Had our winter "Gourmet Night" at Rick and Katie's house.

Experimented with a fore rib of beef cooked for 24 hours at 50 degrees C, and then cut into steaks and sealed each side in a very hot skillet!

Gotta say it produces very juicy steaks, beautifully pink in the centre. Had that with roasted vegetables and red onion gravy.

So full afterwards we had no room for desert but cheese and crackers.

Played "Buzz" on the PS2 and got home about 1.30am! A really good night.

One of us is fat, tacky and full of hot air, and the other is a Christmas decoration!
For those of you trying to find my house on these dark winter evenings, we are the people next door!

Lilian and I went with Pearl and Archie and Winnie to the Waterfront Hall last night for our annual outing to Handel's "Messiah". This is one of these events where you keep bumping into hundreds of people that you know but haven't seen since last year!

We ended up right down at the front close to the cellos. Excellent performance this year, one of the best I've heard in the Waterfront.

The Waterfront hall during the interval.

Day off so went into town shopping. Bright but cold in Belfast but the Continental Market set up around the City Hall was great, with a wide variety of foodstuff from around Europe.







Met up with Rick and Katie and we did some shopping with them. Found ourselves back in the market and wandered about sampling Paella and all sorts of stuff.







All the shops were open late so we ended up in Waterstones browsing through the books and having coffee before going back to Winnie's house for supper.

For you folks who are looking for pictures of my grandson Caleb, here are a couple.

He lives with his mum and dad in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada and Caleb will be one year old in January coming.


Dave and Stacey are doing well. Dave appears to be enjoying his job and they are both involved in their local church with Pastor Mike.

Day off so we decided we would attempt to bake some cinnamon scones from a recipe we were given by a little restaurant in Medicine Hat, Canada. (We used to go down every morning for coffee and these superb cinnamon scones). Here they are about to go into the oven...
and this is what they look like baked and buttered. Fantastic recipe. If you want a copy let me know.



Chestnuts roasting by an open fire. (Well a fan assisted electric oven actually!) Rick and Katie arrived for tea. Had a curry and then retired to the front room to play backgammon!
At about 11 o'clock Katie took a notion for ice cream and hot butterscotch sauce, (pregnant women, who needs them!) So headed off to Tesco's (who said 24 hour shopping was a crazy idea?).

It's that time of year again! Got the Christmas tree up and decorated. (Lilian did all of the work!) Rick and Katie had stayed overnight last night.

House is now starting to look, sound and smell Christmassy.

Looking forward to our annual outing to the Waterfront Hall to hear the Ulster Orchestra and Philharmonic perform Handel's Messiah in a couple of weeks time.

Held what looks set to become established as The Annual Christmas Gingerbread House Buildiing Competition, (or as we say for short AGHBC) last night. Competition was fiercer than last year with Rick and Katie joining us for the first time with a fancy design involving dormer windows in the roof. However according to the official and independant judge, (our next door neighbour dragged away from the TV!) Alison and Nigel's creative efforts and pretzel fence stole the show! Despite everyone having eaten far more smarties and dolly mixtures than we actually used for decoration, we managed supper afterwards.