Four Things for Back to School

Doesn't the beginning of the school year feel like a time to refresh, even if you're not going back to school?

If you live in the north, you're probably thinking that I'm jumping the gun a little. But if you live in the southern states, I bet you're feeling the "back to school" vibes too. Down here, school usually starts in late August and ends in late May. 

As someone who works in the field of education, "back to school" has a lot of relevance, even though I'm not readying my own classroom. As the teachers I work with go back to school, I'm also  thinking about how I can have that back-to-school feeling, where I can get a clean start and recharge.

There are four things I want to be intentional about during the "school year."

• Exercise: This summer has been killer on my waistline -- I sprained my ankle (I have a tendency toward a summer injury each year), plus I was traveling a lot and eating junk. I'm not someone who obsesses about body image, but I do believe in feeling comfortable with oneself, and right now I'm not feeling like myself. I'm going to need to work back up to exercising regularly so as not to re-injure my ankle, but I need to get serious about slowly bringing myself back into my usual level of health.Goal: Work back up to exercising at least 4 -- preferably 5 -- times per week, without re-spraining my ankle which will set me back once again.
• Gardening: It's not quite time to plant a fall garden, but I've carved out some time tomorrow to make a plan for my vegetable garden, and -- if the weather cooperates -- to repair the raised beds in my backyard. My garden (fingers crossed) will also, eventually, help me to ensure a healthy, plant-rich diet. Once the garden is started, my plan is to clean out the chicken coop, so that I can have some hens for eggs! Goal: by September 15th, plant my first round of veggies. By January, have 2 chickens.
• Spanish lessons: Lately I've had to cut back on my time with Rosetta Stone, so I want to schedule myself at least 20 minutes a day for Spanish practice. Rosetta Stone has made a huge increase in my Spanish proficiency, but that proficiency slips away quickly without practice. I also want to observe teachers in some bilingual classrooms, so that I can get some practice. Kids are the best resources for practicing a foreign language -- they just laugh at you if you get things wrong, but they aren't being mean. Goal: By the end of the school year, hold a 5-minute conversation with a student in one of our bilingual classes in which we both know what's going on.
• Writing: When all of my other hobbies slide, I try to make time for writing -- both blogging and my own fiction writing.  Writing is probably the number one support to my mental health.  However, even though I prioritize writing, that time has been pretty sparse lately, as I'm sure you've noticed.  I've transitioned to a new role in my organization, which will demand less writing. Less writing at work means I have more energy for writing at home. Goal: by the start of the school year 2013, I want to self-publish a book through the Amazon Kindle store. Now, you might wonder why I don't want to get a book published the traditional way. Wouldn't that be a bigger, better goal? However, I've come to realize that trying to sell a book would take a lot of my time, doing things I don't really enjoy. When I thought about what I want, in terms of audience, I want an easy way for my friends and family to be able to access my writing. Kindle seems like the way to go. Therefore, I feel like this is a smart, practical (yet big enough) goal for me.

To accomplish these things (which are also part of my Learn-Go-Do list), I'm going to need to get a lot more serious about organizing my time. I'll keep you updated on how that's going...

Daisy-Related Existential Crisis

I'm going to admit something very un-green right now: I do not like to garden.


I hate dirt.
I hate worms.
I hate mud.


I like to be clean and let someone else dig in the dirt. However, I know that the best way to get flowers is to grow them yourself.


Next best: buy them seasonally from a local farm whose practices you trust.


But the farmer's market has been a sea of squash lately (which is really weird - all my neighbors have beautiful flowers growing, so I know that flowers can grow in Houston right now - why don't they have any at the market?)

So I bought these daisies at Whole Foods, grown in Colombia. The flower industry in Colombia provides 800,000 jobs. You may think that flowers from Colombia would have a higher footprint than those grown in the states, but actually, it can be hard to know. 


