New Year: Resolutions for Foodies

03 Jan New Year: Resolutions for Foodies

(From Mark Bittman’s great New York Times story)

Are you so over New Year’s resolutions – the list-making, not the doing? Do you resolve not to read one compilation with new and improved options? Well, I suggest this one time you make an exception, especially if you love food and value your health. Mark Bittman, who calls himself “The Flexitarian,”a handle I love (and relate to), wrote “Sustainable Resolutions for Your Diet,” an article which appeared in the New York Times Dining section on New Year’s Eve. His suggestions, including the recipes, make sense and are easy as pie, rather caramel-brasied tofu, to execute.

New Year’s resolutions tend to be big, impressive promises that we adhere to for short periods of time — that blissful stretch of January when we are starving ourselves, exercising daily and reading Proust. But, and you know this, rather than making extreme changes that last for days or weeks, we are better off with tiny ones lasting more or less forever.

Mostly, though, when it comes to diet, we are told the opposite. We have a billion-dollar industry based on fad diets and quick fixes: Eat nothing but foam packing peanuts and lemon tea, and you’ll lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Then what? Resolutions work only if we are resolute, and changes are meaningful only if they are permanent.

What follows are some of the easiest food-related resolutions you will ever make, from cooking big pots of grains and beans once a week, to buying frozen produce, to pickling things à la “Portlandia.”

Continue reading for the payoff right here.