Curses of Cooking for One

We're 3 weeks into the new year, and this long weekend seems like a good chance to evaluate progress on my new year's resolutions.

I had a couple of vague resolutions relating to food:

1. Try creating a new dish of food every week
2. Eat less preservatives

In general, the idea is simply to cook more at home, bring lunch to school, and eat out less often. Now, when I say "eat out" I generally mean the unhealthy stuff - I still want to explore new dishes at nice restaurants! And actually, I feel like one of the "curses" of learning how to cook more meals is that I generally don't want to eat at places with meals I feel like I could make myself. 

One of the steps I tried to start out with was to make a weekly meal plan. Figuring out what to make has fed my addictions to Food Network and Pinterest. Last week was rather successful; here's what I made: 

• Bread pudding - I had half a French baguette that was reaching its last breath, so I tried making my first bread pudding ever. It turned out pretty well (although I have nothing to compare it to!). That brings me to another curse of cooking more: there's no one to eat these dishes along with me! 
• Orange Chicken - This turned out very yummy too. But if I were to do it again, I wouldn't bread it. The breading ended up coming off and just lingered in the sauce. 
• Shrimp and Mango Salsa Two Ways - This was something I made without a recipe. I've made tons of pico de gallo, so the mango salsa was just another variation. Along with the shrimp and fixin's, I was able to make a few meals two different ways! 
• Noodles with Peanut Butter Sauce - No pictures unfortunately, but this was a delicious recipe that came from "In The Small Kitchen" by Cara Eisenpress and Phoebe Lapine. I bought this cookbook when Errol and I moved in together - and had a small kitchen! 

Overall, I've had a successful few weeks of not letting professional responsibilities get in the way of responsibilities to myself.