Glanbrydan’s Weblog

We took the business to Lampeter food festival last Saturday and woefully underestimated the amount of people who would be buying pasties. Having sold out by about 1.30 we had a good look round ourselves dipping back into our stall when the heavens opened up and drenched the town in rain. The day then brightened up and again and we packed to go home. The festival attracts many Welsh producers and even brings out some of the bigger companies.

We were pleased to say hi to Love Spoons galleto  -and have a tub each. Yum, Yum also buying in fresh loaf of bread and some lovely cheese for our dinner. We made our way back to our temporary cooking home and baked for Sunday market at Llanganydr.

Sunday was a quietish day but the morning passed pleasantly and we met a new cake making lady ‘Cullens Cakes’ from Abergavenny. We tried out her carrot cake and Chelsea buns which were scrummy!

The house has been on hold because of the rain and we delighted that the builders came to mark up for the footings on Friday and return to put them in today. It’s remarkable how the rooms look so small and yet the finished dimensions are not a palace but certainly make for normal sized (UK normal) rooms.

Our veg has also been suffering with the huge amount of rain. The carrots are passable and the cucumbers are good but the tomatoes and runner beans are looking a tab small.  I have moved the none performing courgettes to a more open site and they are picking up a bit. The parsnips are starting to look better with nice green leaves wafting about and some of the onions are almost ready. The broccoli has run to seed but the cauliflowers are making a go of it with a couple miniature hearts peeping through the leaves.

We have come to love new potatoes in the last week. When you don’t have much of a kitchen to play with they are wonderful. We cook 2 days worth and have one days hot and the next days cold with mayo or onion or something!

Yesterday I wondered up to the veg patch thinking my 2ndearly spuds must be about ready. A bit of scratching around and I came up with 7 quite big fresh new potatoes! I gave them a squirt with the hose pipe to clean them and then popped them in the fridge to have this evening.

I keep thinking that many people around the world live with much less of a kitchen than I have now. I now have a washing machine in a temporary location and a dishwasher but no sink. There are no work surfaces other than the tops of the dishwasher, washing machine or cooker and all the cupboards are gone. We have a stacking shelf unit in action until we leave the house completely.

• The worst thing is making thing stay put on the stacking shelf – I have sent a few things flying!
• The best thing is not being able to do any washing up so it makes you really careful about making things dirty.

Our very kind friends fed us last night and sent us home with a food parcel of soup, bread as well as a couple of portions of crumble. We now have a good lunch with steak with new potatoes for dinner. The steak was on the reduced counter and I may go searching for a few pea pods and broadbeans in the garden if the rain stops.

A note on the wardrobe sorting – I’ve done it!! The charity shop has several bags of clothes that are too small for me and as T-W-O says   ’If I loose the weight then I get to pick up a few new bits!’ (Maybe I’ll be buying back my favourites from the charity shop   ). I now have a rail of clothes I can see and a massive pile of ironing we are going to share.