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.

An Advent weekend in Germany

After the bread  round,  last Wednesday turned into a logistic excersice as we started a little bit earlier than usual, baked our bread, send one basket off to Waterford and one to the Truffle Fairy in Thomastown. Another car went off to Kilkenny very early while the rest of us changed into happy clothes, grabed our suitcases, packed the car, turned around five times in case we forgot something and headed off to Kilkenny. We found the lads who had at this stage deliverd the bread and together headed off to the airport. 9am in the morning, one job done and a long weekend to come. Feeling self righteous and marginally worried about the car which had been driven nearly empty the day before and was protesting with slightly sluggish behaviour, we got to the airport nice and early, parked the car, found the shuttle bus, checked in and settled in to wait. Travelling by air you can choose between frazzled panic or boredom and we opt for boredom any time, incorporating enough time into the schedule to deal with all evenutalities and mostly ending up with no eventualities but with a massive amount of time. So we read, we play, we windowshop, - and we found an amazing new waiting area in the airport. Cooled down to nice temperature and sporting big, colourful sofas, a play area, wifi access, computers and cute holes in the wall, this place was virtually empty because not ascotiated with any restaurant and actually made for the poor travellers with their own sandwiches. The perfect place and the start for a perfect weekend. We travelled on to Charleroi and Mechernich near Cologne for a few packed days with all the family. We ate way, way too many Bratwurst and drank enough Sekt to make it through the entire Christmas. Speltbakers had their promised Christmas outing on the Christmas market in Bonn with hours of food, stalls and ice skating, with Christmas present shopping and hint dropping and with a nostalic look at the carrussell that we are now all too big for and the historic ferris wheel that we will never be too big for but which appears to have shrunk and turned from gigantic to quite small – as so many things do when you grow up.

We met even more family when we celebrated a cousin’s confirmation and are now on our way home. Slowly and with time in hand, we will work our way back to Charleroi, to Dublin and to Bramblestown outside Gowran. Speltbaker’s bread will be  back in the shops on Tuesday, 9th and through to Christmas as we come back full of energy, Christmas spirit and Bratwurst. 

Is busy just an attitude ?

After the bread  life is busy at the moment and all good intentions of blogging twice a week, have failed yet again. Failed in the same way as the grand plan of getting terribly fit and running every day has gone by the wayside. No running, no writing is just not good enough  and will get us nowhere when the next Flora Women’s marathon comes around – as it invariably does – much too soon for any grand training plans.

The  bread round is long done, the paper work too and as the day job of managing a busy household takes over, I sit in beautiful Café la Coco in Kilkenny and wait for the youngest son to be ready for collection. The others have actually done the bread round today, collected the flour and done the shopping while I struggle to see why I am busy. I did the bake this morning,  I did meet the principal of the school to try and iron out some trauma, I did deliver a small order to a neighbour, did some paperwork and made the pastry. Not really that busy is it?   While others prepare the dinner and prep for tomorrow, I sit and write in great comfort, will soon head back home to do my token bit of prep, eat some dinner and go to choir. As I failed to train properly, I have at least started singing. Another grand plan of 20 years standing, I have recently joined Thukolo choir, one of Kilkenny’s gospel choirs. I love it, look forward to our couple of performances in the coming month and can at least tick this off my own personal bucket list. Tomorrow, after the bread round ( which I am not doing again!!) I shall go and run. I already owe the other baker €60 in Shutterbug, the fantastic vintage shop,  as she manages to run and do her work at the same time. We walked the mini marathon together and we have a bet - €30 in Shutterbug if one manages the daily run and the other doesn’t.  She’s winning, she is 35 years younger than me and I won’t even see her at the run next year. I will have to work harder but hey, I wrote this today, didn’t I  - so tomorrow I run or possibly the next day ....

