Jamie Wakefield

As you can tell from the lack of updates – we are in Vermont, continuing to plan the wedding, meet with carpenters, landscapers, electricians and whatever you call a guy who redoes the stones in your driveway. For those regular readers, you will know that I am going to have an operation on my eyes to replace the lenses and put in artificial lens that will never wear out and my vision will never deteriorate with age. I am very excited. In the meantime, my eyesight continues to deteriorate and I continue to 1) bitch about it and 2) need stronger and stronger reading glasses. Except they’re not reading glasses because I wear them from dawn to dusk. Wendy suggests I get contacts. “Those are like six hundred dollars. At least, they used to be.” “Why don’t you look into it?” I am surprised by what I find. I make an appointment at the nearest Lenscrafters. Guess how much an eye exam and disposable contacts that last 2-4 weeks costs? Go ahead. Guess. Wrong. $93.45. It takes me ten minutes to ...

Tentacle ala Fanari turned out to be much less satisfying than we had hoped. It is a very complex dish and we could not flambé it because the alcohol was boiling so much it would blow out the lighter every time we got near it. We will need to work on technique and research more. A work in progress. We have returned to Vermont. Every time we come here, the main hazard is gaining weight. We went shopping the other day and, my God! The temptations! They don’t exist like that in Madrid. We eat healthy there. It is tough to walk by the bags of chips and salsa, the ice cream bars, the massive frozen pizzas, the cans of chili, the frozen dinners, the little snacks and easy to prepare processed food that doesn’t do your body much good. We have been on a journey lately. Our friend Lena turned Wendy onto a podcast called Inside-Out Weight Loss. It is a real psychological approach to losing weight and keeping it off, instead of a diet where you lose the weight then put more than you lost, back o...

Spaniards are… different. There are times when they drive us bat-shit crazy, and times when we find them charming. The other day, Wendy is at the post office. She asks if she can use a credit card to mail something. The man behind the counter tells her no. The woman next to her, not involved at all, speaks up and says indignantly “This isn’t a department store. You have never been able to pay with a credit card. What makes you think you can pay with a credit card here?” Wendy, having been forced to watch too much MMA with me immediately tackles her to the ground, achieves full mount and starts throwing down elbows. “I’m sorry, Did anyone ask you? “No!” Smash “Then why are you talking?” Smash “I don’t know! It’s my culture! “ /fantasy over. In reality Wendy stared at her blankly wondering why the hell she was commenting at all. This would never happen in the states. Which brings us to today. We are going to attempt “Tentacle ala Fanari” which is boiled, grilled, flambéed octopus limb th...