I have a lot to say about all the great food I ate over the holidays. But I also have a lot to look forward to in the beginning of 2009, and I can’t help sharing.
1. Night of the Barrels @ Extreme Beer Fest (via Beer Advocate) – I bought my boyfriend and I tickets to this as a Christmas present. I’m happy about my timing, they’re sold out already! 50+ wood-aged beers will be there for the tasting.
2. A 3-session sewing class. I know the basics but would love learn some tricks, and how to care for my machine.
3. A 2-session Veggie gardening planning class – I can’t wait to get a jumpstart on the garden.
4. Making ice cream – Jeremy got me an ice cream maker for Christmas, and I made key lime pie sherbert last night. Maybe this year I will have that ice cream social I threatened to have last year.
5. A winter weekend – last year we went to Maine in February and it was cold, but great. This year I would love to see some maple sugaring.
6. A spring getaway – somewhere warm but not too far away.
7. Using my restaurant gift certificates – I just got $230 in restaurant gift certificates for $25, thanks to a deal through Borders Perks & restaurant.com. We’ve been trying to stay on budget and cook at home, so this should give us an excuse to venture out more often.
8. Putting local events on my calendar -There’s always so much going on, and we all need an excuse to leave the house in the winter.
9. Watching Netflix on demand – I hook my laptop to the TV with an HDMI cable, and have 12,000 movies at my fingertips. I find this much more worthwhile than a cable subscription.
10. Knitting during lunch – my coworkers have a 1x a week knitting group. Maybe I’ll attempt my first sweater?
11. Walking to work – this will be so great once it’s not a skating rink out there. Yesterday, I took the bus. Yuck.
12. Cast iron – my parents gave us a griddle and large cast iron skillet. Time to cook up that thick bacon that’s been waiting patiently in the freezer!
Sounds like a FUN year!! Be sure to post each event as they happen!
Great, the one time I don’t got to Night of the Barrels is the time you get tickets… 🙂
Re: Ice cream. If you don’t have David Lebovitz’s book, I highly, highly recommend it.
I wish there were more restaurants.com restaurants up here. I’ve got a near-limitless collection of $25 gift certificates to the one place up here I like because of that promo.
Stacey – I should!
Kaszeta – Too bad you won’t be there…this is my first time. I do have David Lebowitz’s book. I found the Roasted Banana Ice Cream recipe on a blog and loved it so much that I had to buy the book. I have a ton of recipes bookmarked to try!
Any chance you could post that key lime pie sherbert recipe? It sounds awesome, and I’d love the first use of my ice cream maker of 2009 to be spent making that.
Cast iron is the best, isn’t it? Kudos on the skillet!
Christina –
It’s actually from Epicurious –
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Key-Lime-Pie-Sorbet-235174
It came out well, but if I made it again I would do two things
1. add the lime zest (about a tablespoon)
2. let it cool longer before it goes in the ice cream machine