I’m not very old, but for much of my youth in the north west of England, it was almost impossible to find fresh foods that weren’t local. Today such a statement seems like an echo of Victorian times, but, literally, that’s how it was until a supermarket was built behind the Knutsford courthouse in the late 80s.

I often tell my wife about the cheese stall at the weekly market only kept five kinds of cheese – Cheshire, Cheddar, Lancashire, and sage Derby were ever present, with perhaps a Wenslydale reasonably common too. If anything as unusual as a Stilton, from distant Nottinghamshire, appeared, it would generate as much commotion among the town’s housewives, who elbowed their way to the front of the queue to catch a glimpse of this highly perfumed foreigner, as if Julio Iglesias showed up sporting his tennis shorts. My wife usually responds that I should count myself lucky because when she was young there were only four kinds of cheese at her local supermarket: white American, yellow American, cheddar and Swiss and had anything else been available it would have been looked upon with extreme suspicion. Touché.

Making our weekly Tuesday rounds of the covered (indoor) market (the outdoor market sold mostly fruit and veg, bric a brac, and live pets, believe it or not) with my mother, on the cheese man’s left was the egg man, or “mister Chookie” as I knew him, on account of his perennial sales pitch “come tek a look at these lover-lee chookie eggs I’ve got for yuh!”. Unlike his fellow stall-holders, whose wares fell within a particular genre, the egg man also sold milk, orange juice and yogurt due to him being one of the younger siblings of the Sheldon family that owned the local dairy, and who, excepting market days, delivered these provisions to the doorsteps of the town’s residents.

Beyond Mr. Chookie was the fish man, Mr. Scales, as my mother used to call him, although at the time her pun was lost on me. Above his stall ran the legend “fresh daily from Fleetwood, Lancs”, referring to the port just north of blackpool where much of Britain’s catch was landed. That his stall was only open Tuesdays and Thursdays didn’t seem to matter. Whether it was due to her upbringing in blackpool where there is – rightfully – a great deal of local snobbery about the quality of the fish that goes into their fish n’chips, or whether because of an innate suspicion of fishmongers, my mother always eyed mr scales’s wares closely, casting a wary eye over his glossy fish, as if trying to discern if there was anything untoward hiding among the cockle-shells. Because we rarely had fish except on Fridays when we weren’t allowed anything else – even in our lunchboxes at school we had to mark the end of the week with evil-smelling “salmon paste” sandwiches – and because mum worked a full day on Thursdays, whatever we bought on Tuesdays had to last on ice in the bottom of the fridge until then (freezing fish made it taste all woolly, she always said), so freshness was absolutely crucial otherwise it/we wouldn’t survive.

Typically, the fish was cod, but often halibut or hake did service in the flaky white fish department. This was usually broiled and served with oven-baked chips, since as a nurse my mother couldn’t countenance deep-frying at home lest it give the townies the impression she was a hypocrite in her dietary exhortations, and homemade mushy peas, flecked with mint and tangy with a splash of malt vinegar. Apart from a distinctly non-traditional and rather dodgy-looking “curry” she made every so often, friday night fish suppers were my dad’s favorite – he still demands it to this day and he is about as agnostic an Anglican as you’ll find.

Instead of waiting for Friday, and going against my mum’s rubric of no-frying, but keeping with the buying of white fish on a Tuesday, we made a version of the Provencal classic, aioli garni, with a pan seared halibut fillet, steamed fennel and butter beans. Rather like much of the cooking I experienced growing up, it doesn’t look like much on the plate – the pale colors and the two sauces lapping against one another may seem bland – but the sharp tang of the garlicky aiolli with the surprising hot peppery-bite of the brown sauce against the muted flavors of the white fish and butter beans makes for an unusually rewarding dish. I am convinced that my mum would’ve enjoyed this dish a great deal, even though she would have asked why we didn’t save it for Friday night. As for my dad, well, sadly, he wouldn’t touch it on account of it humming with garlic. Too bad for him.

