34 Pots
I recently took up pottery, and during my sabbatical went quite deep on some pottery courses (including an intensive at the Leach Pottery in St Ives). It made me realise how many different pottery forms there are to explore and learn. And so I want to throw and document 34 of them this year – perfecting them as much as I possibly can. I think I’ll mark them in some way, so I know they’re part of ‘the 34’ I’ve tried. And I’ll repeat forms where I think I can learn something.

34 Podcasts
I love podcasts, but I’ve tended to go very deep on one or two (looking at your three bean salad) rather than sampling more of what’s out there. So I’m going to do that this year – try out 34 podcasts I otherwise wouldn’t usually listen to, and hopefully stretch beyond the spotify algorithm.

34 Fish Dishes
I really enjoyed the BBQ challenge last year – it was great to cook outdoors more and push beyond my usual recipe repertoire. It was very meat based though (obviously) and a week in St Ives reminded me just how wonderful fish can be. So that’s the plan – 34 different fish recipes, cooked by me. They can be as simple or as complex as I want – and can be starters, mains, snacks or whatever.

And hopefully I’ll document them a bit better this year, vs. last year. We’ll see.

Late, true to form. A fun 33.

Challenges this year were great fun – the BBQs were excellent, and really stretched my cooking ability. I’m sorry to see that end.

The coffee got finished incredibly quickly. It was good, but I wish I’d done more side by side tastings. I don’t think I could say my coffee palate has improved all that much over the year.

The lectures didn’t get finished – I enjoyed the ones I did, but struggled to focus on it enough to make any reasonable headway.

Documentation was very poor across the year – I started taking photos early on for the BBQs, but quickly forgot. So very few visual props this time.

But I did take a lot of photos of other things, and here are the 33 that best sum up the year. Always fun to search through and see what we’ve been up to.