I have some personal news: I went vegan three or four months ago. Considering that I’ve written thousands of words about it how much i love tofu and Black bean burgerThis “news” is hardly shocking, but the meat discourse is reaching furious new heights (or lows?) every day it seemed too relevant not to share.

To be honest, it took a long time. I’ve never been morally or ethically against eating animals – I still am – but capitalism is a different story, and at this point there is no division between the two. I don’t have to tell you that industrial meat production is a huge contributor to global warming (and climate denial) or that meat processing companies are almost caricaturally evil when they exploit an underpaid, often undocumented workforce. The facts are visible to the whole world, which is why more people are likely to eat less meat.

But making the choice is easy; figuring out how to eat less meat is less like that. What do you eat instead, especially if you’ve been eating meat all your life? Whether you are completely vegan or just restricting, these tips will help you find some answers.

Ask yourself the tough questions

OK, I lied a little – there are a few more questions before the answers. Big lifestyle changes should be food for thought, but if the idea of ​​eating less meat is still uncomfortable, you owe it to yourself to ask why.

G / O Media can receive a commission

What are the downsides? You will eat less meat. That’s pretty much it. Of course, there will still be meat, but most of the time you just eat other things. Is this really a deal breaker for you? If yes why? You can get protein and fat from tons of other foods – do you have to have meat? After a little thought about it, you will find your personal reasons, or you will find that you don’t need meat at all, or at least not all of the time.

Do a little brainstorming

The easiest way to eat less meat is to eat more of everything else. A good first step is to sit down and make a list of the meatless foods that you already love. Don’t be afraid to take this task extremely literally: even a list of 10 vegetables you like is valuable and makes meal planning easier.

Your list shouldn’t include foods that, with the right substitutes, could be meatless. Known quantities are fair game – like your favorite frozen vegetable dumpling or a great vegan burger from a local pub – but don’t expect the wrong meat to save the day, especially if you’ve never eaten it.

Get an air fryer

Oh my god I can’t believe I waited until 2021 to buy an air fryer. It does short work of every roasted vegetable you can think of, as well as a variety of goodies like crispy tofu, extra crispy potatoes, fried bread, frozen gnocchi, leftover fries, crispy shallots, and of course, frozen tater tots– and that’s just a mystery to me. Please don’t be a dummy like me: get yourself an air fryer before you go without meat.

Really get in beans

You probably saw this coming, but beans are a cornerstone of a meatless diet. This will be great news for some and a real downer for others – but if you’re not a big bean guy, try to stay open-minded. The world of beans is wider and more delicious than you might think.

Beans don’t have to come out of a bag or can, and you don’t even have to eat them whole. Tofu and tempeh are wonderful examples of the versatility of the humble soybean. Falafel is just chickpeas and herbs in a convenient, fried pack. You can even make pancakes and donuts entirely from beans: In Indian cuisine, Chilla (or Cheela) are pancakes made from besan (chickpea flour) or soaked legumes that have been pureed into a dough. (If you soak and ferment the legumes with a little rice, You have dosa dough.) Has Korean cuisine nokdujeong (or bindaetteok), a mung bean-based donut filled with kimchi, bean sprouts and spring onions.

Broaden your horizons

Beans are just the beginning. For most of our time on earth, humans have eaten anything but meat – meaning we’ve found roughly a billion ways to make plants taste good.

Every kitchen on the planet has a rich tradition of meatless dishes, and you don’t have to dig very deep to find them. Whether you can get them from Youtube or Cookbooks (my two favorite sources) Homestyle recipes from pretty much every culinary tradition will never get you wrong.

My dinner usually consists of either Mexican home cooking – beans, tortillas, salsa, potatoes, the occasional soyrizo – or literally a recipe from Priya and Ritu Krishna Indian, the best cookbook of the decade. As always, look for recipes created by people who are actually part of the culture they represent. The recipes will get better and you will learn more.

Buy more groceries

My final tip to eat less meat is very obvious, but rarely mentioned: if you are used to a high meat diet, you will need to eat a lot more other things to make up for it. I’m not talking about nutrient macros – I’m talking about sheer volume. A large steak is still a large steak after cooking, but a giant head of cauliflower can shrink to a single serving in a hot oven. Whenever you go shopping, buy larger portions than you are used to, at least until you get a feel for your new normal. Something tells me it won’t be long

Photo: Hung Chung Chih (Shutterstock)

Any type of interaction with a negative or downright mean person is uncomfortable on so many levels. Unfortunately, they are everywhere and fundamentally inevitable. You know the guy: rude and inconsiderate right off the bat, as if you think it’s perfectly acceptable to treat other people like crap, but also to expect everyone else to show them the utmost respect.

The problem is that everyone has their limits. When faced with relentlessly negative people, it can be very easy to bow to the other person’s level and respond to their hostility towards your own.

But a successful trainer Doug and Lynn Nodland have a different strategy: countering the other person’s negativity with kindness – a topic they wrote about A recent article for the Chanhassen villager. Here’s how they suggest we do that.

First, deal with your own emotions

As the Nodlands point this outIt’s a good idea to remember that we are all human, and we each go through certain times in our lives when we are particularly stressed, frustrated, or angry. When we find ourselves in this state, we can easily get angry or send out negative emotions without even realizing it. Maybe you met the other person on a really bad day.

G / O Media can receive a commission

But as therapists like to tell us, even though we cannot control other people, we can learn how to control our own negative emotions and behaviors. According to the Nodlands, the first thing we should do is understand why we feel a certain way:

What creates stress and negative emotions? Are you overwhelmed with responsibilities at work or at home? Is it a person making you angry or upset? Are your feelings towards people or situations triggered by things that happened to you in the past? Once you understand the root cause of your feelings of negativity, you can make changes to reduce the stress you are experiencing.

