A Resolution we can Sink our Teeth Into

So we've greeted another year; holidays were a bit hectic with lots of overtime for work; we ended up not doing a large Yule celebration this year, but we made up for it at secular New Year with my first from-scratch Prime Rib Roast.  It was very good and it is now very gone.

Jo and I were pretty firm in our opinion that we didn't want to do any New Year's Resolutions this year; in fact, we had some conversations a few weeks back about how it seems that the whole world seems to have dismissed the whole New Year Resolution tradition as a laughable cliché.  The morning "news" shows seemed to make a joke of the whole thing this year, and even old standbys like cooking publications, who usually have "Light" recipes in January, seem to be skipping it:  Both Serious Eats and Food Network Magazine are headlining "Comfort Food" instead this year.

Speaking of Food Network Magazine and comfort food, though, I was going through the January issues I have to look for dinner ideas, and I found a "Fun Cooking" feature for "A Year's Worth of Chocolate" in the 2015 issue.  So I've ended up making a resolution after all, as a gift to my sweetie who loves chocolate and wishes I would make more desserts:  I've made a commitment to make all twelve recipes this year, one per Full Moon (less the Blue Moon that we will have this summer).  Last night was our Quickening Moon, so today on my day off I spent the afternoon making recipe #1, this Chocolate Blackout Cake with Chocolate Crunch (aka the Weapon of Mass Consumption).  It didn't turn out completely picture-perfect (the top layer crumbled as I was trying to assemble the cake), but it seemed to be a hit with the recipient of honor.

Of course, we couldn't shouldn't make a Full Moon dinner out of just a chocolate cake, but since I only have the one day off, I decided on something simple but homey for the main course, so we had this roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus.  This was actually a hit with the recipient of honor as well, she told me it reminded her very much of the Sunday dinners that her father would make, so the roast chicken might be something I can make more often too--it even does a good job of helping to fill the stock-bones bag in the freezer, so it will help me make sure I don't have to use store-bought broth (blech) anymore.

So overall, our Moon was filled with blessings, and we are looking forward to next week when I actually have a good stretch of time off that coincides with the Imbolc (Bridghid) holiday.  I've already picked out recipes for that as well, but that will be a story for the near future.