We have lots going on in our lives with the restaurant, the cookschools, the catering that we do, and everything else that happens in the background.

A restaurant is open virtually every day and as a result things have to happen every day, so that all is ready and welcoming for the customers when they walk in the door. That means constant attention to detail - its almost impossible to ignore stuff simply becos you don't feel like attending to it at that particular time, becos everything is co-dependant and something not happening when it should always causes  major problems.

For that reason I consider our lives to be reasonably busy - none of which is meant as a complaint becos I rather like it that way. But below is a link to the latest Ballymaloe cookschool newsletter, which you should read - becos Darina's focus and busyness, makes me feel positively apathetic by comparison.

As I mentioned in the French trip blogs, we went to Ballymaloe in Cork at the end of our French trip last year - becos Darina had extended an invitation to us, and we, and some friends were very keen to have a look at the set up. Suffice to say we were blown away, both by the very special Irish hospitality, but also by the concept of the farm that is attached to the cookschool, and just what it is that they do there.

http://www.cookingisfun.ie/pages/newsletter/pdfs/Spring2008.pdf  gives you a feel for some of what goes on - but doesn't really capture the extraordinary energy and vitality of Darina. Shes an amazing lady, and one we hope to entice out to NZ again - once we get our own cookschool on a more professional footing.

One of the strongest impressions I've brought back from our trips to France and Italy was the fact that so many of the food stores concentrate on a small range of goods. I found that bemusing, becos we are so much more used to the supermarket approach of a dizzying array of identical product, differentiated only by its packaging.

In small villages and large cities in France and Italy, we were fascinated by tiny shops who focused on a small range of foodstuffs - no need to confuse and perplex with a 20 different types of the same thing.

I came home with a newfound respect for that degree of specialisation, and a desire that when we finally enter the retail market properly, that we will stay small and niche focused, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

And one of the things I fell most in love with were macarons - the meringue biscuit sandwiched with a butter cream.

I spent almost a year some time ago, working on how to perfect nougat - and was rescued by a good customer who'd undergone a similar process of trial and error, and incredibly generously gave me the results of her learning process..

I've been engaged in a similar process with macarons, becos I haven't as yet managed to crack the perfect result. Imagine then my delight when I discovered a link on the Paris Breakfast blog that I get ( mainly to be titivated by the images of Paris, a city I need to go back too!), to a dessert magazine, and a detailed description of the definitive method of making macarons.( Go to page 36).

I'm off to the kitchen!

Friday nite is well underway at the restaurant... Rhonda has everything under control, so I've beaten a retreat to catch up with some stuff at my desk. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day at the moment, to do everything that I need too. Have menu changes to email thru to Simpson Print, together with some wine list updates of vintages.....

I've installed a computor programme for wages after years of doing them manually - and got a quick lesson on that early this week. Amazingly fast,  and is going to be great once I'm feeling a little more confident about finding my way around. I need to go back in and find an employee that I managed to delete this week - he has finished, but I deleted him before calculating his holiday pay - inadvertently!! So am going to be here for a while!

Have just checked out the latest blog on Michael Ruhlmans blog -something I refer to regularly, becos I like his take on most things, and was intrigued to read the latest ( April 17, 2008) on fois gras. Fois gras has become a cause celebre in the US, with activist groups targeting restaurants who serve it, and using extraordinarily extreme measures, to try and force them into stopping serving a foodstuff that these self appointed public watch dogs have decided is cruel and unusual. I've felt for awhile that such a stance is a little suspect, becos fois gras is considered a luxery item in the States, and therefore in targeting it, they are really striking a blow at the 'dillitente rich'. Which is fine, but not consistent. So much of the cheap chicken that is sold in supermarkets in vast quantities, not to mention the beef and also pork, is farmed under truly appallingly cruel conditions, and I am convinced that if the general public were aware of just how extreme some of those environments were, then they wouldn't consider buying the end product. But to target that stuff in a militant fashion, means making people who shop to a budget each week have to examine their consciences, and that would be a much harder sell to the general public. So instead these groups go for the easily targetable, at the luxery end of the market.

I'm suspicious.

When we were in France last year, we were in the middle of fois gras territory, and gavage ( forcefeeding ) is considered a perfectly normal thing to do. there.  In no small part becos the geese and ducks naturally gorge themselves when they are about to undertake the long migatory flights, where they don't stop for feeding. Its an ancient custom, which can be done in a much more humane manner than a lot of modern farming and slaughtering techniques of animals, so it has always felt a little perverse to me, to single it out as a sign of mans inhuman treatment of animals.

I came home  feeling  a little conflicted, becos I'd gone to France expecting to be revolted by the process, and I didn't end up feeling that way. As I said in the booklet I sent out to our cookschool attendees about our impressions, like anything it can become cruel when it is industrialised and the animals are force feed by machines. But done as it was always intended to be, it is not cruel - and I thought this blog captured that sentiment really well. Proved the point actually.

Like anything - misinformation is dangerous in the wrong hands, and its amazing how people can build a cause around something without bothering to check the facts...