The birth of a bakery?

I spent last Saturday evening running a cake stall at Central Baptist Church in Leicester, the venue for The Clean (As Possible) Comedy Show, part of the Leicester Comedy Festival.

CBC founded the Centre Project, where I work as a cook three days a week, and the idea was to use the evening as a way of piloting the possibility of developing a bakery project as part of the Centre's provision for vulnerable adults. On reflection I think the evening was largely successful, but preparing for it highlighted the kind of challenges that are inherent in starting a new initiative, predominantly a lack of clarity of expectation around money and time.

But you have to start somewhere, and nothing is ever plain sailing from start to finish. Onwards and upwards!

Three weeks in...

I'm three weeks into my new job. I'm already overworked and exhausted, but there's potential here. On my first day, Judy, one of my two new colleagues, said she wanted to start a bakery. I asked her if she enjoyed baking; it transpired she'd never learned to bake. So we've started baking together. Yesterday we were joined by Chippo, a volunteer, who said she'd love to bake but can only make cupcakes; it turned out she meant cupcakes from a packet mix. When she'd finished pressing a double quantity of flapjack mixture into the tin she struggled to find the words to express the sense of achievement she felt.

This is a job unlike any other I've had. I'm on my feet the whole time, apart from when I eat lunch (about ten minutes) and when I go to the loo (er...). There are people around all the time - the kitchen has no shutter so the whole cooking process is punctuated by making cups of tea, answering questions, talking about last night's telly and a generous amount of laughter. It's lovely, but for an introvert who prefers to cook alone without even the radio for company it's been a bit of a shock to the system...

Collecting my thoughts

In some ways this has been an uneventful year, in others it’s been as much of a rollercoaster as the preceding three or four! So simple lists of things that have stayed the same and things that have changed will largely suffice.

I’m still…

• Living in Leicester
• Working at Just, The Fair Trade Shop, a job I enjoy and which is teaching me lots about lots of things – what I’m good at, what I’m not good at, leadership, management, social enterprise etc.
• Involved in church-type things although roles (and, indeed, church attendance) are evolving.

I have…

• Moved twice this year – initially in with my brother-in-law’s sister and then to another vicarage occupied by a single lady clergyperson. I’m hoping not to move again for at least a whole year…
• A second part-time job which starts after Christmas, primarily cooking for a drop-in for vulnerable adults, but hopefully with the scope to develop new areas of working particularly using my growing passion for baking…
• Learned to make bread! With my own hands, not a bread-maker! Simple pleasures!
• Rediscovered knitting in a big way.
• Been on a silent retreat – not as silent as I’d anticipated! A great way to take some time out and reflect on all sorts of stuff.
• Made a wedding cake for a friend. One of the scariest experiences of my life. But said friend then commissioned me to make a 40th birthday cake for another friend, so it can’t have been too disastrous…
• Put on hold my exploration of ordained ministry for now. But watch this space… Not literally. That would be really dull.

Pushing (kitchen) doors

So, some movement on the Christmas baking front! It's possible I may have found a kitchen...

Given that not having a proper (by which I mean registered with Environmental Health) place to bake has been one of the major barriers to putting my ideas into practice, this is no small achievement. Earlier this week I emailed round a few local churches (of which there are many locally!) to see if anyone had a kitchen they'd be prepared to hire out for a whole day a week in September, October and November. The first reply I got was an encouraging 'Interesting - come and have a look and a chat', so today I headed round, trying not to get my hopes up too high. In a nutshell it was all very positive but I sense this is just the beginning of a long-ish road that will no doubt have it's challenges and frustrations.

One thing it has made me realise is that regardless of how generous they (or somewhere else) are prepared to be with their hire charges, renting someone else's kitchen is going to have a significant financial impact on how things develop from here. It means I'm going to have to sell a lot of stuff. A lot. That means I'm going to have to produce a really good, but probably very small, product range, and then I'm going to have to market it really well. And that means I'm going to be heavily reliant on you lovely, lovely people to help me get the word out.

