Day: January 1, 2023

now that was a meal

I made the gravy (roast drippings sufficient) and the salad and the roasted potatoes; Mike made the shrimps with garlic, the three rib prime rib, the airfried brussel sprouts. Jeff and I and Mike ate ourselves into a state of pleasant repletion and I just ducked out of cleanup long enough to brag about it. Mike dry aged the roast for a week. Unbelievably tender and juicy.

superb meal, no notes. We’re lucky dogs and that was an incredible start to 2023, thank you o founder of the feast.

653 words on ‘The New Guy’.

Happy new year

The Darkling Thrush
BY THOMAS HARDY
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.