Hannah's Meanders

A month of celebrations

04 May 2011 Leave a Comment

by hannah1981 in Birthdays, Food, Friends, Holidays

Warning – this a long post, mainly for my own memories of a fantastic month.

April began with my 30th birthday. My actual birthday was a lovely family day with Mr H and the children (and the school runs!).  We didn’t plan anything as the next day (Saturday) we had to head north for my nephew’s christening (on the Sunday). I wasn’t hugely impressed with the way my sister had taken over my birthday weekend, but there wasn’t anything I could do, my celebration down here would just have to wait.

On the Saturday evening we were heading out for a family dinner, or so I thought. I walked into the restaurant to be met by not just my family, but 5 of my best friends from school days too! My sister knew they couldn’t come down for my party the next weekend so had invited them to the restaurant with it only being an hour away rather than three and a half. I was somewhat overwhelmed and did start to cry. It was fantastic to see them all. I’d been very sad that I wouldn’t be able to celebrate my birthday with some of the most important people to me. Sadly the restaurant was really quite loud so we didn’t manage to chat as much as I would have liked, but it was amazing to see them.

It was also lovely to see some of the extended family the next day at the church and christening party. All the children were fabulously behaved and we had a wonderful time before driving home ready for bed.

The next Saturday brought my birthday ‘party’. Due to the friends here being a mix of families, couples and singles I decided to have an afternoon/evening open house so people could just drop in for a cuppa/cake/pizza whenever they were free. In the end most people came in a crowd in the early afternoon. It was great to have the house and garden full of friends, and to see so many special people. The only evening attendees were our vicar and his wife, which led to a lovely couple of hours discussing the church redevelopment and the vicar’s plans and ideas for the church in the future.

Mum arrived to stay the next week, and while she was with us Mr H took advantage of the resident babysitter to take me away.

We began with lunch at the Michelin starred Auberge du Lac in Hertfordshire. Mr H had been here with work colleagues a couple of times and I’ve always wanted to go. It was all I expected, and more! Quite simply the best plates of food I have ever eaten by a long way.

We began with delicious amuse bouches of Waldorf salad (one single mouthful each on a teaspoon), seared tuna (a bite sized portion with orange zest and pomegranate) and little sticks of black olive crispbread with a garlicky dip. Mr H started his meal with a lamb dish (I can’t remember exactly what) while I had mackerel with almonds and brown shrimps (gorgeous, I don’t like almonds, but they were lovely in this combination).

My main course was sea trout with samphire, wild garlic and steamed (or possibly poached) mussels. Wow, I’ve never seen so much garlic on one plate, or enjoyed garlic as much. The trout was perfectly cooked and so flavoursome. I’d not eaten samphire before and loved it. I can’t remember what Mr H ordered.

We both ordered the same dessert, pineapple parfait (which arrived topped with coconut – urgh!), mango compote and yogurt sorbet. Once I’d tasted and removed the coconut the plate was gorgeous, the sorbet so refreshing and perfect with the compote and the parfait was just delicious. When the desserts were given to us a little platter of six bitesize cakes was placed on the table as well, two each of coconut marshmallow (very coconutty, Mr H ate his, but didn’t want mine), baby Battenberg (I was wary of this as I’m not a marzipan fan, but it just tasted beautifully sweet) and lemon cupcake (wonderful, perfect balance of sweetness and zest, delicious buttercream and lovely chunks of zest in the cake).

We had hoped to spend the night at Brocket Hall (in whose grounds Auberge du Lac sits), but by the time we knew when Mum was coming and we got chance to try to book the hotel only had single rooms left. I left it to Mr H to choose an alternative, and after a lot of searching and consideration he decided on the Cambridge Quy Mill Hotel. Not too far from both home and Auberge du Lac. He booked us a four poster room in the main building which was lovely. Sadly we hadn’t known the hotel was being refurbished which meant it was a bit of a maze to find reception.

We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant which has been awarded two AA rosettes, unfortunately the food we ordered was very disappointing. We knew it wasn’t going to be as good as the food at lunch, but even so, every plate was not what we’d expect from a restaurant with that rating. Basically, in our opinion, the chef(s) was trying to hard to create high end food. The plates looked good, though my main (Sutton Hoo chicken with poached lobster!)looked very busy, far too many different things on the plate, but the flavours didn’t always work well together (the lobster just didn’t fit with the rest of the chicken dish, the sorrel in my starter completely drowned out the flavour of the sea trout it was with) and some plates were very dry (especially Mr H’s pressed rabbit and smoked chicken starter). The food wasn’t even well seasoned, there was so much pepper on the sauteed leeks served with my chicken that I couldn’t eat them. Mr H’s 28 day aged steak was the toughest he has ever eaten. The dessert we shared, ‘Apple Textures’ was generally nice, though the layer of sugar on the miniature toffee apple was so thick it was inedible.

The whole dinner including one drink each cost more than the lunch which included 2 glasses of wine each! Thankfully, lunch was so amazing even such a disappointing dinner couldn’t put much of a dampener on a fantastic birthday treat. I’m so grateful to Mr H, and already plotting another excuse to visit Auberge du Lac! (I haven’t come up with one yet, but I’m working on it!)

The final part of the celebrations came this last weekend. My best friend (R) lives in Brussels and together with 3 other friends from school days we headed over to stay with her and celebrate our thirtieths with beer, sightseeing, waffles and a bit more beer! We initially planned this weekend to take advantage of the May day bank holiday, but once the Royal wedding bank holiday was added as well I decided to head out earlier and get an extra night with R (as well as not needing to be up crazily early to catch a Eurostar that would get me to Brussels by lunchtime – the other girls were flying from Manchester, they still live near the city we grew up in, in Yorkshire). It was fantastic to see where R lives (this is her fifth year of working abroad, and the first where she’s near/easy enough for us to visit!), and brilliant to visit a country I’ve never been to before. Brussels was wonderful, some beautiful buildings in the centre, slightly concerning statues (Mannekin Pis and Jeanneke Pis – when we visited the Mannekin Pis was dressed in Portuguese national costume), good (though expensive) food, and a cellar bar (Delirium) selling more beers than I think I knew existed! We spent Sunday in Bruges (travelling up on a double decker train – the girlchild would have loved it!), it’s even more beautiful than Brussels. The city square was lovely, R, her boyfriend and I sat in a bar drinking beer while our three friends climbed the belfry (I couldn’t thanks to some evil blisters), there was an antiques market by the river which also had a wooden toy stall where I bought some lovely things for the children. We also visited an impressive beer shop, the choice was amazing I ended up with 6 bottles to bring home, which seemed like a great idea until the tube lines were closed between Moorgate and Liverpool St on Monday and I had to walk! I picked up a beautiful lace cross to send up to Mum for her birthday, Bruges had a lace shop almost everywhere you looked, if a shop wasn’t selling lace it was probably selling chocolate! Mr H stayed at home with the children, it was the first time he’d had sole charge of the pair of them for more than a couple of hours! The weekend wasn’t without it’s incidents, but all three have survived relatively unscathed! Brussels is definitely somewhere I’ll return to one day, though hopefully once the exchange rate is a little better, it was somewhat expensive!

April was a fantastic month. I’m so grateful to Mr H (especially) and the friends and family that helped make my 30th birthday month so special.