After the bread round – we go to CATEX for new ideas and battle the elements at the market

Much as I loved to go to Barcelona to be inspired, sometimes you can’ t go quite that far and have to stay a little bit more conventional. So last Thursday we headed to CATEX, Ireland’s catering expo in Dublin. 

First however, the day – one of the worst of the whole winter – illustrated a magnificent team, a great customer base and amazing family support. You didn’t think a rotten day with gale force winds and rain could do that? Well, it can. Firstly, our senior baker, baked a full shift, starting here at 3am, finished at 8 and then set off to do the market, against all odds and probably against common sense too. Gale force winds disallowed the gazebo and so he sold from the back of the van, showers forcing the bread in from the – well tied down – table in front of the car twice. With never ending good humour, imagination and stamina, he never  complained as he smiled,  improvised, joked and sold – to our wonderful customer base who will come out hail, rain or shine and support our determination to sell on each and every market day, whatever the weather says. 

So thanks very much to Philippe and all our costumers – and to the husband, who without as much as a moments hesitation, gave us his car to go to Dublin ( the van being tied down in Kilkenny - literally) So, we set of to Dublin to CATEX and lots of inspiration while he settled down to cycle home from Waterford! So good for him and his training schedule - but still much appreciated. 

With all this bad weather and good will from team and family alike, we set off for CATEX. Four years ago, we found this expo and at it bought our ovens and mixers and got to know some of the industries suppliers. Four years later, we are a little bit less green and still love to come for the ideas and the chats and – of course – for the huge amount of free samples and free food  - with the arrival of the craft beer stalls and a wine bar with a wonderful timber barrel of prosecco a much appreciated addition. However much we all shop on the internet these days, there is no replacing the real thing, the machines set up and working, the demonstration of what they can do, the experts who not only meet you here but also willingly come out to anywhere in the country to demonstrate and talk you through what you need to know. For hours we walked and worked our way through a confusing maze of stalls, ate way too many different things, dreamed of sometime owning a hotel and finally settled on three things we should get. A labeling machine, a branded gazebo cover and – maybe – a vegetable prepping machine that would also handle bread crumbs. We looked at environmentally friendly packaging and planned ahead to the next great expansion when we will get rotary gas ovens. 

So, here I am, still grateful for all the team and family support, working through brochures and filing contact numbers but secretly dreaming of that hotel , probably with a café and bakehouse attached – but most certainly with an old fashioned drawing room with the timber barrel full of prosecco………  

After the bread round and the blogger world

Yoga two days running and one walk – we won’t mention the daffodils trapped in last year's basket. After the bread round did another run over to the continent last week to celebrate my mother’s 90s birthday.  #travelissoeasy, saw us bake on Friday morning, have a dizzying panic session to get all the paperwork ready for the weekend and the house ready for the lovely people coming in to mind our three dogs -  and then head off to the airport. A couple of hours later, we sat into another car, steering wheel gone over to the left, and headed down another motorway – considerably faster this time - to meet up with the birthday grandmother and the rest of the family. A lovely, lovely weekend later, we sit back at home in massive gratitude for such a healthy and totally fit grandmother at 90, who celebrated two days running late into the night and who we are all trying to convince to write a book. The title is going to be “When you’re 90 – my God”  

Normally, I don’t travel that much and that quickly but I could really get used to it!! Could get used to the parellel life between Germany and Ireland, between Costello’s ale and Früh Kölsch. I could get used to seeing family more often, to shopping in Kilkenny and in Bad Münstereifel in the same week, to speaking English and German simultaneously. I could even get used to the wonderfully cheap but terribly squashy Ryanair flights and I might even realise my ambition of looking cool and sophisticated when travelling rather than permanently turning into this demented women who has lost her phone -  again - while juggling a suitcase, a handbag, a coat, a duty free bag, a travel pillow, a bottle of water and her passport. Any tips of how to do this??

For the moment, I rest my holidays in the certain belief that other people in this outfit are now due a few days off but I’m just saying I could get used to it. For this week, the task is for After the bread round to become more familiar with blogging and the blogger’s world. My daughter and I read Girl Online and she follows other blogs, vlogs and Youtubers and I will have to learn. I would love to widen my readership, to take a proper step into this world and so I have to follow more blogs or, as Penny Porter says in Girl online, I have to get involved!! So if you are writing blogs or know blogs that I would like, please let me know and help me find a way into this world – and then I will actually get a computer young enough to handle the blogger site!!! After the breads round -  back to baking.

Be inspired in whatever you do

Y

Two walks, no yoga but, after a lovely couple of days in Barcelona,  full of good intentions – waiting to see where that will get us..

As so many people who travel to Barcelona, we got caught by Gaudi and his amazing works – full of colour, nature, fun and more colour. It is said that he lived an almost monastic life in virtual poverty but his work is so full of fun and colour that I find that very hard to believe. I mean who lives a monastic life and uses broken champagne bottle to decorate a chimney???? I was even wondering if the word gaudi, implying fun and enjoyment comes from his name but it transpires that that is an even older catalan word, which his name is derrived from.  

Walking through his famous chruch, La Sagrada familia, we were stunned by his use of light, his using nature as his inspiration and at the pure size and courage of his imagination and the amazing concentraton on detail for such a huge project. 

