Silver

I couldn't quite stay away. In particular, I couldn't let a major milestone like our 25th Wedding Anniversary slip by without a mention. 3rd November 2018, High Noon, as Elizabeth loves to point out.

Plan A had been to take the weekend off in Westport at a nice hotel, nice restaurant. We had Charlotte of the Mini Horses* lined up with time taken off work to cover the farm baby-sitting. Then I got sick and the hospital visit  and op were looming over us, threatening to scupper any plans we might have involving hotel bookings plus I'm on restricted fluid intake so I'd have been the one ordering quarter pints of Guinness!

We decided to rein it all in, stand Charlotte down and re-schedule a 25.5th  or 26th Anniversary when we are over this hump and we know where we are. Plan B was to be a home version of the fine dining, some wine and with the place set up as much like a hotel environment as we could manage - house gleaming like a spotless new pin., best table linen and fancy candlesticks, best china (I'm pretty sure the china is also 25 years old - it was surely a wedding present).

Near neighbour and local florist supplied these gorgeous
flowers.

It was a miserable, wet, cold day, so we also had fires going at both ends of the house and a goodly stack of logs on hand. I was set up to "cheat" a bit surreptitiously on the fluid volumes - saving myself (almost) enough cc on the water bottle that I could join Mrs C in 2 glasses of the fizz, a glass of the posh Beaujolais and a 'tint' of Teelings whiskey with the cheese.

The menu was as follows......

Salmon Fish Cakes with salsa of tomato and cucumber.

Steak with roast-on-the-vine cherry toms and duxelle (mushrooms)

Pear and chocolate tart

Cashel Blue cheese with slices of pear and water biscuits

'Fizz' - McGuigan's (Oz) frizzante

'Fleurie' Beaujolais from Francois Dubessy

Teelings whiskey

Nom Nommetty Nom!

Ooops. Looks a bit black in the pic but trust me, that's
just the mushrooms (Duxelle). Steak was deliciously rare
inside

It all added up to a superb, splendid day and evening and, for me, a lovely relaxing spoil. The Lady of the House, of course, was on duty for which I am so, so grateful, swapping between accessorising her floaty dress and pearls with a champagne coloured shawl and the kitchen apron, one minute 'Domestic Goddess', the next 'Domestic Help'.

Pear and chocolate tart to the right..

The steak had come from our good friends and local butchers, Ignatius (and Joe) Gannon down in Castlerea, who "deal with" our lambs when required. Joe had thrown a couple of burgers into the bag for good luck and both congratulated us on the 25 years.

When you can't have many cc of liquid in
the day, might as well make them count.

After a suitable rest (a 'trou Normande'?) to let the pear and chocolate tart settle (I love that combination of flavours) we segued into the Cashel Blue cheese and with that cleared away, we played a couple of games of Quixx (one to me, one drawn) and adjourned into the Sitting Room for a nice long evening of reading and total rest congratulating ourselves on a Celebration well planned and excellently executed.

We also thoroughly appreciated the blizzard of congratulations and good wishes that come to us via Facebook and Twitter whenever we have one of these family type things to 'announce', so if you are an FB-er or a Twitterer and happen to be reading this too, then thank you very very much if you supported us that way. Plenty of jokes about the "next 25 years" too of course - I'd be 86, which is quite do-able if I can get through the current hiatus. Who knows what the future holds. 

Ah well, just a couple of unrelated pics to use up. The 'pie' is my Turkey-Shepherd's pie. 

Deefer.

The picture of Deefer is one Elizabeth took of her asleep on my lap last night. Have a good weekend, all.

* Charlotte of the Mini Horses has pretty much handed the horses (Romeo, Bob and Cody) back to Mum and has branched out into 6 (at the last count) goats. Good luck with those, Char' !