Eating out at Fairy Hill

For months Husband has been working on Younger Son and Nuora's house and for months I've been saying,' I'll come and do the garden.' Well, this week I managed to spend two whole days there - working very hard! Husband was impressed: he's not used to seeing me working hard.

We found a hover mower in the shed there and it worked. Except it would only go backwards.It would only go forwards when the grass was already cut short. Which sort of defeated the object.

I may be no good at growing things but I'm very good at clearing wildernesses. Although this garden wasn't that bad a goodly number of brambles were springing up. That pile is bigger than it looks and has left its mark in the form of scratches all over my legs and arms.

And a before

and afters.

Then, after all my hard work on Wednesday, Husband took me out for a meal. Not just any old meal but a meal at Fairy Hill, an AA 5* rated 'restaurant with rooms'.

One benefit of working so hard on the house is that Husband's been listening to a lot of local radio and so heard the offer 'spend £20 get £40 worth of food' at a variety of restaurants. He bought 3 vouchers for different restaurants and this was our last one.

Canapés in the lounge beforehand were promising: deep fried cockles, salmon mousse and lavabread quiche. Then it was into the restaurant for the meal, for me, beginning with wild garlic risotto with parmesan crisp,

followed by pork belly, scallops, root vegetable terrine, soya beans and tomato with a ponzu (Japanese) sauce,

rounded off with arctic roll (but not a Bird's Eye one) with poached rhubarb and hibiscus sorbet.

Husband meanwhile had soused mackerel followed by hoggett (below) with spinach puree, violette potatoes, broad beans and peas, and a lovage salsa, and ending with the cheese board.

Then came the bill. And even with our £20 off it was one of the most expensive meals we've ever had. The food was good and the presentation excellent but I think it's the whole experience of being spoiled for an evening in lovely surroundings that make it so special.

The next evening, after another hard day in the garden, we had beans on toast.

Oh, yes, do you know what hoggett is? It's not as I guessed some sort of pig but is, in fact, year-old lamb. So hoggett is a pretty silly name for it really. I guess it's between lamb and mutton and benefits from slow cooking. I can confirm, from the tiny sample I had of it, that it was very tasty.