The day’s Ceres menu included sole with spinach, shitakes and goat cheese. And lentil soup with beets and coconut milk. Food designed to lift the spirit as much as provide healthy nutrients to bodies that need some special tending.

The meals that went out that night and every week, delivered to homes throughout Sonoma County, were created by volunteer teenagers in white smocks, guided by volunteer professional Wine Country chefs. Hopefully the kids also get hooked on eating local and organic and understand why slow food trumps fast food.  Then there’s the bonus of being part of a community doing something nice for others.

Those being people who have cancer or other serious illness, who need to eat as healthy as possible but whose palate may be off from strange new meds and whose families have other priorities than creating something enticing in the kitchen.

This is the Ceres Community project, which teaches young people to cook nutritious  inspired meals for sick people and which is becoming a national model for food  programs around the country.  The Ceres kitchen is in my neighborhood, housed in a bright new building painted spinach green with carrot colored trim. But I never got inside the operation until the other night when I accompanied my husband, who started driving for Ceres after a sick friend joined the list of clients.

It was one of those cold inky black nights when you’re glad for a car with a good heater and a radio with a strong classical music station. Lovely aromas came from the back seat. I guessed it was the soup.  Ceres operates year round but given the season it felt like the best thing to be doing, taking very fine food to very important regular people who are not out doing the eat, drink and be merry thing. Someone had also donated fresh wreaths with red ribbons to be included with some deliveries.

We drove down the highway against the commute traffic, remarking on how many years we had been part of that string of slow moving impatient drivers.  With our gift bags of food we crept through unfamiliar neighborhoods twinkling with reindeer and Santas,  trying to read obscure street numbers.

They were waiting. One woman introduced her grandson and we talked about the charm of two-year-olds. Another, her smiling face framed by a knit cap, seemed as thrilled to see the wreath as the meals.   She hadn’t done much decorating, she explained. This was her chemo week.

You can’t help but wonder how you would be if everything changed and you were trying to keep the holiday spirit, do the tree, wrap presents and imagining what the new year might deliver. Is it harder to be sick at Christmas? Does it feel like a milestone to reach another holiday?

I never did much volunteering when I was working full time. People who do say that it provides a sense of satisfaction and purpose and helps balance your karma. It’s a reminder that even if you can’t solve global problems or what’s going on in Washington you can do one more thing for your community. And trust that when you need a kindness, a neighbor will knock at your door.

We drove home with the empty containers from last week’s delivery. My gloves smelled like Doug fir. We took the back country route and some forest creature – maybe a fox or a coyote – darted across our headlights. I took it as a sign of grace.

It was fitting that on a November weekend when the temperatures soared into the record-breaking 80s I was at two events where we were reminded that care-taking the environment is up to us in this most green corner of the universe.

As Ann Hancock from Sonoma County’s Climate Protection Campaign said, “If we can’t do it here, where will it happen?”

That was at the Peace and Justice Center dinner where Ann was honored for her environmental leadership. Ann used to be in real estate but wanted something on her tombstone other than “sold houses” and now is all about getting individuals and businesses and local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She calls climate change the preeminent public health issue. She says that climate change, “unchecked, will swamp all other issues.”

The next night Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, away from Washington and back in earth-friendly territory, said pretty much the same thing, that we need to keep the green light on, given how Washington is filling up with global warming and climate change scoffers.

Green-wise, California triumphed against giant oil companies in voting down Proposition 23 that would have turned back the state’s climate change efforts. But it didn’t come through with new money for state parks which would have been funded by an extra $18 on vehicle registration fees. Sonoma County did, however, vote for the measure.

Lynn Woolsey was at a dinner for LandPaths, a greenie group that helps acquire private land for public access, builds trails, puts on hikes and finds ways for people to not only get into the outback but help maintain it, seeing how there isn’t enough public money or rangers to do it.

The LandPaths people talked about the importance of having not only good ways to get out into open spaces but a place to sit and take it all in. They call it a “sit spot,” where you might prop yourself on a rock or a piece of beach and just be quietly alone in nature.

