The Panini Scale

It's always astonishing when you realise that someone knows you better than you know yourself. Last night, I had the perfect demonstration of that, courtesy of The Geek.

I have been swithering, to use a great Scots term, about Union being a pure soup cafe - soup, salad, gorgeous breads and nothing else. The menu streamlined; the cafe specialising in soups; the numbers of soups on offer increasing as time goes on. Rather like Ali Yeganeh's Soup Man in New York - we do soup. If you don't want soup, don't come in here. I like that attitude; that robust confidence to stand by your original idea.

However, the thought of turning away sandwich-seeking customers makes me twitch a bit. As I get more nervous about this, I start to widen the menu options to include sandwiches, even though I don't want Union to be yet another Edinburgh sandwich shop. Then I fret that I'm wandering away from the original idea, and then the frets grow.

The Geek knew of these switherings before I was properly aware of them, and now I realise that I swing from being totally confident in the soup-only business model to panicking about it. Thus my confidence (or lack of) can be plotted on the Panini Scale:




In other news, I may be embarking on a renaming exercise for some of my soups. The soup trialists got cream of courgette and spinach this week. Something about this made me ask them if they'd choose this soup from a cafe menu. Almost all of them said 'no' - but they all loved the taste. One of the triallists said I should call the soup 'The Big Green', as the spinach-and-courgette name sounded depressingly healthy. I like that. Not sure what made me ask them that question - must have been irking away in the back of my mind as well. It has, though, reinforced the idea of letting customers have a taste before they buy. That then led me to the 'semi Genius' and 'full Genius' - a lunch serving of multiple smaller portions of soup. 'Full Genius' is all six. Semi ... well, guess.

And I tried a new bakery this week; Bakery Andante in Morningside. Which has left me with a rather annoying earworm.

a three-soup day

Soup trials are going well. I'm experimenting on the folks in The Geek's workplace. I started meekly, with a minestrone followed by cream of mushroom (ha! but this cream of mushroom tastes like a forest floor)(in a good way), but this week's offering is a little more outre: sweetcorn, chipotle chile and lime, from Yotam Ottolenghi, via my tinkerings. It's utterly gorgeous. Though it's rather immodest to say so, but maybe not, as it's not my invention. Though I have tinkered. At a course last week, we were told that the Brits, and Scots in particular, are terribly bad at self-promotion. I had my brand-new business cards in my bag, announcing the launch of Union of Genius to the world. "Have a large, self-promoting gauntlet", I said, as I handed a card to the tutor. And then tiptoed off.

So, today I've cooked up a lot of soup, but by daily cafe standards, it's a mere bagatelle. I have, however, picked up the Geek's challenge: to make a breakfast soup. I thought what I like for breakfast when I'm away, and hungry, and in need of a comfort-food splurge - bacon, sausage, egg, hash browns, tomato. I've taken the essence of that -



- and turned it into soup. What I have is a potato and sausage base, with crispy bacon, pepadew peppers and tomato topping, and an egg flower on top of the topping. As a first attempt, I rather like it. I wonder if it'll catch on? Here it is:



It wasn't bad, actually. The soup base was rich and savoury and the general consensus was that the soup needed some bits of sausage in it, as well as the bacon. The egg flower, though, was a definite hit.

In other news, I've been looking at premises, and nothing seems quite right for any number of different reasons. It's early days. I started looking at property with the thought that by starting early, I'd have lots of time to find a good spot. Unfortunately, my forward-planning brain has interpreted my failure to find the perfect place in three weeks as an impending sign of certain doom. Someone, please tell my critical faculties to go put their feet up for a little while, eh?

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.

First day working for the new boss

Here's the view from my new office window this morning:




I like my new office. It's very homely.

It's been snowing for over a week now. My last week at work was defined by the worst November weather since the year I was born. And my last trip to Keyworth was cancelled because of the snow. While it's a pity I didn't get to say goodbye to the folk I'd worked with for the last ten years, I didn't lose sleep over it. I'm already in touch with the folk I want to stay in contact with; I have a list of folk I'll contact when Union is closer to opening, and the rest can face into the mists of memory. I think the mists of memory might be something like London Peculiars - sudden, impenetrable and dense. I appear to have assimilated the fact that I'm not going back remarkably quickly, and although it's less than a week since I walked out the door (humming 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, for which I blame Kev Becken), already it feels like another lifetime.

I took a few days holiday last week. It was great. Off into town to buy myself some warm clothes for homeworking in - feels weird explaining this, but for the last ten years I've gone to work looking smart, in skirt-based work-clothes. If I do the cliched working-at-home-in-pyjamas, I'll lose all sense of discipline, and the boundary between working and leisure time will vanish. I need to keep the distinction clear, so I now have a working wardrobe for my new job. I also mixed business with pleasure - I went to the Foodies event on Friday, and on Friday night I went to the Vegware Christmas party. On my own. Knowing no-one there - just the sort of thing I hate doing. It was great. Drank too much and talked all evening, but I have my packaging supplier sorted, and found out about the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce.

