Lots of round 3’s going on. this time was another vegetarian streak. Same rules, I had no problem with animal by-products [eggs, milk, stock] but I would avoid all animal flesh [including all seafood].

This time might have been the most relaxed attempt. I ended up cheating a few times mostly while I was eating out. Once in Philly there was a lamb spring roll in the mostly vegetarian dim sum place. I snagged 2 bites of some chicken Peter made for dinner out of hunger and curiosity. Some of the food that Mom meal prepped and brought to us early in the month had meat. Chive and pork dumplings. The string beans had a meat sauce. And the morning [afternoon.] after VolIII, I went with Peter to split a spicy pork banh mi and shrimp pho. That was a necessity and an earned stress relief.

That being said, I ate an extremely minimal amount of meat for the month. The four weeks could have totaled two handfuls of mostly pork.

I’m still glad I have theses restrictions. It gives me a good appreciation of sticking to a vegetarian diet. I have the opportunity to try new things. Philly had vegan cheesesteaks that were delicious umami bombs on bread. I couldn’t tell the queso that Betsy made apparent from real cheese. We meal prepped and I used lots of eggs and beans in new culinary creations. Asian flavored hummus from scratch. Soy marinated eggs. Mexican and Moroccan inspired bean salads. I tried jackfruit as a pulled pork and that was an astonishing taste. Definitely something we’ll have to cook with in the future.

To reiterate my goals, I believe humans especially in first world eat too much meat. Our diets were mainly vegetables and grains, as gathering produced most of our calories before agriculture and agriculture was also vastly plant oriented. As such, these stretches of vegetarianism lower my total lifetime consumption of meat. I can feel strong differences in my hunger levels [hungry more often, able to eat more], digestion [poops were clean af], and alcohol tolerance [better as I generally had more food in my stomach. Mornings felt better too. I think I generally had stronger ability to process alcohol?]

More important than diet and health, I want to lower my carbon foot print, as it is well known that farming for livestock is the least efficient, most wasteful, and bad for the environment. The farming practices are not good, like their living situations [terrible] and poor waste management [methane/water run-off contaminations]. The fact that you have to plow land to grow feed to feed the livestock which also need more land. Extremely inefficient, very bad for the globe. I’ve read if everyone adopted a vegetarian or vegetable-centric diet, we would greatly reduce our global carbon footprint. That 70% of global water usage is for agriculture. A third of those crops are used in feeding livestock. And 26% of the non-icelocked land is used for animal production I cannot go full vegetarian [for godsakes, I can’t make it a month without nibbling on something here and there or literally salivating at the thought of fried chicken wings in lemon pepper] but I am trying to make sustainable changes in my diet. It’s a small, if insignificant step towards making the world a better place. I owe that to the world, and to myself.

Anyway, it’s all good! I want to try to maintain a Meatless Monday or something of the sort going forward. I think that the additional challenge will keep my total meat consumption down further and also keep more of the benefits of a vegetarian diet.