In the tiny Cheshire hamlet of Lower Peover (pronounced “peever”) is the delightfully rustic country pub “The Bells”, so-called because one has to literally walk around it to get to the parish church. In fact, so aligned are church and boozer that the two are separated by only fifty feet of graveyard, a low gate and a tall hedge, with the path from the church door leading directly into the pub — demonstrating the weighty tithe rural folk feel to both institutions.

I worked there as a barman in my youth, and over the course of my employment became, as barmen often do, intimate with many of the regulars, who, for the most part, were local farmers and laborers. Every day, at no later than 11.30 a.m., these ruddy-faced gents would pause outside and wash their heavily-calloused hands in the moss-rimmed trough, before propping themselves up at the bar and grunting hellos to each other. Whether their usual was a simple pint of “best”, a black n’tan, a “brown over bitter”, or a pint of “Chinese”, I’d spy them washing-up, and have it ready for them when they walked in. And, though I learned a great deal about their home-lives from their daily grousings — the damp weather affecting their strawberries, the disappointment over their older son’s desire to become a club-singer instead of a pig farmer — I never met or even saw their wives, about whom they grumbled most often. Probably because these tyrannical-sounding women were at home cooking the stout lunch their husbands’ would need if they were to remain erect at the wheel of their tractors after several noontime ales.

Europhile Pretensions Beyond My Station
In fact, the realm of the rural pub, during the daytime at least, was almost an entirely male domain. With the occasional exception of the vicar’s wife popping in mid-afternoon to admonish the regulars about their poor Sunday attendance over “half” a lager and lime, it was only in the evening that the women-folk from thereabouts came in to whet their whistles. And their whistles were whet on a peculiarly vocational basis, with the village shop-workers, almost exclusively, drinking shandies or halves of lager (with or without lime), and the professional and retired classes opting for gin and tonic, or Dubonnet and bitter lemon. The general sense — daytime or evening — seemed to be that real country people drank only beer, whereas effete, French cordials were either for “nancy boys” or the haughty, upper classes with pretensions of continental sophistication.

Being “in” with the regulars, I managed to convince myself that I, quite contrary to my middle-class upbringing, was a stalwart of the working class — even punctuating my, hitherto, mostly uncorrupted English with all kinds of full-bodied rural idioms like, “down at Jim’s mother’s” (somewhere a long way away), “coming down like cow’s piss” (heavy rain), and “‘e couldn’t stop a pig in an entry!” (describing a bow-legged person, of whom there are plenty in rural Cheshire) — and so developed an accompanying disdain for Dubonnet, without ever even having tasted it.

Made Famous by Legionnaires, Royalty
In fact, I shouldn’t have been concerned that enjoying an occasional chilled Dubonnet before dinner would impinge upon my undoubtedly macho self-image, for the drink was introduced in 1846 as the winner of a competition seeking to find effective ways of getting the famously tough soldiers of France’s Foreign Legion to take their quinine. As with several other notable aperitifs, including Kina Lillet and Fernet-Branca, Dubonnet began life as a medicinal beverage that, using fortified wine as its base, combined herbs, berries, spices and peels into a palatable mixture.

For evidence of it credentials as a nostrum, one has to look no further than the British royal family, the Windsors, whose longevity, at least on the maternal side, can be credited to regular libations of Dubonnet. It’s well-known that Her Majesty the late Queen Mother was a devotee of gin — famously having badly scalded her lower half in the bathtub after one too many — but she was also a regular on the Dubonnet, which she liked to drink in a 30/70 ratio with gin and a slice of lemon under the ice. So committed to this was Her Majesty, that she once noted before leaving the UK on a trip abroad, “…I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed…” Similarly, her daughter, the reigning Queen, Elizabeth II, is rumored to take a daily Dubonnet and gin before lunch. Royalty, you see, doesn’t have to work in the afternoons.

The Multi-Colored Belle of the Bar
As we have seen, preparations for Dubonnet abound, including with bitter lemon and with gin, but there are a myriad others, and Dubonnet features in literally hundreds of cocktails the world over. Perhaps this is because it, like Lillet, comes in more than one color — three, in fact — though, in the United States, only two are generally available — white and red, with the latter being by far the most common and widely used. The gold variety can occasionally be found behind cocktail bars of quality.

