Time: A gift of preparation

Turning from November to December. (From nine to ten – those Romans really did influence our calendar didn't they?) I'm ready for the season of reason. I'll prepare for the mid-winter holiday I love so much. It hasn't really snowed here yet, at least no accumulation. Not cold enough to make ice for skating. The lakes, still, open water. We haven't had more than a few days of temps below freezing.

So let's keep the mid-winter holiday in perspective. This not a time for a feeding frenzy of purchasing like the stories in the paper. Not a time to obsess about every detail of a party still weeks away. It is time to share with friends and acquaintances. Share food, meals are excellent sharing venues.

• Invite a friend to breakfast or dinner today.

Wait for Food: Intensify Deliciousness

Think about waiting to eat food on a holiday like Thanksgiving. If you're like me and you love eating. If you invest a lot of time and thought in your food, waiting to eat can be very hard. When dinner is served, if you can stay calm and enjoy the event; savor the smells & tastes, drink slowly from the chalice, breath deep the air of festivity, you will have a greatly enhanced experience. A thoughtful, intentional waiting builds anticipation while adding to the delicious experience of food.

• Wait calmly for & eat slowly the feasts of holidays. They always taste better that way.

Food storage: 11+ Millennia of Solar Power

We've been storing food for more than eleven thousand years. Granaries over eleven thousand years old have just been uncovered in Jordan. Wow! You have to be glad that people were able to use simple technology to store food, essentially storing the sun's energy for later use. Think of all the great things it allows us to do!

Specialization, new uses for time, art, politics, housing, clothing, food cultivation, domestic animals. The list could go on and on. We owe it all to food storage. We didn't have to spend our time hunting and gathering. We could gather and save! Smooth out the slow times with the abundant. We become more social, able to accommodate larger groups, better learners. I can just imagine the advances that these ancestors made when they could store food!