Few things cause whiplash quite like the list of things you resolved to accomplish a year ago, written in a postholiday haze of euphoria and optimism. Around this time last year, I outlined my own 2023 kitchen resolutions in this very newsletter. I resolved to cut down on restaurant meals, stop skipping breakfast and cook one new recipe from a cookbook each week. I asked you to share your own resolutions with me and said we’d “see how we did a year from now.”
I love to keep score, and I can report that I’m two for three on those lofty goals, having dined out and ordered delivery far less and, for the most part, done a good job of eating before noon.
So have you, apparently! Some of your favorite Veggie newsletter recipes were of the breakfast variety, including Yossy Arefi’s bircher muesli, Ali Slagle’s New Mexico breakfast burritos and Melissa Clark’s spinach and Gruyère breakfast casserole from last week.
And you just as often gravitated toward more luxurious, restaurant-caliber dishes, like Kay Chun’s mushroom piccata and Martha Rose Shulman’s risottoesque farro with mushrooms, both worthy of menu real estate in the finest Italian dining rooms. And you loved this vegetable pajeon, which came from a restaurant chef here in New York, Sohui Kim of Insa and the Good Fork, by way of Melissa Clark.
The cookbook resolution was a tougher one to tackle, I’ll admit, despite the dozens of cookery spines surveilling me from the many shelves and tabletops across my apartment.
But I did make Hetty Lui McKinnon’s crispy gnocchi with tomato and red onion on repeat during the summer. I couldn’t get enough of Samantha Seneviratne’s Technicolor treats and Sohla El-Waylly’s rainbow rave cookies during Cookie Week. I relied on the tofu queen Yewande Komolafe’s glazed tofu with chile and star anise on busy weeknights and turned to Yossy for all manner of snackable cakes and bakes. Considering that all five talented recipe developers published cookbooks this year, I think I’ll still cross that resolution off my list.
I’m still working on my resolutions for 2024. But I’d love to hear yours (and perhaps glean a bit of inspiration in the process)! Write me: theveggie@nytimes.com. And in the meantime, have the most joyous, delicious New Year.