A few years ago, they did a study in the UK comparing roses grown in Holland to those grown in Kenya. You'd think that the Dutch roses would have a lower footprint, but those grown in Kenya were actually MUCH better for the environment, even with the travel.   That's because the growing practices in Kenya, where the flowers could nod and smile under the sun, were so much greener.


I like the idea of supporting Colombian workers (the flowers were part of some "whole trade" program that supports both workers and the environment; I know you can't trust all of those types of things, but we do the best we can). I just wish there was some easy way to compare carbon footprints on items.


Two side notes: 
1) Yes, those adorable vases are reusables! The tall one is a 360 Vodka bottle (the bottles can be recycled, and the company recycle the caps, through their "close the loop" program, but the bottles are really handy so I usually keep them); the small vase is a bottle that contained sea salt.
2) Las flores son amarillas. That means: the flowers are yellow.  I can say that now because of my Spanish lessons! I used to just point and say "Flores... amarillo". But now I can make sentences!

September Round-Up

First up: What do you think of this new template? I like some things about it and others I'm not sure about - let me know in the comments if you think it should stick around.


Now... September Round-up!


Yes, yes, I know, we're well into October now. However, this week marked the completion of the massive work project that has been eating up all of my time and mindspace (it was a big success, FYI), and so I thought I'd just put a cap on September by just rounding up where I am with my 2011 intentions and pop culture all at once.


2011 Learn-Go-Do (see the link above for more info)

• Hollow Victory: So, I technically met my goal of visiting three American cities to which I'd never been before, as I visited Newark, New Jersey. Those of you who are familiar with geography may be thinking to yourself: Hey, Newark is right near Manhattan. Why didn't you go to Manhattan? That's a good question. Well, I was busy with that work project (which was a conference. Held in Newark). In fact, I only left the Newark Airport Sheraton ONE time during the week. Grr. I did have a lovely Amtrak trip from Newark to DC, however, and got to see more of the East Coast than I'd ever experienced before.And I did get to learn a lot about the ed reform movement in Newark.
•  ¡Hola! So in my work, we think a lot about identity (yes, if you're not a touchy-feely type - which I'm not either - feel free to gag). My good friend Elizabeth and I have been talking a lot about identity and she's done lots of work to come to terms with parts of her identity that had been diminished by the assimilating factors of life in America. The crux of this is that I've been thinking about how my family is really good at honoring the Russian part of our heritage, but the Spanish part - because in the 20's and 30's that was looked down upon even moreso than today - is much less prominent in our family history. Doing all this thinking has led me to get serious about learning Spanish, which will also help me at work as well. I've started taking online lessons, and even though I knew a lot of disconnected words before, and could even read quite a bit, having a formal structure has already given me a lot of a-has about the structure of the language. Of course, right now I can mostly say things like, "She's drinking" and "The man is running" but being able to put together a sentence, rather than just using random words and pointing, is a big step forward for me.
• Kitchen Connection: I've been trying to renew my commitment to sustainable eating. If you've read the blog for awhile, you'll know that I'm a "near-vegetarian." In the past, I've cooked poultry or fish once a week and been veg the rest of the week. Unfortunately, I was found to be on the verge of anemia (the lab report literally said "Alert" on it). Since I haven't eaten red meat for 17 or 18 years (want to be more sustainable? Eat less red meat!) I've known I was low in iron - this was just more extreme. Don't worry, I didn't start chowing down on steaks. However, I have upped my intake of non-mammal meats a bit, along with starting an iron regimen. If you want to know which foods are high in iron, check out this list.  Your body doesn't absorb much iron from plant sources, so if you're strictly veg, you might want to talk to your doctor and make sure your iron is adequate. Seafood sources are good, but make sure you're making sustainable choices by checking out the Seafood Watch list.

