So...whats for dinner?

Carole, I love the Beau's lobby. I don't know if you're familiar with their promenade, but they always have a huge gorgeous fresh flower arrangement in the middle. One day I came upon the florist arranging it and I complimented her on the always beautiful display and she plucked a rose out of the arrangement and gave it to me. It pays to acknowledge people's efforts!

I'm not sure about dinner, maybe chicken noodle soup. Too bad I don't have a rotisserie chicken. Love that for the stock. Dh just informed me he wants spaghetti and meatballs. I'll have linguini with white clam sauce. Guess I'm baking a chicken tomorrow.

Carole - glad to hear that there is a plan for your DH.  Hope that does the trick.  I agree, you'll miss the cocktails but you're right about the weight loss too.  Hugs.  Please do keep us in the loop.

Carole, thanks for the anniversary wishes.  I like your idea of tracking the WW points and setting a weight loss goal with a time frame attached. Good luck! I do think that the elimination of alcohol will help your loss plan as well as DHs health effort.  Wishing him the best as he manages this. I bet that you can replace cocktail hour with something that results in your not missing it much...a new interesting routine.

We went to a lovely restaurant tonight. 80 Thoreau is just outside of Concord Center in a renovated train station with a modern decor with colonial touches....very nice. I had read both wonderful and angry reviews on it while on the treadmill this afternoon and ours would be in the wonderful camp. We started with some bluefish pate and delicate crackers, then DH had an appetizer of gnocchi with bits of lobster and I had a beet salad with tiny sliced potatoes and walnuts in it. I had to settle on this since I was allergic to any number of other apps. For entree, DH had the hake with celeriac and lentils, which he enjoyed. I had duck with kale and it was the most well prepared, delicious duck I have ever eaten! But wait! There's more....

I had noticed at a table across from us, a woman had a birthday candle delivered to her....no dessert....just the candle attached to her coffee saucer!!  Fascinating! So, I thought....maybe they don't have desserts here (like at Sweet Basil), but wanted to acknowledge her birthday. WRONG! They had wonderful offerings! I was not going for any saucer balanced candles, so ordered a carrot/parsnip/walnut cake with a dollop of caramel ice cream. But DH got the prize.....a goat cheese cheesecake with these little tart grapes in a sauce over it that totally exploded with flavor in your mouth. Wow! Fortunately we shared. This meal was a very sweet end to our 41st!  I would definitely return to this restaurant after saving up or winning the lottery! 

Lacey. Apologies for being remiss in sending you happy anniversary wishes. Sounds like you and dh did it up right!

Minus, love your meal. If I lived alone, that's the kind of meal I would have.

Roasting a chicken with garlic, thyme and preserved lemons. Or maybe I'll season it with the Moroccan spice mixture I just picked up at the spice shop instead of the thyme. I got some saffron at trader Joe's so perhaps I'll make saffron rice to go with it.

Carole, I'm glad your dh's issues was not cirrhosis. I share his diagnosis. It's a common issue with diabetics. Losing weight is really the only treatment and that doesn't always make a difference. I don't drink much, so that's never been an issue for me. 

Cornmeal-battered oven-fried catfish fillets with a nice tossed salad and Green Giant broccoli with cheese sauce.  I forget how bad the steamer broccoli is.  It's all convenience and no taste or good texture.  I need to develop a "light" cheese sauce to put on steamed broccoli.  I'm happy with lemon juice and a pat of butter but dh enjoys the cheese sauce. 

Nance, I learned that one of my brothers has fatty liver, too.  Apparently it's very common.  I ordered saffron from Amazon and it's very slow in arriving.

eric - I'm still at her place but will go home tomorrow. I'm sure it will be hard for me to drive away. She will already be at work when I leave. We have been lucky that she did two internships away from home, so has really been gone for the last year, but lucky feeling in the sense that those were temp situations with an end point. This will be different and this time she took her bedroom furniture - when I go home her room will be totally empty. When she comes home she will have to sleep in a guest room - first time in 25 years, since she attended college locally and lived at home. It will be weird. Fortunately, she is a homebody and will enjoy her place. I have been here helping her get settled. As parents I think we try to prepare them, and ourselves, for the day they leave the nest - and it is a mixture of pride, apprehension, and missing them. It is the same feelings they have, I think.

lacey - congrats on the anniversary and fabulous dinner!

carole - glad you have a Dx for DH and a plan.

Can't wait for my preserved lemons to be ready!  I have the date marked on the calendar. 

Tonight's dinner will be turkey meatloaf.  I've been searching for the recipe I used before and found it at Epicurous.  I had tweaked it a little.  Made some substitutions like eggbeater for egg.  Green onions for yellow onion.   A side dish will be butternut squash.  And probably a garden salad.

Special.  I was thinking about "back then" for me.  I was 18 when I moved off to college. 

I remember the time very well.  I wasn't afraid, worried or even that excited.  Like I said earlier, the strongest memory was how quiet it was after my parents left.

The first time I went home was Thanksgiving.  I remember walking in an seeing the kitchen table.  It seemed so low.  I stayed in my older brother's room--that had become the guest room--and that is when I realized that while I was welcome there, it was no longer home.

