The Weary World Rejoices

There is one word that seems to keep cropping up when I snatch moments to write my blog these days and that is, simplicity. It helps me to rest after even the most complicated days at work and it seems to make room for everything else. It is homemade food and singing old carols. It is the smell of our Christmas tree and the hum of my sewing machine. It is the bite of frost on my cheek and seeing my breath in the air. It is countryside walks and cosy pubs. It is my family, my friends and the time I get to spend with them. In short, it is everything I love about Christmas. Last Saturday, as we pulled-up outside our house, this song started playing on the radio. The Ginge silenced the engine, I rested my head on his shoulder and we sat in the darkness, listening. It is a song we have sung together for many years with our choir and it has a very special place in my heart. Once it was over, we went into the warm and decorated our tree. Christmas began in our little house; simply and beautifully.    

The Happiest Day

What a couple of months! I feel like I've barely looked up since I started work in August. I haven't really. It's going very well and I've really benefited from throwing myself into it, but I now need to get a bit of balance back. Last weekend, we went to the wedding of some dear friends. It was just the jolt I needed to start to bring everything into equilibrium once more. The bride and groom simply effervesced with love for each other, as did every guest for them. We all laughed and danced (and cried) and had a simply wonderful time together. Plus, they had a steel band, so who can beat that? Hooray for Luke & Gem. 

Clambering up Baslow and Curbar Edges

What happened to 'the delightful adventures of Treacle and Ginge'? We have both been so caught up with work and being busy that we haven't really had any. Well, they are back in style this week. Breakfast outside at Cafe Ceres - yum - Followed by a beautiful drive out to the Peak District where we had a brilliant ramble around Baslow and Curbar Edges. It was wonderful to be out in the fresh air, doing some proper exercise and what a beautiful walk! Flower-rich meadows, dark, rugged cliffs, startling blue skies, lush, green, patchwork fields, dappled woods and quaint little villages, all with a soundtrack of swallows and meadow pipits. We did try to have afternoon tea, at Chatsworth House, but were very sad to find out that they had closed for a private function. Ho hum, we will just have to go again another time. Oh, the hardship. I can't wait!  

Out and About with Treacle and Ginge

It's funny how you can go for months without a break, not realising you need one, yet as soon as you have one, you seem to need to need another one even more! Missing our holiday desperately, we decided that Saturday should be a proper day off, for a bit of Treacle and Ginge time. 

We started the day with a drawn-out, late-breakfast at our new favourite coffee shop, Bragazzi's; a lovely little italianesque deli/cafe on Abbeydale Road, in Sheffield. 

My coffee-of-choice is a cappuccino. Common yes, but not always done very well. In my search for the best cup around, I have been working on a set of criteria: size, taste and foam, with bonus points for pretty patterns and the addition of chocolate powder. This one scored very highly with its deliciously rich and fruity coffee, tight-bubbled, almost moussey foam and a lovely swirly top. It was let down slightly by the absence of chocolate, but not enough to stop me ordering another one!

We also had some very tasty grub, in the form of homemade sandwiches: one with emmental, parma ham and tomato and another with salami, artichoke and balsamic onions. We also had a little pot of marinaded courgettes. De-lish! So good, in fact, that we had eaten nearly everything, before I remembered to take a photo for you! 

This is the scarf I knitted Andy, for his birthday. It was sitting on the table, looking so pretty that I just had to take some pictures.  

It was the first thing I ever knitted, so it is quite simple (just garter stitch), but I am extremely proud of it, most particularly because of the little 'made by treacle' label I stitched for it. It is the softest wool, made of Alpaca and Merino and it looks truly lovely on my man! 

Here he is, catching-up on the Heeley City Farm news. Apparently, they have lots of new pigs, so I think we might have to make a visit very soon. 

Anyway, here is Bragazzi's. Yummy food and coffee, in beautifully and simply decorated surroundings. Perfect. 

Once we had eaten our fill, we journeyed to Derbyshire to visit Hardwick Hall, built by a brilliantly clever lady  called Bess of Hardwick; elizabethan courtier and social-climber extraordinaire. 