September Pop Culture

• Watch: September brought back our favorite TV shows. Yay! I could probably write a lengthy post about the return of each of my faves (that musical number on Community! Stefan killed Andi on Vampire Diaries! Um... whoa, is that allowed on network television? on The Good Wife) and what I'm thinking about the new ones (The New Girl, 2 Broke Girls... apparently women in their 20's are still considered girls, even at this late day and age. Discuss.) Suffice it to say that it's a good time to curl up with your best friend DVR.
• Listen: Even though it came out in February, I've been listening to Let England Shake, by PJ Harvey quite a bit lately. PJ always reminds me of my Sassy-magazine-reading days, and this album has a lot of the power and menace of her old stuff. I've also been mourning the end of R.E.M. by listening to my favorite songs of theirs: "Country Feedback", "Leave", and "E-bow the Letter." Plus there's that Scotty McCreery CD... oh wait, no... no there isn't, although iTunes SURE wants me to buy one. It's time for iTunes to get better at personalizing your home screen.
• Read: This month the movie Drive came out, which is a great one if you're a fan of existential quiet men protecting ethereal dames. I'd highly recommend the novella it's based on, also called Drive, by James Sallis. It's a disjointed series of memories, deeply grounded in the earthiness of food, cars, and geography. 

2011 Learn-Go-Do - August Reflection

Remember this?

Well, if summer 2011 had a theme for me, it was losing my intention.


Because in a crazy world of business travel and 108 degree days, living intentionally just fell by the wayside. I've been home for two weeks, though, and I'm beginning to feel like my old self again. 


July went like this: Airplane/airport chicken sandwich/SuperShuttle/hotel/conference room taco bar/SuperShuttle/airport/airplane.


August went like this: GAH! I know I set some intentions at the beginning of the year! What were they again? Let's get back on track.


So I got right and started to re-visit my intentions for 2011. 


Learn
I feel like I've conquered my intention to learn to knit lace. With the hot weather, however, I've temporarily put aside the lacey sweater I'm knitting; the sweater is now almost sweater-sized, and that's not a nice thing to have on your lap when it's 108 degrees out. I've started a short, small project to tide me over until the weather facilitates sweater-knitting.


I've added to my "Learn" list. I'd like to learn to needle felt. I'm hoping to share some examples soon...


Go
Of my "Go" goals, I'm doing really well. I've gone to Spain, and I've gone to two American cities I hadn't visited previously (Minneapolis and Philadelphia). I'm scheduled to go to Newark in October, and complete my goal (Yay, Newark!)


I also had a "Go" goal to go to a new restaurant each month. In August I hit two:

• My friends Kelly, Keith and I went to Raia's Italian Market, a simple space in Houston's Washington corridor. It was an old-school Italian place with checked table cloths in a new mixed-use development. When we arrived, all of the tables were filled with families and friends, and they brought us wine while we waited. I adored my pescatore pasta, with shrimp, calamari, crab and anchovies. A briny delight. We all loved our meals, and finished it off with some perfect gelato.  A definite find.
• For Houston Restaurant Weeks, my friend Amanda and I headed out into the suburbs to le Mistral. During Restaurant Weeks, restaurants offer 3 course meals for $35. Our meal was fancy and enjoyable, but it didn't revolutionize my life. The best part of my meal was the chocolate truffle dessert. I think I'd choose Raia's any day.

Do

Health is the theme of my "Do" goals. Two of them are to: re-commit myself to sustainable eating and to work myself up to working out 5 times a week. Here's where I am with those:

• Re-commit to sustainable eating: When you're traveling, sustainable eating really goes out the window. However, now that I'm home, fresh veggies and fruits are my friends. I'm feeling so great to be eating whole grains, greens, and yummy fruits like fresh figs and blueberries. I recently found out I have an iron deficiency, so I have to take lots of iron which means that I also have to eat tons of fiber - which means delicioso spinach, oats, and my favorite snack - prunes.
• Working out: Over the first 5 months of the year, I worked my way up to working out 5 times a week. At the beginning of the summer I sprained my foot, and then I got a bad cold. I know that experts say you can work out when you're sick, but as someone who is not a pro-worker-outer, that was the last thing I wanted to do. So I started over, and I'm back up to working out 3 times a week. I don't love it, but I have to admit I feel better when I do it.

