Brekkie.
Toasted black rye bread slices with cheese, tomato and basil. Tomato and basil go together like nothing else. Say tomato, think basil. And vice versa. Morning juice too (of oranges).
Lunch.
I was eating out with Jan, so for the first time during the Meatless Week I had to face the temptations in a diner menu. And sit opposite of someone ordering tasty-looking meat :p Well, it didn't look that tasty, and it was only pork, so... I had white fish called tilapia, and I am feel a bit guilty, funnily enough, as it is kind of meat, but I didn't ban seafood so... And fish is so healthy and good for body as well. There were also mashed potatoes, tartar-sauce, and some freshies. The food was very good (the place we went to tends to have ... shaky quality at times).
Dinner.
It was the same as yesterday, since I made so much food. Plus a glass of good ol' dry apple Crowmoor. Since it was funny not to cook something today, in the light of yesterday's marathon, I decided to make dessert. I was searching for an English word for it and Wikipedia helps - Kissel. So it's a fruit soup, a popular dessert in Eastern and Northern Europe, as we can read. And out of curiosity I tried translating kissel through Google Translator, from Finnish, and I was not left disappointed - Google suggests that kiisseli could mean fool :o ... What can I say. It was a tasty fool we had for dessert.
Anyway. I made it of dried fruits (raisins, plums, apricots), with not so much sugar and added cinnamon and lemon juice. It would have been very good with whipped cream, but since we don't have any cream whipper at the moment, I got this sweet white dairy product from the shop. Google Translator says it's curd, but that's pretty far from accurate. Over time I have realised other nations don't really have what we in Estonia call kohupiim, and what a shame, because it's bloody tasty! (And it's not one of those funny foods we like and others don't :p People from abroad like it too, very much. Unlike something like sült (that's a meat jelly :p), or black blood sausages...)
How I feel in the end of the day: surprisingly good, except minor stomach ache. I felt quite full of energy, thanks to regular meals and sleep, no doubt. And sunny weather, too. We people of the north can be in some semi-hibernation state in the winter, but try going out for a nice walk if its minus 15 degrees and sea winds blowing everywhere... All in all I am confident that I will manage the week without meat, and I already know what to cook tomorrow evening. It's gonna be de-li-cious!
Brekkie.
- Porridge (mannapuuro/mannapuder - of this funny semolina grain) with blackcurrant jam; toasted black rye bread with garlic cream cheese, cheese and tomato slices; mandarins; orange juice. Proper breakfast, but if i wanted to be a real teacher's pet, I'd choose oatmeal over semolina.
Late lunch.
- Salmon sandwich; energy drink. Nothing to excuse myself with here, Monday is the suck work day :p I would have taken sandwich without any meat or fish, if there would have been any available.
Dinner.- Cheese-vegetable pie. An hour in oven results in such a drool-worthy pie! The topping consists of garlic-flavoured cream cheese, cottage cheese, eggs, a bit of cream, broccoli (my love) and tomato. Note for next time - could work well with some herbs. The result is very creamy and soft. Worth re-making.
- Tomato soup with pasta and basil. Also contains paprika, onion, garlic, vegetable bouillon. Good classic tomato soup, perfect on cold day. And processed tomatoes are good for your health, so everyone - eat tomato soup (if you don't like ketchup, like me)!
In conclusion: It was quite a successful day. The only moment I felt like having a meat was the habit of adding ham on breakfast sandwich. Other than that, since I had the dinner planned out, there were no problems. I am satisfied that I took time and made a proper dinner, since usually I am too lazy (shame on me :().
I have decided to try not to eat meat for a week. I try not to use any form of the word "vegetarianism", as I do intend to eat seafood, if it finds a way to my plate, and fish. I don't have any other particular reason for doing this than curiosity, mainly to see if it is difficult, will I have cravings, how will I be feeling afterwards. Every day, I will "blog down" (write down does not sound quite right in this environment :p) what I have been eating, and add food pictures, if possible. Conclusive post will be made on Sunday evening.
From years 5-6 to the adulthood (biological, anyway :p) I used to live in a small village. We had one post office in the village, and one mailman (-woman), who delivered all kinds of mail to everyone. In the corner of the village that our house was located along with 10-ish other similar houses, there were sets of mailboxes located in one spot in the middle and everyone had to go there to get their daily newspaper and magazines.
When I moved to Tallinn and lived in several apartment houses (at least four) (and a dorm, which I don't have very fond memories of), the mail system was the same everywhere - there's a bunch of mailboxes downstairs at the front door for each apartment, where all the mail gets delivered to. So you could pick up your mail when you came from school/work/walk/wherever/feeding ducks in winter, or if you stayed in, you had to go down and pick it up.
When I moved to Helsinki I soon discovered there are no mailboxes at all. There are holes in the doors, where the mailman pushes the mail into, and then it falls on your hallway floor. Convenient, eh. It was funny at first, as this procedure takes place with kind of a loud "clonk" and I used to get startled and thought someone is trying to break in :p Mailmen and -women have to work more here to deliver mail to everyone separately, but I bet they have much less area/population to cover than mailpersons in Estonia, who have like a whole village or half of the town (semi-figuratively speaking).
But that's not all. It seems like different people are delivering different mail-related items here as well. Our first paper, Hufvudstadsbladet ("The Capital City Newspaper" in rough translation) that Jan-Erik reads comes at night (!). I have woken up accidentally 3-4 am and heard the paper being "clonked" through the door. Poor mailpeople! Hufvudstadsbladet is Finland's biggest Swedish-language paper.
The next batch arrives some time in the afternoon, from midday to 2-3 pm. That includes Kauppalehti ("Trade Newspaper"), which is in Finnish and comes for free thanks to some shenanigans, no doubt, which I occasionally browse, but it's not that interesting so I don't dedicatedly read it. This mailperson also brings letters and magazines (gaming magazine Pelit once a month and Disney comic book Aku Ankka once a week for me because it's good for my Finnish practice :p No-one shall know I actually like Donald and Daisy Duck!), and DVDs and other stuff that fits through the mail hole. Bigger stuff goes to the mail centre.
And then ther's some mailpeople who bring advertisements and such pointless fire material about 5 pm or so. That has happened lately because we took away the ugly "No advertisements, please" sign from our door in order to replace it with a nicer one, and meanwhile, since it's not there... There are also nice DHL-people, who occasionally deliver cat-related stuff ordered from Germany, and they come in the morning-ish too. When I was little, I wanted to become a mail deliverer. Then later I wanted to become a journalist. But after having chief edited the school newspaper for a few years, I buried this thought. Way too much pressure for way too little reward (and I'm not talking about financial reward here) :p Right now I do work with newspapers and magazines, though, in more of an observant kind of way, and that's pretty fine with me. 
