Remember that time I made cooking my new year’s resolution for 2017?

Believe it or not, I made these here beef and cheese empanadas.

Well, I did, and like most other new year’s resolutions meant to somehow improve your life or take it in a new direction, this year’s has been tough.

I’ve stuck with it, making at least one, sometimes two, homemade meals a week, usually with my roommate or the boy as my guinea pig and taste tester, but if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t enjoyed it.

Not ideal for a hot summer night, but I made it anyway: shrimp and corn tortilla soup.

I love eating but dammit, I just don’t like cooking. It’s been stressful and messy and hot, and one time, even painful. (Special shout out to the chicken breast that sent scalding hot oil flying on to my wrist, leaving me with an ugly brown scar that just narrowly missed my tattoo. Yea, big ol’ F-U to that chicken breast.)

Some people find cooking meditative because it takes your mid off other things and forces you to focus on the task at hand. I rather just meditate.

That being said though, I’ve made some pretty good stuff in the last six months, almost always with the help of Plated and most recently Martha & Marley Spoon. There were some pretty spectacular beef and cheese empanadas, a gooey, cheesey chicken parm, a fantastic pine nut crusted salmon and last night, a delicious shrimp and corn soup with chipotle and tortilla strips that made my unairconditioned kitchen so hot it was about 2 degrees from being a hallucinatory sweat lodge.

Every last bite was enjoyed but the same can’t be said for the process. Yes, I’ll keep at it for the other half of this year, and while I’m sure it’ll get easier and I’ll feel more confident in my kitchen skills, I’m pretty sure the fun for me will always be fully in the eating.