General:
- Save 20% of our income
- Take a family vacation
- Get a nice (professional) family photo taken
- Consolidate my old retirement accounts
- Renew the kids' passports
- Publish one piece of writing a week (a blog post, freelance piece, etc)
- Update my personal site's visual style to improve readability and make blog posts more prominent
Cooking:
- Cook five new things, from at least three from different sources (cookbooks, websites, etc)
BJJ: Variety, Confidence, Fitness
- Visit at least six gyms that aren't mine
- Roll with any new person who comes in the gym
- Roll for one continuous 30-minute round
Projects:
- Launch at least one project from my brainstorm list
- Make a game other people can play
- Generate at least $1,000 in revenue from side projects
Exercise:
- 60 minutes of cardio per week
- 60 minutes of stretching or mobility work per week
- 60 minutes of weight training per week
Books to read:
- Heretics of Dune
- Chapterhouse: Dune
- InkHeart
- Her Own Hero
- The Great Gatsby
- Star Wars: Into the Light
Books in consideration:
- Moby Dick
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- To Raise a Boy
- These Truths
- Rich, White and Blue
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- The Round House: A Novel
- Southern Cross the Dog
- The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese
- The Goldfinch: A Novel
- Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel
- The Good Lord Bird: A Novel
- The Underground Railroad: A Novel
- Exit West: A Novel
- Educated: A Memoir
- Sourdough: A Novel
- Pachinko
- The Dutch House: A Novel
- The Island of Sea Women: A Novel
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- Horse
- Learning to Optimize Movement
- Demon Copperhead
- Remarkably Bright Creatures
- Mother Night
- Let Us Descend
- West with Giraffes
- The Three-Body Problem
- Parable of the Sower
- Leviathan Wakes
- Why I Cook
- The Inner Game of Tennis
Cooking
Jan. 8: This pineapple chicken was pretty good. It's basically a sweet and sour chicken variation. I stir fried everything separately before combining at the end, which I think was the right choice. Could have cut the pineapple smaller. Would make again.
Jan. 12: Made Jean Varda chicken from San Francisco a la Carte for Laura's birthday. She's made it a bunch of times, but this was my first try. Had to run out to the store at the last minute for bread, because dipping bread in sauce is pretty much the whole point.
Jan. 19: Did these country-style ribs in the slow cooker. Not bad, maybe too much cumin, probably good on a sandwich.
Feb. 18: Made a Chinese-takeout style lemon chicken from an old cookbook. (My MIL sent us a bunch of photocopied pages, along with a bunch of lemons from her backyard.) Decent, not amazing. It's deep fried in the wok, using a batter of cornstarch and egg yolks.
April 2: We did this larb-like thing with ground turkey, snap peas and bell peppers in the wok, and it was a surprise hit (with three out of four of us). I want to make real larb now.
April 20: This porchetta made with pork shoulder is one of the best things I've done on the smoker, or maybe in this kitchen. Lots of prep, but I had Tony butterfly the meat for me and everything was pretty straightforward after that. I ended up with two smaller cuts instead of one large one, and that also made the cook faster. Will definitely try this again, maybe with different filling (Calabrian chile paste?).
June 2: Did my first outdoor stir fry, using the side burner on the new grill. This recipe was good, but it definitely would have set off the smoke alarm inside.