New Year's Resolutions

Last year was a mixed-bag for me. On the one hand, my beautiful niece was born, Husband and I moved into our own house, I got a job after 9 months of redundancy, and I had some great gluten free dining experiences. On the other hand, I developed more complications with my Crohn's Disease, meaning that my diet is now permanently low-residue, and seeing me in huge amounts of pain, violently ill and exhausted for much of the time.

This year will be better! I'm not big on resolutions, they usually fall by the wayside by January 6th. This year, however, I will strive to keep my resolutions all year.

I have one food resolution. I will develop more skills in the kitchen. I have already decided to make my own sausages - the ideal way of knowing exactly what goes into your food - and this Christmas I boiled and glazed a ham (a first for me). No longer will I neglect to try a recipe because it "looks too hard", or because an ingredient is unusual to me.

As an early start to this resolution, I attempted to confront one of my biggest dislikes. Meat and fruit in one dish... I can't understand why people put sultanas in curries, cranberries with turkey, apricots in tagines, it jars my palate to taste sweetness with savoury meat. I know that I am in a minority in this so I cooked Nigella's lamb tagine with dates and pomegranate juice for our New Year's Eve celebrations. I loved it! This sweet, sticky sauce with rich lamb works so well. I was wrong. So much so that I accompanied the dish with brown rice salad with pomegranate seeds, lemon juice, parsley and coriander. Those juicy little jewels popping in your mouth alongside the tagine made it an ideal celebration dish.

Now, I'm off to find some exciting sausage recipes!