New Year's Resolution: to eat and cook better

If you want to eat better this year, and by better I mean not only in terms of quality, but in terms of simplifying your cooking and doing more with less, than you owe it to yourself to read this column by Mark Bittman: The Minimalist - The Latest Must-Haves for the Pantry - NYTimes.com.

It's packed like a good pantry with lots of great advice. I highly recommend that you print it and start making meal plans and grocery lists with it.

Going over it, I thought of some other ideas that could suppliment his, such as:

Fresh garlic: another thing you should get. It's much better than the bottled kind.

Fresh herbs: great idea, but if you are like me, you end up throwing them out at the end of the week, which seems like a waste. The trick to that is what he suggests: make pesto. You can make pesto with more than basil and pinenuts and parmesan. There are other pesto recipes out there that use parsely and walnuts and cilantro and lots more. Drizzle the pesto on soups, roasted vegetables and roast meats (great on a grilled chop), and of course you can combine it with cream and use as a sauce for fresh pasta.

Stock: if you are following Mark Bittman's advice, try throwing in some of those fresh herbs you have around as well. It will add that much more flavour.

Oils: get a small bottle and toss some of your extra fresh herbs in it and then cover them in olive oil. You can then use this for making your own pesto, or use it for cooking. (This is handy if you want to add flavour to your cooking but are dealing with children who consider even a fleck of green to be a major turnoff.) A small bottle is better to prevent the herbs and oil for hanging around too long.

Croutons: another trick for making your own croutons is fry up some bite sized pieces of bacon in a pan with cubes/small chunks of bread. Then toss both the bread and the bacon in your salad. For more flavour, add a shallot or two. You can even toss some vinegar in the pan (get a recipe for this) and make a warm vinaigrette.

Bread crumbs: think out of the box here. Don't just use white bread. Rye bread can make great bread crumbs, especially if it has carraway seeds. (Fantastic for coating pork). Or try pumpernickel. Really any good savoury bread with good flavour will make for interesting bread crumbs.

Look up some Italian recipes that use bread crumbs sauteed in olive oil and tossed on pasta. Simple and tasty.

Grains: although orzo and couscous are pastas and not grains, they can be good substitutes for grains in terms of variety.

Prosciutto: another great use of prosciutto is to wrap it around a sweet slice of fruit. It makes a great snack!

Enjoy!

(Delicious looking photo of good olive oil, balsamic vinegar and wonderful bread from Neeta Lind's photostream on flickr.com)