Back to normal

Posted on December 27, 2011 by nicdempsey

So tomorrow I head back to work after 4 lovely days off. Christmas was a joy, time spent doing not much and yes I got some amazing presents..which isn’t the point of Christmas but is always nice!

Also this Christmas is the first that I’ve come out of the same weight that I went in, I did eat quite a lot, these were delicious..

Boxing Day was sheer greed…no-one really needs ice cream after pizza…but I’m not really fussed about it, I’m at work Wed until Friday, so every one of those days is a gym day so no issues…

If work starts for you tomorrow, hope the commute doesn’t do you in and if you are one of the unfortunate people who have been working through Christmas, I hope you get a rest soon!

Full speed ahead until 2012…

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Sunday Music

Posted on December 25, 2011 by nicdempsey

Happy Christmas! As Christmas falls on Sunday…we’re having a carol moment. So as I used to hear them at Mass on Christmas morning…

O Come All Ye Faithful or Adeste Fideles

Always the first hymn at Mass on Christmas Morning Mass.

Once In Royal David’s City

(because I love it and as a Christian child, I don’t think I was ever ‘mild, obedient or as good as He!)

Away In A Manger

Because it makes my Mum cry and was generally the communion hymn followed by…

…Silent Night

My Grandad used to complain that the words were wrong, but Salvation Army words or Catholic words..it’s still beautiful..

 

Hark The Herald Angels Sing

Always the last song for Christmas Mass. I spent several years as an altar server and for 5 or so years (12 to 17) did both Midnight Mass and the 10.30am Christmas Morning Mass. I heard this hymn a lot and the last verse is just beautiful:

Hail! the heav’n-born Prince of peace!
Hail! the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die:
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Happy Christmas!

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Mostly Whining

Posted on December 22, 2011 by nicdempsey

Today I will be mostly sick and tired. I have a sore throat and all I want to do is sleep. Everyone except me seems to already be on holiday and I still can’t get a seat in the Tube, I haven’t got to the gym as much as I want to and the presents I’ve ordered for Oli haven’t turned up yet.

Christmas and the 4 days that I don’t have to get out of bed at 6am really can’t come to soon!

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#resound11: Then and Now

Posted on December 21, 2011 by nicdempsey

What was your life like a decade ago? How has your life changed since then? If you’re not feeling wordy today, why not show us some then and now portraits of yourself?

How will you resound?

Strange for me that this was the question for the 19th, you see exactly 10 years ago my father died. So around about the time I’m writing this 10 years ago, I’d spoken to my mum, my brother, comforted Sarah’s sister (who upon hearing the news had started to cry…she was always doing stuff like that, I wasn’t surprised). Mum had just started a new job and legally couldn’t do anything because she and Dad were divorced. I remember that we were worried about Ben, because he was the one the police had told (over the phone – something that still makes me cross) and he was closer to Dad, my relationship with him had pretty much crashed and burned years ago.

In the 10 years that have passed since he died lots have things have changed. Dad dying gave us the opportunity to be a different kind of family, something that wouldn’t have happened if he had been alive.

I have forgiven Dad for the damage he me, he did to us. I mourned the life that we could have had but didn’t and accepted him for what he was.

I’ve also lost friends that were bad for me. I’m happier than I was 10 years ago, despite or maybe because I’ve less friends and money than I had 10 years ago. I think coming to terms with my father’s effect on my live has changed me for the better.

I don’t have any photos scanned in of myself from 10 years ago something I am very grateful for!!

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Christmas pudding truffles

Posted on December 21, 2011 by nicdempsey

So this year, I’m broke and I’m making Christmas presents. Mostly inspired by Max, I’ve made some new things.

 

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The truffles are one of them. The original recipe is in Nigella Christmas as Christmas Pudding bonbons. I’ve used brandy instead of sherry and rather than decorate them with white chocolate and coloured glace cherries so they look like Christmas puddings have, with all due respect to Nigella, opted to cover them in cocoa because I think that tastes better and I’m not keen on whimsy or faffing around. Anyway they’re good, you won’t need too many of them and don’t give them to children (they probably won’t like them and that would be a waste!!)

What

350g cooked Christmas pudding (you could use homemade, but I don’t make them and used Sainsburys!)
125g dark (70%) chocolate
30 g golden syrup (light corn syrup if you’re from the US and don’t have golden syrup and you should complain about that!!)
60ml brandy
Cocoa powder for dusting
Disposable gloves (ok not essential but they will make this a lot easier)

How
1. Line a baking sheet with something non stick (clingfilm, baking parchment, foil etc)
2. Melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended above a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave.
3. Break up the cold Christmas pudding in a bowl, add the brandy and the golden syrup and mix up until it’s all incorporated.
4. Pour in the melted chocolate and mix together.
6. Put on your gloves (if you have them!) pinch out small pieces of the mixture about the size of a walnut and roll in your hands until they’re smooth and round. You should get about 30, sometimes I get more, sometimes less!
7. Put in the fridge so they firm up
8. After about an hour, take out and roll in cocoa powder.
9. Resist the urge to eat them and box them up!!

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Weekly Shop

Posted on December 20, 2011 by nicdempsey

Cassie at Back to Her Roots, has a What I Ate post every Wednesday and I find it quite interesting because she always eats quite interesting stuff. Whereas Monday to Friday my diet is fairly monotonous with breakfast and lunch being pretty much identical every day.

On Friday in Sainsburys, 2 people in the queue commented on how healthy my shopping was so I thought I’d share that, though I can’t promise I’ll do it every week!

In case you can’t see it all, here’s the list and what they’re for:

Nectarines  – snacks

7 peppers (yes 7 – I love pepper but never green ones!) – breakfast and lunches

Grapes  – lunches and breakfast

2 pomegranates – lunches and snacks and maybe this sunday for pomegranate martinis!