Now I'm home my head is full of ideas about mince pie tasting packs that will survive in the post, new variations on tried and tested classics, making lists of people, places and organisations who might promote what I'm hoping to do.

It feels like I might be creeping just a little bit closer to something a little bit exciting.

Birmingham, Brick Lane, Brighton

It's six weeks since I last blogged. On the one hand, not a lot has happened in that time; on the other, I've had some interesting conversations, discovered some new organisations and initiatives and even had a meeting at the seaside!

Not a lot has happened in the sense that my circumstances remain as they were six weeks ago - still working five days a fortnight, still living on the generosity of friends and family. But on the back of that last blog post I emailed a whole list of people who I know to be interesting and who have fingers in interesting pies and asked them to tell me about the interesting things that they know about. This was largely in an attempt to put into action point 6 of my options list from last time:

Seeing if there are any community initiatives / churches who are looking to develop projects around baking - a café, community bakery etc - who I could team up with to shape some kind of social enterprise.

The result was as interesting as I'd hoped. I discovered Devenishgirl Bakery, a baking social enterprise in Birmingham; I visited Kahaila, café church in the middle of east London's Brick Lane; I found out more about Florence Road Market, hosted by One Church Brighton in, er, Brighton; I met up with sourdough baker Jessica Edmonds of Leicester Born and Bread who has, rather marvellously, offered to give me some of her sourdough starter free and gratis; I heard about London Reclaimed, a recycled furniture social enterprise in Peckham; I was introduced to Flavour Gateway in Tower Hamlets. I've heard about churches being challenged about social enterprise as a way of responding to changes in the way they're funded and how they serve their communities, about the importance of sharing food together as the people of God. And I've discovered a whole load of new blogs and small businesses doing lovely things in lovely ways with lovely people.

And in amongst those new encounters I got to exchange emails and share coffee with affirming and encouraging people, the value of which really can't be over-estimated. But the reality is that none of this has offered any kind of solution to the very practical challenges of earning a living, which brings me to option 5 from last time:

Starting my own business. I've been doing a lot of baking recently and have realised that I really enjoy it and, it appears, I'm moderately good at it. However, this requires a kitchen which I don't have.

The more I explore this, the more hoops I become aware of. But now's a good time to start thinking about Christmas (wait, come back, let me finish!!) and given that I've already tested the market for fair trade mince pies I'm giving serious thought to finding some kitchen space to rent one day a week in September, October and November, focusing on Christmas cakes and mince pies and seeing what transpires. I've been in touch with a few local churches to find out about renting kitchen space, and on Thursday I'll get my Christmas baking thinking cap on and wait for inspiration to strike.

I'll be honest - I'm at the point at the moment where it doesn't take much for any crumb of enthusiasm I have for, well, quite a lot of things to dissolve into the ether but then I read articles like this, tell myself to get a grip and try really hard to count my blessings, of which there are many. But if you are of a praying disposition I'd appreciate you chucking a couple up for me. When I was on my year out, my insightful but not entirely pastorally sensitive church leaders regularly told me when faced with challenging circumstances that I'd look back and realise what I'd learnt. They were, of course, absolutely right.

To the ends of the earth?

For the last nine months I've been exploring a call to Baptist ministry. To put it another way, having spent a good proportion of the last fifteen years either employed by churches as a youth worker or volunteering in a variety of capacities I was wondering whether actually being responsible for leading a local church was something I might be capable of doing and, more to the point, what God was calling me to.

To cut a moderately tedious story short, it turns out that although lots of lovely people have been very affirming about my ability to exercise leadership and pastoral care, the London Baptist Association have decided that at this stage accredited Baptist ministry isn't for me. Weirdly, I'm not particularly surprised by that decision and for a whole bunch of reasons I'm actually quite relieved that I won't be heading off to college in September. There are loose ends to tie up but for now it's back to the status quo.

