I've been struggling in the back of my head to come up with an appropriate New Years goal for 2011 for the last few weeks. Yes, the fact that we're almost to February hasn't yet convinced me that this is a lost cause. In recent years past I've made my share of misguided and over-the-top resolutions. I've also made a few that I've actually met. Among my goals in 2006 were to become a Paralegal (check), move out of the efficiency Kisha and I were currently sharing (check) and into "PARADISE HILLS APTS" (um..what?). In March of 2007 (see, I'm doing good, it's only January right now) I recorded among my goals to "cease purchasing books for a year" (failed totally), become a school teacher (nope), and to "Read 8-10 books" (I read 12 that year). With some success in the workplace, comes feelings that nothing is beyond your reach. So, on the last day of 2007 I set some more ambitious personal goals, among which were "play the piano with moderate skill" (ahm, no), and "work my way successfully through the 1st Chinese unit of Rosetta Stone (I don't even own it, I never have). I didn't record any New Years goals in 2009 (probably wishing not to face the music with my prior 2008 resolutions). So, after giving it more thought than I probably should have, I've decided that I'll just have one resolution for 2011. My resolution is keep learning. I like it because it's vague and no one can really say I failed at it (I will have surely learned something by years end). So, in honor of this new 2011 spirit, I took some time over the MLK holiday to make my first foray into the kitchen (that didn't involve washing dishes). I made a pie from scratch, a lemon margarine pie. I even made the crust from scratch. For those of you that don't know a lemon margarine pie has three parts, the crust, the filling and the margarine. Of these, I figured the crust and the margarine would be the toughest. I'm proud to say I made a pretty good crust, and a passable margarine (I think), but when I cut into my pie, after spending literally hours on it, I discovered that the filling had all the solidarity of soup. It turns out that eggs have an enzyme that eats starch like there's no tomorrow, and under-cooking the filling will allow this enzyme to live to eat another day. So, I wasn't able to eat a slice of my pie, because I was unwilling to take a spoon to it. That's alright though, it's still January and there's plenty of time to butcher some other art!
