And so it begins.

And so it begins.  Actually, it began yesterday.  Well, actually it began last August, but who’s counting?  Last August, I decided not to eat out.  Anymore.  At all.  Why?  Lots of reasons – financial, health, a commitment to keeping my kids off the street because we all know that if you don’t eat dinner every night with every member of your family they will end up pregnant and on drugs and worst of all, living at home with you when they’re 30.  Who the hell am I kidding?  Mostly I just wanted to save some money and lose some weight.  Not necessarily in that order.

I was initially inspired by the wise and brilliant and funny Elizabeth Jayne Liu and her blog  Flourish in Progress.  In it, Ms. Liu details her year-long “project” in which she swears off any non-essential shopping, something that had become a fixture in her life.  Toward the end of her project, she challenged her readers to try a project of their own.  Great idea, I thought!  Easy!

Now, if you’ve ever met me, or seen me more than two days in a row, you’ll know that shopping is not an issue for me.  So, I decided to take on food.

I managed in my test run to keep from eating out at all from August 1 through November 17 (my birthday).  What happened after that?  Well, let’s just suffice it to say that recovery doesn’t always happen all at once.  The holidays happened.  The kids off for almost three weeks happened. Not that it’s an excuse.  So, instead of just giving up and moving on to learning to knit socks, we’re starting over.

Well, that’s great, dear, but it’s January.  Why are we just now hearing about this project?  Excellent question.  My best friend keeps asking me how much longer I am going to blog in my head.  Turns out that the cooking and eating business wasn’t all that hard for me – I love to cook and don’t work full time.   What was hard for me was writing about it.  Which really makes no sense because I love to write.  Turns out that the real challenge, the real project for me may be a lot more about fear than food.

Wish me luck.