Tag Archives: breakfast

Whatever happened to Poets day?

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By “Poet’s day” I refer to the “Push off early, tomorrow’s Saturday” variety (and its less polite derivatives), not National Poetry Day, which is something completely different.

What starts with preparing a set of international breakfasts (England, Scotland, France, Germany, USA) and ends with preparing for apple pressing on Saturday? That’s right – Friday.

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International breakfasts

The kids, as usual, voted for the German Breakfast – salami, cheese and rye bread. The French (pain au chocolat), was second along with the American (pancakes and honey). English (toast and marmalade) and Scottish (overnight oats with fruit) came bottom.

I could have added a further breakfast by doing toast and Vegemite and calling it an  Australian breakfast but it didn’t work out well last time we tried it.

They may not be the best examples of national breakfasts but we have time and cash constraints with these presentations. I’m not about to cook a dozen Full English breakfasts, for instance, and last time we made proper Scottish porridge the kids put so much sugar in it the healthy eating message was well and truly buried under a heap of calories.

So – shopping, breakfast for 12 kids, Men in Sheds (where we had tools, mugs and jam jars donated), back for apple pressing demo, replace fuse in electric scratter, press juice for someone in return for donation of apples and pears, clean up, blog, get ready for tomorrow’s pressing, set Saturday Cafe up, make overnight oats for cafe, home, sleep in front of TV. I think that’s all.

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Routing the arrow signs for the footpaths

I’m slightly worried that things are going too well.

A blog in in which fingers are mentioned

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I’ve been sleeping badly for the last few nights because I have a painful finger. Yes, that’s right, the large bearded man is whining about his finger. Sorry, but it hurts and I can’t get to sleep.

I know it doesn’t measure up to the pain of childbirth and stuff like that, and I realise that having to open bottles with my left hand isn’t officially recognised as a disability but it’s amazing how a little thing like that can affect your life.

Probably the worst thing is the uhtceare. (Read the list behind this link by all means, but if you are one of those people who thinks in pictures, do not click the link in Number 9). Yes, fitful sleep causes a constant state of uhtceare, and for a man that has a lot to regret, this is not good. The result was that I travelled to work this morning wishing I didn’t have to go. This is very unusual.

Now, just in case you are thinking of telling me, as Julia does, that “it’s just arthritis”, stop and pause a minute – I don’t want to be told that bits of my body have entered old age.

Anyway, things got better when I reached the farm. The new apple press and scratter have arrived! We can now travel with and demonstrate pressing in schools (if anybody wants us while we have apples) and we can use it for the juicing days (starting from 12th September) instead of having to set the big one up to do a bucket of apples. That’s why the picture at the top of the blog shows two cardboard boxes. Not a very interesting picture by most standards, but quite exciting for me.

We had a nice steady flow of breakfast, there wasn’t much I needed to do and it was all very relaxed.I met the author of the nottsvillages blog, showed several people the visiting Painted Lady (it came back!), secured the offer of a moth trap, found a volunteer to do the job of Santa (let’s face it, I’m not a natural), took details from someone who wants to help with the bread group and took £10 after we were supposedly closed.

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As if that wasn’t enough, I also took the name of another baker, persuaded someone to come and do crafts at our Winter Event and had a good look round Project Molish (which started this weekend).

That, in the language of my youth, is a result!

I’m tired now – time for tea and cake, I think.

Green Care in Nottinghamshire, Care Farms and SEO Optimisation

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Yes, it’s a dull title, but read on and all will be revealed.

Today, after helping with the breakfast for the “Breakfast and Yoga” event and ejecting a number of slugs from the polytunnels, I thought it was time to get more serious with this blogging stuff. First search was for Search Engine Optimisation.

I’d remembered it in the very early days, when I managed to get “Green Care” into the first line, but I’ve drifted off course since then. In fact, having just checked Green care Nottingham on Google, I’ve drifted so far I’ve dropped off the edge. If you offer dental care or pet care or run a care home that in any way is greenish you will be mentioned ahead of me. The farm is there on page 3 with the old website but apart from that there’s six pages of nothing to do with us.

Prepare to hear the words “green” and “care” more often.

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It was a different story with care farm nottinghamshire. Top entry is the Ecocentre website, second is the old farm website, third is Chesterfield Community Care Farm which is in Derbyshire and has a Sheffield post code (though it mentions Nottinghamshire on its site). At that point I was beginning to worry. Fourth is Care Farming UK and fifth is a Nottingham-based food blogging site written by the second-best blogger in the area. Modesty prohibits me naming the best one…

I am mentioned several times in the food blog, so thanks for that Marcus, you’re actually more attractive to search engines when writing about Care Farms on a food blog than I am writing about Green Care and Care Farms on a Care Farm blog. Not quite sure about this SEO malarky but repeating Green Care and Care Farm in a subtle and contextual manner is, I’m told, a good thing.