Now, because it’s red, Dubonnet Rouge adds a certain drama to any cocktail, and can therefore be used in place of Cointreau and cranberry juice in a Cosmopolitan, instead of the sweet Vermouth in a Manhattan, or in place of Campari in an Americano. However, that shouldn’t suggest it is nothing more than a colorant. Dubonnet Rouge can quite easily be the prinicipal in many cocktails, including the fabulously-named Smoking Cat, amongst others. The similarly aromatic Blanc is often used as a substitute for dry Vermouth, in famous cocktails like the Martini, Rob Roy, and the superbly-titled Creole Scream.

Marxist vs. Gastronomic Class-Struggle
If the regulars at the Bells were right, and you are what you drink, then I am, in all honesty, an arriviste, petit-bourgeois Englishman from the provinces with pretensions of epicurean sophistication. I am, I realize, far more closely aligned with the mixed-drink sippers than the hearty beer-drinking peasants of my former place of work. I hereby confess that I enjoy nothing more than an aperitif of Dubonnet rouge over ice and garnished with a slice of orange, as I contemplate the arrival of a savory bistrot luncheon. Similarly, my predilections are more inclined towards a glass of Dubonnet blanc with ice and a slice of lemon ahead of a sole meuniere than two or three pints of best bitter and a plate of Irish stew. Does the fact that my tastebuds contradict my ancestry and upbringing make me a traitor to my class and a bad person? Okay, don’t answer that. Instead, you should give either color of Dubonnet a try in whichever preparation you find most suitable to your sense of self and class identity.

File this one under “utter fabrications told to you by older sibling and believed for too long”. I must have been very young when my sister (15 months my senior) informed me that I should be wary of eating my grandmother’s suet dumplings because suet was the gooey material supporting bovine eye-balls. Quite where she got this idea from, I’m not sure, but she seemed to believe it and, as a credulous juvenile, so did I. And so convinced was I, that until some brief research yesterday proved her to have been telling porkies, I had held it up as truth for the intervening 25 years or so. Why I found her a credible source about this I have no idea – she’s been a vegetarian since the age of 12, and an extremely picky eater before that.

Suet is, in fact, raw beef fat that is typically from around the animals’ kidney or loin area, and while that may not be a much less appetizing prospect than eye-socket, it certainly helps explain why it should be used in the preparation of a traditional British dumpling. It’s basically a firm kind of lard that melts perfectly at the relatively low temperatures found on top of a stew, which is where a British dumpling is typically found.

American readers will be forgiven for commonly associating dumplings only with Chinese restaurants, or at the outside, with Russian or Polish cuisine, but in the northern reaches of Britain, suet dumplings are, or, at least, were a frequent sight floating on top of a thick stew during the winter. And indeed, suet dumplings do look and taste a bit like their Chinese counterparts – slightly chewy and definitely filling, except that they’re much less uniform in shape and are not wrapped in pasta, the filling is the dumpling, basically. Suet as an ingredient though, is not confined to the creation of floaters, it’s also used in the recipe for other traditional British favorites as spotted dick, pastry, Christmas pudding and mincemeat, demonstrating remarkable flexibility as a fat and flavoring.

Suet is also commonly used throughout the Caribbean in the preparation of patties, particularly in Jamaica, and I think that this is the reason for it appearing on the shelves of our local supermarket, as not far from us resides a large and vibrant Caribbean community.

We’ll definitely be exploring some patty recipes with suet in the near future (a $2 package goes a long way), but for the time being, please consider searching out some suet and making yourself a good old British dinner this weekend. It’s on oft-repeated maxim among survival experts that icy temperatures can best be braved when you’re core is fired with plenty of firm beef fat. I’m not kidding.

