I'm still feeling cheerful and floaty light from having an unprecedented 2 days off together. It was the perfect balance of lazy and active and included some great little & local highlights so I thought I'd do a quick blog post about them.
Our garden is an ongoing mission. It's still in pretty bad shape but we're finally making some progress, I think. Every time the sun comes out, it's a mad dash to do a bit and as we had a bit of time this weekend, we had a lovely wander round Minster Plant Centre on Long Lane.
It's one of my favourite independent garden centres because its really straightforward. They grow and sell plants, rather than all the other stuff that seems to be packed into garden centres these days.
Chris and Carolyn who own it (and their staff) are also brilliant about giving advice and making sure you've bought the right thing. I got some tips on how to bring my sad looking Fatsia back round and they sorted us out with the right compost for potting up last year's Christmas Tree (also bought from there) which now needs a bigger container.
We managed to resist veggies and bedding plants as we really don't have anywhere to put them until we've done more work but just seeing them makes you feel like summer's on its way.
On Monday, we had a day out with friends and headed over to Burton Agnes Hall for a wander and a picnic. Wow. Built sometime before 1610, this Elizabethan Manor house is absolutely beautiful.
Image from gardenvisit.com
Apparently, it has been described by Simon Jenkins in his book England's Thousand Best Houses as 'the perfect English house' and as one of the twenty best English houses alongside Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Chatsworth House. Pretty high praise. And it's right on our doorstep.
The house is warm and welcoming, the friendly staff were great with the kids and full of interesting information and the walled garden is beautiful. It also has a small maze and giant games including this snakes and ladder board - where a competitively fought game ensued.
Image via cheriesplace.me.uk
Easily the best thing about the whole place for me was the amazing art collection. When I got back and googled it, I couldn't believe how few mentions there are of it online. It seems to generally be referred to as an impressive collection of English and French Impressionist Paintings, which it is. But come on, what's wrong with dropping a few names? Try Matisse, Renoir and Pissarro for starters. Throw in Cezanne, Corot and Gaugin. And top with Augustus John, Manet and Derain. And seriously, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I know nothing about art and even I know these names. There are so many more that I didn't recognise but will go back to see again. If you love beautiful things, go. Run there. You'll love it.
There's a woodland walk, cafe and shops and an area for the kids to play. A word of warning though. Approach the cafe with caution - we queued for over half an hour for a cup of tea and an ice cream. If they got a little more organised, it would be perfect.
We enjoyed our picnic on the lawn so much that we're tempted to go back for their Jazz Festival in July.
Oh, and I have a new culinary success to share. I wanted to take a salad on our picnic and remembered seeing a jar salad on a blog last year. It makes salad easy to transport and stops it going soggy in the dressing. It's super easy and looks good too.
Make your salad dressing - I just made a simple vinaigrette and then added some thinly sliced red onion and oregano so that the onion would soften in the dressing and not be too strongly flavoured.
Throw that into the bottom of a jar (one with a tight seal on it) and then add layers of whatever salad things you want. I added carrots, chopped flat leaf parsley, tomatoes, cubed feta cheese and lettuce. Put the hardest stuff (like carrots) at the bottom as they'll soften just the right amount when they're in contact with the dressing. Put the softest stuff like lettuce at the top. You'll end up with something that looks like this.
When you're ready to serve it, just turn it out into a big bowl and toss.
After taking the very long route round the woodland walk (slight navigational error) we'd all walked our lunch off and were ready for tea so we came home via Hornsea and had a chippy tea in the sunshine on the seafront.
They were queuing right down the road at Sullivans, which I think qualifies as an east coast institution. The young team were super efficient and within a few minutes, we had chip butties in hand...
... and six very happy people.
After all, what's a few thousand calories between friends?
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