She was married four times in total, each time to a richer man. I'm not saying I would approve of such behaviour, in this day and age, but back then it was the only way to get anywhere, as a woman. She remodeled and built several highly fashionable houses, she had eight children of her own, plus two that she inherited from one of her husbands and rose from sheep-farmer's daughter to the second richest woman in the country (after Queen Lizzie, herself). What a woman! 

The house has many claims to fame. Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned there, Jane Eyre has been filmed there at least twice and when we arrived, I was quickly informed that the house had recently been used as the location for Malfoy Manor, in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. Being a massive Potterite, I jumped at the chance to do a Harry Potter themed detective trail around the house. 

We had a lovely afternoon, poking and gazing around the incredible house. It was definitely one of the best National Trust houses I have visited to date.  

We even squeezed in a cream tea, before heading back across the Peak District to Sheffield, feeling very pleased with ourselves. 

A Damp Day in Drizzly Dovedale

Can there be a better way to spend a Saturday than in the beautiful middle of nowhere with one of your closest friends and your respective other halves? Only if the 'middle-of-nowhere' happens to hide a veritable feast of gastronomic establishments, selling drool-worthy, hunger/craving-quenching delights.

As I have got older (and thus more busy), I have found it increasingly difficult to arrange regular meet-ups and catch-ups with friends, especially those of the used-to-live-round-the-corner-but-now-live-far-away variety. The other side of being older and busier, however is that it is so much more important to hang on to the important people in your life and to drop everything from time-to-time in order to spend quality time with them. 

Having not seen Jenny - first and best friend at secondary school, pen-lender extraordinaire and general heroine of my teenage years - since Christmas, I decided it was high time that I saw her again. She lives in Nottingham (only an hour away), but both of us fancied getting away from our respective cities and out into the countryside. We therefore met at halfway point in Dovedale, Derbyshire.

Being the slightly (but not really) grown-up ladies that we are, we also took with us our significant others. This worked out very well for all concerned. Jenny and I had plenty of time to talk the world to rights whilst the boys were able to indulge in a little male-bonding over sports, medicine etc. 

Dovedale is very quiet and sheltered, compared to the rest of the rugged, wind-harried peak district. A shallow river, so clear that you can see right to the bottom, runs through the heart of the dale and rolling  green hills rise-up either side of it, occasionally pierced by an enormous shard of a grey, stone cliff. Clusters of snowdrops seem to litter the skirts of every road and path and great carpets of them stretch out like the remnants of actual snow before a thaw.   

The area around Dovedale is clearly the place to live if you have a lot of money, but prefer a life in the country. The former will never be true of me, even though the latter is the subject of most of my daydreams. Never mind, this house and the many others we saw, though stunningly beautiful are rather too big and palatial for little old me. Still, nice to look at though, eh?

As I said at the start, we punctuated our healthy country walk with regular food stops. The first was in a little village called Milldale, where some very business-savvy people have set up a little window-kiosk at the front of their cottage. In the absence of any other sustenance-vending establishments, a veritable flock of people were gathered in the tiny area around the cottage, all munching on homemade biscuits washed down with a hot cup of well-earned tea. They even sold 'Fab' ice-lollies, which proved to be an irresistible childhood throw-back, for Andy. 

Our next stop should have been the The George Inn at Alstonefield; a quintessentially English, rickety old pub that specialises in locally reared meat and seasonally grown produce (I could not be a bigger fan of either of these things). Unfortunately, this is clearly a matter on which a lot of other people agree as the pub was completely full when we got there. 

Starving and three miles from the next pub (far too far for anybody's liking), we satisfied ourselves with the pub's farm shop. What a treat! We had pork pies, goats' cheese tarts, bread and an amazing cheese called 'Hartington Bomber'. It was rather drizzly outside so the ingenious lady from the shop gave us an industrial roll of clingfilm with which to waterproof a picnic bench. Such industry! I am definitely going to keep a roll in the boot from now on as it worked an absolute treat!

We did get slightly lost on the way back, but were cheered up massively when Jenny produced a stash of brownies from her bag. 

We returned to our cars feeling very pleased with ourselves. We had spent a lovely day in each others' company, eaten some seriously delicious food and found an absolute gem of a place to visit (one, which we will be returning to as soon as possible).

We even managed to squeeze in a cornet of lovely, local ice-cream for the road. 

Perfect.