Chicken & Root Vegetable Stew with Herbed Suet Dumplings (serves 4-6)

Ingredients

• 4 bone-in chicken breasts, or (preferably) 6-8 bone-in chicken thighs
• 1 large yellow onion, roughly sliced
• 1 large leek, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 3 large carrots, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 parsnips, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 4 medium potatoes, cut into eighths, or 2 inch chunks
• 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 bouquet garni (store bought, or wrap parsley, bay and thyme in the green part of a leek and secure with string)
• pinch of hot pepper flakes
• 2oz (50 grams) dry white wine
• 3 tsp olive oil
• 2-3 pints (1-1. liters) chicken stock (depending on size of pot you’re using)
• 2oz (50 grams) plain flour
• salt and black pepper

For the dumplings:

• 4.5oz (125 grams) plus a bit more, plain flour
• 2oz (50 grams) grated or very finely diced fresh suet
• 2-3oz (50-75 grams) water
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

Recipe

• Heat oil in large heavy casserole or dutch oven to medium.
• Dust chicken pieces with flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in pot. Allow to brown well on all sides – about ten minutes.
• Remove chicken and add onions, carrots, potatoes, parsnips and leeks. Sweat until lightly browned, about 6 minutes.
• Add garlic and hot pepper, and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until garlic softens and perfumes room.
• Deglaze pot with white wine or 2oz of the stock. Make sure all the caramelized chicken juices come up before adding remaining stock (or enough to cover contents) and bouquet garni.
• Cover and allow to simmer for around 40 minutes.
• In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, chopped suet and parsley. Mix well.
• Add half of your water and stir. If dumpling mixture is too dry add more, but you’re looking for a dough that’s nicely sticky and elastic, not too damp.
• Then using two tablespoons, make quennelles with dough and removing the pot lid, gently plop them into simmering stew. Alternatively, flour your hands well and make squash-ball size dumplings and drop them in.
• Then, re-cover stew and allow to simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
• Serve in a bowl and allow to stick to your ribs. Repeat with second helpings.

Note: prepare for a very long read or click here to skip forward to the recipe.

In the same way that there is probably some truth in the Chinese claim to have invented the noodle that became the ubiquitous Italian pasta, the origins of the archetypical British dish of fish n’chips seems to stem from Sephardic Jewish and French Protestant immigrants to the UK. In the mid-18th century, fishing trawlers became large enough to catch significant numbers of North Sea bottom-feeding white fish and domestic railroads expanded so that much of the UK began to have cheap and regular access to this fresh bounty. Also at this time, the potato-cooking skills of French Hugenot immigrants and the fish-frying traditions of Southern European Jews came together in what was to be a lasting and wildly popular marriage.

The French fry had been invented years earlier when the poor had first ventured to cook this new world tuber - originally only thought good enough for animal feed – and these techniques have continued to be refined to this day. Jews immigrating to the UK and other areas of Northern Europe having been expelled from Portugal and Spain brought matza (matzo, matzoh, matsah,) with them, which they knew to be an excellent coating for fish when ground or crumbed. Combining these two techniques with the endemic British passion for beer and deep-frying, resulted in one of the most famous exports from the British Isles since limey sailors began spreading a horrifying variety of VDs in port cities the world over. 

Today’s fish n’chips (depending on where you go) still closely resemble the original ideas found in Portuguese fried fish dishes pescado frito, in which strips of fish are dunked in a light batter of water, matzo flour and salt, then rolled in crumbed matzo before deep-frying in a cauldron of hot oil. In fact, the Portuguese are sometimes credited with having introduced this technique to Japan where it developed into the extremely delicious tempura style. In the UK, beer was often added in place of water to the flour (typically plain flour nowadays, rather than matzo) and salt, with the resulting batter being richer, but somehow lighter, frothier and more golden colored.

The British habit of “chipping” potatoes into larger batons than the continental Europeans, and now the Americans, and only frying them once, appears to just be a local habit. Some have suggested that the UK picked up on an early potato-cooking technique and kept it while the more culinarily-advanced French and Belgians continued to experiment with thinner-cut potatoes and double-frying, so that they perfected the golden and crunchy frites of today. I prefer to think of the British technique to be based not on ignorance, but on textural appreciation. For why have a crispy deep-fried fish and pair it with something else crispy? Why not pair it with something softer and more unctious?

