Eco-positive weekly diary #121: attending a Vedic cooking class

Hi there, welcome back into my personal weekly diary. Great that you’re here! In this diary I’d like to show you what an eco-positive lifestyle looks like on a daily basis. What habits make me reduce my negative impact? And what do I do to create positive impact? The past week I made some vegan sushi with friends, attended a Vedic cooking class and made some vegan apple crumble!

Thursday

I went off to Amsterdam with a friend to another friend who lives on Uilenstede. Uilenstede is the campus of the Free University where I study. We went to the supermarket to buy some groceries. They were not package free since that is nearly impossible when making sushi, but unfortunately there was a limited amount of options for organic food. Yet, it was still all vegan so that was good! Once home we made the sushi together, which I always feel like is much fun. It’s a really interactive way of dining, you make and eat the sushi, I can really recommend it. Everything turned out great and so today two of my non-vegan friends ate vegan as well! They said they they liked it and didn’t even miss the fish. We went for drinks with our student association afterwards.

Friday

After I went to school I was going to go to my boyfriend but since I was off quite early and he wasn’t, I had to stay at school for four hours. I spend that time making homework, but after a while my brain was just fried. So, I watched an episode of ‘Gefileerd’ (Dutch) again, a show about the origin of our fast food. It’s quite confronting and this is the exact reason why I try to avoid MacDonalds and such. At night my boyfriend and I went to do some groceries and there we saved some food. I try to choose the discounted food, since it’s the second most sustainable choice you can make when it comes to food (the first is to choose plant-based). We saved some no-fish sticks, lettuce and kale and made lovely burgers for dinner with the lettuce and no-fish sticks.

Saturday

When my boyfriend turned 23 back in June, I gave him a cooking class for his birthday. That’s because it’s more sustainable than buying stuff, but most importantly it’s way more fun I think. We make memories together. We went out to do a Vedic cooking class, which is the ancient Indian cuisine. It’s 100% plant-based and healthy. It’s a whole-foods diet with a lot of herbes. We enjoyed it a lot! We went out to have a drinks afterwards and I am still going strong with the only-drinking-water thing. With the exception of Thursday-night, I only drink water. I want to be more healthy and this is going well so far.

Sunday

Sundays are the best lazy days. We had a lovely breakfast. I had some vegan filet American and vegan cream cheese from Violife again and they’re both amazing! Afterwards we went for a walk in a nature park nearby, Nature Park Lelystad. It was lovely but they have a lot of animals and so I would like to look more into how they treat them. Do they let them grow old there? Do they breed with them? All that stuff I’d like to know since I do support the park by visiting it and I want to make sure it’s all vegan-friendly. Once back home we made some vegan nachos with pulled oats, grated Violife cheese, guacamole and sour cream. All vegan and sooooo good! I could eat this for dinner every day. As a dessert we made some apple crumble, which I had never had before but oh my, it’s so good! We ate the apple crumble with some vegan Ben and Jerries. On days like this I never understand why people would still eat animal products. There are so many great plant-based alternatives out there, why still choose to hurt and abuse animals?

Monday

Time to go back to school and afterwards to Haarlem! On Saturday I forgot to meditate for one day (that tends to happen when I’m not by myself), but I have I picked it back up Sunday and today and it’ll be fine! Once home in Haarlem I did some small tasks and edited my vlog from last week for my Youtube-channel.

Tuesday

On Tuesdays I am free from school. I started the day with some meditation and breakfast and made some homework. I had to make a presentation, since my end-presentation is coming up next week. After a few hours I was done and I chose to just chill. I watched a Netflix-documentary from Brené Brown. She has done a lot of research about vulnerability and courage and I must say I really liked it! I would definitely recommend watching it. At night I finally made the decision to buy a second-hand coat I saw on United Wardrobe. I had seen it a while back but I am scared of buying things online since you don’t know if it’s fit. A new long winter coat is on my list of things I need (I keep a list on my phone with things I need so that when I am in a thrift shop I can look for it). The old coat is just worn out. I have finally decided to buy it. It was 29 euros with sending and administration costs included. I am really hoping it is what I imagine it to be.

Wednesday

Today I had some sandwiches with vegan apple-celery salad and peanut-butter for lunch. The apple-celery sandwich from Johma is something I would really recommend! It’s delicious. At around half past 4 I went of to Amsterdam. I am meeting up with a friend (and classmate) to go eat some dinner at The Loving Hut. I have never been there before but I really have been wanting to. The menu looks amazing, it’s all vegan. I had a lovely noodle soup with dumplings! I really thought it was tasty and can’t wait to try more of the menu. I also had a vegan milk-shake and so I made an exception to my water-only rule since they barely offer them anywhere. I forgot to refuse the paper straw, bummer. Afterwards we went to Pakhuis De Zwijger for an informative meet-up about waste in the city. It was quite fun and I always feel so good after it, full of energy again when I see that so many people are tackling the waste problem we have. We can do it!