Celebrating F's 40th birthday
Apr. 9th, 2016 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylLovely day celebrating F's 40th birthday. Gathering in Exeter around midday, a few of us caught a taxi from town to Brampford Speke and met up with everyone else at The Lazy Toad. Sitting on an L shaped table round just past the fireplace, with a table for the children, we were perfectly placed for a party: out of the way of everyone else and seated in a way that allowed people to talk to as many other people as possible.
The food was truly excellent: I had a lovely goat's cheese thing with a potato cake and spinach, while the meat eaters had chicken breast, with the fish people going for cod. The root vegetables that went with everything were a wonderful mixture of squash, beetroot, and celeriac — the last a particularly inspired choice. For pudding I went for apple and rhubarb crumble, which had just the right balance of acidity.
After lunch we went for a short walk to Stoke Canon and back, eschewing the circular route in favour of a quick out-and-back version after learning that the longer way back was a little on the muddy side. Back in Brampford Speke, we divided ourselves up between the cars and returned to Exeter for tea and cake at home.
The children — and the dachshund — were very well behaved and the cake was excellent, despite F's concerns about the recipe. She'd increased the number of eggs but hadn't remembered to scale the amount of dry ingredients until part way through the process, but you wouldn't have known any of this from the finished article.
Everyone had a good time, it was wonderful to catch up and see everyone again, most importantly, F enjoyed herself, everything went extremely well, and it was a memorable, laid back, delightful day.
The food was truly excellent: I had a lovely goat's cheese thing with a potato cake and spinach, while the meat eaters had chicken breast, with the fish people going for cod. The root vegetables that went with everything were a wonderful mixture of squash, beetroot, and celeriac — the last a particularly inspired choice. For pudding I went for apple and rhubarb crumble, which had just the right balance of acidity.
After lunch we went for a short walk to Stoke Canon and back, eschewing the circular route in favour of a quick out-and-back version after learning that the longer way back was a little on the muddy side. Back in Brampford Speke, we divided ourselves up between the cars and returned to Exeter for tea and cake at home.
The children — and the dachshund — were very well behaved and the cake was excellent, despite F's concerns about the recipe. She'd increased the number of eggs but hadn't remembered to scale the amount of dry ingredients until part way through the process, but you wouldn't have known any of this from the finished article.
Everyone had a good time, it was wonderful to catch up and see everyone again, most importantly, F enjoyed herself, everything went extremely well, and it was a memorable, laid back, delightful day.
