scared off. which is one of the reasons for my resolution. In this case, I don’t cook for people on a regular basis with the exception of Nick and he has to like my cooking because he’s my husband. Also, I’m very sensitive about my cooking (among other things) so if someone doesn’t like my cooking I’d be crushed! So anyway, my coworker had her baby and her supervisor organized a group to choose a night to cook for her and her husband and their small child. I really wanted to help them out so I decided to do it. Yay!
There were lots of dietary restrictions but that actually didn’t bother me because my best friend has most of the same restrictions. I later learned that this has scared off some other potential cookers so point for me 🙂 I was actually able to choose a simple, easy recipe pretty quickly. I decided to make a Chicken Curry Apple Stir-fry with brown rice that I’ve made for Nick and myself several times, but minus the chicken as coworker is vegetarian. No problem. Then my only concern was logistics. Where should I cook the food? I wanted it to be as fresh as possible so I didn’t want to make it the night before and take it as leftovers. They probably wouldn’t have minded that but I personally don’t like having leftovers so I didn’t want to serve them to other people. I could have come home after work to make it but by the time it was ready and I drove to their house, it would kind of late. Plus it was silly to leave my office, which was like 5 minutes from her house, to come to my house and then turn around go back.
Luckily, our office has a sweet kitchen with a full range and refrigerator and lots of cooking utensils. So I brought all of the ingredients with me to work that day and around 5:00 I started cooking. I’ve never made the rice in the recipe so I was just going to make some that I already had but I noticed at the last minute that this rice blend had some wheat berries (or something like that) in it, which falls into the aforementioned dietary restrictions. So I had to run across the street to the co-op where they, again luckily, had some already made. This actually saved me time so it was probably a blessing in disguise. I cooked up the stir-fry and took it to their house. Success!
Do you think this counts toward my resolution? It’s something I’ve never done before but it’s also not mind-blowing. I’m going with yes because it was a fun, grown-up experience. What do you think?
P.S. I forgot to mention that I have a few more new things lined up, including a live performance and super awesome trip, so make sure you stay tuned.
