Alleluia Christ has risen, Christ has risen Alleluia.
If you want proof that old habits die hard there it is. I have no idea but for some reason that is the only thing I remember from my time in Sunday school and despite the fact that I am not overly religious anymore I feel a need to say it on Easter Sunday.
So the fact that I just went through the previous spiel means that lent is over. This year for lent I decided to give up meat, but not for religious or moral/ethical reason. I gave up meat because I wanted to challenge myself and experience just for a little while, the challenges that vegetarians face. I also inadvertently managed to learn stuff along the way thanks to various people from University students to former vegetarians.
One of the first things I realized is that eating out can be nearly impossible unless you go to a restaurant that you know has many meatless options. I am glad I decide to keep fish and seafood in my diet otherwise I would be hooped if I ever felt like not cooking at home and eating out. If you eliminate seafood I found that almost every restaurant has 2-3 meals that don't have meat in them however one of those options will be bread sticks, one will be some unholy concoction of your least favorite foods and 1 option will be something you might enjoy. Add in the fish stuffs and your up to 5-7. I purposefully left out any meals where you can theoretically just pick the meat off and leave it on the side, because you fill like walking into traffic afterwords. I also left off salads because 9/10 times they are a huge rip off or fall into the category of picking meat out.
If I decided to try this out again I will not eat fake meats AKA anything that says meatless then a meat product. These things taste nothing like the originals and make you crave the original harder than you did before you had the imposter. I suspect that if I decided to go meatless for life I would accept these abominations since my tongue would someday forget what the real thing tastes like. The only exception to this is veggie meal (fake ground beef) and veggie burgers which are surprisingly delicious mainly because they offer an alternative to hamburger instead of imitating hamburger.
While going meatless I found that certain fast food places were better than others. When I first started I found solace in McDonalds Fillet O Fish. Before lent I would have one of these occasionally now that lent is over I hope to never put one in my mouth again. I rarely go to Tim Horton's but during lent I went at least 3 times on my way to work for a bagel and a fruit smoothie and possibly an egg salad sandwich. If you have never tried their egg salad sandwich I would suggest you never do it leaves a lot to be desired. Burger King has a decent veggie burger however I have never been a B.K. fan. One place that I found to be incredible useful was Booster Juice since they have various smoothies and some decent wraps. I am unsure of how good subway is. On one hand I went there a few times for tuna and seafood sensation subs. Tuna was fine however seafood sensation is rather perplexing. A six inch sub was not quite filling enough and a twelve inch was too much seafood to handle and there is a chance that it made me violently ill at least once but seeing as how I had it more than once I can't confirm if it was the sole cause.
After everything is all said and done this has been a more or less enjoyable experience and one I am not against trying again in the future for longer lengths of time and after finding out about the effects that meat has on the planet I will definitely be consuming less and will probably do something similar to meatless Mondays. Now that lent has run it's course I will probably wait at least a month before I tackle something else. I blame A.J. Jacobs for my almost need to be challenging myself in some way. If you have not read The Year of Living Biblicaly or The Guinea Pig Diaries I suggest you go out and read one or both of those books. I am not 100% locked in but I may take another run at radical honesty in the near future.
Also I am glad to report that my body didn't attack me after eating a sausage mcmuffin for breakfast and hopefully there isn't an intestinal revolution until well after Easter supper.
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