It’s pretty much a national consensus that a birthday near Christmas sucks, right? Not through any fault of your own but because you get side tracked, lumped in with Crimbo and in the worst case scenario– you get forgotten. So in my humble opinion, if this is the case, I command that thou moveth thy birthday celebrations to the start of December: close enough to Christmas to have that happy air in the streets but far enough away to keep the day as yours! Of course you still have to celebrate with your nearests and dearests on the official day too– this is not greedy, it is fair.
Now if I were to tell you that I have a very special lady in my life who goes by the name of Carole, when would you guess this chick’s birthday would be? Clue’s in the name.
The 24th December, known to many as Christmas Eve, is my Grandmamma Cook’s birthday and consequently to my family is firstly that and secondly it’s the day before Christmas (little Amy didn’t understand this quite as well as she does now). So for her 21st birthday (no, that is not a typo… it’s so I don’t get my backside kicked) my Mother and I decided we would take Cooky out to some local Christmas markets to feast our eyes and then finish off by feasting in Lola Jean’s.
Our first point of call was the North Shields market in the old town square, we tasted and tested to our hearts content and came away with some Turkish delight (to cool down our chilli coated gums) and a bottle of locally made ginger wine– barely a week later and it’s already evaporated…
For desert we jumped on the metro and disembarked at the glorious Tynemouth market, at which I frequent a little to often. I think that was the first time in a while that Gran had been so we had a right good meander through the stalls and I introduced my two ladies to the delights that are Benny’s Toon Macaroons.
Our favorite pesto and oils were swiftly bought, along with a bloomer to smother it in. And some cheese, naturally.
I was naughty and bought a couple of plain and a couple of Cranberry pieces of joy to share out between us and the blokes at home. Restraining ourselves from devouring the lot was quite an effort so we left the market and found our way to Lola Jean’s for some proper food.
Settled into our booth we were a little snap-happy but the lighting was terrible and turned our faces into blotches of washed out wax, so we ditched the camera and dug into our food. Which was a hell of a lot more photogenic.
To start we had the bread board with peppers, humous and sun dried tomatoes. This is heaven on a board. Little tip– throw some olive oil and salt on your bread instead of butter, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Seeming as I hadn’t had breakfast I went for the poached egg with black pudding, bacon and mushroom. It was nice but could have done with a hollandaise sauce to make it a little less boring.
Angie and Carole opted for the risotto and what a good call that was! Apart from the hundred and odd nuts that the chef had dropped in, that they skilfully manoeuvred around, it was a lovely dish. But my Mum’s is better, just saying.
Being the cheeky little things that we are, we snuck off to Allard’s for some cocktails– after paying the bill of course! After introducing Gran to our favorite wine bar we got down to examining the drinks menu.
One Madagascan martini, a Poppy and a something I can’t remember the name of.
They went and changed the cocktail menu didn’t they! No more Butterscotch Beach’s for me or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or Loch Almond’s… Not that I memorised the menu or anything.
With smiles on our faces and an early-birthday well spent, we toddled off home and planned to do it all again very soon.