Except that for me the status quo doesn't really exist at the moment. As I'm sure I've written about before, the last four years have been a transition but I'm still not sure what I'm transitioning into. The prospect of ordination seemed to tick that box but clearly that's not it. I'm living with a friend rent-free (this has become something of a pattern and has got me thinking about the nature of my 'welfare state', but that's a post for another day) and working five days a fortnight in a (just above) minimum wage job which I enjoy and has some scope for role development (although without extra hours or money). This is clearly not a state of affairs that can continue indefinitely.

So I'm at a point where I'm trying to reflect on the possibilities that might be open to me. They include (with varying degrees of practicality)...

1. Continuing to exploit the hospitality of gracious and generous friends, working five days a fortnight and spending my free time swanning around.
2. Moving back in with my parents without any immediate income.
3. Becoming part of a Christian community for a few months. This would enable me to exercise some of my ministry skills and contribute practically to community life, whilst having my board and pocket money provided.  
4. Getting a proper job. By this I mean full time employment which will enable me to rent my own house. Who knows how realistic a prospect that is in the current economic climate? 
5. Starting my own business. I've been doing a lot of baking recently and have realised that I really enjoy it and, it appears, I'm moderately good at it. However, this requires a kitchen which I don't have.
6. Seeing if there are any community initiatives / churches who are looking to develop projects around baking - a café, community bakery etc - who I could team up with to shape some kind of social enterprise.

There are several reasons why I've decided to share that list. One is simply that it helps me to collect my thoughts. But another is that I'm looking for some feedback on points 5 and 6.

Ten years ago I was almost half way through the Oasis Youth Work and Ministry Course and was beginning to think about what my next step might be. I told God I'd go anywhere and I ended up ten miles down the road (although it was a whole world away in many respects). I'm wondering whether I'm back in that place again. So if you know of great opportunities on the other side of the country, the continent or the world, you should feel free to share them. I'm not saying I'll definitely have the courage to go, but at least I'll know what I'm turning down.

Ending well

I think it's fair to say this week has finished better than it started. Last weekend I was struggling with the thought of moving house, partly because it's just a pain in the bum and partly because of what it represents - my life lived in transition.

But some key things this week have made a difference to my outlook this weekend. The first is the simple fact of having started to move my stuff from one friend's house to another.
 
The second is that I've FINALLY finished and sent off my Baptist minister form (only two months after I was given it...). I've found it a really tough thing to do and the relief when I finally put it in the post box was immense.

The third thing is that I've now finished my dull, dull and boring Friday job. I wondered if I'd get all panicky again but I haven't, and I think that's because I've immediately been able to start doing the kind of creative and productive stuff I'm hoping I can invest my time in in the coming months.

The fourth things is that I've taken the decision to start a second blog focusing on baking and fair trade. I wasn't going to mention it yet because I'm not ready to make a big thing of it 'til I've posted some more content, but I've been working on it today and it seems daft not to! If you're not into baking, please don't bother following the link :o) 

And the fifth thing is that my rather marvellous sisters sent me a parcel of nice stuff which arrived today - what's not to love about Jesus soap, plant pot muffin cases, jelly babies, Dairy Milk and a clever book about politics, all topped off with a picture of Cliff Richard?  

I can't guarantee what frame of mind I'll be in this time next week but I'm making the most of a good end to a significant week.

Pulling focus

I realise I'm at least ten years behind the curve on this, but I've just recently got into reading a few blogs in an intentional way, bookmarking them and having a look every couple of days. It's been fun - they're mainly around sewing, baking and ethical fashion, but there's a couple of more theological ones in there too.

But I've been struck by the fact that all of these blogs have something mine doesn't seem to have - a particular focus, whether it's turning charity shop clothes into new outfits, making cakes and taking beautiful pictures of them, or writing about church from a different perspective to my own. 

But then the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether actually there might be some themes that run through my blog. So I did a little research - entirely subjective and non-scientific, I should point out. I had a look at the labels I've given my blog posts to see which ones crop up the most - the top five are future (15), work (15), fair trade (11), church (10) and creativity (9) with baking, community, money, ethical and potential close behind.

Now I suppose some would argue that this is a fairly random, incohesive list, but I see some interesting connections (although I would - it's my blog, after all!!).

