Production begins

My initial goal was to blog every second day, at least. I can’t believe a whole week has passed since my last post! (Warning: This post is a long one as I try to share a whole week with you!)

This week Ryan, Jed and Ethan attended a Holiday Club held by the Methodist church and us homeschoolers followed a school morning-routine! The boys had to be up, dressed and fed by 8am every morning – a whole hour earlier than has been our routine till now. They had a wonderful time meeting new friends, learning new songs and bible verses and ‘met’ some interesting characters from the Old Testament. They came home each day with very interesting and creative crafts too. This wasn’t something that we’d planned for them to do, but we jumped at the opportunity when we found out about it last weekend  - and we’re so glad!

Aimee spent the week at home with Dieter and I and had her share of treats throughout the week too. On Monday morning the 3 of us went to the Mall to get a few things and also to had a coffee and some cheese cake at Mugg and Bean. Dieter and I had decided to use the opportunity to make some samples of our Baby Food range so that we can work on costing and sales prices, so we also used Monday morning to buy a big batch of fresh veggies too.

On Tuesday morning Dieter and I made samples of the 4 purees in our 6+ months range. Apple, Pear, Butternut and Sweet Potato. It took us all morning, working together, learning as we went along. We also used our new hand blender, a powerful 700w Phillips machine we’ve bought specifically for the cause! It works really well and does exactly what we need it to do – hopefully it will work just as well when we increase its workload! We don’t have any labels yet and have handwritten the business name, our mobile number and the name of the dish on the lid in ink. None of the pens we had at home worked on the plastic lids so I had to stop at the stationers in the afternoon to get a freezerbag marker pen which is perfect for us! We visited the McCains factory shop to buy some frozen veggies - just 3 bags of things that we didn’t find in the fresh veggie shop.

Trying to prepare and coordinate purchases for all 12 dishes at the same time proved too challenging for me, so we decided to just take one phase at a time even if it meant numerous trips into town to buy ingredients. After making the 3 puree blends we have in the 7+ months range (Green veg puree, Root veg trio and Leek, Sweet Potato and Cauliflower) on Wednesday morning Dieter, Aimee and I were treated to a coffee in town by some new friends. Coffee shops are something so very different in South Africa! Costa Coffee and Starbucks have huge competition here in the many little coffee shops which serve great coffee and delicious cakes at much more reasonable prices. With an old wood stove burning very close to where we sat and beautiful music playing in the background, we were snug and relaxed as we got to know each other better over our hot drinks. After lunch Dieter, Aimee, Jed, Ethan and I made a short trip into town to buy some more stock at Checkers. We dropped Jed and Ethan at the library for about 45 minutes to return their books and take out some new ones while we did our shopping. The boys then popped down the road to play with Zian and Adine for a couple of hours. We’re loving the holidays!

Yesterday we spent the entire day cooking! The first two phases are both purees and very easy to make, but the 9+ months range is more chunky (Lentil Delight, Baby Bolognaise, Hake, mash and mushy peas and Chicken with sweet potato and apple) and needs minimal pureeing so the veggies and meats have to be cut rather small. We made all but the hake dish yesterday, and froze them before starting on the chicken and lentil dish in the 12+ months range. The lentil dish we made is a Vegetarian Cottage pie but the hit of the day was definitely the Chicken and Apricot Curry dish! We were very surprised at how delicious and flavourful all the dishes are and that is due to a combination of leeks, peppers, turnips, sweet potato. We’ve started by keeping our dishes free of salt, sugar, dairy, citrus, etc. and they really do taste yummy!

It didn’t help that Ethan, Aimee and I (and eventually also Ryan!) became ill and are struggling with croup cough, phlegmy chests and snotty noses. Our energy levels were low and by the end of the week we are all quite exhausted! It seemed wise to take today ‘off’ and rather spend a couple of hours giving the kitchen and living areas a good clean. We’ll finish up the last 3 dishes early next week and then spend some more time working on our marketing and sales plan. Now we also need to find some moms with babies that we can give our samples to and hopefully they can give us some feedback too.

Dieter, Aimee and I spent our last morning alone this week visiting the Winter Market that is held at the NG Kerk in town each year. South Africans are so creative its always inspiring to visit the markets that are guaranteed to be a display of handmade items galore. We bought our first ‘koeksisters’ (a sweet pastry delight) as well as some chilli flakes, coriander seeds and a small gift for our niece and nephew. The rest of the afternoon has been relaxing and peaceful, but not quiet because Aimee and Ethan had tons of energy! Oupa has gone to Johannesburg for the weekend but we saw Ouma for a short while this afternoon – its nice to see them! Pork Kassler chops, mash and salad was a great treat for dinner tonight and a good start to the weekend! Its been a good, busy and exhausting week!