Minimise time in the danger zone

I've been busy. Busy eating, mostly, since it's been Christmas and New Year since I last updated, but busy cooking up plans as well. And cooking up soup. Which is fortunate. I'm scaling up my own recipes and costing them out; the Geek has recruited some human volunteers to field-test my recipes and packaging in return for some honestly-completed questionnaires; I've found two potential artisan bread suppliers and I've passed the REHIS Food Handling and Hygiene certificate. I now know things about bacterial growth I'd really rather not, but have stuck memorably anyway, and I have this useful and handy chart. All food must minimise time in the danger zone:



I also now know exactly what Environmental Health will do to me if I allow so much as a smidgeon of smudge to besmirch my immaculate kitchen. That stuck memorably, too.

Business Gateway have been amazingly helpful. I've signed up for many of their courses, and today I met with one of their business advisers who gave me a wealth of information, just when I needed it. Just fabulous.

And also today, I went properly looking for premises for the first time. This is feeling very real, and after thinking through the advice I was given, completely achievable. I also feel, if I'm honest, properly confident for the first time since I bounded out of the front doors of my former employer, still-wet cheque in hand.

Which is a good thing, as last week I fluffed a recipe for the first time. Beetroot, ginger and lime soup with wasabi cream was what I'd planned. In my mind it was earthy and sweetly tangy, with a lovely little kick from the wasabi, which would then be cooled down by the cream. It was, instead, vile. Thin and sharp, not earthy at all, and not even tamarind could put this baby right. I blame the beetroot, personally, for being too big and watery, but the real disaster was the wasabi cream. Those ingredients don't marry; they divorce with instant effect. It was amazingly awful. Spectacularly bad. I'll try again; I'll roast the damned beetroot first next time and leave the wasabi powder on the shelf. In true Alanis style, however, I chose beetroot soup to illustrate my new temporary business cards:



Because she'd approve of the irony.*


*if my life has taught me one thing, it's that Alanis IS God, and you don't mess with her. Don't even THINK anything less than pixie dust and angel milk about her. Her memory is long and her reach infinite.