Tag Christmas

12 Things About Christmas

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy

Once upon a time …

Though it’s not really that long ago, it’s amazing how much the things & the work surrounding the Christmas festivities have changed.

Can you add to this list?

  1. Where did we find the time to write 50, 60, maybe even closer to 100 Christmas cards? By hand even? And we had to lick the stamps! Yuck!
  2. There was a time when the Amazon was only a river & a rainforest. Now we don’t even have to leave home to shop.
  3. Expecting a CD or vinyl under the tree? Now we get an email with a gift subscription link to a streaming music service.
  4. We had no other choice but to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Christmas Day.
  5. Remember how long it took to find that one dead bulb that kept the tree lights dark?
  6. On Christmas morning, we had to light the fire with paper, kindling & matches. That sounds so Dickensian! LOL
  7. We got up at 5am to start preparing the Christmas dinner. Now we slap the pre-cooked turkey & ham into the oven 45 minutes before eating.
  8. Our local church streams its services. Is that okay, do you think!?! Unless the kids are young, of course, then there’s no choice but to go to the crowded children’s mass. And yeah, that takes about two hours!
  9. Hey priest & choir master … we used to know the words to those old “greatest hits” Christmas hymns!
  10. Used to be that I’d go through the entire festive season without even thinking about the bathroom scale!
  11. Can’t believe there was a time I was disgusted by the thought of having Christmas dinner on the beach!
  12. Imagine there was a time when Christmas was all about God ‘n’ love for each other ‘n’ mushy stuff like that?

Fortunately, it still is. I still see it everywhere, when I take the time to look. In the faces of family & friends when we shake hands & hug, exchanging the spirit of the season. In the local supermarket, when people drop a bag of groceries into the donation bin for those in greater need. In the Salvation Army baubles, bulging with cash donations at this time of year. In a million little ways, so many, regardless of religious beliefs, do a little more. We seems to find a little more of our humanity around this time of year.

There ought to be an app for that!

I may occasionally look back, with nostalgia, on the good old days but, to be honest, I like all the new stuff. And the new ways. I’m just grateful that we seem to have managed to preserve the spirit of, & that’s the best of, the old ways too.

I would like to wish you, & all those you hold dear, a very Merry Christmas. May whatever light that’s lights your way, shine brighter throughout this holiday.

Thank you for reading my stuff throughout 2019. I promise I’ll diet better in 2020. But forgive me if I overindulge during the holidays!

Merry Christmas to all! 🙏🎄🎅🎁

Stocking Stuffer & Christmas Gifts

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Christmas is coming, pick up a copy of my absolutely amazingly hilarious collection of Irish short stories as a stocking stuffer for yourself. Or as a gift for a friend. You can tell them you know the author!

For a Man or a Dog is available at your local Amazon site, in paperback & Kindle versions.

Okay, guilt is forcing me to back off the sales pitch a bit … being honest, I think that maybe one third of the stories are great, another third are decent & …

okay, let’s leave it at that! 😜😁

Click the Preview button below & skip through the Introduction to read the first story.

PS … Aside from the Irish shenanigans, you’ll get some interesting insights into where my dietary challenges might have originated too!

Results … Month #17

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Results Month #17

Down 4.2 lbs for November! Woohoo!

Now this isn’t so much the result of me dedicating myself to a highly focused dietary plan, it just kinda, sorta, maybe happened because I occasionally paid attention to what was passing my lips! I still ate cookies, cakes & candy during the past month, just not with the same degree of carelessness that I had been doing. Believe me, this past month was a big improvement on the three months prior!

What happened this past month is that I started trying to figure things out, again. How did I abandon something that was working reasonably well, while allowing me to eat really well at the same time? I’ve come up with a couple of suspects that might be contributing to the derailment. One is the lack of a gallbladder. I seem to be avoiding the fatty cuts of meat that were once a staple of my weigh loss efforts. I’m just not as in love with bacon & pork belly as I once was. I even trimmed the band of fat from a rib steak one night … what is wrong with me!?! Funny enough, while I’m avoiding all the fatty meat, the lack of a gallbladder is not stopping me heaping heavy cream over some decadent brownie dessert!

OMG … Am I turning vegetarian or something!?!

The other suspect is my routine, or rather the lack of one. I am a creature of habit & I like a good solid routine to help me get things done. I’ve made a few changes to what was a well-developed routine & I’ve had some other changes imposed on my schedule. I haven’t quite adapted to the new arrangement yet & I need to take a look at how to get that new routine bedded in properly. On top of that, I quit smoking about three or four dozen times over recent months. I’m not kidding, I’d quit for a day or two here & there, and then go back to smoking again. Another major routine disruptor. It’s important to disrupt bad patterns in order to lose weight, but I need to replace them with good, repetitive, habituated patterns to make the alternatives stick. Despite how I like to think of myself as this free-spirited & adventurous being, I still need to get stuff done, and routine, habits, & consistency are important for getting things done. Including weight loss!

