October Unprocessed

For a family that prides itself (ok, mostly I pride myself) in eating a healthy homemade diet we sure do have a lot of frozen pizzas in the house. And last month, during college boy's summer vacation, there was actually a box of....cue the gasp...corn dogs in the freezer (thanks Wilson;) So when I stumbled upon this challenge on Eating Rules blog, it sounded like just what we needed to getting back on the road to completely ditching the prepared (aka processed) foods we continue to buy. It doesn't hurt that Wilson is back at school so only Annie will have to put up with our idiosyncrasies. (we really miss you Wilson...honest)

Our biggest problem with this challenge is the timing. Our garden is in transition from summer to winter crops so not a lot of produce will be fresh home-grown stuff. We do have winter squash, sweet potatoes, and black beans coming out of the garden...so soups will definitely be on the menu...and we've got quite a bit of home-canned and frozen goodies. Guess we'll just have to hit the Farmers Market on a more regular basis and keep our trips to the grocery store to a minimum... staying on the outer aisles.

This will be a good exercise to see just how much processed foods we actually are eating. I think when you have a lot of fruits and veggies around it seems ok to have a bag of Kettle chips in the cupboard to snack on (hey, they're GMO free). It'll be interesting to see what we miss the most and if it's possible to duplicate those items with home-made versions.