For the next year of blog posts, I plan to learn to cook better meals. My husband finally has a somewhat predictable schedule, for the first time in our marriage. Even the evenings when he’s not home, the kids are old enough to appreciate a home-cooked meal.

Right now, I do not love cooking. My mom and sisters are great cooks, but somehow this domestic talent – which most women possess – has escaped me.

Learning to follow a new set of recipes won’t do it for me, either. I want to understand why certain food combinations and techniques work. I want to be able to look in the refrigerator and use what’s there to make an enjoyable dinner any time.

I’m starting with one piece of encouragement: At this time last year, I wouldn’t have dared to change the settings on my camera. I was sure I’d break the camera! So maybe by this time next year, I’ll no longer be worried about chopping off my fingers, overcooking the meat, or tweaking an established recipe.

Moving on to other thoughts…

Julie and Annie haven’t dropped off the face of the earth, I promise. They both have posts planned, but it may be a while before they can add them here.

If you’ve made it this far into my rambling…

I plan to password protect some of my posts. Most of the time, I love it when Google finds my posts and sends visitors here! But there are a few posts that need some protection from the search engines. The password for these posts is:

4friends&family

Please feel free to pass this along to friendly faces who have been following the blog. If you forget the password, you can always find this post again by clicking the “archives” drop-down arrow (now in the right-hand sidebar). Select the September 2011 set of posts.

I’ll test this password with another post in a few days, after I’ve bumped this post further down the page.