I was then offered a free lunch and some friends came to visit, so I lost interest in SEO and started thinking about gardening and life again as we drank mint tea brewed from mint that had been standing inoffensively in the garden thinking of bees and rain, or whatever they think about, less than 10 minutes earlier. It can be a hard life at times, but this wasn’t one of those times.

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Sorry, just noticed an omission – I didn’t tell you that this blog is sixth on the list. Not bad, but considering we’re behind a defunct website, a Derbyshire Care Farm and a food blog, I really should do better.

Out of the frying pan…

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We had a booking for 16 breakfasts this morning, and I was planning on being around as back-up because 16 breakfasts is a lot to prepare and serve at one time when you have seven ingredients and only four rings.

I’ve only done the breakfasts once before and it ended badly.  Fortunately we had the regular…ah, there’s the problem. On Friday night I had a text saying “you know how we joked about me going off sick to avoid the 16 breakfasts…”. I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks. Fortunately we have a group of five cooks who take it in turns so a back-up was no problem. Well, actually it was. Two had other plans, one was already doing the pizzas at East Bridgford Show (with 25 kg of dough that I mixed on Friday night) and one hasn’t replied yet.

That all leads to one conclusion – I was in for a tough morning.

To put it in perspective, it wasn’t as bad as the start that the regular cook was experiencing, as she had texted early to tell me she was in hospital.  (I’m not being insensitive referring to the “regular cook” by the way – just respecting her privacy).

Nor was it as bad as the start they were having in East Bridgford.

No point worrying though, I had my trusty chafing dish ready, I had new fuel tins and I had the experience garnered from my last disastrous day in the kitchen.  I even had floral decorations prepared by Julia the night before. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out – nothing.

One of the neighbours pitched in to help with the egg cookery (not my strongest area), the party of 16 smiled and ignored the smoke and swearing that accompanies my breakfast-cooking antics.

You can tell all you need to know about my egg cookery from the fact that I dropped four poached eggs and was able to catch two when they bounced back from the floor.

They may have been slightly overdone, though, being lightly dusted with detritus from the floor, nobody had to test them out.

All in all, a successful day, though I forgot my camera so I don’t have any photos to prove it.

 

Breakfast at Scriffany’s

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OK, it’s not quite breakfast at the better known Tiffany’s but I’ve just been asked if I can take a booking for one of our Saturday morning cafe sessions. It threw me slightly because I had the office phone put through to my mobile to prevent the yoga class being disturbed. I never know whether it’s a call for me or the centre for the first few seconds, and the words “Can I book breakfast for fourteen?” left me sitting there with my mouth open.

So there it is – full English breakfast for fourteen. Birthday party (do you think candles in the sausages will be going over the top? Or sparklers?). I’ll be seating them under the awning, reserving the tables and picking a few wild flowers for the middle of the table. I’ll also assist in the kitchen because with just one four ring hob and no bain marie breakfast for fourteen is going to be a tad on the hectic side. I may press one of my chafing dishes into service, Maybe both of them, though I’m going to have to buy more tins of fuel.

I’m also going to have to remember that after use they have a remarkable amount of soot under them. The black hand prints on the car upholstery took some getting off last time.

This is when your jack of all trades status is called into question. Can the man who does the gardens and the blog, the marketing and the teaching sessions on baking and beetles, manage a simple breakfast for fourteen? I didn’t do too well when I had to do breakfast for nine a few months ago, though there were extenuating circumstances.

On the other hand I can do a sit-down three course meal for 40, so why not give it a go? I’m only going to be assisting after all so if it goes wrong I can blame the cook. That’s another of my many skills – management. Or passing the buck as it is also known.

 

Birds, frogs and staying inside while my wife gets cold

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Life only seems to have two themes at the moment – birds and paperwork.

Last week it was the Big Farm Birdwatch, this week is National Nest Box week. We have some boxes to put up so it’s a good memory jogger to have the week.

Meanwhile, after having another memory jog (this time in the slightly menacing form of an Environmental Health Officer), it’s time to go through the kitchen diary. It’s a bit like the frog boiling exercise so beloved of management gurus – we’ve changed a few things over the last couple of years and although it doesn’t seem a big thing at the time it accumulates to become a major change.

When we had the kitchen registered, and I first filled in the handbook, we were mainly doing bread and (vegetarian) pizza sessions with schools, youth groups and our own bread group.

