What have you got for harvest time?

Sing it with me:        ‘Somebody’s got some local, organic sausages,

                                Somebody’s got some local organic sausages,

                                Somebody’s got some local organic sausages,

                                To put on the harvest table’

Ahh that song brings back some memories; the parquet floor, my grey pinafore dress, Miss Sutton hammering away on the out of tune piano as the September sunlight streamed into the lunch hall.

I dearly hope that it was not just Liphook Infant and Junior Schools who sang this song every year for their harvest festival, in my mind it was as common as ‘We plough the fields and scatter’, anybody with me?  Back then it was always tins of beans and chocolate biscuits on the harvest table anyway.

That has all changed, thank fully,  as we will indeed be serving delicious local, organic Lambourne sausages and very local free range eggs in hand made flatbreads with salad, onions and homemade ketchup at the City Harvest Festival this Saturday (22^nd) at Capel Manor in Enfield.  Renee has skilfully hand made nearly 200 delicious flatbreads this week and we are keen for you all try them along with some wonderful, local as you can possibly get organic meat.  Yummy.  In keeping with the Harvest theme I will be preparing some fruit and veggie themed cakes: Velvet chocolate beetroot, lemon drizzle, feisty ginger squares and squash muffins.  Our old favourites tea, real coffee and organic apple juice will, of course, be available too.  If you prefer vegan cuisine, come and visit our friends at Norman Loves Soup who will be serving nearby.  Who wants digestives and tins of mushy peas when all this is on offer?  There will also be lots of family fun and chances to meet the animals. 

http://www.capelmanorgardens.co.uk/events/city-harvest-festival.html

Renee and I are very excited to be part of this. It is going to be a wonderful day. We hope to see you there.  Now it’s back to planning the baking….only 150 portions to make by Friday…good job I love it!

It's not about the ..........

No offense Jessie J, but I am inclined to think that you are left to simply ‘make the world dance’ because the ‘money, money, money’ is already taken care of, by your record contract presumably.

Although our little company was born out of a passion for change, we are very much beholden to the bank, or rather the grant, in order to get it off the ground.  My kids love that song and I am very taken with the sentiment; being motivated by belief, not image and cash is admirable, aspirational even, but you sort of need the cash stash too, or it remains just a just a dream.  I am sure this is no revelation to you!

Yet there is a beacon of hope on the horizon, we have been provisionally awarded a grant by the lovely folks at Awards for All.  Hooray, cue the music, balloons, dancers and most importantly…. the dishwasher!  Renee and I are extremely excited and mentally spending it on delightful equipment for the kitchen.  No more ‘crazy cat lady’ stares and comments as we drag our blenders around the corner in shopping trollies, no more piling the dishes high on the tiny draining rack, HUZZAH! Of course we must be more measured in reality.  The money is not ours until it is in the bank and there are strict parameters about what we can spend it on, but each and every item will be needed and cherished. We can also set about planning a celebration event with games, merchandise, free food and entertainment, just as we dreamed.  I am feeling blessed.

Please do not think that my opening rant is change of heart on my part.  ABSOLUTELY NOT.  I am as much now as I have always been and always will be a believer in living according to your beliefs and morals; my ideals, my faith and my family will always be my motivators.  I guess my point is that you have to work bloomin’ hard to put the wheels in motion and get the help you need, financial or otherwise.  

Somewhere a clock is ticking....

….and that place is right here: we should hear about our pivotal funding within the next 24 hours!  I am not saying pivotal merely to be prosaic, we will have to rethink pretty much everything if it doesn’t come in.  Partially because we have been awarded funds from another body on the proviso that we get significant financial backing from somewhere else too and partly because neither of us has a spare £8,000 under the bed, who does?!  My chest feels tight just thinking about it!

That said, Filling the Gap N15 will re-open on September 28^th, come what may.  Even if it’s with the same bare bones of equipment that we ran the pilot with and even if we have to operate on a café to café basis; Renee and I will be there serving the healthy, affordable food you love, with a smile.

If that’s just too darn long to wait, you could always visit us at Capel Manor for the City Harvest Festival on Saturday September 22^nd from 10am to 4pm.  Renee will be serving some delicious local, organic sausages with flat breads and salad and I’ll be rustling up some home-made cakey delights too.  It’s a very family friendly affair, so bring the kids to meet the animals and join in the fun.  Some friends of ours, Norman Loves Soup, will be there too, serving yummy vegan fare.  Hope you can make it.

On a slightly lighter note, hope you all had lovely summers.  Renee had fabulous weather in France, whilst my tent partially blew down in Devon!  Fortunately the local Cider and ruby red steak made up for it!  I mustn’t moan, I love the west county and we had tons of fun exploring beaches and rock pools during our week on Cornwall.  We didn’t camp for long and I’m not sure I ever will again.  The site and tent were lovely, but 4 days of being cold is more than I can stand.  Yes, I am a wuss who likes dry clothes and walls and roofs that are made of bricks!  Maybe I’ve just been living in the city too long, nah, not possible, I love it here.  Oh and thank you, Snow Patrol for the title!

Stumbling blocks or chances to climb?

This is my attempt at optimism, being Eeyore not Tigger, it’s not my natural state.   So, the initial grant application did not come through.  Blast and botheration!  The reason was microscopic, but undeniable, so we have made changes and resubmitted.  Although that might not seem like too much of a stumbling block, it does rather delay everything we want and had planned to do in the autumn.  Also, having been knocked back once, our confidence has taken a bit of a hit and we are reluctant to set anything in stone without the assurance that cash is coming.  Having no funds is less of a stumbling block and more of a giant boulder.