Eight years ago, this blog started essentially because EVERYONE had a blog (well, at least that was the impression I'd got) but I had no real sense of purpose or direction for it. Now I'm enjoying blogging and I'm finding the stuff that I'm genuinely passionate about, rather than stuff I think I should have an opinion on. So the question I'm starting to ask myself is whether to continue with this blog but narrow its focus slightly, or start a parallel blog which explores some of these ideas (probably the ones around fair trade and creativity) in more depth. Or do I not worry too much because come Easter I'll run out of steam and go another year without writing anything?!

Incidentally, if there are blogs you think I should be reading, please let me know - I have bookmarks and I'm not afraid to use them! Equally, if you have friends who you think would enjoy reading about ethical baking in church, you should absolutely share a link to here!!

Keeping In Touch

Arnesby is a small, sleepy village in Leicestershire. Once a vibrant farming community, its population of around 350 people now includes an intriguing combination of commuters, retired farmers, Leicester Tigers rugby players and young families. But demographic changes and a gradual loss of shared meeting places have meant that the village has lost a cohesive sense of community. It does, however, have two churches – St Peter’s, and Arnesby Baptist Chapel (ABC) where I’ve been worshipping for almost three years.

Last year I suggested to Johnny, the pastor of ABC, that the church could run a project during Fairtrade Fortnight, opening the church for a couple of hours each day as a community café, serving fair trade refreshments and selling fair trade products.

The idea was so successful that repeating the project this year was a no-brainer! Last year, the most consistent feedback from villagers was how much they’d appreciated a place to meet up with others to spend time together. Largely as a result of this the most important development this year was the decision to hold the café in the village hall on three consecutive Saturdays (as well as at the church during the week) which meant that we could serve significantly more people (around seventy each week) and make it easier to attract those who were unwilling to be part of something on the church premises. The majority of the customers were village residents, and one of my highlights of the fortnight was chatting to a local man who spoke with real enthusiasm and affection about the role the church has in the village even though, as he laughingly pointed out, 'I only ever come to things when there's food'. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing!

But from my point of view, the value of a project like this also lies in the impact it has on a local church community. Ladies from the church baked cakes and an amazing team of adults and young people served with a smile, while over three Sundays the church’s evening services focused on our responsibility as Christians to live out the reality of our faith in a broken and hurting world, engaging with poverty and hardship both in the developing nations supported by fair trade and in our own context.

Through the window

So the big idea is this...

This summer I will serve you and your friends afternoon tea in the comfort of your own home.

That it's really!

Need convincing? Picture the scene. It's summer. The sun's shining (no, really - use your imagination). You've got a few friends round and you're peckish. But what's this? Your very own dining table laid with glassware and china, plates of sandwiches made from local ingredients, savoury snacks, cake stands with an array of homemade goodies and unlimited fair trade tea and coffee!

All this, in your own home?! But that must cost a fortune! But no, this is the genius bit - your guests get to decide what they'd like to pay, and you not only get your tea for free but there's a gift to say thank you for hosting!

To be honest, I've been pondering this idea in various forms for a while, as a few blog posts from this time last year testify. But with my newly-free Fridays (well, from April), and a slightly pressing need to start saving for college in the autumn (all things being equal) I think it's an idea whose time has come.

I want to do it properly and register for tax and sort out food hygiene stuff which is a bit daunting but, as I said yesterday, it feels like a window's opened and I should do my best to clamber through it.

It's always a bit nerve-wracking asking for feedback on an idea - the risk is that either people won't care enough to respond or they'll pick holes in your idea and it'll all get a bit discouraging! But I'm going to take the risk - I'd love to hear what you think, regardless of whether you think I'm onto the Next Big Thing or I need my head examining.

That was the week that was

So, as predicated, there was very little room for spontaneity this week - all work, baking, form-filling and sermon prep. This is not an inherently bad thing - in fact it's felt like a pretty productive week.

My cuppa with Pregnant Laura yesterday was the most spontaneous thing I did. Actually, the most spontaneous thing was buying her a large jar of Nutella as pre-new baby present - part throw-back to our desk-sharing days and part wanting to be a little more imaginative that a packet of baby-gros.