I find it weird that my strongest memory of walking in to the house for the first time in 4 months is the height of the kitchen table. :-)   

Tonight is chicken chili Verde burritos. I'm cooking a largish pot of pinto beans with jalapeno and ham hock for a side. I'll freeze the what's left, which should be plenty, for future meals. It's a great convenience having already cooked beans in the freezer.  An avocado salad will round out the meal.

This afternoon is dedicated to ridding all three refrigerators of the little containers that have a tablespoon of something or other in them. I pray that they're all recognizable.

making the pork chops tommorrow night instead of tonight had an errand to run after hubby got home from work

This has been the week of technology hell. The websites for both of our businesses went down along with all of our email. Spent 2 days trying to get it fixed, and when Jorges, the customer service representative, told me three times in three separate emails that my email was working just fine, the research began. Canvassed a lot of people smarter than I, chose a new provider, re-registered my DNS registries and then waited for that to propagate. My business took exactly 7 minutes to work. Husband's business? 47 hrs! Since my incoming email was bouncing, as I am trying to do all this, clients are calling to see how I am. Felt like hours telling this story over and over. Yesterday, noticed that I was dropping packets over ethernet at a client office which makes working impossible. The sysadmin and I spent 90 minutes troubleshooting and it became clear that one of my thunderbolt ports was failing. So, last night I migrated my machine to an older one. Calls to tech support, and my dear MacBook Pro is on its way back to the mothership. Can anything else go wrong?

We did eat. Monday night was family dinner [like I had time for this!] of smoked turkey breast, sweet potato gratin with sage, and a green salad. Tuesday night I cooked up some Merguez sausage and served some of the gratin and another salad. Wednesday, my husband was worried I might jump from the Tobin bridge, and took care of grilling some lamb loin chops, and more of the gratin and the last of the salad lettuce. Tonight, we threw our hands up in the air and Mr. 02143 said someone else is cooking for us tonight. We headed to our local Irish pub for a burger [him] and fish and chips [me.] We go early when we want to eat at this spot since it is very popular and small. Can be a long wait later in the evening.

Lacey, congratulations on 41 years!!!!!! So glad to hear that 80 Thoreau is as good as I have heard. What a special evening.

SpecialK, your daughter will be fine. You have prepared her well for this next stage.

Got to try to get some work done.... the last 6 days have been a work wasteland.

*susan*

Eric, I prefer that this happens to clients... that is income. When it happens to my machines, it is loss of income!

*susan*

Susan and Eric, I admire how your brains work. Totally an enigma to me! And I will leave it at that...

Fortunately DH is enough into tech stuff that I have in-house support for my computer needs, or I would be sitting at home playing with my rotary phone.

Tonight's dinner at DH's conference was fine...at least the filet mignon and salmon combo was done well and good quality (both amazing feats for hotel conference food). My drive into Cambridge was not so fine...well over an hour for a 25 minute commute. No one here can drive in rain in the dark! To be fair there were a lot of flood puddles adding to the traffic nightmare...so I was starved when I arrived late for the dinner. Since we were sitting at the head table and the program was about to start, I felt I could not chow down on the lovely looking rolls, but did hastily enjoy my surf and turf. Does salmon count as surf? 

Susan, glad you got out  instead of more cooking after your harried week! 

Tomorrow night, my next door neighbor's church is having their yearly bazaar and they have the best middle eastern food there....soooo, I know where we will be eating. Then on Saturday we are having a quick dinner at a local restaurant before a Judy Collins concert here in our town hall, which was recently renovated to accommodate performances. The acoustics are good, so it will be such a treat to hear her that close up....in our own little town. Fun! An awful lot of eating out tho....often not good for the waistline.    

The kindergarten kids today were just adorable!

Carole- I admire you for your WW goal.  I have been going since May and for the past 2 months the same 5 lbs been coming on and going off.......Its got cold and I need to go get that gym membership cause I haven't been to the lake trail in weeks.  And I want to eat heavy, warm, comforting foods which equals too many points. .....  Tonight will be some rotisserie chicken, some mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.  Had tomato soup for lunch....

Dr/ Oz said yesterday that we need calcium, vitamin C and pistachio nuts (50 per day) to help bust up belly fat.......right.....  I love to eat grapefruits and have been getting some good ones lately.

Lacey, belated belated anniversary wishes--your dinner sounds like something out of a food magazine...  Love it-especially the dessert section.....

Love butternut squash, especially when I find it already prepped...... I want to eat healthier but cooking for one is the pits....most times.

susan - I have no earthly idea what your post about the tech difficulties actually said as I am a techno-peasant, other than it was a bunch of bad things that made you upset, but that things are on the upswing, and you still cooked and got to eat some delish food, lol!  I hope next week is smoother sailing!  You are right - the DD will be fine - and I will be too   I drove home from Georgia last night - late - didn't arrive until about 1:30 a.m. - wanted to get everything in place so she has a nest to come home to when she has a challenging day at work.  That was accomplished - had a pre-op appt at 8:30 a.m. today for surgery next week - was sleep-deprived enough to make a wrong turn on a street I drive on all the time, lol!  I am going to type this post and go to bed!

carole - yay for WW and your resolve!  I have strayed this past week due to being away from home, but need to get back to the usual tomorrow.

eric - isn't it weird the stuff we remember?  Years ago I compared notes with my mom about a series of events - she remembered things completely differently than I did, and yes - funny the table height was what you noticed!