Which is where my second metaphor, and hopefully the old Scottish stubbornness, kick in.  Faced with the decision to carry on with the café and food festival come autumn, or to sit, wait and circle the drain of despair, Filling the Gap N15 has decided to take the high road, ‘climb every mountain’ and use this giant sized boulder in our way as an opportunity to climb.  In other words, we’re going to do it anyway – so there!  The tiny profit we had accrued from the pilots will serve to facilitate the food festival and we will just have to open the café in September with nothing but loyal customers and a keen sense of willingness.  Certainly, the much desired equipment and big party (can’t really call it a grand opening event anymore, but we will celebrate) will have to wait, but we have coped up until now and we will prevail.  The café and business mean too much to us to cave in at this latest and largest of hurdles, even if it is a huge one.  If it doesn’t work, then at least we’ll know we went down fighting.  Yet at the heart of it all, we still truly believe that it can and it will.  This will be enough to drive us one and I am eternally grateful that our families aren’t entirely financially reliant on us yet.  That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger!

Pregnant Pause

I’d like to start by saying that neither Renee or myself are with child, I am merely referring to the fact that although the café will be on hiatus for a couple for months, we will be madly busy in expectation and planning of the wonderful things that are to come.  No that babies aren’t lovely and all that, but I’m very happy and blessed with my two, thank you very much.

Slow roasted pork or paneer skewers with painted hills potatoes and crispy salad were enjoyed by all last Friday.  Jenai was back in the dining room and Matthew had his maiden voyage in the kitchen.  Turns out, he had been hiding his light under a bushel and he is a great cook.  In fact, he will be guest cheffing for us in the autumn, in between climbing sheer rock faces, gigging and all the other amazingly cool things he does for fun which I really admire, but make me feel old!  All went well, with a steady stream of customers.  The clumsiness gremlins only made a brief appearance, but long enough for me to break 2 cafetieres and very nearly fall head first over the sofa.  Nobody was sitting on it at the time, fortunately.

So as the summer, well at least the school holidays, begin, we press the pause button on serving food on Fridays and shift into over-drive on getting everything perfect for the grand opening in October.  Thanks to all of you who have done the pilot journey with us. 

Watch this space…………WE’LL BE BACK.

With a little help from our friends

When the cheese cake hit the fan big time on Friday morning, Matthew, Malcolm and Debbie swooped in, capes flapping in the breeze, to rescue us.

All was well, all was planned; Renee and Malcolm had devoted much of Thursday to producing a delicious feast of dhal, two types of curry (chicken and veg), salad, raita and poppadoms.  Then Friday and I arrived with calamity tucked into our back pockets!  I am known for being extremely organised and uncontrollably clumsy in equal measure, merely one of many ridiculous contradictions that is me, I like to think the two things balance each other out, sort of.  Anyway, it would seem that I left my organised self sleeping on Friday morning and a Mr Bean-esque persona took her place; bumbling, disorientated and disorganised, not exactly the kind of person you want in the kitchen!

I forgot scales, ingredients and failed to notice limes which were cunningly hidden in plain sight, so I had to interrupt the Taylor’s breakfast time, sorry Renee.  Whilst Malcolm calmly and expertly finished and perfected his culinary masterpiece, I flapped and flailed, but somehow eventually produced a subayon which tasted great, but lacked at little in the presentation department.  It was only as half past nine approached that I realised that we were going to be one down; our key player Jenai could not make it today.  We were about to trial our new ordering system – how could this be happening?  My head started to spin, I thought I might pass out and sent a call up to the heavens for sanity and back up. 

That was when the phone rang.   The heavens delivered Debbie to us as guest waitress for the day.  Matthew helped me set up and made a delicious fruit salad before disappearing of to climb something in the rainy Peak District and it all worked swimmingly.  Perhaps the catastrophe was all in my head!  We saw many smiling and enthusiastic new faces alongside our faithful, fantastic familiar ones and sold out of curry before I could even dip a poppadum in the sauce.  Our fabulous friends even stayed and helped with the clearing up.  Thank you Debbie and Malcolm for services above and beyond the call of duty, we owe your family.  I hope we didn’t out you off ever helping us again.

So my quotation might have been a little predictable, but at 9.30am the brilliant outcome of the day could not have been.  I had given in to panic, but nothing played out as I had expected.  Shame on my lack of faith.  Fear not future customers, I have duly chagrined myself, banished Mr Bean and, moreover, Jenai is back for Friday, so please come and join us for a lunch this Friday.  Please.

Spicing things up

It's curry week at Filling the Gap N15 courtesy of our première guest chef, Malcolm.  We will be providing the much needed warmth that the British summer has, once again, failed to.

There will, of course, be a meat and a vegetarian option, both equally delicious and enticing you to scoop them up with a home-made poppadom, yummy.  We will be cooling things down with key lime pie or zingy fresh fruit salad for dessert. Don't worry, we have kept the spiciness elegant and child-friendly.  Malcolm is a dad of three and assures us that his recipe is a family favourite.

Hurry to join us, as there are only two sessions left before our summer "break".  I do not use these quotation marks lightly, which is a pet hate of mine, by the way ("Get well soon" just seems rude!)  Although we won't be opening again until October (gasp, sob!) our time will be spent chasing up the funding applications, getting the kitchen up to scratch and most excitingly planning our opening event for Saturday October 6th.  Funding applications have been sent out and prayers have been sent up, but come hell or high water, we will be open from October. It would just be great to do so with some funding under our belts.
October seems like a long time, but all these stinky, adminy gremlins must be conquered so we can get back to the real business we enjoy; serving food to our community.  With some fun in the sun (hopefully, rain, rain go away) and a couple of sandcastles with the kids thrown in, the autumn will soon come around.  Who knows, it might even we warm enough to eat outside by then!