Off-Topic; Essen Motor Show 2014

Ever since I got my drivers license, another stupid, ridiculously expensive industry draw my interest: Cars.
Don't get me wrong, not the 'OMG look at those rims, daaamn check out the V8, aaaaaw yeaaaaah AMG bro!'-kind of liking cars, I prefer slight understatement wagons and engines around 2.0 l and 170-220 PS, like the Volvo V60, Skoda Octavia RS or the BMW 320d.
Another question for 'what the fck is wrong with me?'-category but then I think about my passion for Grey's Anatomy, Sex and the City, baby cats and the movie LOL (the original version not the messed miley-cyrus-one) and calm down again.

Anyways, I absolutely wanted to visit the Essen Motor Show, I can't remember the last time I went to a trade show. It was kind of smaller than I expected and I'm still a rookie, so I just wandered around and took pictures of what I was interested in.
Suprisingly, Skoda presented the best booth in my opinion (they had free slushies! And the hostesses were wearing clothes which actually covered their bodies!).
I really like the brand and their refreshed line, huge props to the marketing head. (VW...'cough)
As I follow the Rally circuit (WRC and ERC) for over a year now, another highlight for me was to see the new Fabia R5 without the prototype paintjob (even if I'm sure the only R5 thing about this R5 was the body, haha).
BMW was lined up pretty nicely, too, but I don't like their new 'signature-white'.
The rest was filled with the standard stuff: Formula One, DTM, a few Dakar rigs (only a month left now!) classic cars, hot rods, motorcycles, merch, rims, suspension, etc.

My highlight was the drift show in the middle of the trade, even if I don't like this drifting-jdm-stuff, the skills these guys showed were incredible!
The guy with the LED's on his BMW absolutely won the style award but the two japanese rigs, a Toyota GT86 and a Mitsubishi FTO (I did a little research, this Mitsu has a Nissan RB25DET engine AND was reconstructed to rear wheel drive, seriously crazy shit and it absolutely sounded like it, too) totally smashed the hall (and my ears) with their exploding turbos. 

The lightning was really really bad for taking pictures with my poor equipment, so only a few (hardly edited) pics made it here...I should've taken my small digicam with me, this little magic wand.

All in all, a really cool side trip into the world of cars! But I'm gonna keep spending all my money on bikes I think, haha, even if I can't wait to put my feet on the pedals of my dream car...someday.

Love,

pwp

Off-Topic: My Nutrition

Before I start, I would like to mention that I'm no expert or specialist in this field who would like to tell you how to eat, I just want to take the chance to sum up what I learned over the years.

If you remember my last post, I want to change my habit to downplay important factors! Due to the fact that I grew up with a lot of vegetables, fresh cooked meals and a varying but always healthy cuisine (Thank you so much, mom!) I never thought about nutrition as an important factor of a healthy lifestyle, it simply was the food my mom cooked.

But from my teenage years until my twenties I gained over 12kg (25lbs) and I always thought the reason was that I stopped doing sports on a daily basis but now that I think back, I see that the real cause was my nutrition. I ate outside a lot, loved fast food and sweets. I still loved my moms food, but I loved the unhealthy stuff even more. My skin also suffered under my eating habits, I have to fight acne to this day.

I don't know how or why it happened that I started to engage myself with the topic of nutrition, I just remember that it wasn't my weight but my decision to ban all my cosmetic products and switch to natural cosmetics. Animal cruelty in cosmetics is a topic that is really important to me, I'm aware of the fact that other industries will always make use of animal testing but cosmetics are an unnecessary item of our lives, which makes, as far as I can see, animal cruelty in this industry equally unnecessary, but that's another topic.

When you get to animal testing, you also get to topics like factory farming and food industries.

The more I went on with my research, the more I felt the urge to stop eating all that crap. But like with anything else, I needed time to completely implement my idea of a healthy diet.

There were extreme times where I only ate rice and leek because I didn't know what to buy without remorse and there was the opposite where I jacked it all in and got back to pizza and burgers.
Over the years I found some kind of balance and approached my first steps like eating less wheat, less sweets, less fast food, more vegetables and doing more sports again. The results came in and I lost weight, my skin got better, I engaged with weight training which influenced my diet positively, too.
But my biggest problem stayed: No matter what you buy, be it vegetables, meat, fish, dairy goods, everything led to some kind of cruelty, be it mass husbandry, misuse of antibiotics, monocultures, wood clearing...I felt like nothing would help, no matter what I eat. But thanks to some recent happenings, I found a way to live with it.

At first I accepted that the only way to save the world would be to eat nothing so I cut down my diet to four areas: vegetables, meat, dairy products and grains. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, I consider myself as 'conscious-eating' - being aware of what I buy, eat and where it comes from.

Furthermore, I wanted to consider the factor of weight training and muscle development.

To me, dairy products are worse than eating meat, so I cut down dairy products to curd (protein source) and sour cream (I just need it). Plus, oat milk tastes SO much better! I eat meat once a week or less (B12 and protein source) and I changed from wheat to spelt (also a great protein source).

Vegetables are my nourishment No.1 and let me tell you, buying 'organic' in the supermarket is a big lie - so finding a source that I am satisfied with was a tough cookie - fortunately the solution found me instead!

Due to research for my bachelor degree, I discovered the term 'Community Supported Agriculture' (CSA in short, SoLaWi in Germany, Teikei in Japan) and as fate willed...I discovered a CSA-farm in my neighbouring town. At first I went there for research, but it quickly developed into a long-term cooperation. Summarily, I pay the farmers for a year, help on the farm together with the community and I get fresh, organic greens in reward.

If you already asked yourself why I constantly post a bunch of greens on my Instagram Account... this is it and it's amazing! The gardening on the fields is a great activity! The greens are incredibly tasty and finally - harmless. I can watch my food grow! You also learn about the great effort vegetable cultivation takes (it's a hell of a lot of work I can tell you!) and you economically support your local area.

If you want to know more about the topic CSA...check out several links:

CSA - The American Version
Teikei - The Japanese Version
SoLaWi - The German Version

My CSA-Farm: Bioland Gärtnerei Ischebeck

My first crop

Peppermint I cultivated from a bunch 

I'm far away from eating completely healthy, I still have a big big weakness for sweets and other snacks, I still buy several industrial processed items and eat outside...but step by step, my organic heart beats louder. I like to learn about processing fresh greens and do more things myself instead of buying them.

Again, I want to underline, that my way is not the perfect/ultimate/right one. I respect every vegan and vegetarian for their ability to completely cut out several items and I also respect everybody who doesn't want to deal with the topic of nutrition.

But there is one thing we all can't deny: Healthy nutrition is incredibly important!

Love,
pwp