.

2011 Learn Go Do - July Reflection

Yeah, yeah... I know. It's not July anymore. And I also know that I skipped this little reflection for June. Let's just say that for a couple of months, intentionality has gone out the window. It's been a combination of work travel, sprained foot, more travel, and 90 degree heat. But I have a big plan to get back on the 2011 Intentions horse in August.

Here's the plan:

do stuff on the list.

OK, now, I did, by happenstance complete a couple of things on the list, but I can't say I did it very intentionally. Here's a rundown:

Learn

I did not learn anything.

Go

• I had a goal to go to three American cities I'd never visited before. In July I hit two - Philadelphia and Minneapolis. I wish I had more time to explore, but I found both of them charming. And yes, Minnesota has a whole bunch of lakes.
• I also had a goal to try a new restaurant in Houston each month. My friend Amanda is really great at finding coupons, and she had a coupon to Shade. The restaurant was in Houston's Heights neighborhood, and I almost missed the small storefront. Inside, however, there was a long, narrow dining room. It was modern but casual. I had a great fish dish with sweat pea risotto. Their menu is heavy on the proteins, but Amanda, who's a vegetarian, found some great options. Neither of us had the vegetable plate, but it sounded amazing.

Do

I did not do anything.

And that's a wrap! Coming up: the July Pop Culture Round-up!

2011 Learn Go Do - May Reflection

Have I ever mentioned that I'm prone to freak accidents? Well... I am. There was the whole Drill Bit Incident of 2007, the Bathroom-door-handle Shenanigans of 2009. Good times. Good times.

So, last night, I was watching So You Think You Can Dance while sitting cross-legged on the couch. I was also on the computer. I got up to put the computer away and as I stepped down I realized my foot was totally asleep. I mean totally. It was as if toes had ceased to exist. You can imagine what happened. My foot rolled weirdly to the side, I threw my weight weirdly backward to avoid dropping the computer, and then felt the worst pain I'd ever felt, along the side of my foot. Much worse than having a drill bit jammed in your toe, let me tell you. You know how doctors say: on a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt? I realized that the worst I'd ever felt before was probably a 5.

So now I'm RICE-ing (Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation-ing) like a champ, but the real bummer is that in the month of May, I'd worked out 5 days a week every week! I had been so psyched that I'd met my goal (included in my 2011 Learn Go Do list, an ongoing list of goals). Even on vacation, I hiked and beach walked and continued my exercising.

Luckily, I think my ankle is not sprained, just badly bruised. I'm going to monitor it and see if I can do some light walking on Saturday (and Mom, if you're reading this, don't worry. I will NOT over-exert myself).

Here's the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, where my mom and I went hiking, pre-disaster.

And here's a really big pelican that Mom and I saw when we went walking on the beach.

As for the rest of my goals - well, I've been doing pretty well on my lace-knitting and sustainable-eating goals, because they are embedded in my daily habits. However, work has been killer lately, which means that almost everything else has gone by the wayside. Obviously, I haven't been blogging 3X a week, although I do have a lot to say! Look for more posts soon.

I do see the light at the end of the tunnel though. I'm looking forward to things slowing down a bit and doing some summertime re-direction of my life.

2011 Learn Go Do - April Reflection

In 2011, rather than having one New Year's resolution, I created a list of intentions for the year. You can read that list 2011 Learn Go Do by clicking here. This is my reflection on how April went.

Learn

If you've been reading my other monthly reflections, you know that one of my intentions has been a real beast: learning to knit lace. Usually I feel like I can conquer any knitting challenge. However, knitting lace tested all my powers of concentration. While I knew all the right moves, I kept getting tangled up and starting over. However, I think I've got it! (Knock on wood). The picture above shows how I'm doing. Hopefully, the sweater I'm working on will be finished before the end of the year.

