A dilemma

For years and years our Go To place for celebration meals has been The Nettle.  And not just for celebrations.  It has been our Go To place for impromptu Saturday lunches, and planned Sunday lunches.  Alas, it is no longer an option, so we were faced with something of a dilemma on Friday which was our (sixth!) wedding anniversary.  Where shall we go?  What shall we do?

I think that we have decided that rather than learning to love one place to the exclusion of all others, we are going to eat our way around the many pubs that are to be found in the Peak District, and in North East Derbyshire.  We kicked off our endeavour with dinner at The Three Cottages.  We've been there before but not for a while.  You can't do impromptu at the Three Cottages - you have to book in advance.  Fortunately, we did know in advance that we wanted to go on Friday, so that wasn't an issue.  And it's close enough to our place to make it affordable to go (and come back) in a taxi.  So we did.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed with my meal.  My garlic mushrooms in cream sauce could have had more garlic.  My field mushroom and grilled tomato could have been hotter.  My steak could have been closer to rare than to medium.  But you couldn't possibly fault the chips.  The chips were amazing!  The pub is well-regarded for its pies.  We are going to go back and have pie and chips for lunch one Saturday - as part of our exploration of the local food, of course :-P  And I'm going to have a trawl around the internet and come up with a list of other places to try.

Apart from that, we didn't have a very exciting weekend.  It was the first weekend in simply ages where there wasn't really a proper plan.  I had my hair cut on Saturday morning. We went to the allotment and to the Post Office.  Other than that I don't think we left the house and garden on Saturday.  We did on Sunday, but only to go to the supermarket.  Otherwise we ate and drank and enjoyed the sunshine.  It's quite nice to have an unremarkable weekend every now and again.

Poor Tony didn't have an unremarkable weekend.  He's been quite ill with a chest infection.  And today he has ended up in hospital in the hope that they can make it go away.  He had quite an astonishing cough when I spoke to him on Skype yesterday.  Oh, and poor Cally has chicken pox. She doesn't like the spots - they "hurt".  Although probably not as much as Tony's cough hurts him!