Christmas Cabbage Soup

Made this up today based on what usually works well together. Chop one cabbage, then fry in oil in a large pot for ten minutes while stirring. Add 1.5 litres of vegetable stock, five crushed cloves of garlic, a good dash of chili sauce, eg Tabasco, some chili flakes, a dash of Lea & Perrins or similar, plenty of salt & pepper, some dill, a good dollop of mustard, and a tablespoonful of honey. Simmer with a lid on until the cabbage melts in the mouth. Amazing! :-)

Beef with sesame, orange, rice, carrot & lettuce

Made this tonight from a blend of recipes and memories of a dish I used to enjoy for lunch at an Asian restaurant in Stockholm. I think it's actually a Korean dish.

It's thinly sliced steak strips, with fine chopped onion, marinated in soy sauce, honey, sesame oil & seeds, with a little ginger, chilli & garlic, and orange zest.

Once flash-fried in a hot frying pan I served it on a bed of lettuce with warm sticky rice & topped off with grated carrot and orange slices to squeeze over to taste.

For two people I used 400 grams of meat, 1 small onion, 3 tablespoons of soy, 1 tablespoon of honey, 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, and 1 teaspoon each of lazy ginger, chilli & garlic. Grated the surface off 1 orange, and prepared sushi rice finished off with rice wine vinegar. Sliced the remains of the orange and grated two carrots.  Really yummy and fresh. Top marks from the better half! :-)

Update - made it again without the onion or carrot, more honey, and more sesame oil. Also heated the rice wine vinegar with some vegetable oil, sugar and salt. Tasted even closer to the dish I hoped to recreate...

Paths Through Addictions

I've recently drafted this diagram to help outline what I feel are my own paths through addition to both alcohol and nicotine. I feel very lucky to be able to say I've recovered from both - five years free from smoking and ten years free from drinking.

After unsuccessfully trying patches & gum a few times, I quit thirty years of cigarettes by using Champix tablets over two months. Effectively they "switched-off" the part of my brain that craved nicotine.

Interestingly, my escape from alcohol ten years ago involved a massive last binge (and prolonged hangover/withdrawl) with a very powerful movie* as a background narrative, and transferal of addiction from booze to fags in the first few weeks. After that period there was almost no temptation to drink again (I did have a couple of 12 hr curiosity lapses 6 months apart in the first year which only reinforced my determination each time). It has, since then, felt that the part of my brain which craved alcohol has been switched off too.

I'm keen to get any and all feedback, in the comments below please, to refine the diagram and answer anything I haven't explained adequately. Thanks.

* Touching The Void - which shows the extent to which people can recover from trapped situations.