Chrysalis

Wealthy Europeans doing "the tour" to Egypt and the Middle East wanted the most comfortable (and expensive) accommodations on the ship. Those accommodations were termed "POSH": Port Outbound Starboard Homebound Every group needs a member who is a veritable wealth of useless information. That's me! :)

Oh, my! I SO understand that poor mother! Thanks for the laughs, Frez.

Very impressive, Colleen. Creepy, too. :(

I'm with you, Humbled. What do you need the tea for? Just put honey, lemon and whiskey in a cup and drink it! (I guess that's what they call "Irish Tea". :) )

Tonight we have Northern Italian Chicken, oven roasted potatoes and orange-cinnamon glazed carrots. "Northern Italian Chicken" is named in honor of my first college roommate. Everything she cooked was brushed with olive oil, smothered with garlic, onions and parsley and baked. She proudly proclaimed that her family was from NORTHERN Italy so I call this "Northern Italian Chicken". No offense intended to the Italians among you-- the chicken is delicious. :)

Oh, I'm so very sorry to hear this, Thyme and Nancy. Losing a sibling is so hard! I recently lost a brother to melanoma. When I hear stories like yours it makes me appreciate the fact that I WAS able to quit! It took me several tries. There were times when I thought that I, too, might be so addicted that I just couldn't quit. But I kept trying, my doctor helped, and this online support group helped. As they say, "There but for the grace of God go I." If you are thinking of quitting, if you did quit but then relapsed, if you quit but you're feeling shaky on some days, please remember and believe 2 things: 1) if you continue smoking it WILL diminish your quality of life and it WILL eventually kill you, and 2) you are NOT too addicted to quit! You CAN do it! Just stick with us here and don't give up.

Yes, you are right, Kristin. You are NOT a smoker!! That is the only important thing right now. Good for you. Applause! Applause! :D

Hey, no fair! You have to give us at least some indication of what you like. Chick flicks? Murder mysteries? Comedies? Contemporary or period dramas? My husband, for example, loves the violent series-- 24, Dexter, Breaking Bad, etc. but I won't watch them. I like Eureka, Medium, Numb3rs, and The Unit and (when hubby is not around) Bletchley Circle, Call the Midwife and Selfridges. Give us a hint about your tastes.

Thanks, Scott. I bet the pickled beets and onions are delicious with the pickled eggs! Your recipe sounds very sour, though. What kind of vinegar do you use? That will make a big difference. I never got around to making the mustard and dill eggs. I should do that soon-- after all, I already bought all the ingredients. I was disappointed in my second batch of pickled eggs, though. The first batch was as I described-- vinegar with mixed pickling spices. They were delicious. Then I got cute and decided to re-use the pickling brine; I just added more eggs. Batch #1 eggs turned a tan color and were very flavorful, but batch #2 with the re-used brine the eggs were barely colored at all and not very flavorful. It turns out that the first batch of eggs ABSORBED the spices so the brine was depleted. Who knew??!! :o Oh, well, I'll have to try the mustard and dill ones now. See how that goes. Then maybe Scotts beet and onion eggs. Oh joy!! :)

The first time our cat had fleas we used Hartz flea powder on him. An hour later he was sick as a dog (pardon the pun). He was hiding under the bed obviously feeling miserable and his eyes and nose were running. We rushed him to the vet. Turns out he was having an allergic reaction to the flea powder so the vet shot him up with benedril. The vet said to never use Hartz flea products because they are often toxic to cats (I don't know about dogs). Since then we have used Revolution every summer (and Capstar once in a while) with no problems.

As noted in one of the comments to the law suit article, if you work for an animal shelter or know someone who does, please warn them to remove Beneful from their stocks and not accept any Beneful donations. I can understand (a little) that perhaps some supplier shipped some bad ingredient and Purina didn't know about the problem. But according to the lawsuit article, there have been more than 3000 complaints about Beneful making dogs sick or dead and the company just ignored it. THAT is unforgivable! And, of course, manufacturers do that with human food and cars and cribs and everything. Better to ignore the problem than acknowledge it and fix it for fear of coming to the attention of the litigation attorneys. Who is more at fault-- the companies that knowingly include toxins, the companies that deny any problems or the attorneys who peruse the newspapers looking for sad situations with deep pockets that can be picked. Disgusting, every one of them.

Cat plays dead to avoid going for a walk. Hilarious! :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sy1MDHZ27M

Nancy, have you watched the Wallander series?

For those of you who like Michael Connellly's Harry Bosch books (police procedurals) Amazon has made a video series of several of his books. The series is entitled "Bosch". It's pretty good-- very reminiscent of BBC's Wallander series.

