It is a New Year, and I’ve been dodging writing for quite awhile. I want to write, but life and work get in the way. I’ve been taking care of some family stuff, and working on getting a different position at the Job. It’s an important step in my culinary career.

I want to share this information I just came across. You may already know about it, but I didn’t. Check out this blog about the 100 day Real Food Challenge. Lisa Leake and her family cut out processed foods, and realized how much better they felt. And then they blogged about it and built a Challenge that any of us can take. I think it’s fabulous, and fits right in with Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution. There’s another site out there called Eating Rules, take a look at that as well.

There are a few other folks out there doing this kind of challenge. It seems to be connected by Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food,” published in 2009.

I don’t think any of my readers would argue that Americans need to change the way we eat. We cook, skrunch, extract, and re-form food, and then sell it in packages and cartons to the public, with “added” nutrients, and claim it is healthy. I’ve contended for a long time that is not the way to eat. I’m a Chef, I work with whole foods, proper foods, and turn them into something that is yummy and delicious on your plate. However, they do not get stored in a freezer or can for up to two years, waiting for someone to open it up and eat it.

So these food challenges that pop up are very cool. And I like to see that some of us are starting to eat better. And step by step we can turn back from a Processed Nation to a Whole Nation . If more of us stop buying what’s pre-packaged, and buy the produce, we can send a very loud message in the form of consumer dollars to the people who make the food. We want fresh, wholesome, whole ingredients, and we want to cook our food ourselves.

And if you want to learn to cook, contact me. I am a culinary instructor.