A week at NANA

I've been spending the week filling in for my friend Katie, who started up NANA - a comfort food cafe run by older women from the community. Currently run through The Elderfield pub on Elderfield Road (which is a lovely pub with delightful owners, if you are in the area, definitely stop in for a drink in the evening!), the cafe offers up food that reminds you of sitting in your nana's kitchen - dippy eggs and fish finger sandwiches, victoria sponge and treacle tarts, and bottomless cups of tea and coffee served in old china. It's a delightful place with a good heart and I hope it has a long future.

The main cliental at the moment are mums and babies, which makes for the ultimate inter-generational environment, without seeming forced or contrived. So if you are in Lower Clapton and looking for a bit of comfort, NANA is the place to be.

"It's like throwing a birthday party every single time..."

I grabbed a drink with a friend the other day who recently opened up her own cafe. We were chatting about starting up our own projects, both in food, and the difficulties that can go along with it. Halfway through the conversation, she said something that completely embodied my thoughts on the subject -

"It's like throwing your birthday party every single time." 

Not in the "party time, excellent!" kind of way, but in that you spend ages handing out invitations, making goodie bags and blowing up balloons, but are constantly wondering whether anyone will actually come, and if they do, if they'll even have a good time. Loads of people can come and have an amazing night, and you feel on top of the world, or you can find yourself sitting on the couch alone eating your own birthday cake with your hands... I hate organising my own birthday activities - there's always more stress and inevitable disappointment (especially in a city as notoriously flaky as London) than anyone wants. It's a high stakes gambling game, opening up the doors to a project, putting it out there, and finding out what people really think.

Coupled with this, is the idea of going it alone. Both my friend and I have started our respective business/projects on our own, without a partner or permanent staff - hiring and getting help when we need it, but otherwise doing the brunt of the work, worrying, and decision making solo. The thrill of success and burden of failure weigh completely on our shoulders. Our businesses are intrinsically tied to us as people and it's hard not to feel that everything that happens to it is a direct reflection of our own value. Of course, that's not always, and not often the case, but that doesn't change the emotional reaction - be it good or bad. Of course there are nice things about going solo - namely autonomy on decisions and the direction of where things are going, but also being able to run completely on your own schedule, and to play a part in every aspect of what you are creating. However, there are certain things you miss out on - when you have a partner, you have someone to bounce ideas off of, rally together, find humour in difficult moments, and generally a comrade in arms - someone who, even if no one else shows up to the party, you can still get pissed with and have a good time.

I don't mean this as a complaint; it's an amazing thing to be able to start something yourself, and while it can be an emotional rollercoaster, I love the challenge and opportunities that come with the work - I wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now. That's why it's important for people going it alone to support each other, vent the stresses and anxieties, run ideas past, celebrate and commiserate the triumphs and stumbles we experience along the way. Because if you have a good support network, you know that at least a couple people will always be at your party.

Cakes...just because.

Recent baking exploits,
'nuff said.

An overwhelming amount of icing sugar

I've always been a baker - back to when my mom would give me the scraps of a ball of dough to knead and inevitably coat in endless amounts of flour. I've always baked for fun (I went through a banana bread a week phase in my first year of university, I had to stop when my trousers were struggling to button up...), for friend's birthdays, gatherings, etc... but never more than that. I dabbled in a cake stall last spring to mixed results, but otherwise reserved my baking for pop-ups and personal things, until a few weeks ago. I got a call from a friend saying his housemate was opening up a cafe around the corner and they needed a cake supplier. Within a couple hours, I had a fresh out of the oven lemon drizzle cake for them to sample, and by the next day, it was sorted.


Three weeks later, I've been baking 2-3 cakes a week for them (hopefully more as business grows), with each week bringing a new challenge on what to bake next. Because they are brand new and I didn't exactly have a cake list ready to go, we've been testing different cakes every week, seeing what sells best, what tastes best, and what recipes I can pull together that fit the ethos of the cafe - honest, simple, and of a great quality. It's pushing me to expand my baking knowledge, and the chance to hone my skills a bit - they always say practice makes perfect, so these weekly baking sessions surely can't hurt (especially since I'm no longer the one eating all of the results...). The guys at the cafe are brilliant too, up for anything and make THE BEST coffee I've ever had.

Think orange drizzle, carrot, chocolate cinnamon cakes, a treacle tart popped up last weekend, and the Aussie classic, lamingtons, are in the case this week. Supplying cakes is a different beast to baking them for your own purposes - its more about creating something that suits the place that will sell it, something that is eye-catching and appealing from the name and look, enough that people will want to pay actual money for it. If you want to taste some of my ongoing experiments and drink AMAZING coffee (and they have a smashing breakfast and lunch menu too), head over to Embassy East on Hoxton St and check out the disco cake box to see what's on offer.

I suck at keeping blogs...

As this and other failed consecutive writing ventures can attest (my teenage diary seemed to only get filled when I was angsting over a boy), I'm pretty terrible at consistently writing about my own things. I've written a lot of blogs for past jobs, ranging from bios of old hollywood film stars to innovating in the public sector, but when it comes to personal blogging, if I'm lucky I get out a one off rant, collection of photos, or recap of a pop-up, but they are few and far between. These days, most types of regularly scheduled programming send nervous chills down my spine. In a state of transient anti-commitment, my life is currently one of working on about 6 different things (to name them - freelance catering, popups, cake supplier to a cafe, ad hoc kitchen hand, soon to be street food trader, and tentative book proposal writer), few of which can relate to words like 'consistent' and 'regular.' And I'm loving it. Every day is different, everything is a new challenge to tackle and hopefully triumph (and if not, fail and bounce onto the next). My daily learning quota is through the roof and as my scraped hands and weary feet can attest, I feel every ounce of the labour I am putting into these jobs. I finish my days exhausted, and ready to see what the next one brings.

That being said, and not due to any boy angst, it feels like time to pick up the old prose again - chronicle this time in my life where every day seems like a different world, and where for the first time, there is no set plan or agenda on what's supposed to happen next. It's time to resurrect the blog. I can't guarantee regular entries or anything of particular use or purpose, but I can guarantee strange ramblings of a rambler, pictures of good food, and a recipe or two.