Turning of The Year: New Traditions for Better Health

January has always felt like a contradiction to me. It’s “a new start,” yet at the same time, it’s the depths of winter, with short days and long nights; a time to hunker down for better health. It makes the call to start over again feel strange to me. To me, spring feels like a more appropriate time for new beginnings.

The nice thing about living a low carb lifestyle is that you can start over again, even when all you crave is comfort food because it’s snowing so hard you can’t tell if you’re looking at the earth or the sky. And you can do it with seasonal foods, like the cauliflower, cabbage, parsnips and lemon in this month’s recipes.

Maybe in May I’ll feel like having grilled tilapia again. Right now, I’ll light candles and snuggle down with my mug of hot chocolate (low carb, of course) and listen to the snow settle.

As I sip my cocoa, I smell this roasting:

• Roasted Chicken on a Bed of Roasted Cabbage (Al Bukhari bil Dajaj)
• Roasted Cauliflower with Lemon-Tahini Sauce
• Finally, if you’d rather be a bit more conventional in your hunkering-down restart, you can dress up in your moose slippers and flannel pajamas, and go for some Hunter’s Pie. Hunter’s Pie, Cottage Pie and Shepherd’s Pie are all very similar, but the meat is different. It’s ground beef for Cottage Pie; ground lamb for Shepherd’s Pie and wild game for Hunter’s Pie.