Kristin, you GET it. You really, truly GET it!! Your Nicodemon is trying her best to suck you into a relapse. I'm so glad that you understand that. If you can hang in there just a little longer-- just 10 minutes-- your craving will fade. And then hang in just 10 more minutes. That's all-- just 10 minutes. You can do that, can't you? Sure you can. Then 10 more minutes... you get the point. And during those 10 minuteses (sp?) read and re-read your brilliant message to yourself that you wrote in November. That's priceless! You do NOT have to throw away your quit. You really don't. Just hold on for a few minutes. Distract yourself any way you can. And feel your strength grow by the minute. You want to be there for your kids and your grandkids more than you want to smoke. Keep repeating that to yourself.

So turn off "Gone Girl" and watch "50 Shades of Grey" instead! :)

I love Pringles, too. The trick is not to think of them as potato chips--think of them as being something else. Personally, they remind me of communion eucharists. :) I think it's the Yellow 5 Lake that makes them so special. :P

Karen, I was happy to read that in retrospect you realize that you had been romancing the cigarette for a while before you relapsed. I think that is such an important concept-- a relapse doesn't happen from "out of the blue". If you know what to look for, you can see the seeds of relapse starting to sprout weeks in advance. If you learn to recognize that, you can take steps to deal with it, thereby preventing a relapse. I started a thread called "How To Prevent A Relapse" that is now pinned at the top of the Discussion forum. Although I happened to start the thread, there are a lot of great posts on that thread that will help you prevent yourself from relapsing in the future. Sharon posted a really good video that talks about the importance of finding ways to care for yourself other than by smoking. That video helped to clarify my thinking about the attraction of smoking and what to do instead of smoking. wrote about it here http://www.quittrain.com/topic/4093-how-to-prevent-a-relapse/?p=111510 I'm very sorry that you relapsed. I'm sure that you are disappointed in yourself. But if you can learn a valuable lesson that will help to prevent relapses in the future, at least there will be a silver lining to that cloud.

Evelyn, romancing the cigarette was probably my most difficult challenge during this quit and all my previous quits. I always wanted to smoke long after most people seemed to be long done with it. Maybe you have read it already but if you haven't, I suggest that you take a look at my post entitled "How to Prevent a Relapse" ( http://www.quittrain.com/topic/4093-how-to-prevent-a-relapse/). I fought (and eventually overcame) the romancing by doing 2 things: 1. I trusted and listened to my rational brain instead of my junkie brain. I knew it was my junkie brain trying to get me to smoke, so I would let my rational brain shout it down by saying, "smoking is killing you!" "smoking is expensive!" "smoking is robbing you of your strength and energy!" over and over again. 2. I kept reminding myself over and over again of why I quit in the first place. Those reasons NEVER became meaningless to me. I would tell myself "I want to do X more than I want to smoke." (in my case, X was usually mountain biking). You just have to keep your quit and shout down your junkie brain. Stick with it! Your junkie brain WILL eventually shut up but you have to outlast it. Be strong, be patient and have faith in yourself. You CAN stop romancing the cigarette.

The guy's name is Cyriak. He's a graphic artist and animator in England. I think his work is incredibly creative and humorous. I'm also very glad that I don't live inside HIS head! :blink:

Thanks, Pippa. I will check in the frozen foods section of my local Publix. I assume they would be near the frozen pie shells, right? For people in Canada and central/western US, here is a list of stores that carry frozen crepes http://crepini.com/Static.aspx?s=InStores

Darn it! I forgot to take a photo again. We had chicken marsala tonight served with buttered parsley noodles and a side salad. Delicious! I love serving this dish to guests. It's so easy to make but for some reason the presentation and the flavors make it seem very complex. Everybody is always impressed. I found a video where the guy makes it just the way I do. You can see how to make it here: <iframe width="640" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ggXciBudXhk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> By the way, poking around the Internet today I heard that it's much, MUCH better to use marsala wine imported from Sicily than domestic marsala. I'm going to try that next time.

Crepes! Where can you buy ready-made crepes? I would love to make crepes-something for dinner if I could find the crepes.

Thanks, Scott. I'm glad that the dish turned out well and I find your "chef's notes" very helpful. Love the addition of the shrimp, too. I'll bear that in mind when I make the dish. I'm confused about this whole "curry" vs "garam masala" thing. In India, curry is a plant. You can purchase curry leaves at Asian grocery stores (which are delicious, by the way). "Garam masala" just means "spice mixture". It can contain different mixtures of spices depending on the dish and your personal preferences. Somehow, the English starting calling the spice mixture curry powder. I think that "garam masala" is dark brown in color because it contains allspice and black pepper. Curry powder is yellow because the main spice is turmeric. But beyond that I am very confused-- when do you use curry powder and when do you use masala? When a recipe calls for both do you use both spice mixtures or do you use curry leaves and masala powder? What do you folks do when faced with this dilemma?

Hey, Scott and Babs, anybody try the chicken curry yet? Inquiring minds want to know.