Go

April's new restaurant was the Jarro Cafe, a Mexican place out in the Spring Branch area of Houston. It's worth the trip just because they give you seven different kinds of salsa with your chips. They are known for their tacos. I had mole enchiladas. In case you are unfamiliar with mole, it is a chocolate-chile sauce. It was pretty good, but a little sweeter than I like my mole. Next time I'll have to try the tacos. The prices were very reasonable, which sweetens the deal.

Do

Since January, I have been working my way up to exercising five days a week. This past week was the first week I tried it. Man, I have been sleeping like a champ these past five days. I have to say, I kind of enjoy it. I've been a regular enough exerciser at different points in my life to know that I never get to the point where I just LOVE exercising. I hate sweating, I hate being hot, I hate exercise clothes, I hate spending time on it. That never really changes, no matter how much I do it.

My friend Liz has this belief that exercise should involve three pieces of gear or less, and this is something I subscribe to as well. Driving to a gym seems like a waste of money and fossil fuels (and those places must just suck energy, with all of the TVs and machines!). I like to do things that are simple and can be done at home, so that I'm not spending extra time preparing or driving. Some simple workouts I like:

• Yoga. I've been practicing yoga on-and-off my entire life, and so this is something I can do at home with only my iPod and a mat. It doesn't annoy me as much as other types of exercise because it's really more of a spiritual practice than workout.
• Walking outside. Always free! Always something different to see! Houston is full of amazing walking trails, and during the spring and autumn it's a great place to walk or run outside. (I don't run. But other people do).
• Walk at Home videos. Leslie Sansone is the creator of the Walk at Home series, and everyone I know who has tried them really likes them. One reason I like Leslie is that she's kind of goofy and not an exercise-tyrant. While she's leading the workout, she talks almost exclusively about health - not about losing weight or how you should look. Her positivity is infectious. The videos have easy steps to follow, but they are fun and the time passes quickly. Great for those of you who hate exercising. (A great money-saving tip -- if you already have cable onDemand or Netflix streaming, a lot of exercise videos are available).
• So You Think You Can Dance workout DVDs. These DVDs are a different kind of fun. I grew up dancing, and sometimes I miss it. These DVDs teach you some dance routines, instead of just having you do a bunch of random "dance" moves. All of the leaders are dancers from So You Think You Can Dance, and they really explain how to do the moves. You can put together your own workout, combining a warm up with different dances and a cool down (they also have segments where they teach the dances very slowly, which are also great for toning muscles).

So, April was exhausting! I'm looking forward to May, where I plan to try to continue working out (5 days during at-home weeks, 3 days when traveling), accelerating work on the sweater I'm knitting, and trying some new restaurants around town.

2011 Learn Go Do - March Reflection

Is March gone already? I am not exactly sure where those 31 days went.

At the beginning of the year I created a list of goals for 2011, which you can read by clicking here. Here's how I'm doing on them so far.

Learn:

• Learn to knit lace. I'm still working on the same &^*#@$ lace sweater that I wrote about at the end of February. Each time I think I've got the lace figured out, I ruin it. At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I might have it this time.
• Improve my Spanish. I did! I went to Spain and said things in Spanish - like, la cuenta por favor (the check, please); or un cafe con leche. All kidding aside, being in Madrid, even for a few days, made me more confident to at least try to say things aloud. Luckily I was with my friend Katie, who could help me out a lot.

Go:

Did I mention I went to Spain?

There it is again. Spain. This is the Sagrada Familia.

I also have a goal of trying one new restaurant a month in my home city. My friends Keith and Kelly invited me to breakfast at The Country Kitchen for breakfast. This is exactly the sort of place you should go for breakfast -- the floor's a little sticky and it's kind of in an industrial neighborhood. The coffee was great diner coffee and they kept it hot and refilled. I would totally recommend it as long as you're not overly-obsessed with cleanliness.

