Every year when the holiday visitors have packed up and gone, I can’t wait to get back to business. For me, that means lots of things, but I seem to focus on the fact that my family has been eating nothing but salted meats and white flour (shudder), and that we seem to receive enough gifts over Christmas to fill our entire (already full) house.

So I tend to ring in the new year trying to climb back on the same two bandwagons: healthy eating and keeping my house. These two things enable me to feel good physically and emotionally, and to devote my time to the things that truly matter (my husband, my kids, our school and farm).

I’m thinking a lot about food. Something I’m trying to do is incorporate more interesting meatless dishes and a bigger variety of grains and legumes. I made baked beans from scratch earlier this week. With them we ate homemade pita bread and apples. Well, I’m the only one who at the beans. Each child took one bite and politely filled up on pita.

The beans were a miserable failure, but my daughter was very impressed by my apple-flower.

For lunch today, I made ‘johnny cakes.’ These were a hit. Here is my recipe:

1 cup polenta or corn grits (you can use cornmeal too)
*I used a few tablespoons of flax seed meal in place of a bit of the grits
1 tsp salt
1 tsp honey
1 TBSP butter
3/4 cup boiling water (about half of mine was out-of-date kefir)

Soak all these together for a few minutes, then drop by heaping teaspoon full into warm olive oil (notice that I said warm, not hot). Cook for a few minutes, then flip. Make them as crispy as you like. I have some who prefer super-crispy and some who like it super-soft, so I do a few of each (I vote crispy). We had cheese and fruit salad with the cakes.

There were two left, but before I could take the picture, I ate another one.

Something I would really like to work hard on this year is vegetables. I’ve been running my food processor and adding vegetables to more dishes than my daughter could ever imagine (don’t tell her, she will have nightmares), but I would love some ideas. How do you like to eat and prepare your vegetables?

As you can see, I’m doing some foreshadowing with this post as well, so expect a housekeeping post soon. Oooooooo, I’m being all literary and stuff.