Things are finally getting into gear for my market stall. Well given that the stall is tomorrow and involves a 6am start – today had to be the “gearing up” day.

I’ve written up a timetable of everything I need to do and the strange thing is that cooking doesn’t cover too much of it.  Partly because some of the cooking will be done on site but also because it appears that running a market stall requires lots of trips to the wholesalers to pick up things you were hoping you didn’t need. It involves a lot of spending money and adding up numbers that end in minus numbers. The adding up bit is a particularly time-consuming task because the concluding minus numbers propel you to recalculate endlessly, over and over again amending the figure until you work out that the most financially viable option is deleting all the numbers in your spread sheet, because  nothing is better than less than nothing. Hmmm new motto?

Well but obviously not, I really want to do this. This is the closest thing I’m doing to the thing I want to do so this is exciting.  And I guess nerves are inevitable. And nerves are good? Its nerves that have sent me to Smithfield’s twice this week to buy fresh meat, nerves that have dictated I throw two separate dinners for friends so that they can try out my market offerings and give me feedback and its nerves that have encouraged me to eat variations on lamb everyday this week. So hopefully these nerves will make this stall work as best it can.

Having gone through various menu options with the odd two dozen people or so, tomorrow’s market menu will be as follows:

Midwinter lamb braised in stout served with a:

–          Sourdough trencher with lashings of garlic parsley butter topped with caramelised onions;

Or

–          Soft and crispy potato layer cake with braised gem lettuce.

Each £6.50

Mulled ginger beer spiced with whole cloves and orange peel – £2

Anyway, would love to blog but things to do. See you tomorrow!