Do I Smell Another Food Challenge?

Umm how did I miss this?! I came across this site (via SlowFoods Los Angeles) documenting the journey of going an entire months without eating processed foods. Am I weird, or does the prospect of eating only 100% natural, preservative/crap-free, CLEAN food make you really excited too? I'm probably just weird, huh? Luckily for me, I forwarded the link to my husband and he was equally enthusiastic to give it a shot.

I consider ourselves pretty health conscious people, and I don't think(hope) following an unprocessed diet will be too big of a change. I mean we make it a priority to eat clean, cook as home as much as possible, and make healthy choices when eating out (although we've been known to have the occasional King Taco slip - d'oh!). Since getting married and moving in together, and especially since having our own kitchen, we have made a conscious effort to establish healthy eating habits for our family. We have gradually gotten better and have learned a ton over the past year. As with anything in life, though, there's always room for improvement. It's time to say no to the frozen food dinners and pre-packaged foods. We are ready to step it up a notch!

The question that remains is when. When should we start this challenge? I wish I could say now! Or at least next month! I'm trying not to get ahead of myself as we still need to finish our October challenge. But next month is November. Thanksgiving is in November, as well as two of my siblings' birthdays, and I'm sure the start of many other family gatherings that precede the holiday season. Which leads us to December. December = tamales. Do you know how bad I would feel neglecting holiday and family gathering meals from both my and the husband's moms? Not just that, but they would look at us funny for making up such "silly" food rules. I'd rather avoid the awkwardness. But damn, that means we have to wait till January?

Hmm... pretty sure I don't want to wait that long. We will have to think about this and go over our current kitchen inventory to see what needs to change. I'm sure there will be some planning and researching involved, so that might take some time. Maybe we can even share our knowledge with the families and invite them to participate. Except I'm not sure how well that would be received by our traditional, been-cooking-this-way-for-25-years mothers, but it's worth a shot right?

I'll have to get back to you all on this one. In the meantime, has anyone tried this out? Got any opinions...thoughts...anything? More importantly, who wants to join us? Unprocessed dinner parties anyone? ;-)