New Year

Want to turn your body's fat-burning potential up a notch? Check out these five ways to wake up and up the calorie burn.

1. Exercise: That dawn workout doesn't just put a pep in your step; exercising in the morning also helps boost your metabolism, more than exercising at other times of the day. Studies have shown that people who exercised in the morning burn more calories than those who exercise at other times of the day, so lace up your sneaks and greet the sun for an added calorie burn.
2. Add intensity: Good news for the time-strapped: a recent study found that a simple intense 2.5-minute burst of exercise can lead to an increased afterburn all day — up to 200 calories worth, in fact. Need ideas on how to add intensity to your workouts? Here are five short exercises that will help you burn extra calories fast.

Three more ideas after the break!

What's keeping you from composting? Is it too stinky? Does it attract fruit flies in your kitchen? Or does it just seem too difficult to bother with? Whatever your excuse is, these tips will help dispel your fears or bad experiences with composting so you can feel good about filling the green bin.

1. Get rid of the stink and flies: While there are some airtight compost bins with charcoal lids that help prevent smells from getting out, here's a guaranteed stink-proof method. Place all the food scraps in a compostable green bag and store it in the freezer until the bag is full.
2. Stop trashing your food: The compost bin can be the new home of all of your food scraps including vegetables, eggshells, coffee grinds, meat, bones, and leftover cooked food. Just remember to remove any stickers, plastic, or foil from the food.
3. Toss the packaging: If it's made of wood, paper, or compostable plastic, then it belongs in the compost bin. If it came from the ground, it's compostable, so even greasy pizza boxes can go in there. (Plastics labeled "biodegradable" are not compostable.)
4. Research where you can compost: If you have access to a backyard, set up your own composter or reach out to the city for a green compost collection bin. If you live in a large city, see if your apartment building has a green bin or ask your landlord to request one. Otherwise, most farmers markets will have a compost drop-off for you to contribute to each week.
5. See the amazing results: If you compost and recycle regularly, you'll soon notice that you barely have any trash — I toss one bag of trash a week, if not once a month. Thanks to composting, the days of stinky trash are gone, as my trash bin only holds nonrecyclable packaging, plastic wrappers, and bags.

What are your tips for smarter composting?

Has Grüner Veltliner's consonant-heavy name put off your interest in enjoying a bottle? Fret no more! Pronounced GROO-nur velt-LEE-ner, this Austrian gem is more than worth the enunciation effort, as is evident on the first sip of the mineral-rich white. Even better, thanks to its relatively limited prominence in the US market it's often a great bargain buy, with quality far surpassing its moderate price tag — many exceptional bottles are in the $15-$25 range. But before you snap up a bottle (or two) to try, let's delve briefly in the nitty-gritty of this superb varietal:

• While Grüner Veltliner is Austria's national grape — and commands the greatest acreage of any grape grown there — it's also grown (in much smaller quantities) in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and regions in Washington, Oregon, and California.
• Grüners are known for having a marked sense of terroir, making the region from which they hail a particular point of interest. Much of the crop comes from the rocky terraced river banks of the Danube river in the northern part of Austria, which lends a pronounced mineral note to the wine — something we can certainly get behind.

Keep reading for general tasting notes and our top pick to sip now.

Just as Champagne wineries in the Champagne region of France have struggled to control their authentic designation of origin, so too have Prosecco wineries in Italy. Up until 2009, Italian winemakers called both the sparkling wine and the grape it is made from Prosecco. However, after years of other winemakers capitalizing on the Prosecco name, the Italians decided to fight for DOCG status (a quality assurance label put on every bottle guaranteeing the product is authentic and from a particular growing region in Italy). During the complicated process, officials formally changed the name of the Prosecco grape to an old synonym, Glera, to help further authenticate and demarcate true Prosecco wines from Italy. Here are some other reasons why you should care about the Glera grape:

• The Glera grape originates from Prosecco, Italy, a Northern Italian village about a half hour from Venice. While some claim the grape has been cultivated since Roman times, the first written account of the Glera grape dates back to 1772.
• Each bottle of DOCG-certified Prosecco must contain at least 85 percent Glera grapes.
• Golden Glera grapes have been cultivated to ferment into a crisp, clean, and slightly fruity sparkling wine, unlike Champagne, which tends to have some yeasty flavor and body. This difference in flavor occurs because the second fermentation process differs from Champagne. Glera grapes undergo a second fermentation in large steel tanks (rather than in the individual Champagne bottles).
• To find the highest-quality Prosecco, look for the Prosecco Superiore DOCG-labeled wines. These are grown in the same historical area called the Veneto, a hilly cluster of towns between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene. We recently tried Sorelle Bronca Extra Dry ($18), a Prosecco Superiore DOCG, made from 100 percent Glera grapes (most from organic farmers). It pleased our palates with its fine bubbles and refreshingly light flavor.

Hearing words like "tannins" and "oxidation" may make you feel like you're back in chemistry class, but they're oh-so important to the wines we enjoy on the regular. Don't let them intimidate you, though — getting familiar with wine's most common terms can be as easy as pouring a glass of red at the end of a long day. Brush up on these words, and you'll be moving past "sweet" and "dry" in no time so that when you go wine tasting again, you'll be the pro with all the insider knowledge.

• Acidity: The bitter or sour flavors that a wine gives off.
• Aeration: The act of exposing wine to oxygen to let it "breathe" and mix with air. This is meant to open up the wine's aromas and soften up the flavor.
• Appellation: A specific geographic region where a wine comes from.

Keep reading for more glossary terms