Another New Year's Resolution Down

I may not talk about them much, but I'm still tackling my 2011 new year's resolutions with good energy, just as when I formulated them way back in 2010. During my weekly review (not to be confused with my weekly summaries here) I always check my list of new year's resolutions, so they're never ever forgotten, explaining how I'm so well keeping on them. Recently I've had the pleasure of getting another one down: cooking and eating an entirely grass-fed steak. Well, for cost purposes I compromised with ground beef, but still it's pretty much the same thing given it's muscle meat -- steak -- ground up.

It was delicious. I just went with a simple salt and pepper setup in my patties, and was surprised at how different the meat was. Way more succulent and juicy than conventional grain-fed counterparts, and rather than having a savory meaty taste it was actually quite sweet, had a little tang to it, and was almost buttery. I liked it. I liked it a lot and yearn for more. Hopefully in the future I can get to affording a nice grass-fed pot roast or the likes. If you haven't tried grass-fed, then give it a shot!

I've already had free-range chicken. Though while it wasn't pasture-raised, it did have a very small amount of grain in its diet. However, I have yet to try anything in the realm of pasture pork. If I ever do make myself wealthy I'd like to make this the only meat I eat. Heck, given my culinary aspirations I'd like a giant meat cooler to stock to the brim. But patience and work are needed before that happens.

Also, as you might already know, another new year's resolution has been completed by my purchasing a digital camera to practice food photography with. I regret waiting so long now, as I'm impressed with what satisfying results I'm still able to obtain with my cheap equipment and frugal setup; I thought it'd be much more expensive. In truth, I probably could have gotten a camera near the beginning of this year, as I certainly had the savings set aside for it, but I misjudge the expenses, waited too long, and redirected my savings towards moving to Texas. Oh well: It's here now.

From here in my resolutions, I have yet to try sous vide cooking and one more kind of salt. For the former, I've been intrigued for a while with the concept of precision cooking, but never tried it. When the SousVide Supreme came out some Objectivist friends raved at how wonderful it is, so it's a culinary delight I'm missing out on. For the latter, I made the goal of trying three different kinds of salt and have so far tried two so far, though I don't want to name them right now since one was included in a chocolate bar I have yet to review.

The two goals I'm stumbling on, however, are reading 20 books and writing activism-oriented articles. The former has been difficult in completing since I've not only been having trouble getting to my books, I've also learned it's best to read some books just for isolated, valuable sections, which makes their reading not count towards my goal. However, I think I may have a new strategy: Skim through non-fiction books for valuable parts, for my education, and rely on entertainment books such as great literature to satisfy my cover-to-cover requirements. As for the activism, I'm not sure yet whether I'd say I've failed this goal, because I am being more diligent in posting political articles with my commentary on my social networking profiles and have hardly been keeping quiet about my views. In this case, I'm having trouble with my value hierarchy, as I just don't want to dedicate the amount of time it takes to continuously write long activist articles for newspapers and the like. So far I think I'm doing well.

It might be difficult to make that last push to get all my goals completed before the year is up, but I think most of them can be done. The only one I'm skeptical about is the sous vide cooking, as I don't think it'd be possible for me to arrange a setup given my current cook top access, though maybe I might be able to attend a demonstration or something. We'll see.

I'm proud of myself for sticking to my goals like this, and am already contemplating 2012 plans.