Our Christmas Day dinner was absolute perfection. The Chateaubriand roast came out the exact rare state from edge to edge we were hoping for. Bravo me and my roasting skills.  The horseradish sauce was stunning with the beef. We had our favorite take on peas - petit pois french style - with lardons, shallots, lettuce, and cream. Mashed potatoes, beef gravy because Alan always wants gravy with his dinner, and an indulgent French Bordeaux to sip. Later we had Christmas Pudding with cognac cream sauce and brandy butter. A peaceful and delicious Christmas meal.

It was all in all a quiet and nice day. We chatted with family on phone and online. Tasty nibbles and drinks during the day, too. Our cat Rosie approved of the food after she taste tested it all.

Boxing Day we gave away our Honda Civic to a nice local young woman through a neighborhood recycle/reuse scheme we support. Alan hates cars anyway and I'm not driving lately so it was a huge waste of money and useless hassle to maintain a car here in London. The Honda was old but in excellent condition with very low mileage. It was the right thing to give it to someone who needed a friendly hand.

Tomorrow, the 29th we're having a friend over for dinner - it's Roast Goose leading the menu. Crepes Suzette for dessert.

We had a great Christmas Eve Dinner tonight - roast duck with stuffing and home-made bread sauce. This was the first time I've ever made bread sauce from scratch - AMAZING taste! I've always disliked it because we used the packet stuff but tonight with the homemade genuine article I understand what the moaning and fussing is all about. it was just gorgeous. Since it was actually pretty simple to make, we'll never use a packet again.

Anyway the duck dinner was a perfect way to start the holidays.

Btw the day actually started as a complete disaster with Tesco getting their whole specially ordered Christmas delivery wrong. They didn't deliver the lobster or the roast for Christmas dinner and got other things wrong. Lordy, lordy! I gave them a piece of my mind at customer service as soon as they opened this morning. I understand it wasn't just me; lots of other people who ordered their Tesco Finest Christmas Show stopper whole lobster also found themselves without the promised treat. I hope they also called Tesco and demanded reparations.

Hoping all my family and friends have a great Christmas night and a wonderful Christmas day tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
First thing in the morning at 5am Macklin Bros butchers opens and Alan will be there to collect 2 racks of baby back ribs and then at 7am we get our last Tesco groceries home delivery before the holiday goes live. The groceries were almost completely paid for with my saved up Tesco Clubcard vouchers.

I've completed over 2 months smoke free. Bravo me! I have to get some friends to stop by for drinks and nibbles so they can tell me if the house is starting to smell fresher and the smoke smell is dissipating.

My next project is a new diet. I'm not looking for nor interested in a "sensible and moderate" diet like the weight watchers sort or the usual 1-2 lbs a week food pyramid sort. I saw something that looked more my sort of thing called "Intermittent Fasting" and after doing some extensive reading on it; it looks just my sort of thing.

Just as I stepped into cold turkey to stop smoking directly, I intend to slide into Intermittent Fasting to diet and lose weight as quickly as possible. Sounds like a miserable way to begin the New Year and worse so if you realize I also don't drink. (Not teetotal but fairly close.)

I'll keep up progress posts as things move along.

Back to Xmas - I'll be cooking and baking from scratch so if you pop round you'll find there'll always be assorted goodies awaiting you.

On the family front we're still waiting for the contracts of Tom & Andrew's country house to be signed and the keys turned over.

My grandson AJ:

Andrew and Tom's new country house:

Two days ago was my birthday; I turned 65. Sound the noisemakers and poppers. A quiet and pleasant enough day. It's almost 2 months now since I stopped smoking. Haven't cheated, still moving along with it. Diet starts right after New Years.

And the big news, the GREAT news - the mortgage for Tom & Andrew's country house got the final approval Friday morning. It's all engines on and full speed ahead now. Closing will be scheduled in a few days and the house will be theirs for Xmas. Yay!!!!!

I am so happy for them. I am kvelling like crazy for them. Absolutely shepping nachas for them. They have all worked so incredibly hard to reach this point. This is such a great way for Andrew & Joanna to go into the new year.

In other excellent news, my daughter Astrid has a new terrific job. Her base is in Basel, Switzerland but she'll also be working out of several other project centres including NJ this week. So yes, Asti is in the Metro NY area working this week and visiting family during her down time.

I presume I'll hear more news from other family members at some point. I refuse to allow facebook to take over family communications. I loathe how people utterly expose themselves on FB. This blog is as public as I plan to get.

Enough for now. I need to look through some seed catalogs.

