HABITS

At the end of it all, it's not our occasional great deeds, our frequent misdeeds, our talents, our flashes of brilliance or our fleeting physical attributes that define us. It's our habits. We all know gifted people who never accomplish anything. Shot-in-the pan, one act wonders, big talkers with little or nothing concrete to show the world. In the end the habit of getting up, getting at it and getting it done will far outweigh sheer gifts. Perhaps it is the most precious gift of all.

So I leave a challenge: pick out one good habit and develop it for the month of February. Be it making your bed, working an hour a day on the next great American novel, saving ten percent of your income, or planning and cooking a month of good food, habits form a solid base from which the remainder of our existence can spread.

Food is an important part of my life. Planning, shopping, cooking, enjoying and even cleaning up nurture bodies and strengthen family bonds. Some of my best memories of my mother come from the hours we shared while I dried the dishes she washed and we practiced singing harmonies (actually she mostly sang the harmony while I struggled to stay faithful to the tune!). Some 46 years of cooking and cleaning later, I have developed a good habit for getting nutritious food to the table. It starts with collecting recipes. I scan and print from magazines and library books, download from the internet, and even copy things which catch my eye from my own considerable collection of cookbooks. These get stashed in the back of my huge three-ring binder. When it comes time to go to the grocery store I pull out three or four recipes from my stash which represent a wide variety of main dishes: some quick to cook, some requiring more preparation or a stay in a slow cooker. To these I add three or four side dishes. Some days the main dish and the ever-present salad are enough, some times very simple entrees need more help. Then I add two or three entrees from part of my four-decade repertoire which need no written recipe. On the computer I type menus down the left hand column and list ingredients which are beyond what I consider staples in the right column, even if I have them on hand at the moment. I staple recipes and menus together and make a shopping list which reflects items from the right hand column I need to purchase as well as breakfast and lunch items which are low. This process takes about an hour. BUT, everything I need to fix dinner for a week is right at my fingertips, it's easy to thaw whatever is needed for the following night's dinner, and when the week is through, the menu/recipe/ shopping list gets hole-punched and included in the front part of my three ring binder. On a week when an hour is not available, I can grab a completed menu from the past and be out the door with a completed grocery list in five minutes! Try my method as your habit for February? I think you'll be glad you did.