A Year In Redwood

The focus this week has been on food…. in one way or the other!

The week started with a present from one of our neighbours of some of their own lamb – which we enjoyed with with our own potatoes and our own broccoli!  A good start to the week.

One little piggy went to market last week and sales of the resultant pork went so well, we’ve ended up with none for ourselves!  A bit sad as I was really looking forward to having some of our own pork…  Only solution is to schedule another piggy to go to market next week.  I guess I’d better apologize once again to our friend, Rory (www.flagshipscuba.ie) who had booked some pork, but as family had to hold back, and there still wasn’t enough to fulfill orders, friends orders had to be included to stock the orders!  I’m sure, in time, despite all the slagging that is going on he will forgive me!

Animal levels have decreased sizeable this week, as goats also went to animal heaven!  I had never tasted goat before, and had to do a ‘google’ to find recipes despite the fact that I have millions of recipe books – none of them covered goat!  Anyway, we had goat for dinner last night.  I found a site that gave a load of recipes and decided to try their goat satay which was really nice.  I’ve put a picture down below for you all to see.  It is good to learn something new, and something I learned yesterday was that goat-meat is eaten in more households worldwide on a daily basis than any other meat!  Also it is extremely low in fat and cholesterol…. so generally an all round good meat to be eating!

Our turkey stock has also been reduced in size this week – no, we haven’t eaten one ahead of Christmas – but we had a visit from a fox who tried to get away with one.  The fox did manage to kill the turkey, but didn’t get away with it – we think Buddy disturbed that.  So we are left with 3 turkeys for Christmas.

On a food theme, but not eating it, I am currently doing a part-time course at National College of Ireland in Entrepreneurship, and as part of the course I have to complete an assignment, i.e. a Business Plan.  After much deliberation I have chosen to do the Business Plan on developing a brand and market for our products here in Old Farm.  As the deadline for submission is 18th November the Business Plan has been a bit of a noose around my neck all week….  Not sure how I am going to get it finished in time, but am working towards that deadline!  It’s no wonder that I feel this week is so about food…. if I’ve not been writing about pork products, we’ve been selling and delivering it!

Then to cap it all I got this notion to bake last night.  I hate when that happens.  You’ve no longer started to do something like that and half an hour later you are wondering why did I start!  But start I did, so I had to finish.  I made some Apple & Cinnamon Muffins which I hadn’t made in probably a year.  They were something that I was making on a weekly basis last year when Yvonne and I were doing Birr Market.

That’s something I’ve not mentioned before… our days at Birr Market.  The idea came about over a glass of wine or two – as all good ideas do!  Even the brand name ‘MY food’ (yes, Margaret & Yvonne = MY) came out of a glass or two of wine!  Yvonne runs Hey Pesto! a boutique catering company specializing in canapes but last year we put our talents together and decided to try out the Country Market scene.  Birr was chosen just from a convenience perspective.  Of course, typically we chose to start in October!  Anyway every Saturday we were there with our jams, chutneys, preserves, breads, cakes, biscuits.  So one of my jobs was Apple & Cinnamon Muffins (a recipe from The Big Apple Association recipe book) freshly baked every Saturday morning.  We enjoyed the market despite the cold! We may go back and look at the country market thing again, but we would need a larger population centre, and in reality that would mean targeting perhaps Dublin – and I’m not convinced about all that that would involve!

In my baking frenzy last night I also made some of Darina Allen’s scones….

And continuing on the food theme for this week – I am currently reading Julie & Julia – is it any wonder I feel surrounded by food this week!