Please find below my recipe for the pumpkin gnocchi bake with sage. Sorry that it took me a while to post, but work is taking up a lot of time at the moment. By the way, this dish is not just any recipe, it has to do with my New Year’s resolution for 2020.

Every year, millions of people all over the world make New Year’s resolutions, hoping to continue a good practice, change an undesired behaviour, accomplish a personal goal, or in any other way improve their life. As you can probably guess losing weight is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions. It’s widely known that more gym memberships are purchased in January than any other month in the year. That reminds me of a joke I read somewhere: I’m opening a gym called ‘resolutions’. It will have exercise equipment for the first month of the year. Then it will turn into a bar for the remaining eleven months.

It’s also no surprise that number two on the resolutions list falls within the ‘eating healthy’ category. My New Year’s resolution kind of falls into this last category. It’s not that my eating habits are bad, on the contrary. I would however love to try to reduce the meat consumption of my family. I’m not ready to go vegan and I don’t know if that time will ever come, but we will cross that bridge when we get there. My love for yoghurt, cheese and eggs is so big that I can’t imagine going without these ingredients. Reducing the amount of meat I eat however should be doable. I found that January is a great month to start because more and more people are dipping their toes into Veganuary and are sharing their experiences on social media. I think a resolution shared is a resolution halved in this case.

Trying to keep my New Year’s resolution I found out this month that changing an ingrained habit is not an easy task. It’s unbelievable how many times I picked up a piece of meat or fish while shopping and then realizing I need to come up with another recipe if I want to keep my New Year’s resolution.

I also found out that it’s very important when you want to change a particular behaviour to take a step back and get ready before diving into it head-first. In my case that meant I needed to spend some time on the couch with my cookbooks to make a list of recipes that I can cook so I can easily choose one when shopping for dinner. I also browsed the internet for inspiration and found lots and lots of recipes without meat that looked amazing.

I’m aware of the fact that 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February. While that number may seem discouraging, I’m sure I will be able to keep my resolution for longer than that. That’s also one of the reasons why I didn’t decide to stop eating meat. I decided to reduce my meat intake, so that means I can still have meat, but not on a regular basis.

That’s how I found myself on a Saturday afternoon ready to go shopping for dinner and thinking about what to cook. I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner and they said the would love some gnocchi with a ‘white sauce’. I checked my vegetables and found a delicious pumpkin. There was also some stilton cheese and mozzarella in the fridge. I then bought some double cream and made this pumpkin gnocchi bake with sage. When I posted it on Instagram some people asked for the recipe so I promised them to post it on my blog. So here it is………………

By the way…………if your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, you might want to skip this one. Losing weight is not my goal with this recipe 😊.

I hope you enjoy this Pumpkin gnocchi bake with sage as much as we did. If you try it, please let me know! Leave a comment, telling me what you think of it. You can also tag your photo on Instagram with @culyzaar or post it on my Facebook page so I can see it. I love seeing your takes on the recipes on my blog!

One last thing about New Year’s resolutions:
New Year’s resolutions are a bit like babies. They are fun to make, but extremely difficult to maintain. Please remember though that a setback does not mean you need to give up on your goal! Keep pushing through and stay focused on how much better your life will be when you stick to your resolution, whatever it is. Good luck!