I've pretty much given up on making new years resolutions. The end of the year gets so hectic that I hate to stop the stream of presents, parties, food and visits from friends and family to pause for reflection and muse on my failings. I save that for the second week of January.

And in these early dark, chilly days of January, I've made a resolution I won't mind keeping. My resolution arrived in the form of a 996 page cook book, Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian."

I've long been a fan of the man's weekly New York Times column but it was this impassioned presentation that won my heart.

Our monocultures of soy and corn are dependent on petroleum fertilizers and pesticides, much of which is for animal feed. Industrial farming degrades and pollutes our land, rivers and ocean. Nearly 20 percent of all greenhouse gases are produced by livestock production and it takes an estimated 10 calories of fossil fuels to raise 1 calorie of beef. This seems a strange development considering that plants need little more than the most natural, renewable energy source -- the sun -- to create calories.

But I don't really want to bring the world's problems, including the growing dead zones in the ocean, global warming and cancer-causing chemicals, into my kitchen. I won't institute a 100-mile diet, become a vegetarian or even eat organic all the time. I will simply hope that many other people are making a few everyday choices like mine to eat a little less meat and a little more adventurously in the plant kingdom. NRDC, for example, does not serve red meat at functions or luncheons and it's seldom missed. By making some small (and  even pleasant) adjustments in our lives, we can make a tremendous difference.

So my resolution for 2009 is that I will make it easier to make better decisions, for my health and the environment. Because it is the sensible thing to do. And it tastes better. This is a resolution with benefits. 

Bittman's cook book will make it easier with recipes for everything -- even those wonderful, often unloved vegetables I often see at the farmer's market: celeriac, fennel, fava beans, sunchokes, brussel sprouts. This week I'll be eating White Bean and Celery Root Gratin and maybe a Creamy Watercress Soup.

In the past I relied on Google to find reliable recipes for those strange vegetables. I would search online for "CSA" and "recipe" and the name of the exotic vegetable. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, where people pay up front for a weekly share of a farm's crop. They also tend to post some wonderful recipes for the vegetables they receive. In this way I discovered my now-favorite recipe for turnips and that you can improve almost any dish by adding ramps to it. I also learned that sautéed beet greens beat the actual beet as a side dish.

As fun as it was to peek into someone else's CSA box, it was a lot of effort. And even the best intentions are easily thwarted by a late day at the office, hunger and an empty fridge. But now I've got over 900 hundred pages of quick and easy recipes that are much more exciting than a frozen chicken breast.

Next week I'll be eating Pan-fried Pumpkin with Tomato Sauce, Cocoa and Pumpkin Seeds and feeling smug that I've kept my resolution well into January. Just because it was an easy change to make doesn't make it insignificant.