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!
Looks good to me, a decent balance of nutrients. Although I've always been a bit baffled by the differentiation between "meat or fish". Meat is flesh from an animal used as food, fish are animals. What's the difference? :p Probably tradition more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, meat is fish too. But it would have been a very sloppy headline like that - "Week without pork, beef, poultry, rabbit, reindeer, lamb, cangaroo, dog, cat... etc". So I explained it's meatless in the sense of that meat that comes into your mind first when hearing the word.
ReplyDeleteThere are some reasons why I decided not to leave out sea meat. Firstly, in order not to have too drastic change in my eating habits at once. It is important that I will leave this experiment having positive emotions, so that if/when I decide to become vegetarian, the transition will be less painful.
Secondly, I was trying to avoid the situation where I was making different pastas for dinner every day because I don't know much meatless food. Nor am I particularly good cook. Lack of variety in food ingredients would have maybe led to some very boring foods and I didn't want it to happen.
Thirdly, my eating habits so far at times have been pretty much disastrous, so I have grown the habit of at least trying to eat a lot of healthy stuff, and fish is, no doubt, very healthy. I know that the good stuff in fish can be replaced with good stuff in plants, but to know exactly what vitamin comes from where takes a little research and homework.
Deep down, I don't feel too good about eating animals, but habits are hard to change. I come from home where we didn't have particularly healthy eating traditions. And much of what you love to eat probably comes from home and childhood.
So I'm just trying this "without piggy, cow, lamb, rabbit etc" meat right now and I apologise for fish and shrimps for leaving them out of the circle.
Thanks for discussing!
I wasn't trying to make you feel guilty about eating any particular type of food, I stopped doing that long ago. I was just commenting on how people exclude fish from the meaning of the word meat. It seems to be a very common thing in various cultures, every time food is brought up and I say "I don't eat meat", people say "Hmm, and what about fish?". Personally I don't see any difference but as I said, it's probably something that's deeply rooted in people. :)
ReplyDeleteSo you used to give people hard time based on what they eat? Tsk tsk :)
ReplyDeleteI think that there is also the texture difference, which separates "meat meat" and "fish meat". All the animal and bird meats (oh what lovely terms...) tend to have kind of similar texture while fish is significatly pretty different.
And I think associations that people have with animals and fish are also quite different. Like you don't exactly pat or cuddle a fish... Maybe that is why it's a bit more difficult to generate very warm feelings towards them? I think once I get an aquarium (it's in to-do list) I will probably start looking differently at fishes too.
It was good to write about it anyway since I had a similar discussion with a friend over this topic yesterday.
Well I didn't exactly point fingers at people and say "You're bad because you eat meat" but if the topic was brought up, I argued the case. Now I just try to avoid talking about it completely unless provoked, maybe with the exception of close friends.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about fish not being cuddly, although that's an argument that opponents of animal rights campaigners sometimes use to point out their hypocrisy, as in "you only oppose seal hunting because the pups are all fluffy and cute, if it was something else you wouldn't give a damn". Which isn't to say you're a hypocrite of course, it's an inherent thing that people relate to some animals more than others. To me, the measure when I decide what to eat/wear/use or not is the level of sentience and the ability to suffer and feel pain.
Thought provoking. I am not animal rights activist in the active sense, meaning I don't demonstrate or such. The most I have ever done is being a volunteer in homeless cat shelter (I did that for a long time). I don't even understand tbh, what is there to oppose to the people who try to defend animals? When I was the cat rescuer, sometimes I had to face people who'd say "Why cats? There are so many homeless dogs/children/mice... etc in the world to rescue *as well*". So what? I chose to do something and focus on one thing, at the same time those askers probably did nothing, right...
ReplyDeleteIf/When I become vegetarian, it won't be something to boast about, or feel proud of, it comes from inside, I think, and is quite a personal thing. People stop eating meat for different reasons, after all. So if I decide to give up some kind of meat for the time being, and not all meat completely, I don't think it wouldn't make me a hypocrite (and not that you said I'd be, just theoretisising here), because it's not like I'm trying to prove something. I'm not making a statement with it (I think many people do that). Like we have that saying in Estonia, from literature classics "If you can't do the whole math task, do half". So, when I'm doing half, I think it's better than doing nothing at all. :)
I don't think I'd decide over people if they like certain foods or not, I believe humans can be considered carnivores to some extent. What is despisable, of course, is how food industry abuses it and how the animals and birds who are grown to be eaten have to suffer. I do think people who wear fur look ridiculous... on more than one level :)
If I acted from the bottom of my heart, I'd starve within weeks, because I think I kind of lean towards the people who say that plants are "intelligent" and feel pain too. I'm the type who feels sympathy towards old toys that are being deserted, sheds a tear when flower withers in vase and chooses the "ugliest"/"non-cutest" cat from the shelter, the one that is least likely to get a new home :p
By the way, if you're looking for meatless dish ideas, there are hundreds of cookbooks of course, but I find this particular one to be the best I've seen:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.co.uk/River-Cottage-Veg-Every-Day/dp/1408812126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328106576&sr=8-1
It's probably partially tailored for UK consumers but I'm sure the ingredients for most of the dishes will be available anywhere.
Thanks a lot for the cookbook tip. I would like to have a really good veggie cookbook for sure. I hope there are nice pictures in that one ^^
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a full-page colour photograph for each recipe, of which there are over 200. ;)
ReplyDelete