We were also catering for the shoot about 8 times a year, and we added catering for groups using the centre. Open farm Sunday came round and we used it for the weekend and when someone suggested opening as a Saturday morning Cafe it didn’t seem like a big jump.

But when someone from outside arrives and points out all the changes, you suddenly realise what the words “victim of your own success” mean. In our case they mean that although we’ve been producing a quality breakfast and have plenty of repeat custom we don’t have, for instance, an up-to-date list of suppliers, or ingredients used in the kitchen or allergens or…well the list goes on.

I must add here, if only for the sake of the cafe’s reputation, that frog isn’t on the menu and we have no intention of adding it.

Looking on the bright side, while I’ve been inside risking RSI to both my tryping fingers Julia and the group have been outside in the pouring rain doing useful and healthy things.

Useful, healthy, cold and wet things. Ah well!

More breakfast

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We had a new experience yesterday – five sample breakfasts for 38 pupils at the local school, followed by a vote on which they preferred.

We had:

English (toast and marmalade)

French (pain au chocolat)

German (cheese and sausage on black bread)

American (pancakes and syrup)

Australian (Vegemite and toast)

To be fair, we weren’t showing English and Australian breakfasts in the best light but we needed something that was easy to do.

The results were:

French – 12

American – 10

German – 8

English – 6

Australian – 0

It doesn’t add up to 38 but it’s close. As usual with these things the unhealthy options got the most votes!

For more world breakfasts click the link.

 

 

Breakfast!

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We had a simple breakfast this morning – just cereal and fresh fruit. It’s part of my new regime. It was a good thing I didn’t have too much because I ended up with a second breakfast as part of the National Breakfast Week campaign. The second one was porridge with fruit. I’m feeling quite virtuous at the moment. And full.

It’s a very important meal is breakfast, and it’s currently a political issue with Blackpool council becoming the first in England to provide free breakfasts for all school children. I’m not sure about this – I’m happy to see all kids getting a decent breakfast but I don’t see why the parents should be let off the hook. If you aren’t prepared to feed them you shouldn’t have kids. That’s just my view of course, not the farm view and definitely not the view of the touchy-feely modern world.

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Here’s a picture of us eating porridge and a link to Mary’s meals to remind us all that some kids go to school hungry for reasons other than lazy parents.

Students again

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We were greeted by the increasing guineafowl flock this morning, including the whites and the lavenders. They all seem to have left the shelter of the poultry field and be roaming round as a 30 strong pack making permanant alarm calls. We’ve now had several complaints from the farmer’s mum so Something Must Be Done. Just before lunch he reminded the lads they needed to catch a dozen to send to market with the pigs tomorrow.

You know what?

I can still hear them but I can’t see a single one of them. I know they can’t understand us so there must have been something in the body language that alerted them. Smart birds, guineafowl.

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Apprentices 0 Guineafowl 1.

There’s a good coating of ice today and the group of students we have visiting find the first job of the day is breaking ice on the outside water troughs. I think it’s the first time that many of them have experienced the idea that water can’t be guaranteed. It’s more of a shock than the cold. To be fair to them they have all brought the right clothes for the day (unlike the Monday course) so the cold isn’t that bad. There is, as we always say, no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing.

We won a prize for championing farming as a career two years ago. Not sure the weather is helping us today.

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I’m currently wearing a short-sleeved shirt despite the ice, and I’m trying to look like I’m enjoying it. That’s what happens when you have several black and white checked shirts, middle-aged eyes and get dressed in the half-light without turning the lights on.

We treated ourselves to an extra hour in bed because we’ve been waking each other up with the coughs that refuse to go. That meant we had to rush out with no breakfast though we did find time to stop and buy some to eat in the car. You always do, don’t you?

That’s the 21st century – rush, profligate spending on poor nutrition and a general feeling that I could do better. I’ll have to do better on Monday – it’s National Breakfast Week! OF course, in line with modern marketing techniques it’s know as Shake up your Wake up!. It doesn’t even make sense. Grumble, grumble…better in my day…

On the positive side we saw goldcrests in the conifers by the chicken field yesterday. They are surprisingly common according to the figures but you don’t often see one. Normally you hear the high-pitched squeak they make but, likethe somg of the skylark the ability to hear goldcrests declines with age. I haven’t heard a skylark for ages, or a bat for 30 years,  and am now worried I may have reached the age where I can’t hear goldcrests.

However, it could just be that the skylark is down to a tenth of the population it had 30 years ago. That’s probably sadder than my toughts of deafness. And to round off with a strange coincidence – I’ve just had an email on my phone “Alzheimer’s Disease is now following you on Twitter”.

Not sure what to make of that.

😉