Where to begin? This is how this all started…

I have always had a love of eating meat. That has developed more and more with age and wisdom, and judging from some of my recent Christmas presents that my family gave me (for example: Hawksmoor At Home, an enthralling and, ahem,  meaty read. If you’re so inclined), meat is quickly becoming an obsession.

However for me, that’s a good thing.

My love affair with ‘meat’ has slowly flourished over the years and progressed to the point where, late in 2011, I was standing looking at various meats and cuts of meat at my local butcher’s and I was talking to him about all things meat, much the same way a teenage girl might talk to a Kardashian if given that heavenly chance, or perhaps more apt, I was like a kid at Christmas. My much more intelligent and beautiful companion who was curiously watching this encounter said “you should try and eat a different meat every week”. Instantly I was intrigued. With some encouragement and refinement of this great idea I can safely say that I jumped on the prospect and it quickly formed into ‘eating one different meat each week for the entire year of 2012’.

Then more genius….

The suggestion came “you should blog about it”. That took more convincing, but in the end, why not? If I say I like to try new things then I should probably do just that.

So all of a sudden I found myself in the first week of January this year nervously planning something that I’d been talking to my family about over the Christmas period and fielding different questions about many and varied things relating to the topic, for example- “So, you don’t really eat too many carbs right? What do you have your poached eggs on then?” I still can’t decide if that one was a genuine question or quite a smarmy problem find for me as I was poaching eggs. The answer being: on Ham, avocado and tomato, with homemade basil pesto. It was delicious! Who needs bread…

I have an outline and a list of animals and different parts of some of those (more common) animals that I intend to, well, eat. It’s pretty extensive and, I think at least, interesting. Many of these things I have very rarely or never tried, such as: camel, squab, buffalo, goose, thar (Himalayan Mountain Goat), and lambs brains among others.

 

To say I was a fussy eater as a kid would be like saying it can get warm in the desert. I was a shit. I’ve definitely expanded my horizons and I enjoy trying new things these days (see above), outside of say, onions (A long story that has many layers, perhaps none more pertinent than my, at times, extreme stubbornness). However, I’m still fussy.

It’s just these days it’s mostly due to logical, well thought-out and well-researched reasons. Taste plays a massive part, obviously, but so does my health. I make food and general nutrition choices, largely, based on health benefits and risks.  This, in my opinion and in the opinion of many people in the health and training world that I respect, has the most influential impact on health.

So far this has been going great guns! I’ve done a bunch of meats, some completely new to me and written on various topics. This blog is gaining momentum and I’m getting some great feedback. I’m developing some ideas that I’d love to include in my weekly meat challenge this year if possible, and the more support I get the more realistic some of those ideas are.

I’ve even included an onion so far! Some things do change… And so can my evolving list of meats and ideas as I’m very open to suggestions, so please, keep them coming.

I’m not entirely sure what the Mayans were predicting for 2012 but I doubt they could’ve envisioned something quite so spectacular as a different kind of meat prepared, cooked (if necessary) and eaten each week consecutively for 52 weeks. An entire year. Thirty-one million, five-hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds. Then, to have those experiences shared with the world, in what will surely be at times a humorous, informative, educational and possibly… opinionated way.

If that doesn’t leave you excited then, umm, I hope the 52 weeks will. I hope to inspire you to try some of these things, as well as look at your own health and how you approach your eating, training and living.

I just get excited about eating good quality, tasty and nutritious meat. And if you don’t then hopefully you will at least develop a passion for your health ’cause lets face it, in the end that’s all we’ve got, right?

Click on any of the posts and get reading!

That was 201. Then there was 2013…

With the dawn and commencement of 2013, or Twenty13, the time has come to put the year of 52 meats behind me and start this one with something new.

Something with much more shared value to it.

What are you gonna do Mike?

You asked that in your head didn’t you? It’s ok, you can admit it. I did. I asked myself “OK, that year was pretty fucken epic, huge even, so what are you going to do this year? Can you be arsed doing anything of that magnitude?” I actually spoke those words, in some way.

Initially the answer came back as a pretty snappy- nothing, just cruise for a bit. That was hard work man! Then a few days of Twenty13 passed, an email came through with a suggestion almost identical to one NN had months ago and I started thinking….. why not? ……

So I spoke to NN about it, she made some more suggestions to make my initial one better, as always, and mentioned that we should do this one together. Instead of her just being a passenger with little say in what get’s written, especially about her, we’ll nail this one together. Give both the ladies and the men some good content.

So this year- 2013- myself and NN (Nardia Norman if you’re interested…) are going to do:

Twenty13: 52 eats over 52 weeks

 

Yeah, it might not seem like much to read those words, but you just wait, by joves, you just wait!

What is ‘52 eats over 52 weeks’ about?

Such good timing that you asked that…

This is going to be a different restaurant, cafe, pub, eatery or perhaps mates house that masks as one of the above in order to get a ranking.

The idea of this is to show the other side of what I did last year. The 52 meats was all about home cooking, me doing my thing with quality meat, albeit quite random on occasion, and informing you about what is available and possible and that eating in a healthy and nutritious way doesn’t have to be hard and time consuming. Sure sometimes you have to get three birds, de-bone them all, stuff’em all together with some pork and bits and pieces and labour in the kitchen for a few hours, ala the Turducken from week 52, but most of the time you can get a delicious and nutrient dense meal together in no time.

This year, with the help of my beautiful partner I am going to show you how you can eat out (haha) and keep it healthy and nutritious, you just need to know what to look for and what to ask for if necessary. We will be reviewing certain places, but also giving relevant information for people anywhere about the relevance of what we ate and how it can suit you if you are dining out and looking for healthy options.

Obviously many of the establishments will be in Sydney, but we’ll endeavour to do as many out of this great city as possible. However, for the most part we’ll review all aspects of where we ate that week, give it segmented ratings depending on certain criteria and an overall rating and have a little chat about the place as a whole.

Of course mine will be witty, charming and ultimately laugh embarrassingly loud on the bus funny (you just wait, again) and Nards will attempt to keep up. I say this now as a way of getting the first word in, I find this helps get on the front foot in arguments, you see. I’m sure she’ll bite back.

In fact I know she will. Nards is an extremely good writer who has been responsible for my writing improving so much over the last year. Plus she loves food and eating out (HAHA), so her content is bound to be more informative than mine for some, especially the ladies, whilst I will let the guys know how each place rates for them. If you want to be shredded, get muscular or just live everyday as a weapon, then I’ll break it down for you.

In the same way Nards will give the ladies an idea of how it rates for them depending on what your goal may be, fat loss, getting tight awesome looking buns, or whatever else it is that girls do…

To give you an idea of what we’ll cover below are out categories:

• Nutrition
• Taste
• Budget
• Service
• Ambience
• Extra mile

This will then have an overall rating with some pictures and great take home info. Oh, except for the first one due out tomorrow, we forgot to take pictures there, oops.

So, there you have it people of the internet- Twenty13: 52 Eats over 52 weeks.

Michael Anthony Campbell

‘Meat Mike Campbell’