For those of us who want to eat more healthfully in 2012, changing our diets seems difficult. We have to follow more plans, buy more greens, eat out less often, cook more. Healthful eating seems like it requires many steps and a long-road to reprogramming on health-phobic minds.

Not so says Tamara Adler, a chef and the writer of a new book called An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Her simple solution for better eating in the new year? Boil water. Often.

Adler advocates boiling water and then using the by-products for the rest of the week. She advocates buying all of the vegetables for a week, and preparing them instantly at home, storing them for use later in the week. She suggests drizzling root vegetables and cauliflower with olive oil and then roasting them, and then storing them in jars for later eating. Her book details how a bit of cream can turn the refrigerated vegetables into soups. She also turns chopped stems from these vegetables into pesto.

Adler’s method for boiling water is different to what we’re used to, as well. She adds enough salt to make the water taste like sea water, making pasta with vegetables or boiled chicken. The flavored chicken water can be used afterwards to make differently-spiced vegetables.

The most interesting thing about Adler’s book is that she doesn’t seem to think that we need it, that our own instincts are capable of guiding our cooking. She believes that every step of preparation can and should be guided by intuition, and our own taste buds should guide what tastes good.

I don’t know that I’ve been such a convert in this respect. Adler’s idea seems worthwhile, but it doesn’t seem like food intuition can be converted to its natural state with just a hope and an intention. Our food instincts have been so subverted with fast food, culturally-specific food (do we find the instinct to eat healthy Indian food within our innate sensibility, for example) or convenience food that our food instincts may need to be completely recreated. Or our food misconceptions and cultural hegemony may need to broken down before we can reclaim them.

Adler is certainly more of an expert on food and taste than I am, and I will have to read her book to read her take on some of these questions. I will look forward to it.

Will you pick up a copy of An Everlasting Meal?