Today is the last day of January. I am happy to say that I have walked every weekday morning this month since January 3 (with only one exception) and most weekend mornings. I never would have thought I had time before work to take a walk, but it turns out it was just a matter of forming the habit, one day (and one step) at a time.

In early December I started reading a blog called Zen Habits by Leo Babauta after a coworker sent me a post by email. I’d been reading it for about a month and had become something of a Zen Habits evangelist when, at the end of 2011, Babauta published what he called “A Compact Guide to Creating the Fitness Habit.” This has been one of my favorite posts on the blog, especially since while I know exercise to be a good thing, I’d never been able to make it a part of my routine beyond the occasional weekend walk, taking the stairs, or through bike-commuting to work. A key part of the piece, given its late-December publication, was its declaration that resolutions never last and are perhaps best avoided:

“Instead of creating a list of resolutions this year, create a new habit.”

I like the idea of giving up on resolutions. “This is going to be the year I ______,” doesn’t ever get me very far. Leo also shared his “top principles” for forming habits:

• Make it social.
• Do one habit at a time only.
• Make it your top priority.
• Enjoy the habit.

I took these to heart and decided to apply them to improving my mornings by taking a walk before work. My old morning routine went something like this: wake up, shower, dress for work, eat breakfast with Tom, say goodbye to Tom at 7:15, read the internet until it was time to leave for work at 8:00. The order of this varied depending on my wake-up time, but the point is, I was reliably wasting 45 minutes staring at a screen (by myself!) each morning.

I chose to modify my morning, rather than my afternoon, based on the idea that this had to be my top priority. I knew that if I aimed to take a walk after work that I would be inclined to make excuses to avoid doing it at the end of the work day. I also wanted to make it easy. This meant that I had to make it hard to not walk. Thus became the new routine: wake up, shower, dress for a walk, eat breakfast with Tom, walk out the door as Tom is also leaving, set a timer on my phone for 10 minutes, walk until the timer goes off, walk back, change into work clothes, leave for work at 8:00. My walk is different from day-to-day. I walk in whatever direction I want. Sometimes there is a “purpose,” e.g. a walk to the store for an item for dinner. Some mornings I walk and talk, which is helping me to kick a *bad* habit–talking on my cellphone on my commute to/from work. Mostly I am walking to walk. Going back and reading Leo’s post again, I realize that this habit is very zen indeed:

“So enjoy the habit change, in the moment, and don’t worry what the outcome of the activity is. The outcome matters very little, if you enjoy the journey.”

During my second week of walking, I started to take pictures on my walk. I’m not lugging a camera around, so they are always on my phone, but this practice adds to my own enjoyment and causes me to be more aware of my surroundings and thus more present, too. Taking photos is also a way to make it social–I’m using Instagram to take and edit my photos and push them to Flickr and sometimes Twitter. There’s no hard rule that every walk has a photo to go with it, but I like the idea that these pictures become a record of my walks–the weather, the light, where I went and when.

I haven’t yet decided if there will be a new habit in February (tomorrow!) or what that might be, though I have a few ideas. One thing’s for sure: my morning walks will continue. I’m hooked.

The most striking feature of Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield is the wetland that sits at its center. Even in winter – if you want to call this winter – when the pond is iced over and almost everything is dead, it brings a certain thrill of being an explorer or a pirate to venture out on the center’s causeways between the reed-covered islands, your heart jumping a bit when the floating bridge gives just a little under your weight. Martha and I enjoyed our walk there last Sunday and though I did my best to simply take in the natural beauty, it wasn’t long before my mind shifted to what we’d be eating for dinner.

An experienced forager would probably have been able to find a feast amongst the fallen leaves and icy paths, but since I have trouble distinguishing an elm from an oak, I couldn’t take my dinner inspiration directly from the land. Instead, I took it to a more conceptual level, asking, what really is a wetland? A soupy morass, a muddy stew of plants and animals, dotted here and there with islands of reeds that floating on top.

If there’s one thing my culinary education has prepared me for up to this point, it’s the cooking of soupy morasses. I had in mind a chicken stew – duck would have been too cute, let alone turtle – full of onions, carrots, mushrooms and peas and bound together by sauce velouté – chicken stock thickened with a roux. And those fluffy islands floating on top? Biscuits.

From browning the chicken to plopping the biscuit batter on top of the stew and baking it all together, this can all be done in one pot. I used:

Stew

• Olive oil
• 3 chicken leg quarters
• 2 onions, diced
• 4 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1/2# button mushrooms, quartered
• 6 T flour
• 6 T butter
• 4 c chicken stock
• 8 oz frozen peas
• Juice of 1 lemon

Biscuits

• 2 cups white flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 1/2 t sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1/2  t baking soda
• 4 T cold butter, cut into cubes
• 1 1/2 c cold buttermilk

Make the Stew: Heat oven to 350ºF. Sprinkle the chicken legs with salt and pepper. In a dutch oven, or a large cast-iron pan if you’re dextrous, heat a little oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the chicken, skin side down, and cook until well-browned. Turn the chicken over and immediately place the vessel in the oven. Roast until chicken registers 170ºF – about 25 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and set on a plate. Drain any accumulated chicken fat and juices to a small bowl.

Place the dutch oven back over medium heat. Pour a few teaspoons of the conserved chicken fat in and add carrots and onions. Cook the vegetables until softened and slightly browned, 10—15 minutes. Remove to a large bowl. Return dutch oven to medium heat and add a few more teaspoons of the chicken fat (if that runs out, olive oil or butter is fine). Add the mushrooms and cook until browned. Add to bowl with the onions and carrots.

When the chicken has cooled, remove the skin and discard (or, if nobody’s looking, eat). Remove the chicken from the bones and shred by hand. Add chicken to bowl with onions, carrots and mushrooms.

Heat butter over medium heat in dutch oven. When foaming subsides, whisk in flour. Cook a minute or two, stirring constantly. Gradually whisk in chicken stock–keep stirring! Bring to a boil then add reserved vegetables and chicken. Turn off the heat, stir in peas and lemon juice, and adjust seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

Make the Biscuits: Heat the oven to 450ºF. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Drop in butter cubes and pulse until distributed into flour, about eight 1-second pulses. Transfer mixture to a bowl. Fold in buttermilk with a rubber spatula until just mixed.

Using well-floured hands, plop small handfuls of biscuit dough directly on top of stew, starting in the center and working out to the edges.

Bake stew, uncovered, until biscuits are browned, about 25 minutes.

Tom and I walked at Wood Lake Nature Center on Sunday. This was our second time there, the first over Memorial Day in May 2011. There were no turtles in sight yesterday (they are in brumation this time of year, so I learned), but we did find an array of winter textures and a few chickadees.

Merry Christmas! Remember our tree? I wanted to make more this year at as gifts but couldn’t wrap my head around how to transport them. Perhaps a very long tube?

As planned, we journeyed to Bide-A-Wee Thursday morning for Thanksgiving. The turkey was the best we’d ever tasted, white and dark meat included.

We met Brett’s grouse, of the Grilled Grouse at Bide-A-Wee. It was very soft and its neck still moved.

Some of my favorite pictures from the day were of Brett and Mary’s wirehaired Griffins Annabel and Lily.

I am always trying to get Lily’s picture at Bide-A-Wee, but she has a knack for looking away at the precise moment the shutter clicks. This time I tricked her:

Above, the tablescape after dessert on paper plates licked clean (Dinner was had on the loveliest of plates by Theresa.). Days later, the afterglow remains:

af·ter·glow

• Light or radiance remaining in the sky after the sun has set.
• Good feelings remaining after a pleasurable or successful experience.