New Year’s resolution: Expand your food options, add new ingredients

A new year means new resolutions, which are usually designed to expand a person outside his or her comfort zone.

For some, like the columnist you’re currently reading, that is beginning an exercise plan that doesn’t include lifting a brownie to her mouth.

But for everyone else, I recommend a different resolution: expand your food.

I’m not saying go radical, like becoming a vegetarian when you’ve grown up eating venison for breakfast, lunch and supper.

But adding a new ingredient every week could make you realize that you have more options than Ramen or macaroni and cheese.

Like most college students, I tend to cook a lot of pasta. It’s cheap and easy, and when I’ve come home from a day of classes, the last thing I want is a meal that forces me to wait an hour for a chicken to roast.

But this past year I expanded the variety of food I ate. I tried couscous and added that to my palate. I even got so health-crazed that I ate granola, yogurt and fruit as breakfast for three months straight.

It’s easy to get stuck in a food rut, but cooking new cuisine is more than just buying a vegetable product that isn’t ketchup.

When I make a new dish, I get excited. I have no idea if what I made turned out well, or at least edible.

But that first moment when I stick my fork in, take a sample and nervously taste whatever I’ve cooked, that’s where the excitement kicks in.

Or as I like to think of it, the Emeril moment.

Just a warning though: When you start experimenting with food, there are going to be screw ups.

Sometimes you will make a cake that your boyfriend’s roommates refer to as fudge — and not in a good way.

Sometimes you’ll learn that some directions should be followed — and others ignored.

Sometimes you’ll learn that you will never bake a chicken without drying it out.

But the reason we’re at IU is to learn.

Or at least that’s the reason we pay tuition. And even though none of you will be graded on your ability to craft a three-course meal upon graduation, living on $20,000 is much more pleasant if you have a stock of solid recipes to cook.

I didn’t cook until I moved into my own apartment, and the progress that I’ve made from that first dry, bland-as-paper chicken would’ve been unbelievable three years ago.
So please, next time you’re at Kroger, wander off into a new aisle, look at some ingredients you’ve always been curious about, examine the beautiful raspberry color of a radish and walk away because radishes are disgusting.

But seriously, I recommend to all of you to commit to becoming better cooks this year, if not for yourselves, then for someone else.

Ladies, the saying that the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach is true. And men, when the ladies aren’t there, who’s going to feed you?

So this year, if you learn one thing, learn to feed yourself.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK: 

To start everyone off slow, I picked one of the few two-ingredient recipes I know: barbecue chicken.

Ingredients:
* BBQ sauce
* Chicken (I prefer breasts, but thighs and wings are also good)

Directions:
1. Preheat to 350 degrees
2. Defrost chicken
3. Spread an ample amount of barbecue sauce on chicken
4. Put chicken in oven; how long you cook depends on your oven and what kind of chicken. Just make sure to check up on it every five minutes after it’s been in there after 10 minutes
5. Remove chicken from oven
6. Pour more barbecue sauce over chicken, if desired
7. Eat
8. Be jealous of me for being from Memphis, home of the world’s best barbecue