Connie Wong (6)

This meatless Monday was our last but I think it would be safe to say that it was an interesting experience for me overall. I learned a lot throughout the past six weeks such as new recipes, different cultural cuisines from around the world, and how to eat healthier. 

The main challenges for me during the times I was doing meatless Monday was staying on track, resisting the urge to eat meat, and finding recipes that I would enjoy making and eating. How I overcame the challenges that I faced was that I used a planner and on every Monday, I would write a small reminder saying that it’s a meatless Monday and sometimes my roommates would remind me that I am not allowed to eat meat on that day. I resisted the urge to eat meat by eating a lot of small snacks throughout my day and eating a lot of bread. While participating in this meatless Monday, I have come to realize that instead of taking in a lot of proteins throughout the day, I eat a lot of carbohydrates which is also not too good for me but I have been working on the amount I eat and substituting it with fruits. In addition, finding recipes on what to cook has been a struggle for me because I feel like I’m a picky eater and although I am fine with trying new things; I think that there is a limit for me when trying new things each week. So, I admit I did not try new recipes each week but I still managed to complete meatless Monday perfectly fine. During the times that I did try new recipes, my roommate would always be there to help out with the cooking.

I did not eat any foods that were new to me but I did eat more of the foods that I usually don’t eat a lot of. For example, I ate more scallions, bananas, white mushrooms, milk, and avocados just to name a couple. I am glad that I was able to eat more of the foods because I am starting to like some of them a little bit more and I hope that I will be able to continue eating these foods more often.

For future classes who will or want to participate in the Meatless Monday campaign, it would be a really great idea to designate days for grocery shopping, know how much you are willing to spend, look up recipes that may be interesting to you, as well as preparing the meal beforehand. I mentioned a couple of times in my past journal posts that preparing the meal the day before is a great idea, but I never actually done it which was unfortunate because I wouldn’t have had to struggle every Monday deciding what to eat or what there is for me to eat. Overall, I think participating in this campaign was an intriguing experience and I hope that I will continue to participate in it after this week.