Tag: the pancake house

#oneaday Day 827: Today is pancakes

Forgive the interruption in posting pattern yesterday, but I just had to have a little rant about the number of people using their phones in the pool. Stop it! Also, I will now stop talking about it, and talk about today, whose main attraction was our traditional visit to The Pancake House.

The Pancake House is a Center Parcs mainstay, I believe — I'm pretty sure there's one at every location, at least here in the UK — and Andie and I always make sure we have a trip there as a special treat.

As the name suggests, The Pancake House specialises in pancakes, and this can be interpreted how you see fit (or what you are in the mood for), as pretty much everything on the menu can be consumed in the form of a large Dutch crepe-style pancake, American buttermilk pancakes, or waffles. (The savoury options can also be had as an omelette if you really want to miss the point of the place.)

There is a large menu consisting of both sweet and savoury options. Weirdly, the "bacon and eggs with maple syrup" is under the "sweet" section, but the "full English breakfast on a pancake, optionally with maple syrup" is in the "savoury" section.

The sweet section is probably mostly what you'd expect — options of various fruit and/or chocolate-based toppings, mostly served with whipped cream and ice cream. Andie went for her "usual", which is an apple crumble-style topping on a Dutch pancake. I, however, decided to go for something different for once; I usually have bacon and eggs with maple syrup on American-style pancakes, but for a change today I thought I would have a sweet option on a Dutch pancake. I went for a "Fruits of the Forest" option, which consisted of a pleasant berry compote, whipped cream and ice cream atop the Dutch pancake. It was good, and surprisingly low in calories (relatively speaking, given some options on the menu are 2000+ calories) at 700-something. So I felt vaguely virtuous eating it, but it was actually really tasty, so I also won. Which was nice.

Had another trip to the pool later in the day today. It was pretty busy, as the weekend crowds are in. I often wonder how busy the place really gets at weekends, as I would think that doing a Friday-Monday "weekend break" here would just feel far too short. Our full week here has already mostly flown by, but I can't say I feel any time has been "wasted" — even the times where we've just been sitting in the lodge with a nice fire roaring, watching Ludwig season 2 or playing Super Mario Galaxy.

The only slight downer on the week is that Andie has been ill for most of it. She feels like she is, at least, getting better, though, having dosed herself up with Lemsip for the last couple of days, and so we're hoping she will be able to have at least a vaguely tolerable day — and a trip to the pool of her own — tomorrow on our last full day before going home on Monday.

Going home is going to be filled with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it will be lovely to see the cats again — and to know that we'll be going home to a house with Oliver in it, unlike last time. But I'm also aware of two potential frustrations on the horizon: firstly, having to determine what the hell is wrong with my mini PC, if anything (I tell you, if it boots up first time when I hook it back up to my monitors back home, we are going to have words) and secondly, having to get home and then almost immediately drive three hours to the office for what promises to be a thrilling day of HR presentations. Can't wait. At least I get another night in a hotel before a complete return to normality, I guess. Still, I'd rather not have to do that massive drive immediately after getting home. It is what it is, though.

On that note, I think it's time to get some sleep ahead of what should hopefully be pleasant day tomorrow, if Andie's nose stops exploding.

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#oneaday Day 735: Many distractions

We have both been feeling pretty upset today — like, breaking down in tears upset — so, during moments of clarity, we attempted to get out a bit and actually do some things rather than spending the entire day miserable. We actually ended up having a rather busy day as a result.

This began with our customary trip to the one restaurant we always pay a visit when we come to Center Parcs: The Pancake House, an establishment that, I believe, is fairly self-explanatory. They offer an excellent range of both sweet and savoury pancakes, and you can have each dish made with a large Dutch pancake, a stack of American pancakes, or an omelette if you're some sort of crazy person.

We both went for our usual orders: Andie had the apple and cinnamon crumble pancakes on Dutch, and I had the "New Yorker" (pictured), which is listed under "sweet" pancakes but is actually just a stack of American pancakes with bacon and (optionally) a fried egg, plus maple syrup. Very good.

After that, we weren't quite ready to return to the lodge and potential intrusive thoughts, so we went to go and play pool for a bit. I haven't played pool for a long time and have always sucked at it, but thankfully Andie also sucks at it too, so we had a fairly even best-of-three session. Andie ended up beating me 2-1, and it was deserved. I played well in my first game (which I won) and got pretty consistently worse with each subsequent game. My excuse is that it was hot and sweaty and humid in the pool hall, and I'm sticking to it.

Following that, we came back to the lodge to sit for a bit; I played a bit of Ace Attorney and Andie stared at a knitting project she's had trouble starting. Then we thought going for a swim would be a nice distraction; turns out that it was. A bit of time in the outdoor Sprudel pool and bubbly jacuzzi was nice and relaxing, then we went down one of the water slides, played in the wave machine for a bit, and then we were ready to head back and have some dinner.

All in all, although we're both still very sad and anxious, today ended up being about as nice a day as it's possible to have under the circumstances, and a demonstration of something that is always worth remembering during your bleakest moments: sometimes it pays to just get up, get out and go do something rather than staring into the middle distance being miserable about something which, at that exact moment, you cannot really do anything about.

Tomorrow we will still feel sad and anxious, I am sure. There will be many more tears before we get any sort of closure on this whole horrible situation, I am equally sure. But I will keep telling myself: it is important to continue to take care of yourself, as well as worrying about the wellbeing of those who are precious to you.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.