My Life with Fish n’Chips

Anyway, fish n’chips became incredibly popular in the UK and its colonies around the world, with the chip shop still a fixture on virtually every town’s high street in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For much of my youth, growing up in provincial England, it was one of only two choices for cheap, take-away/out food – the other being the uniformly foul and greasy hole that was the Golden Lantern Chinese take-out, so fish n’chips played an important role in our Friday night social traditions. After choir practice at our local church, we’d often hit the chip shop for a “slap-up” dinner of cod & chips with mushy peas, and bread & scrape (sliced white bread with lard), all washed down with our weekly soda allowance – a can of Lilt (a pineapple and grapefruit flavored soda).

Mr. Chips, the snappily-titled chip shop in my Cheshire town was universally known as just “the chippy” and, correspondingly - demonstrating some terribly enlightened feelings towards the town’s tiny, but most obvious, ethnic population - the Golden Lantern, was referred to as “the Chinky”. Subsequently, this ordinary little town has gentrified virtually beyond recognition, with all manner of ethnic restaurants elbowing aside these two bastions of atherosclerosis. However, echoes of these former times can still be heard in local parlance. Sadly, the Golden Lantern is gone, replaced by Slow Boat and Treasure Village, which now, demonstrating how times have changed for the better, are referred to as “the Chinese”; Mughli, an Indian restaurant, is either ”the curry house” or “the Indian”, and Est! Est! Est! is “the Italian”.

Fish n’chip restaurants still play a significant role in British gastronomic and cultural life. As with many countries, the UK has recently undergone a revolution in its food traditions, returning to basics and local ingredients and striving for sustainability. This has led to a re-evaluation and revival of many traditional dishes, including the hugely devalued fish n’chips. With North Sea cod stocks (like cod almost everywhere) having crashed due to overfishing, some traditions have had to change, and now other white fish are used including hake, halibut and haddock in its place, but the typical methods of beer and matzo batter, quality malt vinegar, fine sea salt and first-class British potatoes cooked in beef tallow (beef lard) are emerging again, much to my delight.

We’re heading to London to visit my new nephew in a couple of weeks, and will be hitting up arguably the finest chip shop in the capital, Fryer’s Delight in Holborn, which you will be the first to hear about right here in these pages. To date though, the best fish n’chips I ever had was at a very dodgy-looking chippy in Fleetwood, Lancashire (NW England, about 1.5hrs north of Manchester). Overlooking the grey and miserable-looking Irish Sea, I ate perfectly fried, golden cod, soft and salty chips and deliciously thick marrowfat mushy peas. It was a glorious, all-English experience.

But don’t think that fish n’chips only comes with mushies – oh no, variations abound in dressings. While the traditional is the simple sea salt and malt vinegar with a side of tartar sauce and M.P’s, others include, parsley sauce, brown gravy, curry sauce, garlic sauce, piccalilli, mayonnaise, Henderson’s relish, Worcestershire sauce, pea wet or pea’s water (liquid strained from peas during the creation of mushy peas) which is often free, baked beans, cheese or cheese curds, coleslaw, ketchup, chilli sauce, thousand island dressing, salad cream, chip spice, brown sauce, and summer savory (turkey stuffing & gravy), to name but a few.

Ever striving for the traditional in our take on the dish, we went with a pale ale batter, beautiful Atlantic cod (yes, i know it’s unsustainable, but our fishmonger doesn’t sell haddock or hake) thick cut chips, homemade mushy peas, homemade tartar sauce and, perhaps excessively, homemade curry sauce – my wife being a huge fan of dipping sauces. In fact, all of them are fiendishly easy to make, but as with most simple dishes, the key is high quality ingredients. Old potatoes and a shitty piece of fish even when perfectly fried will still taste like a turd. Similarly, beautifully fresh potatoes and cod fried in rancid old oil will be a disaster. Make sure you buy everything as fresh as possible. Fresh potatoes have very few “eyes” and yield a nice sheen of liquid when peeled, and fresh cod or haddock (hake is fine also) will have wonderfully shiny skin and nice firm flesh. If it’s already flaky and soft do not buy it, instead sharply reprimand your fishmonger for having the temerity to sell such tat.