So, today is my first day at work. I'm writing a project plan, then doing proper research into business start-up. This feels amazing. I'm not even going to say it's terrifying anymore - I'm starting something which I've always wanted to do, and it feels wonderful. Although I am now at the end of the plankwalk, and while my fabulous husband tells me the fins below me are porpoises and the flapping birds overhead are not vultures but bluebirds, I'm still not entirely convinced.

Nelson Mandela

well, that was an eventful week.

A two-day visit to the East Midlands wrapped up with a meeting with my favourite shaven-headed bully-boy, who asked if I was still 'minded to leave'. I said yes. He responded with an exit package offer, available now. I grabbed it. That was Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning I typed an email accepting the offer on my blackberry. As 'A Fistful of Dollars' came on the pod, I hit 'send'. Bingo. As of Monday 22 November, I have seven more days of paid work. Then I leave with a cheque and a strange feeling of delirium.

This does feel strange. Earlier today, I was ecstatic and terrified in equal measure. Right now, I'm more balanced and feeling a lot calmer, but flatter, about the whole thing. On one hand, I have got what I want - my intolerable and intolerant workplace has paid me to leave. On the other, I'm not ready - I'm leaving six months before I wanted to be, and before I'm prepared in any way for the next step. On the gripping hand, this is as good a time as any. I've always needed a crisis to kick me into action, and this is one hell of a kick.

Today, I went into town, paid a repeat visit to Frederick's for lunch, then went onto Artisan Roast, where I had another coffee in a fabulous atmosphere of roasting coffee and warm air. It's one of those places which attracts the dreadlocked cool Forest Cafe-type folk, but I got the contact info I needed, and will set up a meeting to talk training and supply.

I have so much to learn. But it's all do-able; it's a project, and I'll project-manage myself ruthlessly.

I am stunned that I'm leaving work in seven days. And utterly, utterly delighted.

woooooo

I'm having a wobble.

This will, I suspect, be this first of many, but it feels like a major one. I've been burned by the intertubes once this year already, so I'm not about to spill all my wobbles into the vast ocean of outpourings that washes around us all, but suffice to say that my day-job and I have reached an agreement whereby it barely tolerates me, and I detest it with a rather surprising degree of passion. Add to that my still-unsold house, my apparent inability to find any other work and a consequent desire to get into bed and stay there, and I suppose it's hardly surprising that I've developed a complete crisis of confidence.

I swing wildly from telling myself that setting up a business based on food is not rocket science, and the fact I don't have a catering qualification simply doesn't matter, and me telling myself off for even thinking that I'm capable of doing this, because I don't have a catering qualification and have never worked in a commercial kitchen. Do I want to risk all that we have only to fall flat on my face and then have to suffer the indignity of telling myself later "I told you that would happen?"

So, I'm wobbling. I'm really not sure this is a good idea.

Perhaps I'll go and make some soup.

Stephen Fry's Oasis soup joke

After reading Nigel Slater's recipe for spelt rolls, and being intrigued about using fresh yeast, I tried to find some. Not easy, actually, even in a capital city. The interwebs found it for me.

I picked up this book in Oxfam last Sunday:


and liked the cheese rolls recipe. Of course I changed it. Weirdly, we had no mousetrap cheese (well we did have a cubic inch left, but not for long), and I'd run out of mustard seeds, so I added Parmesan and tons of pepper, and some olives for good measure.

Fresh yeast smells great. Sadly, that's lost on a blog, but here's the lovely stuff anyway.



The rest went as easily as following a recipe:






It's hard to make uncooked bread dough look good in a picture. Especially when you're trying not to get flour down the camera switches.




This is easier, though:




And this is a John Lewis-style lifestyle pic. Warm, freshly-pulled-apart bread, piled artlessly in a ceramic bowl, with 'stuff' in the background. All these types of images have random piles of desirable stuff in the background, carelessly out of focus but looking clean, neat and like it belongs in the house that waits for you, when your salary has octupled and you have a life transplant. In my case, it's the focus of the shot that's out of focus.



Better not employ may camera skills for Union, then. But the bread skills are not that bad.

These rolls were gorgeous. And even better the next day, toasted for breakfast. The Parmesan was strong the next day, and fabulous. For future ref; needs more olives, it does need the damned mustard seed, and we really need to wait until the bread is less than nuclear before ripping it apart.



Stephen Fry's Oasis joke was, of course, "You gotta roll with it."