Gastronomic Goals

The folk at Fed Up & Drunk share their foodie resolutions for 2014…

As this year comes to a close, the time has come to start thinking about resolutions. Although many believe making New Year’s resolutions is a pointless affair – especially if going to the gym is involved – it’s nice to have goals, if only for the smug sense of achievement you’ll feel on the rare occasion that one does come good.

Fad diets aside, food-based resolutions are some of the easiest to keep – for example, Fed Up & Drunk’s Sally resolved to eat more fruit in 2013, and has managed to keep her desk draw as well-stocked as a greengrocers with all manner of fruits throughout the year. It doesn’t need to be too extravagant, or, indeed, too ambitious (swearing off all chocolate, cake or any other culinary vice is never going to last 12 months) – just a short but sweet gastronomic to-do list to make sure you don’t get stuck in a foodie rut. Here are our resolutions for this year – feel free to share yours too.

Time for Breakfast
Emma aims to make breakfast a more important meal in 2014. She says: ‘I’d like to spend a bit of time making something tasty and nutritious while listening to Classic FM, perhaps with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, and taking more time over it. This in turn means I will have to be more organised in general, so it’s a good start!’

Hard Cheddar
What will Sally do next, following her fruit-based victory of 2013? Well, in 2014, she’s taking on cheese. Not giving it up, you understand – let’s keep it real. But she does want to eat less of the stuff, because of its lack of nutritional value as opposed to, say, all that fruit she’s so dutifully eaten. More fruit, less cheese is the motto here.

Planning for the Planet
My resolution is all about getting organised. At the moment, I pop to the supermarket pretty much every day, deciding what I want for dinner based on whatever cravings I fancy giving into, rather than whipping something up with what I already have in the fridge. Thus, I often end up wasting ingredients leftover from the previous night’s dinner, which in turn means I’m contributing significantly to the 7 million tonnes of food and drink we Brits throw out every year. I’ll be making friends with my fridge and doing lots of meal-planning in 2014.

Lazy No More
Although we all, of course, love good food, there comes a time (say, after work on a Monday) when you just don’t feel like cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Hello, pre-packaged pizza. Holly, however, is hoping to banish ready-made food in 2014 and embrace cooking from scratch.

Not So Sweet
Maddie’s resolution is perhaps the hardest of all: to cut down on sugar. With biscuits and cakes making the rounds at the office on a regular basis, it’s so easy to succumb to the sweet stuff. If she manages to resist, though, she’ll definitely feel better for it – aside from the teeth-rotting, obesity-causing credentials of this troublesome treat, sugary snacks also cause that all-too-familiar afternoon slump that only an extra-strong coffee can fix (which can cause sleeplessness, leading to sugar cravings the next day. It’s a vicious cycle, I tell you). If she pulls it off, I predict Maddie will be smugly alert, while us sugar-loving folk reach for that extra-strong cup of Joe come mid-afternoon.