Do:

Exercising more has been my main focus from the "do" part of my list. For most of March, I was pretty good. On my trip, we probably walked 3-5 miles per day (although I gained weight because Europe = cheese. But it was worth it.) I've started doing yoga again, which I'm really enjoying. Yoga is something I grew up with; it's been fairly constant throughout my life, but I would say the last three years I haven't been up on my practice. I'm also walking fairly regularly. In April, I want to try to keep track of my exercising a bit more, in some way that doesn't make me actually hate exercising.

2011 Learn Go Do - February Reflection

So, it's the last day of the month, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my 2011 Learn Go Do List (otherwise known as my New Year's goals). Click here for the entire list.

Learn:

One of my goals was to learn how to knit lace. I am knitting a sweater that involves the "Gull Lace pattern", which looks like this:

I didn't knit that, though, because so far, I have started, and re-started, and re-started the lace portion. It's not that I don't know what to do - I know all the stitches, I just keep getting messed up. I am going to conquer the Gull Lace pattern! It will just take a little more concentration that knitting usually does for me.

Go:

One of my goals is to visit at least one new restaurant a month, because I've gotten into a rut of always going to the same favorite places. This month I tried two new places.

The first was Huynh, a traditional Vietnamese restaurant with lots of vegetarian options. I had rice vermicelli with chicken, which is what I always have when I go out for Vietnamese. A couple of friends had tofu dishes and said they were amazing.

The second place I tried was the Queen Vic, a British pub with lots of British-Indian fusion cuisine. They had a lot of small plates perfect for sharing. We tried a saag paneer pizza, some frites (delish!), some curried paneer, and veggie samosas. They had a nice drink menu, but I had hot tea and it came in the sweetest little individual pot.

Houstonites, I highly recommend both of these places.

Do:

I've been concentrating on my goal of increasing the amount of exercise I get. Originally, I had the goal of starting with three times a week, but I'm actually finding it easier to try to start a daily habit. Because I'm trying to get some exercise every day, I haven't really worked on having that exercise be very strenuous. I've been walking to places in my neighborhood, doing some yoga, and trying to do short lunchtime walks. The latter method has the added benefit of making me more productive in the afternoons.

Coming up:

In March, I'm going to Spain! I'm trying to brush up on some of the common Spanish phrases that a traveler needs. Most of my Spanish vocabulary has to do with teaching (from observing in bilingual classrooms) so I have a very strange mishmash of words at my disposal. Que palabra (what word? said while pointing to a child's paper) probably won't get me too far.

2011 Learn Go Do - Reflection

February is here, and so I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on my progress on my list of 2011 resolutions. I view resolutions not as something to start on January 1st, but as an ongoing list of the ways I want to better myself, which could be started at any time. I divided my goals into 3 categories: Learn, Go, Do (Click the link above to see the whole list).

Learn:

I have two knitting goals this year: to learn to do short-row shaping and to learn to knit lace. To that end, I chose the "February Lady Sweater" pattern.

This is not the one I'm knitting. The one I'm knitting doesn't look like anything yet. This is the finished one. You can grab the pattern FOR FREE from Flint Knits. Huzzah for free!

I've shied away from patterns involving lace for a long time. While I know all the stitches needed for knitting lace, I've felt like I've lacked the patience. However, I've tackled a few in-depth cable projects over the past couple of years, so I think lace is within my abilities. (For you non-knitters, thanks for suffering through the previous sentences).

Anyway, I haven't actually started the lace part of the sweater, but I'm almost done with the top portion. Lace, here I come!