Fish n’Chips with Mushy Peas, + Tartar and Curry Sauces (serves 2-3)

I describe the beers in this way for a reason. You see, the old joke that Americans never seem to tire of cracking when offering me a beer goes something like this: “Want a beer, Jonny?” “Yes, please, I’d love one.” “Here. It’s been in the fridge, sure you don’t want me to warm it up for you?” Oh, the mirth.

British beers, you see, have a reputation of being served warm. This is not true, unless you consider cellar temperature to be warm. Personally, when I think of warm, I think, 80 degrees, blue skies, and the merry chirping of songbirds, not a pint of frothy ale from a cask kept in a cool, dank cellar, served at around 50-55 degrees. By contrast, American beers are always served cold, sometimes painfully cold, and historically, this has, in my opinion, been because they taste so bad when drunk at any higher temperature.

Nowadays, there are many delicious, craft-brewed, bountifully-hoppy, traditional-style beers being made in America, and I enjoy as many of them as I can. In our fridge right now are a variety of excellent English-style beers by Wild Goose ales, brewed in Frederick, Maryland, that we’re working our way through and appreciating drop-by-drop.

But here comes my point, these beers would be much tastier if served a bit warmer. Cooling anything reduces evaporation and prevents the perfumes and flavors of the beer from mixing with air, and therefore, one tastes fewer of the drink’s complexities. To me, this is a shame. After all, why spend all the time and effort imbuing ones’ ale with complex, herbaceous flavors and then chill the crap out of it so the drinker cannot appreciate them? This is why British ales – bitters, pale ales, IPAs, milds and porters – are best served at cellar temperature.

Hand-Pulling
This brings me to my second point. Hand-pulling. We recently watched a show called “Sam the Cooking Guy” or something, on NYCTV, and the host visits an “English pub” in Los Angeles. It’s an English-owned establishment and serves all manner of fayre from Blighty. Sam asked the owner to show him how to pull a pint. He then holds a glass to the tap and pours a Guinness. I like Guinness as much as anyone, but it’s Irish, not English, and you can’t pull a Guinness because it’s a cream-flow beer. Pulling a real ale is a bit like pulling the arm on a slot machine, except it must be done carefully and at a smooth, measured rate. The idea, you see, is to aerate the beer, giving it a head, and allowing air to mix with the beer to release it’s flavors. Typically, for a pint two pulls will be needed, followed by a minute or so of contemplation – a la Guinness – while the air settles and pint comes to a rest.

I have visited lots of English-style pubs in America and not one of them has real, hand-pulled ales. Why is this? Is it not allowed by law? Is it too complex a procedure? I’d love to know why because I really miss hand-pulled ales, they just taste better, and unlike an ordinary beer, you have to have a bit of skill to pull a good one. Any fool can turn on a tap, but only a practiced-arm can pull a great pint.

Anyone who’s interested in “real ales” (i.e. cask-conditioned, hand-pulled ales from the British Isles) should check out the CAMRA website – camra.org.uk. CAMRA is the campaign for real ale and began as an organization to protect the integrity of British ale-producing and serving from the onslaught of, admittedly delicious, lagers and pilsener-style beers that began to be imported to Britain during the 1960s.

We’re back from our quick, 5-day trip to Northern England to visit Jonny’s family and I may just go to bed at 9PM like I did last night! The problem with these quick trips home (I feel like it’s kind of my home these days) is that by the time you’re over the jet lag, you have to turn around and come back. Ah, well. I have no reason to complain. This is one of our first trips back that was almost completely trouble-free (sans the 24 hour stomach bug we both had over there). But you really don’t give a shit about those things, do you? Now, on to the food.