Apology to the normal morning person

After the bread round a few weeks ago, life got incredibly busy and we discovered that small things can throw our week out of kilter completely. First there was a drving test afternoon, then a brilliant open day in Kells Wholemeal in Bennettsbridge with a lovely lunch and lots and lots of new ideas. Then the open days started and for two nights the youngest baker had to check out secondary schools. Interesting, fun and good to do but they do eat into the night on the wrong side. By Friday morning, I had done three nights of under 5 hours each and my eyes hurt purely because they had not been closed long enough. Friday mornings – the day after the market in Kilkenny – are normally easy. Just the bread round, no apple pies and normally an easy stroll though a mornings routine. The junior baker, who does prep on Thursday evening after the market, normally gets the morning off because I can easily swing the show on my own. As I keep boasting – I am fast. On this Friday however, I was so slow, I was nearly in reverse as I struggled from dough to dough and was nearly overtaken by the rise of the yeast. The morning escalated into panic as I  dropped a new bulk bag of Butter milk on the floor and created a milk lake. Not only did the junior baker have to appear to save the day but the other - school going junior baker had to be pulled from his bed early as well to make sure we actually got out of the door in time. Pathetic start to a day as they both reasured me that I was not actually ill but just tired. Most people, they said, feel and act like this every morning and could I maybe in future show some sympathy with the normal morning person. Well, if that is true, if you non morning people, feel this terrible every morning, than I am sorry for talking before 7, sorry for trying to make plans before 7, for dealing with family logistics at breakfast and for even suggesting that you might like to pull yourselves together. I think non morning people should have a free morning pass because whatever they do in the mornings can not possibly be of any value to their employer. What a miserable life a non morning person leads in the morning. After the bread round will endeavour to be nicer to the others and never, ever again get so tired that a mornings work and an accidental buttermilk lake presents such a challenge. As another week starts, we plan and scheme how we can fit a working day into reasonable hours, have time for family and still have a night of longer than 5 hours. There are after all still things to be harvested out there. 

Gathering free food

 After the bread round, I try to take the dogs out for a walk most days. These days it is no great hardship as the sun persists in pretending it’s still summer and wonderful clear mornings have given way to sunny days by the time we get to go out. These days, walks are even better as the blackberries are beginning to ripen and it is proving to be a bumper year for fruit. Even the ancient wild damsons at the back of an old hays shed field are ladden down with fruit and free food is everywhere.  Last Sunday we had Blackberry pancakes and Blackberry lemonade and this week we are planning on damson cake, damson pudding and lots and lots and lots of damsons pickled in red wine and red wine vinegar – a secret family recipe that is spectacular. And then there is the elder trees turning to fruit and the crab apples and rosehips looking to be turned into jelly and juice. All free and all available in a hedgerow near you any time over the next month. Busy we may be, but nobody is too busy to pick fruit when the sun is shining. The hunter gatherer in me is still strong enough to enjoy this picking, especially away from the roads when the environmentalist can’t grumble too much about heavy metal residue. And the hunter gatherer also likes bottles and jars and freezers ( new age hunter gatherer here)  filled with products for the winter. This abundance of food compensates us for the loss of day light hours and lower temperatures. The cooking and preserving reminds us of long winters where the fruit will be welcome and distracts us from the Santa ads on the radio which seem to be earlier than ever and make me want to boycott the whole Christmas thing. Looking forward to the harvest festivals – we block out the other one and run with the free food, foraging and cooking over commerce, and spending and artifical magic. 

Buying and selling

After the bread round  - when we settle down to a day’s selling at some market, we first set up  our stall and look for customers and then we change tack and, turning into a customer, we start to shop at our neighbours and other stall holders while at the same time, they sidle around to ask to hold a baguette or a loaf and some Stromboli. On a Thursday in Kilkenny, Speltbakers stall is flanked by Coolanowl Organic Meat on one side and Hartley's Sea Foods on the other. Choice can be a hard thing and  so we alternate and eat meat one Thursday and fish the next. We indulge in the finest of steak or beautiful sausages or a great cut of salmon, tuna or haddock combined with Pat Hartley’s own tartar sauce. Then we wonder on to buy our veg and get a tea or a hot chocolate. We enviously look at the queue of the tourists as they wait patiently for the crepes or the delights of the Bula Bus, a great mobile restaurant. At other markets or fairs, we meet other small producers and sample their wares, see how we can combine our product, can we maybe supply bread to their sausages or baps to their burgers? We chat and exchange views and ideas, we learn from more experienced traders and help out or ask for help when we or them need to leave the  for a while. We plan the Christmas season in the beautiful weather of early autumn and we envy – kind of – all those intrepid souls that traded at the electric picnic last weekend. We listen to the feed back, the tiredness, the sore legs but also  the energy  that comes from being part of such a brilliant weekend and we scheme and plan again.  It is great to be part of the trading community, of those who produce artisan food and crafts and this community is a fantastic and invaluable resource – not only for the advice and help but also for the delicious food. Maybe, just maybe, we will try the electric picnic next year, build  ourselves a funky stall and sell hundreds of Stromboli. We reckon the Stromboli would sell but would I be able to stand the loud music – me who turns off the radio when I come into the bake house??