Project 365 – A Year of Family Cooking

Really, this is a crazy project I invented one evening that seemed awesome at the time. Let me tell you the whole story…

Several months ago I was standing in my kitchen doing what I love and not loving it so much.

I had too much "on my plate" that week. I was frazelled. I had mashed potatoes in my hair. My phone was buzzing with emails every few minutes. My dogs were barking at other dogs out the window. And although I'd read the receipe for "Almond Meal Chocolate Chip Cookies" at least seven times, I could not for the life of me remember how many cups of chips and sugar I was supposed to pour in to the bowl for a double batch. So – I kept having to remeasure and start all over.

I was stressed to the max. And when mama gets stressed, it's only for one reason – I'm overwhelmed.

Stop. Breathe.

I called my husband and daughter in the kitchen.

"Johanna – can you start peeling the cucumbers for Mommy?"

"Andrew – is there any way possible you can run to the store and grab some more almond meal and coconut milk while you're there? And..a bag of ice. Please…"

I'm not sure the other two were particularlyelated, but everyone hopped to it.

Delegation = I can breathe.

Then I remembered how much I love cooking, my chest was no longer ready to split open and I wondered why I hadn't asked for some help a long time ago.

Old habits are a brat sometimes.

As we sat down to eat I had a brilliant and somewhat totally insane thought -

"Why don't you cook one new recipe each day for a year and ask the entire family to pitch in?"

And so we birthed – Project 365 – A Year of Family Cooking.

Our aprons are locked and loaded to simmer, fry, chop, bake and broil.

It's really more of an experiment to see if we can do it.

Here are the benefits I'm theorizing:

1. I will get tons of practice asking for help. Plus, I'll be cooking a lot which is a great stress reliever (most of the time) and much-needed hobby to break me from my workaholic tendencies.
2. My darling daughter will have more family time, will learn the value of a cooked meal, gain much needed cooking skills and learn how to cook healthy.
3. My husband and I will enter in to a unified and balanced kitchen, increase our fun time and have fun experimenting with new recipes (not sure if this is his idea of fun, but oh well…he already agreed to it).

Altogether – we're going to create a lot of memories, most of which I'm hoping we will look fondly on someday.

If you have a favorite recipe, please post it below! Clearly, I'm going to need them!!!