It’s Friday night, and you’re off to check out that trendy new club downtown. Or maybe you’ve scored a first date with that hot new guy. Perhaps you’re planning to surprise your long-time lover with a sexy treat when he walks in the door.

No matter what you’ve got planned, if you have any brains at all you’re not running around at the last minute looking for the perfect outfit, or shoes that match those capris exactly. You’re not experimenting with your hair at a salon you’ve never tried before.

The secret to making a great impression is planning ahead.

Planning ahead is especially important when it comes to wine. Like your shoes, your cell phone, or that amazing Frida Kahlo on your wall, the wine you serve says a lot about you. Sure, you can rush to the store at the last minute and grab whatever the clerk says goes with nachos and steak or chicken dijon, but do you really trust some random hireling to make a style statement for you?

Stored properly, wine doesn’t spoil, and usually only improves with age. Good wines increase in value as they age, too, making them a good investment. Here are a few classy wines you can stock, with suggestions about when to pull them out:

Essential Red Wines

Beaujolais is a great all-around red wine. Fruity and fun, it’s the blue jeans of wine. You can’t go wrong with Georges Duboeuf, the largest producer of Beaujolais. His beautiful flower labels are easily recognizable in the wine shop. For ten dollars or less, you’ve got a great accompaniment to hamburgers, pizza, or any snack from cheese to cheez doodles.

Merlot is another must-have red: full-bodied, with flavors of berry and a hint of chocolate. Serve it with meat, pasta, stew, or hearty fish, like tuna. Marilyn Merlot, released every year on June 1 (Marilyn’s birthday), is a gorgeous example. The wine is as seductive as the label, which features a different image of the starlet every year. The 2005 vintage, released in 2008, goes for $27. (1985 is selling right now for $3800; 1989 for $3000. A bottle every year on your birthday might be a better investment than an IRA.)

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One simple truth is slowly transforming my life: there’s a reason stuff happens. There’s a reason I have bad days and good days. There are choices I make. My life is a collection of habits, piled one on top of the other. If I don’t like my life, then I need to take a close look at those habits. One or more of them could be dropped, changed, or added, and those simple, repetitive actions can create an entirely different life. One I like.

The holiday season, stuffed as it is with high-fat, high-calorie foods, inevitably leads to certain high-minded resolution lists. Those lists don’t work too well for me. I like writing them out just as a look into what goals are formulating in my brain, but I don’t take them too seriously. Lists don’t make your life. Habits do.

Healthy Food Habits: Change Is Possible

If you’re not happy with something in the food/diet/fitness/nutrition area of your life, change is simple. Change is possible. Change is made one habit at a time. Crash diets are effective only for as long as you can keep crashing, and crashing isn’t a healthy lifestyle. Drastic lifestyle changes, made overnight, tend to disappear as quickly as they came. It’s one doable step at a time.

The Steps of Change For Healthy Food Habits

1. Identify Problem Areas: Think about the area of your food life that bothers you most. Is it the junk food you eat? The fast food you resort to on late nights? The constant eating out because you can never think of something good to cook? The way your refrigerator looks either a) strangely bare and neglected or b) crammed with slowly decaying food you don’t want to eat? Perhaps it’s your lack of energy, or libido? Or the way your teeth feel after you drink a soda, or the way your head feels after you eat sugary food, or the way you feel when you don’t eat often enough? Whatever it is, it’s related to a habit in your life.

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Becoming a vegetarian is a life choice that can have many benefits, both to you and the planet. If more people were vegetarians, or at least ate less meat, we could use the land more productively, and cut down on water usage and pesticides, since we wouldn’t need to grow grains for animals to eat. (And don’t forget about the carbon footprint of your cheeseburger…) Even if you are not prepared to become a full on vegetarian, consider the benefits of eating less meat in your diet.

There are many types of vegetarians

Some vegetarians include eggs, dairy products and even fish in their diet (lacto-ovo- vegetarians). Some will eat dairy products (lacto-vegetarians) but not eggs. Yet others do on occasion, like when they are invited out, or at a restaurant (flexitarians). Vegans won’t eat any animal by-products including all diary and egg products. If you’re considering becoming a vegan, talk to your doctor about vitamin supplements and consider taking calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B 12 fortified food or/and vitamin supplements. Most vegetarian diets are healthier than many meat diets so long as diversity and balance are maintained.

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Elegance and grace, or beer and pizza parties - good attention comes in all sorts of packages. Today’s question comes, just in time for Thanksgiving, from the consummate hostess-with-the-mostess, Jennifer Sbranti, whose brilliant website really is the place to learn all there is to know about entertaining with style, grace and ease.



Carrie says: My grandmother was the best hostess! She could whip up Christmas dinner for 15 with grace and wonder. I learned impeccable manners, how to set a gorgeous table and make the best cup of tea. She was my Martha Stewart, I miss her!
 



Danielle says: My Organic Treasure sister, Candis! New magazines and fresh towels at the end of your bed, with bubble bath treats. Pumpkin muffins in the morning. And she always buys my favourite cheese….which is really any kind of cheese.
 



Jennifer says: My mom – because she opened our home to friends and family members in need for as long as I can remember. Being a great hostess extends to more than just parties…and because my mom was such a caring and welcoming hostess when it really counted, I grew up with cousins, aunts, exchange students, and family friends that lived with us for anywhere from months to years at a time. The fact that she was a fabulous cook was just icing on the cake!
 

And don’t forget to leave your own hostess tips in the comments below…

If you had a magic wand, and could create any relationship with food you wanted, what relationship would you choose to create?

I desire to be a person who has ease about her relationship with food; eating lots of natural, fresh and simple foods, as well as sweets and other treats when desired. A person who chooses pleasure over guilt, and truly enjoys eating. A person who doesn’t diet. A person who doesn’t feel she needs to diet. A person who is at peace with food.

Dieting Madness

It is important to really look at what you want to create. Dieting to the point of madness and obsession is not what most would choose, if the choice was presented in those stark terms. Yet I did it for years. So many of us continue on this path, focusing on the number on the scale, completely losing touch with what we really want.

Ask yourself, do you want to be a person who obsesses over every bite? A person who can’t eat birthday cake because it is not a part of the plan? A diehard dieter who allows something as simple as a cookie to ruin a perfectly good day?

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