I gave up on meat as a part of my first 30 days challenge and this have actually changed me, a lot.
Before you continue reading, you should check this TED video if you have never heard about 30 days challenges before.
I've always wanted to try living a few days without eating any meat. I'm used to eating all kinds of stuff, my mum is a nutritionist so we have a really wide variety of things in our fridge and pantry. She prefers doing everything on her own so even though I wanted to cook something by myself, it was often already done by her or she was occupying our kitchen unit. That's great, sure, you have nothing to care about and only come when the food is ready, but I've always been somehow tempted by cooking and, therefore, wasn't able to gain proper experience. Moving to Olomouc have changed everything. I prefer being there on my own, I just love this privacy and freedom which I wasn't able to get back home, in our not so big flat, sharing room with my younger brother my entire life. Damn, it's really tricky picking up girls in Brno if we can't go back to my place :-D Not mentioning my workaholic parents (they both work at home) and never-leave-my-computer brother.
So, I finally started cooking on my own. I rarely eat pre-made meals, "just add water and stir meals", take-aways or go to restaurants and fast foods. I'm glad I had time to cook and eat meals made by myself during the first semester. Well, I have to admit I was kinda skipping classes during the lunch time, but, anyway, I wouldn't have probably attended most of them even if they were rescheduled. I used to cook and experiment with a lot of things but meat was the main protein most of the time. I should also mention that I consider myself as a big food fan. If I had to choose in which specialization my English is the best, it would be cooking and food related. I've seen countless cooking shows and I'm subscribed to like tens of food channels on Youtube. And I'm so happy that I can try and experiment with those recipes anytime. Of course I have to cook not to ruin myself, most of those meals are actually cheap after all. The average prize of lunch in our university canteens is like 50 Kč from what I've heard and I'm pretty sure 90 % of my meals don't cross this line per portion. I made my first sushi this week, 2 big portions and it costed me 50-60 Kč. Sure, the price would have been much higher if I had to use fresh fish, but given the fact that it was my first time and me, being a vegetarian, I just made 2 vegan maki rolls. All I'm trying to say is how passionate I feel about food.
If I had a chance to go back in time, I would probably choose a cook or a chef career. Not saying it's too late now but I study what I like and I can enjoy cooking for fun. It may already sound like I'm some masterchef but I definitely wouldn't consider myself as good as it seems. I actually never screwed anything that much it became inedible, but there are of course some highs and lows. Yet all people I cooked for seemed like it's great. I even seduced my (now rather ex)girlfriend after I invited her over on a lunch. :-D Well, the food here didn't really matter and it would have happened sooner or later either way, I had to cook because I had lost a bet against her the night before. I bet cooking is like one of the top 3 skills a girl can appreciate about men. At least from what I've heard. It feels weird when a guy is a better cook than his girlfriend, but let's face it. How many teenage and twentyish girls can cook nowadays? Not saying that boys can but they aren't even supposed to from the historical point of view. Don't even try to come up with chauvinism and equality, you know how I mean it. :-)
I can still imagine myself in the food industry/restaurant business. Provide me sufficient capital and I'm gonna build a vegan restaurant chain/vegan food shops in here. I've been reading a lot of articles and opinions from vegs (gonna use this term to unify vegetarians and vegans) lately and a lot of them still don't have many opportunities to satisfy their needs. And this branch has a big growth potential, even from the highest class with all those managers trying to maintain healthy lifestyle. The number of vegs is simply going to grow. This is why I love what I study, I can be a restaurant manager as well as a Chinese interpreter. This all may be naive, maybe not, who knows.
It has been almost 2 weeks since the start of my first 30 days challenge. I knew I wouldn't have a problem eating no meat for a month, but I wouldn't expect the things going on in my head right now. I feel like I wanna continue living this way and even go vegan. I plan to eat some meat after the end of this challenge, just to experience the feeling after it, but I definitely know I'm going to reduce my consumption a lot, if not completely (most likely). I don't have any urge to eat meat. I feel better without it. It might work as a placebo effect but I wake up a bit easier every morning. I just had a completely free week, I was setting my alarm clock for 8 am or earlier and I got out of my bed every time. I was exercising, going to gym and not sleeping more than 7,5 hours. I still feel full of energy. This is really rare for me.
The main reason why I chose this challenge was, once again, cooking. I was already tired of all that meat and I wanted to improve my skill with new techniques and recipes. And it's great! I also hate working with raw meat (especially chicken), don't know why. So, yeah, I cook better, I like the food better and I can even contribute to saving some animals. I've always been avoiding those movements against animal cruelty, I didn't really care much even though I've seen some videos and documentaries. I thought it's hard to be a vegan. I use cheese, eggs and milk in my kitchen a lot but they are all substitutable and most of those substitutes actually taste better. Wondering how the vegan cheese tastes like, some people say it isn't good, I don't expect it to be great either but we'll see. However, I can live without having cheese in my life :-) I definitely wanna try vegan challenge and maybe even raw food challenge (this one in summer) if I only stick to vegetarian or almost-no-meat-diet but I'll try my best. I should give up alcohol and drugs, have more tattoos with one being X on my wrist and become a true hardcore straight edge fan, haha :-D
I've been looking at some scrumptious (I like this word, got it from somewhere and wrote it down) meals on a lot of veg sites and Facebook pages and I was really surprised how some vegans hate vegetarians. Some girl added a recipe with butter in it to a vegan page and all those people made her look worse than Hitler. Idiots are everywhere but these "oh my god, you just killed this poor little ant by accidentally stepping on it" radicals are taking it to a whole new level. It's really nice to live with a feeling that no animals were killed because of you, but I don't intend to lead a campaign against animal cruelty among my friends and family. Do whatever you feel is the best for you. I even think that those people who try to convince their friends and family that they're doing something wrong aren't any helpful. They just argue and the carnivore won't take anything from it. In my opinion, everyone has to come to this on his own, you can't simply convince someone to give up 80 % of their diet. But to be completely honest, I'm starting to think that this whole "we need meat, cheese, eggs and dairy products in our life" system is really sick and against ethics. People are only looking for that easier, more comfortable and hypocritical way of living. Sounds weird from someone who just got into this and I hope to create my own coherent opinion on all of this in the nearest future.
I'm looking forward to another challenges, I plan to get up really early (6 am or earlier) 6 times a week, start the morning with running/exercising and simply do things in the morning instead of going to bed at 4 am. This is gonna be seriously tough but I'll be much busier than ever before and I really want to incorporate this into my daily routine. We can come up with so many challenges, it doesn't have to be something difficult because even a minor one could make your life better. So what are yours?
I hope I inspired someone and I would like to try some challenge with more people participating. If you have any idea or just want to join, let me know and we'll come with something up. :-)
And if you wanna see something amazing, watch some Masterchef Junior (all episodes should be on Youtube). 10 years old kids are seriously cooking better than most of those contestants in the normal adult version. It was mind-blowing for me.
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