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.