A cold day at the market

After the bread round  yesterday, I made an executive decision not to worry about the weather. The bread round took me to Waterford, as always on Wednesdays and it took a bit longer and was bit slippier but so much more beautiful than normal. Short and sweet as that winter was, it soon turned back to Irish weather with wind and rain and more red, orange and yellow weather warnings. We had a minute amount of snow, we had temparture that dipped under 0. We had rain and storm. It’s winter not a national emergency. Yesterday, as Rebecca stormed over the country and we had to decide whether or not to  bake our usual market load, I turned off the radio and the multicoloured weather warnings. Instead, I went outside, looked at the sky with a bit of optimism and reckoned that the wind would blow itself out by tomorrow. So we put on the sourdoughs, weighed out the flour for the rest, lit the fire in the bakehouse and prepped for apple pies and our stromboli .  Then we spent a typical winter evening by the fire, refusing to be paniced by the weather warnings Come 2.30 am, the wind had calmed, the rain had stopped and a beautiful night sky was more reassuring than the met office which again was warning to stay indoors, to mind the roads, to watch for fallen debris, to maybe close schools and to generally not say we weren’t told!! . We baked for 4 hours, went to the market – so cheerfully confident that we nearly forgot the weights. As I write this blog, the junior baker is still out there, selling the last few loaves as one after the other of our hardy customers come out, wondering where all that weather was. You can still buy meat, fish, veg and bread on the market today, the day is actually a beautifully clear and crisp winter day with some little gusts of wind. In other parts of Ireland the weather might be red, orange and yellow, In Kilkenny it was grand. Sometimes, very rarely in Ireland,  do we get real dangerour weather events. Most times, we just get normal weather. Three customers warned me today about the trees behind us. We should go home soon, they worried. Very kind and much appreciated - but that wind only existed in their imagination and on the radio. On the parade in Kilkenny – there was little wind today. There was no yellow, no orange and certainy no red situation. Juts a normal - very cold - winters day on the market. 

Another start to another year

After the bread round is back in work after Christmas. It’s Wednesday and I should be at home doing prep for the market, making pizza bases and cookies and generally doing the “Wednesday is our busy day” thing. Instead, I am in Tower hotel in Waterford, enjoying a really nice and boiling hot cup of hot chocolate, writing my blog and listening to at least three conversations going on around me. The car, you see, is charging. I deliver to Waterford every Wednesday with the E-van and while I make it back on good days, today it was dark and wet and between the lights, the windscreen wipers and my enjoying the torque of the van, the battery was well over half empty by the time we got here. It is one of the unexpected beauties of this electric van, that it slows me down whenever I may not actually want to go slow. Today, I might have wanted to head home quickly, but instead I snnozed in the van for  a short while and then go for hot chocolate and a quick blog before heading home. With any luck the junior baker will have put on the pizza dough and have everything well under control by the time I roll up – all rested and with the wonderfully good conscience that comes from having writting this blog – long overdue as always. This year we are planning great things. First off is the Bia Beag Meet the Bakers session on the 24th of this month and the promising start of a Real Bread Ireland group. Next – just as soon as the paperwork is all organised – we will hopefully join the Food Academy with the Local Enterprise Board and learn to be more professional when it comes to the business side of things. We are planning to start baking courses next month so do pass that news to anyone who might be interested please and we also have a job vacancy again come late spring, early summer. Finally, this small bakery has to employ non-family as the junior baker is planning to take off. All very exciting plans and a good year ahead for Speltbakers – we hope. We wish everyone a very happy new year and put “weekly blog” on the list of new year’s resolutions. The van is charged, the bar in the tower hotel is filling up with lots of well dressed family parties coming in for lunch. I listen in and listen in some more and finally decide that they are parties of recent graduates from Waterford IT. Having solved that problem, I head off to the bake house, the pizza  bases and the cookies. Could do worse on a rainy Wednesday in January.