Ready, set, eat! : Making 40 days without meat fun

Today, thousands of people in Belgium will once again kick off the annual 40-day Dagen Zonder Vlees (Days Without Meat) challenge. Since 2011, this yearly Flanders-based awareness campaign (DZV) has aimed to get as many people as possible to eat as few animals as they can for 40 days.

It’s not about pushing a strict vegetarian agenda, says DZV, but rather about finding a fun way to get people to think about and see the impact that eating (or not eating) animals has on the environment.

They’ve come up with a website that lets you track the impact that your lower meat intake in terms of your ecological footprint, the litres of water used to produce your food and the amount of fuel. As the days go on, you can see the impact of the resources you’ve saved grown enormously simply by eating less meat.

So far, 19,000 people have committed to taking up the challenge on Facebook. When you sign up, it’s in Dutch, but nothing so complicated Google Translate can’t solve for you.

But how do you get through 40 days without your stoemp and sausage? Easy. The best piece of advice is to try not to think about what you’re giving up but about what you’re gaining. A chance to get to know new foods and flavours or to try restaurants you’ve never been to. Here’s how you can do it.

Learn new recipes
Learning how to cook vegetarian is learning a whole new skill set. The place that many people playing around with eating less meat go wrong is that they try to cook the way they always have by just replacing the meat.

While doing this once in a while can be great, you’ll quickly find that prepared veggie burgers and Quorn products are expensive and rarely satisfy your craving for a juicy steak.

Better to rethink your plate entirely and perhaps push your comfort zone, focusing on learning meals from cuisines that are more traditionally vegetarian, such as standard dishes in many Indian and South-East Asian cuisines. You’ll eat fresher and discover how to use new herbs and spices.

If you like, search around for courses that teach vegetarian cooking or specific cuisines, like this one from Pimpinelle (in French) that will teach you several vegetarian Korean recipes.

The DZV campaign has a whole page linking to delicious, belly-filling recipes that don’t contain meat. Another great place to find inspiration is Pinterest, where a quick search for vegetarian foods will have you scrolling for hours through mouth-watering photos of meat-free meals, which should link you to their recipes.

Try new restaurants
Another advantage of eating less meat is that, while you might feel a little leaner, your wallet may be getting a little fatter. Diets that include meat are estimated to be about twice as expensive as meat free ones. So by eating less meat, you’ll probably have more cash to take yourself out on the town.

Your newfound wealth is a perfect reason to branch out and discover Belgium’s meatless food scene. In Brussels, La Tsampa and Dolma are two excellent choices. La Tsampa is a bright, airy spot at the back of an organic shop of the same name. They serve up fresh, inventive all-veggie food, including vegetarian versions of Belgian staples, such as carbonnade / stoofvlees.

Dolma is open in the evenings with a full, all-you-can-eat hot and cold vegetarian buffet, including dessert.  It also has an organic shop of the same name, which recently moved to a new location across the street from the restaurant on Chaussee d’Ixelles.

If you feel like stepping out of Brussels, try Ghent for great meat-free food. With its Veggie Thursdays, where schools, offices and restaurants make a weekly effort to offer more vegetarian meals, Ghent has become the Belgian capital of vegetarian eating. Accompanying this are several great options for restaurants, including Komkommertijd, a vegan all-you-can-eat buffet, and the slightly more inventive kitchen of Avalon near the Gravensteen castle.

If you really want to reward yourself for a job well done, book a table at In De Wulf, the one-star Michelin restaurant that was voted best restaurant in Europe last year. It will set you back at least €150, and it’s far from strictly vegetarian, but chef Kobe Desramaults, who has shot to the top of the Belgian food scene in recent years, will arrange for you a vegetarian tasting menu that will change the way you think about food, meaty or otherwise.

Photo courtesy Dagen Zonder Vlees