Go:

I thought that the easiest of my goals would be to go to a new restaurant each month, especially because I travel regularly for work. And I love to eat. However, I can only half-count my January attempt: I went to the "bistros" in a couple of hotels in San Antonio and Austin. Lately, a bunch of restaurant chains that cater to business travelers (like Hyatt Place and Marriott Courtyards) have begun serving a little bit more than bags of pretzels, but a little bit less than meals. While I guess these "restaurants" were new to me, the point of this goal was to revive my culinary adventurousness, and these hardly counted in that vein. I met the letter, but not the spirit, of my goal.

Do:

So, I acted on a few of my "Do" goals:

• I finished the first draft of the novel I started for National Novel Writing Month. That felt like a big accomplishment, especially because I started it on November first. I'm going to add "Revise my novel" to my 2011 list of goals.
• I renewed my commitment to sustainable eating. I've been doing lots of cooking at home, eating lots of vegetarian goodness, and have even flirted with vegan cooking. Traveling for work remains my biggest sustainable eating weakness, but I tried to make (at least a few) better choices while eating away from home.
• Exercising. Fail. I started strong but got sidelined by two major colds. However, since I got one of the colds from my beautiful nephews Ian and Nelson (ages 2 years and 2 months, which means a lot of slobber), I don't feel too bad about it.
• Finish one item from my big household to-do list every two weeks. Another fail, but a valiant attempt. My first item was to replace the drip-pans on my stove burners. I measured the ones I had and set off to the store. However, it turns out you have to know the type of burner you have, and then it was too late to return home and go back to the store (plus -- NOT green). I'll be returning to this item this weekend.

What's up for February:

I'm traveling to Washington D.C. and possibly the Bay area, so a new restaurant seems to be in the cards. I'll begin the lace-knitting portion of my sweater, and as soon as I kick this cold, I'll be out walkin' for exercise. I'm preparing for one of my "Go" goals: a trip to Spain in March! Which will help me with one of my "Learn" goals: Improve my Spanish (I'm best at language learning through osmosis). I need to do some research to make the most of my time there.

In Which I Share the Secret of the Sustainable Shopping List

This is a nerd post. It's about one of those little, nerdy things that makes me happy. And that is: my shopping list.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to re-commit myself to healthy and sustainable eating. Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a teensy weensy obsessed with healthy food. So why, oh why do I need this re-commitment? Why do I need to renew my vows to broccoli? (Because broccoli didn't cheat on me, friends. I cheated on broccoli).

How did it happen? Slowly at first. Just little things. A cookie from the tray at the office. French fries in the airport. And before I knew it, it was dark-thirty on a North Carolina morning and I was biting into a Bojangles Cajun chicken biscuit for my breakfast and thinking what could be better than this? (Not much, actually).

So, I need to lose some weight, get healthier (hear my arteries screaming?) and really get back into the healthy eating practices I have written about at length in these virtual pages.

Keeping this resolution had to begin with planning. And planning to cook is one of my favorite things, just short of actual cooking.

I begin by thinking about what I'm going to be doing during the week and how many meals I will eat at home. To be more sustainable, one has to cook more and buy fewer processed and packaged foods. The fun part, however, is thinking about what those foods are going to be. I get out the cookbooks and start perusing.

What's that cookbook upside down? It's The Gorgeously Green Diet by Sophie Uliano, a great book with six easy principles for eating sustainably. And recipes. This week I made the delicious and easy "Lemony Chicken Thighs", and followed Sophie's advice to buy the thighs from the butcher counter, instead of pre-packed in a foam tray.

Once the meals and snacks are planned, it's time to make the shopping list. And here's the magical secret of the sustainable shopping list.

Divide your paper up into sections, giving yourself the most room for the foods that are healthiest and most sustainable. Give yourself the next largest space for minimally-processed and packaged foods, like canned goods. And save just a little room for the most highly-processed and least sustainable: meat, dairy, frozen, and breads.

Set up your shopping list in this way, and you have a visual reminder of the principles of more sustainable eating, as Michael Pollan outlines them: "Eat food (not processed crap. My addition). Not too much. Mostly plants."

Plan in hand, you're ready for sustainable shopping.