The Best Holiday Gift This Past Year

After opening several cheap moving boxes worth of gifts this year for the winter holidays, I came across my favorite gift of them all: an extremely nice industrial grade wok that I’ve been wanting for a long time coming. While I received other things that were absolutely amazing, including a sleeping cot and new recipe books and even a food processor, the wok was absolutely my most coveted item of the holidays. As I stood among the various ripped open cheap moving boxes around my living room floor, I couldn’t help but get giddy with excitement when looking at that beautiful wok.

You see, I don’t think enough people take an interest or even a love in their cooking and the food they eat. Too often, the majority becomes consumed in other things in their life, whether that’s work, family, or watching TV. And so, they dedicate less time to the likes of cooking authentic, home-prepared meals. And thus, their health goes down the drain because of it. That’s probably the saddest part to me, when I come to think about how little people focus on their diet.

And so, I think there needs to be a shift in the way we think about food and the process of cooking if there’s ever going to be a trend towards a healthier nation. Until that happens, our general health will be much worse off than other leading countries around the world. We need to make it a point to love cooking, to love preparing fresh food, and to love what we put into our bodies.

I’m glad I’ve already hit that point in my life, where I can’t wait to cook my next meal or prepare something new for the first time. I feel it’s allowed me to regain my health and have a renewed sense of love for the things I consume. Even better, it’s made me more environmentally conscious, because now I’m looking at things like where something was produced or farmed. And having more conviction in what you do and eat means you have more conviction in your ideals.

And so, this is why I’m obsessed with my new wok and cannot wait to temper it properly and have the inaugural fried rice that will kick off the new year right. Perhaps I’m a little too enthusiastic about a piece of cookware, but hey, I could be obsessed with something much worse, right?

A New Year Means New Festival Lineups

Everytime January rolls around, it’s like I’m waiting for my own personal little holiday to come. The first or second Tuesday in January, to be exact.

So what could possibly feel like a mini holiday of sorts? Well, my absolute favorite hobby at this point in my life is quite an expensive one, if you look at it from the perspective of cost per day. But when you really strip down the value of the overall ticket price, you may give a second thought to what was originally expensive. Haven’t figured it out yet?

My primary hobby (or interest, if you will) is camping. And camping festivals are an extension of that hobby. So, early January means the lineup to my favorite festival drops. And boy let me tell you what. When a festival’s lineup drops, it feels like you were just given one hundred little presents to unwrap and enjoy. Those presents come in the deals for destination hotels you’ve never heard of, and now you can start preparing for the camping adventures.

Despite the fact that I’ve only been to 5 different camping festivals, I have visited two of them multiple times at this point. They’ve pretty much got me coming back every single year no matter what from this point on simply because of the experiences, people, and locations they have to offer. To me, that shows that the festival has become more than just a camping adventure. It’s an atmosphere where others can have peace of mind.

But a few things most people underestimate every single year are the snacks, the gear, and the foods they should be taking along with them to camping festivals. For example, would you ever think to bring a few old cardboard boxes to use as storage, kindling, as a totem, or even as a nice matt/floor for your campsite? Cardboard boxes are absolutely useful for festivals, and I’ve used them many times before. In addition, being prepared is the main way of staying healthy, safe, and happy in the summer sun, which is definitely a formidable thing during festival season. So if you’re planning on attending a festival this year, do your research, pack well (overpacking is better than the opposite), and have fun.