Post Day 3: Day 4 of 40 Day Cure a Little Harder

It’s late in the evening for me (10:30 pm) and I want to sleep but as I’ve pledged to write and publish a post everyday throughout my 40 day cure, I’m back to the page.

It was my husband’s birthday today, so after a working morning we headed to the Belgian coast for an afternoon to celebrate. We love this coastline best in the winter when there are few people around and it’s blustery with a good bite in the air that washes away any winter blues.

And after the brisk cold of the beach, there’s nothing better than heading into a warm seaside eatery for waffles and tea. Then later after riding the ‘Cuistax‘ we venture around the coastal town in search of a good place for mussels and frites (french fries).

The coast didn’t let me down today. A magic blue sky day of 3.5° with lots of biting wind awaited us. We took our 11 year old and a school friend, went for a walk, and with the dog splashing in the ocean and being alongside my long-time partner and best friend, the walk was sublime.

We then went in for our tea and the boys had hot chocolates with whipped cream and waffles.

The boys then headed off to find the Cuistax – always a highlight of a Belgian coastal visit, where you careen around looking silly but smiling the whole time. Sadly for the boys they’d just closed up shop (although we both sighed a quiet 50-something-tired-of-the-cold hallelujah).

So that meant mussels time – I planned to find a simple vegetable soup and salad inside the realms of my vegan cure, but we ended up at ‘La Moulinière’ so I was bound to enjoy the only thing on the menu – mussels and fries. That’s one thing that made my day hard – but when I think of the poor people facing famine and war in the world right now, this is totally ridiculous.

The second thing was the drive home. It was my turn to take the driver’s seat on the 1.5 hour way home on the dark freeway, where I am very aware of the dangers of driving at 120 km an hour along with many other steel contraptions over which I have no control. I got ratty with my son because he was bashing my chair, playing volleyball on the back seat with his friend with the danger of it flying into the front. On top of this he kept throwing in the phrase ‘I want an ice-cream’ when we had already consumed so much throughout the day.

At that moment my day was hard because I ate something I’d planned not to eat and the last hour of the beach trip was not spent in perfect familial harmony on my husband’s birthday.

But then we got home and my two big kids, 21 and 19 were at home playing Madonna’s birthday song to welcome my husband and mark the day with him. He opened his card and presents and we got the little one his ice-cream at the corner nightshop. What’s the conclusion? That the day was wonderful and so were the mussels.

Good night!

PS. Thanks to those who liked my post of yesterday. Interestingly I had less pick up on yesterday’s post in comparison to my first post, but new likes and comments coming in on the first one…interesting, I think I might be cracking the LinkedIn algorithm – yeah right, like that’s a thing.