What came to mind later was the backing and support he got, the aparently bottomless pit of funding, the many people who must have believed in him and supported that belief with bags and bags and bags of money.  How many archtitects built so many monuments to their own genius and how many others are thwarted by their low budged commissions, by the limited vison of their funding bodies or indiviudals. He might have lived in poverty but how amazing must it have been for him to actually be able to realise his vision so many times, to be able to create something as funky as the town house, he built for the Mila family. 

Anyone who ever built or renovated their house knows that money rules and many plans just are not affordable. Imagine the planning meetings and the huge desire of the Milo family to not be outdone by their wealthy friends, the Batlo’s who had just got a funky house design from Gaudi. So we want something really showy but balcony railings that look like seaweed, really?? And than their house, the Casa Mila, was nicknamed Pedrea, the Quarry. How that must have stung the so very conventional Mrs Mila and her ambitious husband, who apprentely quarrelled with Gaudi for years over bills to be paid and design fees to be signed off on. Gaudi also ignored planning legislaton and height restrictions and built to his own plan. 

So maybe he didnt have that bottomless pit and support which I envisaged but just pure doggedness and determination.

 I have always felt sorry for architects like the no doubt very talented man who we got to help us when we bought a ruined and long deserted farm house in Gowran 20 years ago. He had so many ideas and visions for this place which invariably ended in “ that is a great idea but how much will it cost”, “ is there a cheaper options” and “ as it is right now is good really” No colourful mosaics, no designing chimneys, no reflection of the scenery in the building, no imagination really at all allowed as the little money we had disappeared frighteningly  fast into the bare necessity of a house structure. 

So an appreciation of talent and skill is really what I brought home from Barcelona, an appreciation of everyone talents and need to design, invent and vary. So after the bread round, we now not only  prep for the next day to do it all again but we also think about a new sourdough which we’d like to try and a new chocolate pie which might just go perfectly with a cup of coffee. So watch this space as we let ourselves be inspired and refuse the stagnation of the everyday. 

Travel to turn those pages and read the book of the world

O

Two walks, no yoga and don’t ask – the daffodils are still striving in last year’s soil and last year’s  basket. On the upside, however, I am writing this in Barcelona, the sun is shining, we have another two days to spend here and apparently, there is a great vintage shop around the corner.

Every year in February, my daughter and myself head off to a European city for a couple of days and this year we are in Barcelona. Every year, in spite of all good intentions to learn a bit of the language and read up on what to do, the day of travel always sneaks up. Before I know it, it is Saturday,we bake, I do the market in Carlow, came home and finish the paperwork for the week to get everything ready for the wonderful people who will pick up my hours till Wednesday and then head off to Dublin. Next morning we were at the airport at an ungodly hour and I slept for most of the way to Barcelona. Waking up as the plane hit a rough patch, I discover the snow topped pyrenees just below us and finally open that guide book.

Short breaks are a wonderful way to travel as you literally just go and all of a sudden, on a sunny Sunday, find yourself not at home, lazing about and recovering from a weeks’s work while thinking you should really be doing a bit of housework and prepping for next week’s dinners. Instead, we were walking La Rambla, the wonderful main street in Barcelona which all of a sudden ends at the sea and an even more wonderful La Rambla de Mar which swings over the harbour. While at home winter is fighting to hold on and frost rules, we were sitting in the Café Zurich, peeling off the winter layers and sitting in the sun drinking the local beer and having lunch, wondering why we only packed jumpers. Later we found our flat ( Airbnb) in a wonderful tiny street – just on the dodgy side of town.  A lovely third story room with a kitchen and bathroom and a tiny balcony is to be ours for the three days. The street is so small that I can talk to the parrot in the cage in the room across from us and marvel at the open door and open window policy in February. Obviously not a place that ever gets very cold or a place that anyone takes a car to. The only noice you hear is the cacophony of people talking, of skateboarders being terribly cool and scooters even more so.  Settled in, we went to the Musee Picasso because it was going to be closed on Monday and being told it was full,   sat in the Placa Reial and had a pitcher of sangria instead. What a shame. We found amazing pastry shops which will have to be investigated and apparently the most famous vintage shop is just around the corner somewhere. Considering we brought the wrong kind of clothes, that might have to be no 1 today. And then there is the market that needs to be seen and so many other things which you may neverhear about because I can’t get the wifi to work………..

and so the blog is late. Tuesday today and while the computer irrated me for hours yesterday, it decided today for no known reason to work and catch the internet. As I keep bakers hours even on holidays it is early and no one else stirs on the road. The parrot across the way is still undercover, the rubbish has been collected on the street and I only hear once tourist couple – speaking English with difficulty and walking with even more difficulty back to their hotel – which I really hope they find. Yesterday, we found Gaudi and all in one day found the coolest house and the funkiest church I have ever seen. Travel really is so amazing. Even for a few days, we see so many new ways, so many different ideas and cultures. From the lovely habit of walking the streets at night, wondering whether the expression "going for ramble" comes from La Rambla, this most amazing of all street and wondering how it must effect a people to take a balmy night in February so entirely for granted, a night that we would appreciate in July. A people that own the Cava and the Sangria and the most amazing jambon ( cured ham ) at every street corner. A people that live with the beauty of Gaudi and with the amazing power, energy and feeling of the flamenco. Here for a day and a half with another day to start in a little while, we pledge to keep travelling, to keep turning the pages of this wonderful world, to not be too afraid of Donal Trump but to trust in the goodness of people."The world is a book", said St Augustine, "those who do not travel see only one page" and here in Barcelona, Christopher Columbus stands in the port, pointing far into the distance into the meditereanena.

Go find out for yourself.