From there, take a minute to identify things that you can actually change (i.e., not anything or everyone), and then take action to change them. If the problem can’t be changed, see if you can at least distance yourself from it.

“As you make difficult changes, you should eliminate other stressors as much as possible,” the Nodlands write. “It is also helpful to convert negative thought patterns into more positive ones.”

How to respond to negativity with kindness

Now that you’ve processed (and hopefully controlled) your own emotions, it’s time to deal with the other person. Here are five options The Nodlands suggest we do that::

1. Avoid mirroring other negative actions and thoughts. Treat them kindly. This could mean apologizing when appropriate. Example: “I’m sorry if I did or said something that hurt you.” Acknowledge the views of others without judging.
2. Speak in a pleasant, friendly voice, as if you were speaking to a friend. Keep your voice under control and avoid anger.
3. Maintain an open and relaxed posture. Avoid rolling your eyes, sighing, or showing any other negative body language.
4. To breathe! Inhale a few long, slow, deep breaths through your nose, take a short break, and then let your breath out. Diaphragmatic breathing relaxes you and re-centers your emotions.
5. Smile, a real, friendly smile. Smiling can help you and others feel good.

Will your kind smile make the negative person think about their own behavior and improve it? Probably not. But at least you can get away from the interaction and feel good about how you handled it.

Photo: Junior Braz (Shutterstock)

If there is one thing that has become crystal clear in the past few months, it is that we are a divided nation. It has gotten to a point where everyone believes they are right about everything and is no longer willing to listen to what the other side has to say. Things can be heated. Angry tweets are sent.

We are, of course, talking about the position in which to place your windshield wipers when parking your vehicle before or during a storm.

A brief context:

We started running in February a weekend contribution to the position of the winter windscreen wipernoting that this problem has two sides, and then shared the attitude of Kevin Williams, a writer at Car bibles– who is firm against winter windshield wipers that stand attentively.

Fast forward to this week, though The drive (the place we saw Williams’ first shot) tried to end the wiper wars by interviewing Bentley engineers on the up and down debate. In short, according to experts, it doesn’t matter how you position your windshield wiper blades during a winter storm. Here’s why.

Why the position of the windshield wiper does not matter

Although you might expect auto professionals – in this case, engineers who design and test wiper blades – to have strong opinions on the matter, the ones The Drive spoke to at Bentley Not. In particular, her position was: “Anyway, mate, purely personal decision.”

G / O Media can receive a commission

You can read Jonathon Klein’s article for the full details, however Here is his summary::

The gist of what they told us is that windshield wipers, their mechanisms, and everything related to the system itself are being tested for torture beyond what a consumer will ever experience in the real world. According to the Bentley guysThe brand’s windshield wipers first go through 10,000 cycles at -20 degrees, then are frozen on the windshield and then pulled off by hand. The mechanisms and windshield are covered in snow to ensure that the wipers and mechanism can withstand the weight of this rainfall.

They also test the rubber itself. To do this, they examine how it reacts to repeated icing, wind, rain, hail, sleet, as well as dust and dirt. If it fails at all during the process, they do a new iteration of the product. And as they pointed out, all of these steps are industry standards.

In other words, your car’s windshield wipers should be able to handle almost anything that could happen to them if your car is parked outside in winter weather – regardless of their location.

Photo: AngieYeoh (Shutterstock)

The other day we talked about how many houseplants we buy in stores, greenhouses and online are not quite as environmentally friendly as we may have thought. This is because most of these plants grow in peat, which it turns out to be a finite resource. (It grows back, but at a rate of 1 mm per year.)

One way to ensure that your houseplants aren’t adding to the overall peat situation is to grow your own. Sure, you could go all the way between plants and seeds, but Growing plants from cuttings is faster and easier. And after a study by investment researchers at money.co.ukYou could also be sitting on a horticultural gold mine – or at least some small sideline.

Apparently, growing new plants from cuttings of your existing plants can turn out to be pretty lucrative (and hard work too, but that’s not the focus here). However, some plants are a better investment than others. Here are those who are more likely to earn a living.

This is how you determine the profitability of plants

The aim of the study was to find out which crops are the best investments (as you would expect from a location called “money”) – not necessarily the easiest to grow or the least maintenance. This was a situation where numbers were at stake.

G / O Media can receive a commission

Here is how the team achieved these numbers::

Adult houseplants and cuttings prices were collected using data from Facebook Marketplace, Farmer Gracy, and Etsy. Once we gathered the data, we calculated the average price of cuttings and fully grown plants for each houseplant variety. We then calculated the percentage of change between the pruning and the mature plant to show the increase in investment for each houseplant.

How to choose the most profitable plants

Based on Research by the money.co.uk teamMonstera Dubia plants are the best investment. According to their calculations, cuttings from a Monstera Dubia will set you back between $ 20 and $ 30, while a grown potted plant will cost you between $ 255 and $ 280: up to + 766% more than your original investment.

Before we reveal the diagram that will make you rich, we should point out that as you probably guessed on the website, the buying and selling of plants was in the UK. Sure, this is what you should keep in mind with regards to plant availability, but mostly we wanted to let you know that the prices quoted are in GBP rather than USD. So you have to do some calculations.

Ok, here you have it:

And, as with any other financial decision, it’s a good idea to do your homework before getting into anything.

“Houseplant investing is a fun and alternative way to explore the investment world from the comfort of your home,” said Salman Haqqi, personal finance expert at money.co.uk said in a statement. “Like all investments, with a little knowledge and market research, these plant parents could turn their home jungle into profitable investments in no time.”