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.