It’s time for our 2025 freshest monthly newsletter. It’s January: New Year – New Resolutions… Open Celery! Oh yeah, it’s ‘that’ time of the year again!

Welcome to Open Celery! (Apriti Sedano!) our midmonth newsletter. A four-handed gourmet adventure dedicated to plant-based recipes, stories and spontaneously unsolicited advices… made in Italy 🇮🇹 The fruit (veggie and dessert) of the collaboration between Simona (Personal Chef) and Orsola (Gourmet Traveler+)

Published in Italian (on ottimoblog.com) and English (on appetibilis.net, here happily edited and translated by Orsola). At some point, we’d like to have it as podcast as well 😀


(Cliccate qui per “Apriti Sedano!” in italiano)

Yes, it’s the time when most of us set the goals for the next 12 months… or, at least we start to fill a list 🥳

Let’s check what Simona is thinking…

“Strolling down the sidewalk, on the way to the supermarket, I can’t help but think about the (articulated) festivities that just took place.

I say ‘articulated’ because of my extended family: who goes with whom for Christmas Eve or Christmas lunch, or New Year’s Eve? And this included my lovely pet ‘la Ninetta’.

You must know that on New Year’s Eve I like to work. So this year too our ‘Food & Yoga’ Retreat landed in the Tuscan countryside. A full weekend in Bucine, a lovely town near Arezzo, where we welcomed the New Year. It was really wonderful.

The dog was with me, of course. Then again, without ‘la Ninetta’, it would be like celebrating the New Year’s Eve without prosecco or the auspicious dish of lentils soup (for wealth and prosperity for the coming year)… no way!

About January. It’s a month so full of expectation… that some would sleep until spring. I’ve always wondered why we don’t hibernate, it would be great for a lot of things, but let’s not get off topic!

And so, still on my sidewalk, I ask myself on what resolution I am about to strand in this brand new year and, with my half-century of life played out, I wisely answer: on none!

This year I’ve set one macro goal and few mini resolutions: easy and highly achievable. They will contribute to the bigger picture, without any performance stress.

What about Orsola…

“I’ve celebrated New Year in the magic NYC, and it’s already a great start.

About my New Year’s Resolutions. My main goal remains more or less the same (the must-do that tops all my ‘resolution lists’) “To travel and…” 

• to learn more about the different Italian ways of cooking from “local” characters, by focusing on regional and traditional foods (You must know that there is no such thing as a unified Italian cuisine, right?)
• To get to know other cultures and their ways of cooking (and drinking) through the use of heirloom foods, and savour every last bit of it!
• while taking pictures with my beloved vintage analog Hasselblad 500C… (+ some digital gadgets).
• Plus couple of other things I’ve asked Santa 😉

It’s January: New Year – New Resolutions List

It is true that many ‘resolutions’ generally end up in the bin, perhaps because they are overly difficult. Raise the hand if you have never set a goal knowing that it was too hard to achieve? We’ve all been there! The important thing is to try our best with baby steps.

Here is our January: New Year – New Resolutions List of ‘ideas’ we came up with for the coming year, and we’d love for you to find something that speaks to you too. Here we go!

1. Let’s start by cooking new foods!
   • We all have favorite dishes, the ones we resort to when we are short of time : they are easy, quick and maybe they always succeed. But there are so many ingredients that we may have never considered because we simply don’t know how to prepare them.
   • So, let’s reserve one meal a week (lunch or dinner it may be) and cook with a new ingredient. You will be amazed at what you can discover!

We’d like to suggest you our “Hasselback” style celeriac roast. An easy and impressive plant-based and gluten-free “secondo” (second course) 🥳

And a refreshing Raw Vegan Cheesecake, that’s also gluten-free

2. Eat more vegetables
   • In Italy we’d say “it sounds as the discovery of hot water”, is that obvious. Yet, whether you are thinking of starting a veggie lifestyle, or opting for a more balanced eating, vegetables are our friends and should be eaten at every meal.
   • A healthy diet consists of fruits and vegetables – preferably organic – (for vitamins, minerals, fibers and water), with some whole grain cereals (a good source of healthy carbohydrates). Plus nuts (the good fats), legumes (source of vegetable proteins). Maybe served with our special veggie mayo?

Here’s the recipe for our mayonnaise: The ultimate veggie mayo, the “Majonesa” – we called the Roman way “Majonesa”, as a homage to Rome, our capital.

3. Drink more water
   • Okay okay, this topic is always widely covered…Repetita iuvant! (Repeating does good) just in case.

