Gwendolyn Elliott

[Featured image: Cora (Toby’s mom) and Toby walk along a path of lights at Skamania Lodge, where we celebrated Christmas this year.]

New year’s resolutions are the ultimate vehicle for disappointment—disappointment being a fact of life that’s all to easy to come by when we’re not even trying. So why do we set ourselves up for the inevitable let down, year after year?

To me, life is too short and unpredictable to turn down a delicious glass of wine (or two), just because someone has claimed the month to be “Dry January” (or so-called “Sober October” for that matter). I shudder at the thought of passing up a boiled and baked, soft, chewy sesame bagel (especially here in Walla Walla, where such gluten-loaded treasures are particularly hard to come by), or thick slice of fresh baked sourdough, because for some reason I’ve gone off gluten (<— purely hypothetical, never gonna happen). I don’t eat a lot of sweets, but that doesn’t mean I never want desert, especially when something looks particularly tempting. I love coffee too much to ever give up caffeine.

Why are new year’s resolutions really, new year’s restrictions? Where are the months that are dedicated to joy, to pleasure, to gusto?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Liberty Theatre Cafe (@thelibertytheatrecafe)

( >>>>> Above: Equally obsessed with the Liberty Theatre Cafe‘s vintage Midwinter serve ware as its sourdough wheat boules, available only on Sundays, which is usually when Toby and I pass through on the way to ski at Anthony Lakes. <<<<< )

I think part of my aversion to New Year’s resolutions (and all the restrictions they bring) is that as a vegetarian in a meat-eating world, I have already incorporated a complex set of dietary restrictions that come under consideration every time I eat, go grocery shopping, or make a restaurant reservation. At this point, I don’t consider these restrictions as much as lifestyle, but I do not like to imagine imposing yet more perimeters on my choices. A month without coffee, gluten, wine? (Insert world’s biggest eye roll here. If you know me, you know exactly what this looks like.)

It’s not that I feel like I have given up much being vegetarian and that I am somehow owed, or have earned, every other pleasurable or intoxicating substance available. My husband and I are capable, inventive home cooks, and scanning an ingredient list or a website menu has become second nature. Not wanting to restrict an animal’s right to self-determination, in fact, is central to my thinking about food. So, I think the restrictive mindset, and society’s general inability to recognize that life happens in all kind of unrestricted, organic, and complicated ways, is at the heart of my unease with resolutions.

In other words, I don’t make resolutions. But, staring down a fresh and shiny new year, it can be useful to meditate on things that I like, that I love, that are going well, that I am grateful for, that are funny or weird, make me think or spark my curiosity or make me LOL, that I would like to keep happening, or experiences I would welcome.

As I think of the year ahead, here’s what that looks like for me:

I will choose bread, I will choose wine. I choose bread because it can be delicious, and I like tasty things, I like a good chew. I choose wine because it washes the food down, and thankfully, it is not water. I choose wine because it has flavor, and I like flavor.

I like flavor because there are all kinds of it. It keeps things interesting. In thinking about flavor, I learn. I choose to learn. When I learn, I grow.

I like to grow, to become more expansive in my thinking. I grow by being curious, by asking why, and by trying new things. When I try new things, I am not restricted, I am not resolved to be prescribed, and I like the way this feels.

This is called gusto. I choose this. I WANT this! If there is time for an aperitif, I will have one. I will choose good, nutritious, spiritual food, and the proper pairings: wine and people. When I can afford it, I will have courses, salad, soup, a main. There will always be wine. Desert if there’s room (and I walked to the restaurant). And espresso if the conversation is still going. I love good conversation, and I love good food, and I love good company. So, yes to all of these things. I choose to say yes to the things I love.

(Also, side note, for the record, when the company is sparse, I choose to dine alone. I have always wondered why people think this is weird. People need to eat—eating is not weird.)

In summary, as we enter a new age of restrictions, on the eve of making annual resolutions, I choose freedom. If I can choose, then I choose choice. I simply like the way this feels. It feels reality-based. It feels organic. It is not an imposition. It provides opportunity. It makes room for things. I choose things that make sense to me, and to me, this makes sense.

Whatever it brings, I wish you all a Happy New Year.