Not sure the spontaneity quotient will be much higher next week, what with the start of the fair trade shop and café tomorrow (have I mentioned that?!), but there should be plenty of pictures of cake!

I am the Cake of life

Today a couple of fairly different areas of my life have collided and yet I think they have something to say to each other.

This morning I was primarily working on my Baptist minister form which is the next step in figuring out whether I really am called to ordained church leadership. There's no fixed deadline which is a bit of a problem, but I'm assuming to have it completed bar the proof-reading by tomorrow evening. It might just happen...

This morning I was also thinking about a sermon series my pastor and I will be team-teaching over the next three Sunday evenings - it's not something I've done before (both preaching a series and preaching with someone else) so it's taking a bit of time to get my head round.

But then this afternoon I've mostly been baking and visiting a friend. The baking is for the fair trade shop and café and the friends is heavily pregnant (and significantly overdue) and therefore moderately frustrated by life.

And now I'm blogging, collecting my thoughts from the day and putting them out there for others to engage with.

The combination has got me thinking - what might Cake Church look like?

For me baking represents a whole variety of different things - creativity, productivity, comfort, celebration, community... I could go on.

Cake brings people together. Making a cake for someone else says 'I value you'. Making a cake with someone says 'I want to invest in you'. Eating cake with someone says 'I'm glad I get to share life with you'.

And surely they're some of the core values of ministry...

Reflecting on Fairtrade Fortnight

Last year my church got on board with Fairtrade Fortnight for the first time and we ran a café and shop for the whole two-week period. The church - a small Baptist chapel - serves an equally small village in which the only community spaces are the village hall and an Indian restaurant. Here's what I wrote about it for the church magazine last year...

Paper flowers, flapjack, Easter eggs and proper coffee – just a few of the items that were available at the Arnesby fair trade shop and café during Fairtrade Fortnight (27 February – 11 March)!

The fair trade movement has been building for four decades and for two weeks each year individuals, churches, shops and even governments are encouraged to think about how they can consume more ethically. Back in January, aware that Fairtrade Fortnight 2012 was rapidly approaching, a few of us got together and decided to have a go at running a fair trade shop and café from the coffee bar at the front of the chapel. Armed with recipe books and fair trade catalogues, we planned menus and chose products. The Just shop in Leicester city centre agreed to supply the shop on a sale or return basis which meant we were able to stock a wide range of beautifully crafted products from some of the worlds most deprived communities, along with fair trade chocolate, coffee, tea and Easter Eggs! Val and her team of bakers worked hard producing huge quantities of baked goods, using fair trade ingredients wherever they could, and each day the café’s cake table struggled under the weight of carrot cake, triple chocolate muffins, Victoria sponges, gingerbread angels and much, much more!

The shop and café opened Monday-Saturday for the duration of Fairtrade Fortnight, and over the course of twelve days we had around three hundred customers! The coffee bar could comfortably seat ten people but there were several occasions when there was standing room only, and on warmer days parents and children took the opportunity to sit outside, enjoying the use of the Huttons’ ride-on toys and, in particular, Annie’s cottage! The project couldn’t have run without the enthusiasm and energy of our team of volunteer waitresses which included Lisa, Julia, Carol, Jenny, Ian and the entire Hutton family!

It was clear by the end of the fortnight that running a ‘pop-up’ (a short-term shop) had given us a real insight into the scope of the role the chapel could have in helping to nurture a deeper sense of community within the village. Many of the customers were Arnesby residents who, as well as noting both the quality of the food and drink on offer and the cheapness of the prices, commented on how much they would appreciate a permanent community café and wondered out loud whether the church might be able to provide something year-round. Older villagers talked about their memories of Arnesby as a thriving centre of life and work, and even those more recently arrived in the village mentioned the impact losing the post office had had on chance meetings with friends and neighbours.

Thank you to everyone at ABC who supported the café and shop during Fairtrade Fortnight, whether you baked, helped with waitressing, brought your friends and family for a hot chocolate extravaganza and a piece of cake, or simply prayed! It was a brilliant opportunity to try something a bit different and bless our community in the process.

