so far so good..

My Monday 'to do' list has now been completed & all the boxes ticked in the correct order. All the big orders for this week have now been sent in, just breads & cheeses for Friday. It's a case of making an 'educated' guess as to how much stuff you'll actually need. Things for example like fruit purees we tend to treble this time of year so as to ensure we have plenty stock piled in case there is a shortage later on. Talking about flavours, we had a very nice lady from France contact us today concerning vanillas from Madagascar. Well to cut the story to the main point, she is sending over a selection, some with pods others without. Should be interesting.

We do 2 vanilla, the royal bourbon which we call 'traditional vanilla' because, well it is. [Brian Turner liked that one] & a Mexican which has egg & vanilla pods, which we call 'creamee dreamee' vanilla. It tastes more like a creme anglaise & is very different from the trad van. Most elderly men go for the trad van. They stand & look at the display freezer, umming & arrhhing then plump for the vanilla. Never fails & if they really can't make their mind up at all[has been known] l just point out the trad van. Sooo much easier.

Hubby has got the first pasteurisation done today so Harry & Masoud will be making 400 ltrs chocolate ice cream all day tomorrow. We use a Belgian chocolate to which we add chocolate fudge brownie pieces. It has got to be the most mess-making ice cream ever. EVERYTHING gets covered in chocolate paste, it sticks like glue. We have a large industrial sized stick blender that whooshes the paste into the mix, this is a seriously big boys sized mixer, not for the faint hearted!

We have had to withdraw from attending the inaugural Hull Farmers market this Friday as, well, we have basically too much on this weekend with ice cream orders coming in for the weekend & getting ready for the 3 events over the bank holiday weekend. It's a shame & l wish them well, but you can only spread yourself so thin so to speak.

What else, ah yes. The Bird Man is still intending to come to do the Nature Walks with Hawk on Sunday. The plan is to park his birds beneath the trees alongside barn & then to take groups of visitors along the countryside stewardship path down to the sea, pointing out the various flora & fauna that just might be of interest. How successful it will be l have absolutely no idea, but l have requested that he organise the event & that the prices he charges per head are paid direct to him. Should be good, though this time he wont be able to do a flying display this time as the rally field is in use.

On a closing note, Gordon is moulting like mad at the moment. He's a traditional labrador with a double coat, fine 'down' next to his skin then black hair as the outer layer. Twice a year Gordon suffers from the 'grand moult', great clumps of hair standing out in tufts, wherever he goes, he leaves large skeins of fluff n hair. The veranda is constantly full of the stuff. On 'walkies' trips it's a case of giving him a good rub all over to release the clumps, with great drifts off the stuff dancing around in the wind. I'm sure he'll feel much cooler when the hair is all out & l can imagine that all the nesting birds have got marvelously lined nests care of Gordon!