Food Challenge 2009?

I wish that I had the foresight, creativity and organizational skills to take on a 365-day food challenge. You know, something like, The Elimination Diet: My Suck-Ass Year of Quinoa and Black Beans, or like, 365 Days of Bacon – you know, one that’s really exciting and would segue into a lucrative book deal, but I totally don’t, save for saying something like, ‘I will eat. Every. Single. Day. For the entire year. And so will my kids.' How’s that?

Not so much, huh?

Thankfully, there are and have been foodies/bloggers/foodie bloggers much more ambitious than myself, and they have done a great job of challenging their culinary prowess for my amusement. From blog to book, they have toed the line of madness for their stomach art, and it is my great honour to give a shout out to those that I think deserve one – make that, 365.

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating – Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon

I know, I know, I talk about this book all the time, and it’s not just because one of the authors is cute, and (I like to think) winked at me when I saw him do a reading. Not the first, not the last, but definitely one of the best accounts of a yearlong challenge I have read. Educational, entertaining, important. Go, read.

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

I read this when it came out a couple of years ago, and I had not read her blog beforehand, so I can’t tell you how it stands up to the original cyber-version. What I can tell you is that Julie Powell, in a quest to find in life something more important than the pursuit of the daily grind, takes it upon herself to spend an entire year cooking up the entire contents of Julia Child’s fabled Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume I. I, personally just go get a massage or spend a few hours in Starbucks with a good book when I have the blahs, but JP figured that channeling her inner culinary maven could help save her career, marriage and spirit, so she went for it. The results are worth reading.

P.S. – movie comes out this year – blog à book à movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy freakin’ Adams?! Way to set the bar out of the stratosphere for the rest of us lowly bloggers just hoping for double digit comments, Julie Powell.

A Year of Crockpotting/The Ultimate Crockpot Cookbook – Stephanie O’Dea

So, blogger Stephanie O’Dea made a New Year’s Resolution in 2008 to use her Crockpot every single damn day. My New Year’s Resolution for 2008 was to be a nicer person, and we all know how that turned out. Maybe 2009 will be my year.

Anyway, I can’t say that I have been reading Stephanie’s blog for the duration, but I did discover her a while back (and not through her appearance this summer on Rachel Ray), and I like her. She’s funny, irreverent, a good writer and a creative crockpotter - everything that I like in a food blogger. (To whit, her first entry had her stick her two gerbils in her mini-crock. Don’t want to know how that one turned out.) Want to know the best part about Stephanie and her challenge? She DID it. She used a Crockpot every fricken day of 2008, and although there are an abundance of soup recipes, natch, she’s got some really great stuff in there. Look around for her non-food recipes, like Crockpot air freshener, Crockpot soap and Crockpot candles. I will be buying her book when it comes out fo sho. And that ain’t no crock.

So what's it gonna be for you? Care to give up fast food for '09? Gonna try something new everyday? Skipping coffee for the duration? Let me know - I'll be your cheerleader. It'll help with my 'Be nice in '09' resolution. Right?

Comments

[Mouse]

Stephanie's crockpot blog inspired me to get mine out and even to ask for a bigger one for the holidays. My food-related goals for the year are to deal with the food sensitivities I'm tracking down and to develop a good number of easy, quick, delicious recipes for the family.

[Don Mills Diva]

I love my crock pot but the whole idea of using it is to create enough food to last for a week!

I can't imagine firing it up every day!

[No Mother Earth]

Skipping coffee? Ha! No.

I am going to try this year to get my kids to eat more nutritiously - that means me cooking better things and them actually eating it. I know. Good luck, huh?