This year we're aiming to go bigger and better - if you're in or around Leicestershire during Fairtrade Fortnight come and see for yourself!

It all starts here

So here's the spontaneous thought that kick this whole thing off...

Why don't I bake some cakes?

This is not an unusual thought for me - I like baking, I'm moderately good at it and it makes me feel creative and productive. Naturally, I leap off the sofa, head to the kitchen and get cracking.

Except that I don't.

I'm having an odd day. I'm not at work (which is a good thing) but I'm feeling preoccupied by things I should be doing but I'm not. I'm also, truth be told, struggling with the news of Oscar Pistorius' murder charge and thinking back to a brilliant day at the Paralympics last September. When I'm in that frame of mind I find it hard to motivate myself to do much at all. Plus I knew that I'd probably have to go shopping for ingredients, and I was aware my housemate's fiance and his mad dog Benji were just about to arrive - not an ideal baking scenario.



This rather marvellous bowl actually

belongs to my grandma - it was a
wedding present 64 years ago.  



My other slight issue with spontaneity is that I have a tendency to have a bright idea and then before I know it it's become a whole big project rather than one small opportunity.

And this is when I resolve to be spontaneous.

I walk round the corner to stock up on ingredients by which point I'm feeling committed. As predicted, fiance and dog arrive soon after so the actual baking is postponed until I have the run of the house later in the evening.

But, as I find is often the case, once I've managed to break out of my 'woe is me' mindset I get all productive - I write yesterday's blog post, subscribe to a magazine (a job I've been meaning to do for weeks) and spend some time reading.

 

Once I get started it's plain sailing. Although I've been baking for years I've learnt a lot from using my Great British Bake Off recipe book over the last year and I now spend far more time on getting the basic mixture right. Spending several minutes creaming butter and sugar together, and then adding eggs in small doses gives a girl plenty of time to, er, reflect.



 A couple of hours later I have a dozen pink cup cakes. I put some on a plate for the love birds and have one myself with a well-earned cup of tea. 

In case you're wondering, the grand plan that formulated in the seconds after I thought about baking was that I would take cakes round to some of my single friends when they were finished. In the end it was a bit late for that, but I did leave some outside my sister's sister-in-law's house on my way to work this morning. I hope she found them...

Learn With Mother (and Grandma and Great Grandmother)

I had an interesting moment of clarity last week. I suddenly realised that in trying to find ways of occupying my time and possibly earning some money I'd turned not to the skills I've gained as an adult, but those I was taught as a child.

One of my earliest memories is of baking cakes with Mum. Always fairy cakes and always with water icing and sparkly sprinkles. I was probably a little older (but not by much) when I was introduced to needlework, embroidery, knitting and crochet by a combination of Mum, Grandma and my great grandma.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm not claiming to be a master craftswoman! My baking and needlework skills haven't really progressed beyond the basic principles I learnt as a child, but knowing the basics was enough to enable me to create little projects for myself, vital for keeping myself occupied as the oldest child in a large(ish) family with no TV.

Was mine a typical experience of childhood? I've no idea! But it does make me wonder how different life might have been if I hadn't been surrounded by adults who not only possessed useful and creative skills but had the time, energy and inclination to pass them on to me.

Let them eat cake!

It's been a while since I wrote about the process of trying to work out what to do with my life. That's largely because in the weeks leading up to Christmas I was a bit too preoccupied with packing up my flat and organising presents and festive food to have the energy or inclination to think about anything else!

While it's fair to say that on the face of things very little has changed on the job front, I do feel like there's been some progression in the last couple of weeks. Moving out of my flat will have a significant impact on the pressure on my finances as I've moved in with a friend who's a vicar and therefore isn't allowed to charge me rent! I knew having so many clerical friends would pay off in the end! While this is only intended as a short-term arrangement it means I can take a few months to genuinely explore what my options might be, which is an amazing blessing really.

