Christopher's.

We celebrated our anniversary yesterday with a very nice lunch at a fancy-dancy restaurant. Fancy-dancy for the Hill Country... about par for the course if we were in the Houston area. I didn't know where we were going till we got there. My husband found the restaurant on-line and made reservations but didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Of course, the first question I asked was "How will I know what to wear if I don't know where I'm going?" That sort of thing never occurs to a man. They pull on a pair of slacks, take a shirt out of the closet and they're done. I figured the restaurant wouldn't exactly be on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" if we needed reservations. My husband wouldn't give in on the location, but he did show me a picture from the on-line site so I got to see what one of the dining rooms looked like. It didn't look like a jeans-and-boots sort of place.

I think I spent nearly an hour pulling clothes out of my closet the night before, trying on this and that and the other.... clothes that haven't seen the light of day since we left the Houston/Clear Lake area. It was too hot for a skirt and stockings, so I opted for black slacks and a silk top-- it was too hot for a silk top, but it was sleeveless and a pretty shade of blue, and I topped that with a short white jacket so I wouldn't be cold in the restaurant's air-conditioning. Out came the high heels... something else that doesn't get to see the light of day here. It probably took me longer to pick out an outfit than it took my husband to find the restaurant, read the menu, and make the reservations. When my clothes were all picked out and set, I polished my nails, which I haven't done since my birthday in January.

Christopher's is in Bryan/College Station, which is a fairly good drive from here. The two towns of Bryan and College Station are side-by-side, with Texas A&M University smack in the middle of the two. Personally, I don't think many people even know where Bryan begins and College Station ends, so everyone more or less just says "BryanCollegeStation" as if it's all one word and all one town. I don't know which of the two towns the restaurant was in, but there is was, a very pretty place in the middle of not much else.

The parking lot was filled with cars, which is always a good sign. They had lots of small dining rooms and a couple of larger banquet rooms. The menu was very nice... selections of French, Italian, Spanish cuisines, with a bit of Tex-Mex tossed in for good measure. We made sure to get two different menu items, rather than both ordering the same thing. We settled on stuffed shrimp with crabmeat, and almond-crusted snapper, and both of us had half of each. Each entree came with mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, grilled tomatoes, asparagus and zucchini, and sauted spinach. I saved the mashed potatoes for my husband, he saved the sweet potatoes for me.

We splurged on an appetizer-- a fondue of crab, shrimp, cheese and artichoke hearts, served with garlic bread. Totally decadent and delicious. Then after the dinner, we splurged again on dessert--- flourless chocolate cake (which we always used to get at Babbo Bruno's in Clear Lake). They wrote "Happy Anniversary" across the serving plate with chocolate sauce... very nicely done, with such beautiful script. "Too pretty to eat," we said...... so we looked at it for a while before we put the forks into it.

On the way home, we decided that rich roods and decadent desserts don't mix well with a 45-minute drive.... we both got sleepy during the drive home. We don't usually eat such rich foods... and even though the menu at Christopher's was tempting and luscious, it's just not a place that you can go to every week unless you want to indulge in the heavy sauces and gooey desserts. (I wouldn't drive all that way for just a salad, and no one makes better salads than I do anyway.)

So we had a wonderful 15th anniversary dinner there, but I think I'd rather leave the silk tops and the pearls in the closet and just enjoy a dinner of salmon and salad here while looking out over our fields and listening to the baby birds singing and the chickens screeching because the cats are chasing them.