Monday 14 May 2007

Farmers' Market Adventures: Installment #2

This past Saturday we trudged out in the crazy rain to sell at the farmers' market once more. Due to the abysmal weather, the market was held indoors. The indoor setting was fine, and allowed for more chatting as we were all crammed closer together, but the Too British even for the Brits showers that were happening outside did mean that things were quieter than usual. And we discovered how unpredictable the public was: while last time the pies and the pierogi were what disappeared quickest (we nearly sold out of both!), this time, we couldn't seem to get rid of those guys. The bagels, cornbread (this time, gluten-free, which pleased the allergic folk), and scones, sold well.

Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died somewhere on the way to the market, so all I have our photos of the cooking process beforehand. Things were much less hectic this time--no cooking disasters like we'd had last time around (pierogi all gluing together, an entire loaf of cornbread not cooking in the middle and getting chucked, not nearly enough shortcrust pastry), everything timed in such a way that we didn't wear ourselves out completely, and even a good 6 hours sleep for each of us the night before. Seriously! I woke up at quarter to 7, and somehow managed to have produced four dozen bagels (and two dozen cornbread muffins) by 10:30am. We ended up having to sit around for a while because we'd finished our cooking so early!

Here are a few choice moments in the process, which unfortunately only feature scones and bagels, and not our other excellent products:

Action shot! Scone master Graeme removes a batch of his tasty scones from the oven.



An army of bagels, waiting to be boiled.


Somehow the neat process of watching bagels poof up when they boil never gets old. I still think it's the coolest.



This is likely the oddest thing that happened during the baking process. Graeme pulled a batch of scones out of the oven and we found one scones, the one on the bottom right in the above picture, in the above state. It seems to have exploded? We could not figure out how exactly it is that a scone can explode.

Bagels and scones, cooling! (It should be noted that, in true DIY fashion, our cooling rack is actually the grill for our bbq.) Don't they look pretty?

Next market date is May 26th! Pray for good weather! Hopefully we'll be more on the ball with our camera then.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Did you make any money this time round? Glad you enjoyed it anyway. Here's what Graeme missed by not being able to come up to Glasgow.

Graeme said...

We about broke even this time, which wasn't so bad considering the weather and that people were seemingly not all that interested in pies and pierogi this time.

It looks like you guys had a good time and it's too bad I couldn't be there.