I was thinking that the scoffers and disbelievers and even those who think we can put environmental issues on temporary hold could all use a sit spot. Take off those business suits and shiny shoes and pull on some hiking boots and maybe those funny looking pants that zip off into shorts and give themselves a time-out. It wouldn’t necessarily change their politics but it might give them renewed appreciation for clean air.

One Land Pather said that being in nature was more than a luxury or a right. It is also a need. The other day I took an early morning bike ride on a county parks trail. The air smelled like vinegar which probably came from fermenting grapes, apples or over-ripe compost. There was also the not so faint perfume of cow poop. You could bottle it, color it green and call it Aroma Sonoma.

There were joggers and bicyclists and a group of school kids. A homeless guy with his life in a grocery cart. A slow-moving couple, one pushing a portable oxygen tank. A woman sat alone on a bench. She could have been looking for rain clouds or coming up with a poem. Maybe wondering what she was going to do about keeping her house or finding another job. Or maybe she was just in her sit spot.

I’ve joined a group of women who hike together every week and a few months ago some ambitious ones suggested that the bike riders in the group sign up for the 35 mile version (the short part) of Levi Leipheimer’s King Ridge Granfondo.

I’d been able to keep up on the hikes and decided that surely by October my girly neighborhood cruiser and I would be ready to join 6,000 national cyclists whipping through western Sonoma County.

I was given a new bike two years ago when I retired from my newspaper but I haven’t exactly been in training. Some of the riders in our group- we called ourselves the Fondettes – are way more proficient than I’ll ever be. They take bicycling vacations through mountains and deserts.

What we have in common is that we have reached a point where we now have more time to play. Many, like me, continue to work at least part time but are making up for those years when we toiled inside and longed to be outside. I suspect some of these new friends have been athletic all their lives. Had we gone to the same high school they would probably not have picked me for their volleyball team.

But for me the lure of the Granfondo (even the mini version) was not to test my riding skills but to be part of the big deal hoopla.

I did a few spins with the others on bike trails before the Granfondo but after I got in my car and drove the 35 mile round trip course from Santa Rosa to Occidental which includes a few daunting grades I had to admit I wasn’t ready.

I would either end up walking my bike uphill, dropping dead or calling my husband to come get me. Fortunately I had an ally. Mary, who also is not fond of punishing ascents, had pulled a muscle while jumping on the trampoline with her granddaughters. She, too, had lowered her expectations.

The speed racers going for 105 miles took off first. Then the 65 mile riders. Then the 35 mile crowd. The more serious riders looked like they all belonged on the same team with their flame shaped helmets, alien sunglasses, huggy shorts and state of the art machines. Others did it their way. Some wore tie-dyed and jeans. One cyclist was decked out like a 19th century woman in long split skirt and fancy jacket.

Mary rode her clown-style collapsible bike with its little wheels. I had my doe-de-doe bike with a ding-aling-aling bell.

With all the crowd it took us a half hour to walk our bikes to the starting line and finally take off. And then wouldn’t you know it, I got a flat. Ran over two thumb tacks. Was I a victim of bicyclist-driver warfare? Had some rural resident tired of maneuvering his hay truck around bike riders planted these tacks as revenge? No matter. A charming fix-it guy named Chad came by in his official repair wagon, replaced the tube, pumped me up and we were back.

By now, apparently dead last in the pack of 6,000, Mary and I admired the scenery, passing egrets, Canada geese and vineyards. We went up and over hills, two of them heart-pumpers, and started talking about breakfast.

When the road monitors said, “Ladies, this way,” pointing west, I shouted, “We’re going for coffee” and Mary and I swooped down the hill into Graton. After sharing a dish of eggs, spinach and cambozola on toast we turned back to Santa Rosa, arriving at the finish about the same time as our hard core friends who ably and legitimately completed all 35 miles.

It was still a personal accomplishment. Having grown up when the only girls who did sports were natural athletes and having reached an age when no one really expects you to push yourself physically, I felt like a winner.

Thankfully, sports have become more democratic. Cycling events are like fun runs, even open to slow spokes. When we pedaled over the finish line the announcer took notice of my cute wicker basket hanging from my handlebars. I gave him a ding-a-ling.