Why I Don't Do Resolutions...

I honestly don't know why I bother making "goal lists" or "resolutions" each New Year's Eve. I mean, really: looking back a year ago, I published a HUGE list of both my invented recipes and other people's blogged posts to try. Oh, how naive! In the past 365 days, I made eight... ONLY EIGHT! of the 34 to-tries I listed. Some of the things on last year's list have dropped off more or less permanently while others (like the Dutch Crunch Bread and Hawaiian Sweet Bread from Baking Bites for example) are still firmly in place.

This year was a big one for culinary achievements on my end, though. I completed a baking course at George Brown college in Toronto, baked one heck of an expensive batch of cookies, enrolled full-time in a 2-year Nutrition Management program in September, won a wicked Yahoo-sponsored contest, gave a nutrition seminar and watched my garden explode (again! Anw who could forget the carrot attack?). It was a big year for celebrations too, between my grandma's small gathering in January, my mom's HUGE 50th birthday party (with three different cakes and an awesome quinoa salad) and my dad's slightly problematic banana caked birthday in March, my 20th in April (with the colossal fail cake) and Andrew's 21st in July.

I spent a lot of this year learning from other food bloggers too, and boy oh boy did I learn a lot! I made some amazing mincemeat with help from David, I turned leftover frosting and some flavour extracts into cakeballs a la Bakerella. Bread-wise, not only did I have a resounding sourdough success, but I also went the veggie route with Alanna's ingenious recipe using beets and Meg Kat's sweet pumpkin creation. I conquered the exotic French macaron with some great inspiration from Tartlette too! Andrew and I joined We [Heart] Food in baking up one hell of a delicious vegan eggplant casserole, topping anything savoury that could have come out of my kitchen!

It's been a heck of a year, and I want to thank everyone who helped make mine as wonderful as it was. What will next year hold in the Yummy Smells kitchen? We are all going to have to wait and see for that one - but who knows?