So how am I spending my time? I still have a job one day a week in a small home and garden shop although a job that started off being five minutes walk round the corner from my flat has become a 30 minute car journey. It'll do for now...

I've also started teaching the piano again for the first time in a few years which I'm really enjoying. My pupil is the ten-year-old daughter of the pastor at church - she's good fun and a fast learner! I think there's potential to find two or three more pupils, so one of my goals is to find out about becoming self-employed, just so that income is all above board and proper.

I've also decided to invest some time and energy in baking. I've realised that not only is it something I enjoy, that I find creative and productive, but it appears I might also be quite good at it! Feedback from my little Christmas mince pie production line has been incredibly positive and encouraging so it seems a good use of my time to take the basic skills I learnt baking fairy cakes with Mum when I was four and up my game a bit.

I think one of the other reasons that baking feels like a significant thing for now is that there's a tangible connection between it and some of the other things I'm keen to explore over the next few months, including things like how to effectively build community, and developing a better understanding issues around fair trade. If I can do that whilst feeding people cake, so much the better!

I've written before about the possibility of developing some kind of small business and it feels like a very scary thing to do. But recently I've been aware of more and more people I know developing side projects or just going public with ideas in ways that have made me think that I really just need to get on and do something! Over the last couple of months I've spent some time with my cousin, Ben, who's working towards becoming a credentialed coach. The speed at which he's clarified and articulated what he wants to achieve and then taken tangible, creative steps to make that happen has been pretty awe-inspiring. You can have a look at what he's doing here.

The one slight fly in the ointment is that so far the redundancy coaching I started at the end of November doesn't seem to be working out in quite the way I'd hoped, and one of the challenges of the next few weeks will be working out how to respond to that. But all things considered, things seem pretty positive at the moment...

Money-making Opportunity 1: Mince Pies

Anyone who's read any of my Facebook statuses this week will know that there has been much talk of mince pies. I've always enjoyed baking - one of my earliest memories is being up to my elbow in eggs, sugar, butter and flour, making fairy cakes with Mum. In fact, my kitchen experience was so dominated by sponge cakes that I got to university and suddenly realised I couldn't actually cook anything useful. Like dinner. (It's tempting to digress here and tell you a story about the day I made a lasagne with red wine vinegar instead of red wine, but that can wait.)

A few years ago, back from uni (having mastered the art of the lasagne) and living at home, I decided I would attempt to master Christmas baking. Mince pies seemed a fairly obvious place to start, and Mum had a recipe so on I cracked. From that first batch I was hooked.

Last year saw another breakthrough as I embraced homemade mincemeat. I had always assumed that mincemeat must be really hard to make or why would you buy it? Mum dug me out another recipe and I was staggered to discover that essentially you stick a load of dried fruit, sugar, suet and fruit juice in a bowl and...er, well, that's about it! Give it a mix, cook it on a low heat, add some brandy and job's a good'un.

So that means that my homemade mince pies are now 100% homemade. Which is nice.

It also means that, provided you shop around, you can essentially have a fair trade option, something you'd be hard pushed to find in a supermarket. In fact, I've discovered it's actually pretty tricky to find fair trade dried fruit in supermarkets, but fortunately Leicester has a great little fair trade shop, Just, in the city centre which stocks a basic range of food products. I know thinking ethically about food almost inevitably costs more, but I find it difficult to justify not paying a little extra when the impact on the life of someone else could be so profound as a result. And, if I'm honest, not to take the ethical option at Christmas seems to me to undermine the whole reason Jesus came in the first place.

Last Tuesday I left my job and we decided to have afternoon tea in the office to say goodbye. I thought I'd make my first batch of mince pies for the occasion and was absolutely blown away by the reception they got. The next day on Facebook an innocent request for suggestions of things I could do with my new-found spare time led to a series of requests - some serious, some not so - for me to make mince pies for people and today I've had my first firm order!

Now, let's be honest. It would be almost impossible to actually make money from what is essentially a luxury product with a very small seasonal window. But I'm thinking that even if they just keep my hand in and give me something productive to focus on, and I don't end up out of pocket, there's nothing to lose!