I’m sorry, I went on a bit there. But that’s all really more a pep talk for myself, as I head into December … drooling about Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, that turkey & ham dinner, bubble & squeak afterwards, turkey sandwiches, chocolates, whipped cream with an infusion of Irish cream liqueur, & on it goes!

I know the January 1st weigh-in is going to be fun! Wish me luck!

And just in case my new routine doesn’t embrace another post between now & January, I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, may whatever light that lights your way, shine more brightly for you as we close out the old year & look forward to a new one. Peace, love, happiness & all that nice mushy stuff to you & all those you hold dear!

Results … Month #6

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Results … Month #6 (Down 35.8 lbs)Results Month 6

Happy New Year to all. May 2019 bring you nothing but the best of times!

Mind you, I’m not too happy starting out the new year myself, this morning. I’m down another 2 lbs this past month. A month that included the challenge of settling in to a new home, AND the Christmas holiday binge season. Yes, I’m down 2 lbs. But it could have been so much better.

It seems like I couldn’t stop myself eating garbage for the past week or so. The closer I came to the monthly results day, the worse things got. I was trying to justify my behavior on the grounds that if all the bad stuff was gone, I might get off to a great start in the new year. But I managed to change all that for the worse when I went shopping yesterday!

The only new year’s resolution that I’ve successfully managed to keep in recent years is the one where I resolved not to make any more new year’s resolutions! Despite sticking with that philosophy, I still feel like I ought to be doing something bigger, better & bolder on January 1st each year. In anticipation of that, I thought we’d try something different, something a little more diet-friendly, for the New Year’s Day dinner today. We decided to go with the traditional Irish meal (North American version!) of corned beef and cabbage. With potatoes, of course. That should work well with my dietary ambitions. I could reduce the number of potatoes. And I could devour a whole pot of cabbage if I wanted. Of course everything would be heavily buttered too.

We went shopping for the beef brisket yesterday. Now you probably won’t believe this but all the Christmas chocolate was on sale too. Half off! Seriously, who could resist? I’ve loaded up on those delicious Swiss chocolate balls. Some holiday-sized slabs of those English chocolate bars that I grew up with. And some other silver-wrapped Christmas chocolate figures, they were just so cute. I really looked hard for the dark chocolate versions of all those items. But they must have been very popular for the holidays, they were all sold out! 😉

Already, in my head, I’m writing excuse for next month’s results. I don’t know what else to say!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

But really … losing weight, even just a little, over the Christmas holiday is good. Isn’t it!?! LOL

 

 

Gifts for Dieters

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Gifts for Dieters

Instant Pot Chicken Curry

First Pass with the Instant Pot

Many years ago, I took part in a diet contest. In fact I organised it. A group of folk got together to lose some weight, and we asked our family and friends to sponsor our losses with their hard-earned cash. The proceeds went towards a local hospital that was trying to finance a piece of new equipment. The first place prize, for the person who lost the most weight, was … wait for it … a food processor!

As a habitual, long-term dieter, that’s my kind of prize. Something to do with food. Things haven’t changed much, I’m still dieting. And I wanted an Instant Pot for Christmas this year.

Santa Claus delivered … Woohoo!

I carefully read the manuals, triple checked some recipes, and I read the manuals one more time before embarking on my first Instant Pot meal. NOT! What I actually did was wing it. After spending about two minutes flipping through the user manual and the recipe book.

There was a family pack of chicken breasts in the fridge that needed to be used so chicken curry immediately came to mind. It was a hodge-podge of whatever was available after that. Potatoes, onions, and a bag of frozen peas, along with a couple of large cans of diced tomatoes for the sauce. And a cup or two of heavy cream, of course. I did a pot of rice for the normal sized people that surround me. But then I had some of that too!

I had hardly started to cook when the “Burn” message came up on the screen. I pushed a bunch of buttons, turning the thing on and off several times in the process. I pried the hissing lid off once or twice, and stirred things around to see what I could see. Eventually some kind of cooking operation went ahead. I really will have to go back and read some more of that manual, won’t I! Despite my best efforts to defeat the thing, when I finally opened the Pot, the chicken was falling-apart tender. From a culinary perspective, the end result was at least good, if not great. But considering it was my first attempt, I’m cautiously optimistic about bending this thing to my culinary will with a little more practice. The great things I see so far are the ease of use, and how quick and easy it is for clean-up. It also makes it very easy to choose real, whole-food ingredients. And that alone is a good thing.

I’m looking forward to exploring this little cooker more. It makes a surprisingly large amount of food. And it’s right in the wheelhouse of my lazy philosophy of one-pot or one-pan cooking. Only without the splatter! I’ll update my progress with this thing along the way, I’m really hoping it makes it onto my top three small appliances list.

But what is it about dieting that has me looking at food-related things for gifts? Ah well, it’s better than looking at recipe books all the time, isn’t it!

Actually, now that I think on that, I have spent just about zero time looking at cookery books, or online recipes, during the course of this diet.

I had to read that last line again myself. There may well be something very important about that!