It's almost 6 weeks since I stopped smoking. No lapses, still going clean. But now finally after all these weeks I'm experiencing deep cravings for a cigarette. I push the feelings behind me but they are undoubtedly miserable. I'm hoping they start to fade away or lessen soon.

Today.
Three Weeks.
Smoke Free.

Not bad.

Made to-die-for chopped liver today. Alan liked it so much he had no complaints. He just shut up and ate and ate. If you know Alan, you understand how unusual that is. I posted the recipe to our family cooking blog.

2 days short of 3 weeks no smoking. Ugh I'm yearning for a cigarette. Not often but now and then - so much.

It will pass, it will pass....soon I hope.

Day 17. I had expected the quitting side-effects would be easing off by now but instead, topsy-turvy, from nothing at first it's growing to sudden episodic bursts of craving. I'm taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time. This too shall pass.

Meanwhile the weather here is non-stop miserable - cold and raining. Alan made a pot of his world class French onion soup today. I made latkes for breakfast and we had the soup for dinner. We're transitioning to a much healthier lifestyle lately; now we just need to get a ground floor flat and we'll be set.

Tomorrow is day 14! Two weeks no smoking. Not fun. Not fun at all.
It's not nicotine I crave; it's the pleasure of fiddling with the cigarette, the texture and experience of exhaling the smoke. Playing with the smoke is the prime smoking experience for me as I never actually inhaled. I know people always claim that but I was sure of it and double checked with my son Andrew who agreed that he always noticed how I didn't inhale. In fact, if I on a rare occasion somehow mistakenly did inhale, that was very noticeable because I would choke and sputter and cough.
Anyway - tomorrow - day 14.

I thought it was supposed to start getting easier after not smoking for a few days - not so here. After a fairly mild first week I'm suddenly and rapidly developing physical withdrawal symptoms. They're the miseries I'd been warned about loud and clear. I can only hope they're a last hurrah and by tomorrow morning they start fading away. Otherwise it's going to get ugly around here.

Originally dated 2005 from when Asti & I were living in Basel, Switzerland
Another mostly useless wasted week. Very limited access to my computer so my productivity was close to zero. Got all the papers to apply for the visa but no tiene los dinero - ie. All the nice offers and promises went up in smoke when the time to put up or shut up arrived, Asti's friend Robin even went back on his offer to give me a job interview/expression of interest letter to include with my application.

So add all the endless crap on top of crap and add to that an early winter settling in which a stunning cold spell. It's been in the 30s-40s F. the past few days and I'm feeling ill, cold or flu coming on. There's no heat in the house either! The landlord ddn't bother turning it on when the temps started regularly sinking into the 30's and 40. Oh joy! The rent is almost 3000 SFr a month but no heat so we're huddling wrapped in blankets.

Someone must have complained because we finally started getting heat at 4pm today. Not real heat yet but the ends of the radiators have started to warm. It will take many hours to warm this apt tho because most of the exterior walls are vast expanses of glass. I'm hopeful tho and at least it's one cheery note in a bleek vista.

So, no visa and no money to cover the fee. I'm going to have to find a way because I -must- have that visa. Without it I can't legally work. I can't go thru that nightmare again. Perhaps I'll have to take my sterling silver flatware from Asti and sell it. I was going to just let it be, but whatever.

Oh, and that is the positive side compared to all the other crazy stuff going on.
1. Asti's new house lease/tenancy isn't approved yet - so
2. She can't agree on a delivery date with the movers
3. The movers want payment upfront which is ok because Asti has more than enough in her pension account to cover the move.
4. Except Switzerland's anti-female laws require a signed notarized statement from Nick. Who is in deepest Oxforshire currently.
5. And they want a signed letter from him and a copy of his passport.
6. Both notarized
7. We don't have the paperwork for the 3 cats to travel yet
8. We don't have train reservations for us to go from Basel to London
9. It gets worse, believe me. And I haven't even gone into Alan being depressed because he's so broke lately.

I think a hot shower is needed right now.

And a new storyline! Damn, why isn't there a nice, kindly god who could change it all

Must have HOT shower. Must get warm warm warm ...

A week without cigarettes. Surviving. I'm still reaching for one and still feel it between my fingers as I reach for that first relaxing puff with my coffee. But nothing I could identify as physical. Just memories of the pleasant gesture.
But, it's a week, 7 days and I'm moving on ok.

Day 5 - quitting smoking cold turkey. I had to stop smoking; couldn't afford the cost any more. A depressing choice which provides me no support or comfort in the withdrawal process. Meh - what a misery.