Here are few more resolutions from last year (lose weight, do more sport, lead a healthy life, reduce stress and relax…) check To New Beginnings, or the (Usual) New Year Resolutions… Open Celery! 2024

More New Year’s ‘Detox’ Resolutions

After a little searching it turned out that, within the most mentioned New Year’s resolutions, there are also:

4. Turn off the cell phone 
   • The much-vaunted technological detox! To sum up, how to limit the damage from overuse?
   • NO cell phone 1 hour before bedtime and
   • NO cell phone for 1 hour after waking up. Place in “do not disturb” mode and out of the room when working or studying.
   • And then, if you want to be really chic, place it on silent mode, in your bag, when you are having dinner with someone, just to convey the ‘revolutionary’ concept that you are listening to what they say 😉
5. Take the stairs
   • “Ah whatever but what’s the big deal about taking the stairs….”. Seeee, whatever! Meanwhile, start doing them ALWAYS then let us know if it is so obvious. So, for those who have elevators, take the stairs (office or home that is).
6. Walk more
   • Even a simple walk around the neighborhood is sufficient, or doing your shopping on foot (perhaps with a cart). Opportunities to move can be created for you at any time of the day: it is never time wasted, it is time well spent!
7. Treat yourself to a Food & Yoga weekend
   • If in Italy… Keep an eye on our “Benessere & Corsi“ (Wellness and Workshops) page. It’s always updated with the upcoming dates of “Food & Yoga” events and more.
8. Make your life smell better
   • Start by placing few drops of an essential oil in a diffuser (perhaps from some citrus fruits, which are the oils of happiness), so as to arouse emotions and memories that put us in a good mood.
9. Buy a plant (or make a garden?)
   • This one is our favorite because we love plants! Actively caring for plants calms the nervous system and also seems to lower blood pressure. By the way, plants (like us) need nutrients, water, light, space and the right temperature. They resemble our basic needs for food, water, shelter and safety: so we share our ecosystem with them.

“If you want to be happy for a year, get married. If you want to be happy for a decade, get a dog. And if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a garden.”

Martha Stewart

Self-care Resolutions

10. Read more books!
    • January is the perfect time to give yourself a reading goal for the new year! It is wonderful to curl up on the couch with a new book when it is cold outside. There would also be the bed but, I don’t know about you, personally I can’t read more than a couple of pages that I’m already in the arms of Morpheus 🫣
    • Orsola is reading “The Cosmic Ordering Service, a guide to realizing your dreams,” how to grant wishes by ordering the universe… by Barbel Mohr. A bit of a letter to Santa 🎅 (after parties). But you know how it is, you never know!
    • Simona just bought The Mindfulness-Based Eating Solution written by Lynn Rossy, PhD, it offers a whole-body approach to discovery the real reasons why people overeating.
11. Care for our body
    • Let’s start with a nice nourishing cream for our hands before bedtime. Also, self massaging the feet is great for skin, circulation, for hip, knee… and so on.
12. Do one thing at a time. (And yes, this is a hard one!)
    • Multitasking is stressful and is not functional to the success of the task you want to accomplish. For once, the boys men are right, just this one 😉
13. Throw away something useless. (This one is difficult too, for many of us).
    • Like, all those things that have been sitting there (in the corner), gathering dust for a while? What do we want to do with them?
14. And finally, let’s pay ourselves more compliments! We deserve it!

“Well begun is half done!”

Aristotle

Happy New Year 🥳

Interesting Links

La versione italiana di gennaio: anno nuovo, lista nuova… Apriti Sedano!

More editions of Open Celery!

May of Cherries and Pesto… Open Celery!

Keep reading…

On the Italian Appetite for the Season… Open Celery!

Keep reading…

It’s March: Spring is Coming, Sunny Days Ahead… Open Celery!

Keep reading…

ockstyle

I’m an Italian gluten-free Gourmet Traveler+ and a passionate storyteller, writing in English and Italian. Fluently speaking (eating and dreaming) in Italian, English, French, and Russian. When I’m not writing, I cook and test recipes for special diets, and photograph (also on film). Not necessarily in that order. — / — Sono una viaggiatrice buongustaia (la Gourmet Traveler+) senza glutine, appassionata narratrice di storie. Scrivo in italiano e inglese, parlo (mangio e sogno) fluentemente in italiano, inglese, francese e russo. Quando non scrivo, cucino, testo ricette dolci e salate per diete speciali, fotografo (anche in pellicola). Non necessariamente in quest’ordine.