Carrots – breakfast and lunches and lentil soup

1 packet stir fry veg – dinner

1 packet ready prepared leek and cabbage – dinner

1 packet chestnut mushrooms – breakfast and when I come home hungry I eat some raw mushrooms and then make dinner

1 bunch spring onions – dinner for a new recipe I’m trying this week

Radishes – breakfast

Hummus – lunch

1 large packet of smoked salmon – breakfast (yep I eat smoked salmon for breakfast)

10 slices parma ham – 1 slice for lunch, 1 for a snack, Monday to Friday

2 packets mixed seafood – dinner and snacks – I love seafood

4 perle de lait lemon yogurts – mid afternoon snack

Cottage Cheese – dinner, for a recipe I’m trying

Red Lentils – dinner, for soup

Quinoa – dinner, for a recipe I’m trying

Sleep easy tea – this is the tea I drink after dinner in the hope it helps me sleep better, it also tastes nice!

2 packets 9-bars – breakfast, I am slightly obsessed with these I won’t eat all of them over a week but I’ll want to!

Given that this is the list, you might what to get some idea of what I eat for breakfast and lunch.

Breakfast

Morning Snack

Lunch

Afternoon Snack

There are lots of comments that you can make about this. You can say that it’s not healthy, or too restricting and if you think those things, that’s fine. For me, I’m never hungry and I don’t feel deprived and it stabilises my mood, (I get a piece of dark chocolate it there too!), I also get a dinner every night and I haven’t included those. I am currently about 2 and a half stone overweight and I need to lose that, this helps. If I get to the stage where I feel hungry I’ll change it!

If you want to tell me what you think of it or what works for you, I’ll welcome that!

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#resound11: Appreciate

Posted on December 19, 2011 by nicdempsey

What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year?

How do you express gratitude for it?

How will you resound?

I’ve come to appreciate my family. I define family in this instance as more that the people who I’m related to but the friends I have that are close enough to me to count as family too.

They’ve encouraged, supported, trusted and had faith in me this year. Honestly, I’m not sure that I’d have survived this year without them.

How I express gratitude is to try and be that person for them and others. To remember how much a phone call matters and to make that call, to show love. That’s all I can do really.

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Bootcamp round up

Posted on December 19, 2011 by nicdempsey

I finished bootcamp!

It’s a simple idea. 6 weeks, 12 exercise sessions and following Jem’s ‘Better Body Plan‘.

I really needed to kick start working out again and can’t afford personal training so this seemed like a good idea. It was.

It was also cold, rainy, dark and muddy but I did it and lost 9lbs in the process.

The weight loss hasn’t been the best thing although getting back into my ‘take no prisoners’ work trousers!! The best thing has been how it’s made me feel, the combination of diet and exercise has helped with the SAD and stabilised my mood. This is the first winter in an age that hasn’t felt like a slog although it’s been the most challenging and I’ve done the last 4 weeks without my sunrise lamp which is usually a disaster.

I will be doing the next one in February but meanwhile, I’ve joined the gym around the corner from work (on the company scheme so £20 a month!) and on Friday did my first class and will be using it three times a week. I’ll also be sticking to most of the diet rules and am determined, as I enter Christmas to keep that weight off.

 

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#resound11: Extraordinary Ordinary

Posted on December 18, 2011 by nicdempsey

Have you ever heard the expression “God is in the details?” Or, perhaps, “the devil is in the details?”

In college, I had an instructor who would circle the most minuscule omissions in red pen and write that phrase: God is in the details. Accidentally double space after a period when the rest have single spaces? Red pen. God is in the details. Barely noticeable typography goof-up? Red pen. God is in the details.

Annoying, right? Right, but insightful. At the time I was annoyed because I had five classes of nothing but writing and creating and the last thing on my mind was a tiny, forgotten detail. When you think about it though, it is the details that make up our lives: little, seemingly insignificant details, choices, and moments that make up our life, make up our story.

Sometimes the most ordinary, mundane things can turn into extraordinary moments. What was one of your most extraordinary ordinary moments this year?

My entire year has been ordinary and extraordinary. I have been trying over the last few years to appreciate the beautiful, ordinary things in my life. It’s been a difficult couple of years. Stand outs this year have been how some of my friends, Tina, Max, Kathy and Bex have, as if by magic, called me and suggested a coffee or a walk just at the point I was feeling really blue.

On one of those walks, with Tina, we came upon mushrooms growing in the park…that seemed like magic

Watching these kids grow this year and learn to walk and talk, that’s been extraordinary ordinary:

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#resound11: Discovery

Posted on December 18, 2011 by nicdempsey

Today’s prompt is brought to you by Krissie from Questions for Dessert and @krissieb.

We learn new things every day. Processes change at work. We meet new people. We cook new recipes. We are constantly learning and growing.

But sometimes we learn something that qualifies as a discovery. A piece of new information – a feeling, a song, a place, an event, a book, a random fact – can sometimes change our view on the world and our place in it. Discovery can bring on positive change, but sometimes discovery is hard. Sometimes it causes conflict. But after a discovery, something about you just isn’t quite the same.

What discovery did you make in 2011? What kind of impact did it have on how you view the world today?

How will you resound?

The discovery I made this year is that I can do impossible things. Not really impossible things, I’m not going to be leaping over tall buildings or anything, but things that I thought I couldn’t do actually I can. I can find contentment when things are horrible, I can find the time to exercise, I can do things that at the beginning of the year I thought I couldn’t do.

This has led to some changes, I find myself giving up some things to achieve the things I really want to do. I want to exercise and I have to work, so sometimes I’m going to turn down a night out in the middle of week so I can do the things I need and want to do.

It’s not easy, but I can do it!

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