Evening all,
May is almost finished and I've managed to survive a very busy month. Between juggling the shop duties, chutney cooking, jar labelling and car-packing, I've managed to spend 9 days selling Cardiff City Centre and a manic 2 days in the Gower Heritage Centre in Parkmill.
Cardiff was fun; a pretty slow 9 days with regards to sales but it's so much fun having time to spend interacting with customers and actually being able to talk about my business and all that it entails. Usually in these food fest it's a smash-and-grab whirlwind of chaos so having a slow, laid back event was a blessing. Especially as I'd spend the previous 3 weeks cooking like a madman and filling almost 1000 bottles and jars with various chutneys, marmalades, jams and sauces. I was staying up with a friend on mine (Becky) so I didn't have 2 hours of commuting every day which was really nice, which meant I was able to catch up with some friends I hadn't seen in AGES and have some well deserved ciders.
On the 24th and 25th I was down Gower for their food festival: that was a whirlwind smash-and-grab event. I took enough jars and bottles with me and unpacked them all on the first day thinking they would last 2 days... Nope, sold out of almost everything on the first day and needed an emergency restock for the second day. Now, Cardiff market was still going on at this point (my parents were doing the final 2 days for me), and all my surplus marmalade stock was up there; unfortunately Gower has no signal whatsoever but through a miracle I had managed to get one bar and sent a marmalade SOS to my mother before the signal disappeared again. By the time I got home the Cardiff market had long shut down for the night, so I had worked myself in to a right state thinking I'd have no more marmalade for the following day (it's amazing that these are my life problems...!) Anyway, my superhero father and brilliant boyfriend has spoken during the day and arranged to meet halfway between Swansea and Cardiff and hand over a few boxes of marmalade. Phew! Panic over.
The second day at Gower was equally as busy, which is absolutely fantastic!
Going to these markets and food festivals is by far my favourite part of the job (although I do love the gardening side, and cooking is pretty fun too). To watch people's (positive) reactions when they try my preserves is amazing, and it's such a confidence boost! It's hard spending all day, every day in the kitchen and alone just cooking all the time. It's long and lonely and there's only so many times you can listen to the same songs over and over on the radio. But to be able to pack the car with boxes of jars, and go out and meet all the people who love to eat the preserves I spend hours and hours making is well worth all the labour in the kitchen. I love my job more and more every day, and I suppose that's a pretty incredible thing to be able to say.
So, now that my store room is pathetically empty, I need to start cooking again. I've made a few contacts through these food festivals and markets and have some wholesale orders that I need to make, and potentially a new outlet in mid-Wales which is also exciting. Oscar's Kitchen is getting busier and busier, which is amazing.
Hope everyone is well,
Ruth & Oscar
p.s. I'm spending a day this week experimenting; I'm going to try and make some homemade fruit gummy sweets. Will be taking pictures through the whole process and will let you all know how well/bad/disastrous it goes!