Jonny had been kind of home-sick and had been dreaming of freshly pulled pints of bitter for the past 4 months. For some reason, I was starting to have pub envy too. Honestly, no place on earth can do a pub like the UK. The atmosphere, the sounds, the smell and the just-chatty-enough-without-being-annoying bartenders make it different from any bar/pub/lounge I’ve been to outside of the UK. Because we have Fox Soccer Channel and Jonny can watch his ‘footie’ matches all weekend from the comfort of his couch, besides missing his family, he really does yearn for the British pub the most. And it’s sad because I can pay $500 to bring all the Premiership Football matches to our cable box (and he can drool over every Man United game), I can fly his family over for a visit, but there is nothing I can do to replace the missing English pub in his life. It’s frustrating, but we deal.

The second we landed at London Heathrow, even as sweaty, bloated, gassy, bad-breathed and tired as we were, we knew we had to stop off for a pub lunch on the way up to Manchester. We had only 2 hours of sleep on the plane (Virgin Airlines give you your own TV with like 30 movies and video games to choose from – I couldn’t peel myself away from it for more than a few hours!) but the adrenaline of getting to that pub lunch was keeping me up and helping Jonny find the energy to do the 3+ hour drive up North. We decided to stop in the adorable, quaint and touristy town of Stratford-Upon-Avon about 1 1/2 hours from Heathrow. I had been here a few years before, but only to grab a sandwich, sit out in the park and take a leisurely walk around town. Stratford-Upon-Avon may sound familiar to all you non-UK people reading – it is the birthplace of William Shakespeare. There’s loads to do around the town with lots of shopping and places to eat to make a night out of it. Regardless, we made an hour of it and were pleased with our selection – The Garrick Inn. It’s Stratfords oldest pub dating back to the 14th century, but the music selection piped in makes you feel as though you’re in 1988. It was fabulous and everything I could have wanted on 2 hours sleep. Jonny had the cottage pie (REMEMBER – Cottage Pie is made of BEEF… Shepherds Pie is made of LAMB. Shepherd’s herd sheep, cottages herd beef – it’s very simple… don’t get it wrong unless you want a cranky Englishman ‘schooling’ you) and I had the delicious Beef and Ruddles Ale Pie in shortcrust pastry with a jug of gravy on the side. WHOA… it was very good but note to everyone – do NOT attempt to drive another 2 hours after a pint and a large pub meal – even after you’ve taken a walk to wake yourself up. Jonny did a fabulous drive getting us there, but I was actually having a dream while my eyes were open. It happened, I swear.

Days later, we were well rested and ready to take a day trip to Chatsworth House in the beautiful and picturesque Peak District (in Derbyshire). The Chatsworth House is a little more than a house – it’s a friggin’ mansion with large, lovely gardens on a giant estate. The Duke and Dutchess of Devonshire still supposedly live in this ridiculously lavish ‘house’, but it’s so huge you’d probably never see them. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas and I very nerdily and dorkily and cheesily got majorly into the Christmas Spirit for the first time in 2007. We were also lucky to have a day with one of the clearest English skies I’ve ever seen. There was not one cloud in the sky – if you’ve ever been to the North in winter you’ll understand what a big deal this is. At lunchtime we were excited for another pub lunch. We found the charming Eyre Arms in Hassop, about 10 minutes drive from Chatsworth House. Built in the early 1600′s, this snug pub was registered as a public house in 1753. It was everything we wanted – delicious and cozy with log fire-burning next to us and hilarious local blue-hairs drinking ales in the middle of the day. Brilliant! Jonny had the amazingly scrumptious Venison Pie topped with a huge pillow of puff pastry. I ordered off the specials board – Roasted Pheasant in a madiera wine sauce with mushrooms and bacon. Again, we left happy, full and bloated. We were able to walk it off back at the Chatsworth House gardens where we frolicked and explored for two hours. I HIGHLY recommend checking out the Chatsworth House if you are making a trip to Northern England.

Unfortunately, our eating-fest was put on a minor hold while we puked and (you know what else) our faces off the following day with a strange 24 hour stomach bug. It’s always fun to waste a sick day while you’re on holiday!! It sucked but since we were at Jonny’s dad’s house and not at a hotel, we were comfy lying on the couch and drinking tea all day.

Stomach bug or not, we had a nice time on our quick jaunt to the UK. We gained weight and, thanks to that bug, we lost it all again!

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