Forty Days and Forty Nights

Lent starts Wednesday. And I like a challenge. A while after I decided to give up the dynamic peanut butter/chocolate duo it dawned on me, "oh dear, forty days of no chocolate or peanut butter on my blog!" And then I remembered that it's been quite some time since either showed up on anyway and decided it was a loss that could be afforded. (This does mean, however, that the weekend Lent ends there will be a fantastically rich peanut butter and chocolate recipe up here! Can't end a forty day fast without something epic.)

I suppose I'll have to come up with something equally delicious in meantime, more for my purposes than yours! I'm a dessert addict and if you have any recommendations as to how I can fill the gap between now and then without going insane, let me know! Not only will I make it and try it, but you'll see it up here :) Mrs. Browning gave me a magazine article on some fruit based cakes that look fantastic, and I think I'm going to try my hand a creme brulee! So don't give up on me just yet, more deliciousness is to come!

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Ok, so I wrote that this morning. The morning of Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent, and before I went to school and saw Supersize Me. I don't really eat fast food, so it really wasn't a big eye opener or anything, but the cool thing about the movie I think is that even if you are a McAddict, you can still relate. The whole movie is about obesity issues in general and it talks about sources other than the fast food industry. I won't lie, even though the issues pointed out in the video are mostly ones I have learned to avoid, I still have my own messy habits that contribute to me not being the size of a rail (which I'm not necessarily docking, so don't go all haywire on me). So it got me thinking. I have given up peanut butter and chocolate before (so to those of you who think I can't do it, know I have already succeeded once!) and maybe I could raise the bar a little more this year.

So here's what I'm thinking... What if I take the whole Supersize Me experiment and reverse it? Morgan swore to eat only products sold at McDonald's for thirty days, what if I swear myself off processed food for forty? Including chocolate and peanut butter. Obviously a direct foil of his mission would be to give up fast food, but I don't eat fast food anyway so that doesn't seem like much of a challenge. I'm proposing that I not only swear myself off of peanut butter and chocolate but all processed, packaged, or ready to eat food. Meaning... anything straight from a package or carton is off limits. Basically no chips, no ice cream, no crackers, no candy bars, no cereal, nothing meant to go straight from the shelf to your mouth. To a certain degree at least. I could prepare packaged foods like oatmeal, or used canned tomatoes to make pasta sauce, or cook pasta or rice, things of that nature. But toasting a pop tart doesn't fall in that category, nor does baking a Tombstone pizza. See where I'm headed?

And by the way, eating food from a restaraunt would be limited to once a week. Fast food is obviously out of bounds, anything that is pretty much just reheated at the restaraunt is automatically off limits, but otherwise I can order food at MOST once a week from any establishment, discluding non-caloric beverages (what if I want to get some tea ;) ).

Unlike others, and this a sick little part of me, I think this sounds fun. I like a challenge. And I'm going to do it. Hopefully that means you'll be hearing from me more rather than less. After all, I'm going to have to prepare my own food more often and come up with some creative ways to indulge, of course sharing my experiments all along the way. I've been wanting to factor some heathier habits into my lifestyle, and I always seem to use Lent as an excuse to do so. Here goes nothing...