Revisiting the New Years Resolutions - Part Two

Picking up where I left off in Part One, I'm finishing off my update on my resolutions for the year. Let's see how I did with the rest...

3. Read more: One of my goals this year was to read more. Having joined a book club for the first time in my life, I have read a few new books that I never would've picked up before, some of which I've liked, others I didn't, but I think that's actually a good thing about book clubs - you never know what you're going to get, and even if you don't really like the book, at least it exposed you to something new and different.

Our latest book was The Secret Daughter by Shilpi S Gowda, which I really enjoyed. If you're looking for a new book, I highly recommend this one, or another one of my favourites, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer. (Okay, I'm biased - that was my choice for book club a few months ago, but I'm only championing it because everyone at book club loved it! And I'd heard so many good things about it before I picked it. It's a really lovely read!) Next on our list is The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I've heard good things about this one too, so I'm excited to start it in the next few days.

4. Worry less: This is a difficult one for me. The people closest to me in life know all too well my bad habit of over-thinking things, from major life decisions to whether or not I should buy those leopard print heels. (for the record...always buy the heels. They're an investment. Trust me on this.) Like all bad habits, this is a tough one to break, but I've really been trying hard to get myself to chill out when it comes to making decisions.

I read a great quote on Pinterest a little while ago and it helped me see things from a different perspective: "Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being positive about what could go right." Over-thinking tends to be about negative stuff, so I've been trying to think about all the positive things that could come out of decisions I've made, and tried to focus on them instead of the negative things. Like everything else in my life, this is a work in progress. Plus, having certain friends, who know me all too well, give me a mental slap upside the head is a good way to stop and check myself too.

When I began 2012, I'd said that it was going to be the Year of Elizabeth (Part 2). And so far, things are turning out okay. Now, we're just about into October, and with only three months left in the year, I'm determined to make these the best three yet. We'll see how it goes.

Until next time!

Revisiting the New Years Resolutions - Part One

At the beginning of 2012, I made a list of four things I wanted to try and do this year. Now that we're more than halfway through the year, (which I can hardly believe - WHERE did the time go?!) I thought it was be a good idea to check in with myself and see how I've been doing with keeping my resolutions. This might jog your memory as well, and make you revisit any resolutions you may have made earlier in the year too!

1. Learn to cook more: When 2012 began, a good friend of mine and I decided we wanted to try a bunch of new recipes that were relatively easy but still delicious to expand our palettes. Being a big Jamie Oliver fan, and having watched his television series where he teaches people who have never picked up a frying pan in their life how to cook, I thought his cookbook, Jamie's Food Revolution, would be a good place to start. We began our cooking series, Transatlantic Tastes (Since we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic for parts of the year, we cook "together" via Skype) and learned a few new recipes while catching up on what was new with each other.

Now, as I'd said in my original blog post, I figured that we wouldn't be able to cook every single week, because we're both busy people, and I knew life would get in the way. So while we haven't cooked as often as we would've liked, we did manage to do our cooking sessions a handful of times, and we are still trying to get back on track. Stay tuned for more recipes!

2. Spend less: This year, I wanted to spend less; time, money, whatever. I took a look at my upcoming year and all the things I knew would be costing me money over the next 12 months (like weddings, travel, etc.) and wrote down all of my bills and loans to pay off, and set up a budget. Thanks to online banking, a lot of these can be paid automatically at certain times of the month, and also thanks to the helpful bank teller at BMO, I've been able to work out a schedule and figure out how to pay off some of those loans, while still putting away money into my savings.

I've also been spending less time on things like watching television, but during the summer, that's not exactly hard - there's not a lot of good television happening (except for Mad Men and Suits, but the former finished early in the summer and the latter only takes up an hour of my time each week, so that's okay, right? Plus, who can resist the charming Harvey Specter? Not this girl.) I've been spending less time being lazy on the couch and much more time hitting the gym. If you have a membership, you might as well use it as much as possible, right?

Have I jogged your memory just yet? I'll be back soon with Part Two of Revisiting the New Years Resolutions!

Transatlantic Tastes - Crunchy Garlic Chicken

Before Transatlantic Tastes went on hiatus, we actually prepared a recipe that I hadn't blogged about. To be honest, I forgot about it, because my camera died right before our cooking session, and I couldn't take any pictures. But then, as luck would have it, I remembered that I'd snapped a few with the camera on my phone! 

So, here, after a few lost months, is another session of Transatlantic Tastes! Our recipe for the week: Crunchy Garlic Chicken.

I'd actually made this recipe before N and I started Transatlantic Tastes and it's been delicious every time. It's a bit time consuming, but the ingredients are pretty basic and the results are pretty tasty.   

                                       

The ingredients included:

- 1 clove of garlic

- 1 lemon

- 6 saltine crackers (I used Jacob's Cream Crackers)

- 2 tablespoons of butter

- 4 sprigs of fresh Italian parsley (I didn't have any fresh parsley, but I did have some freeze-dried Litehouse Parsley, which worked just as well!)

- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

- 2 heaped tablespoons all-purpose flour

- 1 large egg

- 2 skinless chicken breast fillets

- olive oil

It did take some assembly, but once I got going, I got into a rhythm of flour, egg yolk, crust, and didn't mix up my hands...too much. They were still pretty coated in everything by the end of it though. Oh well - it's hard to cook something like this and not get your hands a bit messy.

Fingers crossed I've timed each side correctly...

The end result was, as I said before, delicious. And what I really like about it is that you can use full chicken breasts like I did below, or you can also cut up your chicken and make chicken nuggets, which, growing up (alright, fine, and still today) were my favourite food. 

Jamie explains this recipe step by step in his book and keeps everything simple as usual. If you're looking for a delicious chicken dish, why not give this one a try, and pair it with a simple salad?

Looking pretty good!

Until next time, happy cooking!