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Summer is here??!!

Well theoretically that may be the case and in fact, so far this week the weather has been good but at the weekend, Tim was hanging onto the gazebo to stop if flying off like something in the Wizard of Oz! Despite having two sets of weights! We have better weather during the winter months!

So this is just a little insight into some of our chilli life! Would we change and go back to our old jobs? No chance! Even when the boxes, sauces and ourselves are wet through and our lovely new velcro on the gazebo we had fitted has ripped off in the first use, we still love what we do and no show is ever the same!

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Why chilli sauce is the ideal Christmas gift in 2020

Chilli Sauce Christmas Gift

Christmas 2020 is fast approaching, and with it comes the looming responsibility of buying memorable, useful and exciting gifts for your loved ones. If there’s a foodie in your life, you’re blessed with a fantastic range of gift options, from food hampers, to kitchen accessories and everything in between. However, it can almost seem like there is too much to choose from!

This year, instead of wrapping up a general food-centric item and placing it under the tree, focus on your giftee’s individual tastes. Suddenly, your gift becomes more personal and thoughtful, and will elicit an even wider grin once that wrapping paper is torn away. Luckily, if your gift recipient is a big fan of chilli sauce, spicy foods or exotic flavours, you really won’t have to put any extra effort into finding that perfect gift – the East Coast Chilli Company has a range of gift sets available to suit all taste buds!

But before you browse our range, here are a few reasons why chilli sauce makes the perfect Christmas gift…

1. Get the holiday flavour while staying at home

Many of us have had to cancel holidays this year, and statistics show that ‘going on holiday’ is third on the list of activities missed most during lockdown. While we’re very unlikely to experience a heatwave to emulate that holiday feeling during Christmas this year, we can guarantee the heat in your food with our delicious chilli sauces!

Our sauces vary in terms of heat. Our Extra Hot Habanero and Naga Sauce contains the infamous ghost chilli with its sweat-inducing capabilities, while our Chipotle Chilli Ketchup delivers a smoky sensation with a little kick.

But it’s not just the heat that will send taste buds on a flavour adventure. Depending on the products that you select, our varied list of quality ingredients includes mango, lime juice and aromatic herbs and spices to whisk your recipient away to their place in the sun.

Chilli Sauce with Grilled Cheese

2. Home cooking is on the up

Did you know that 45% of UK consumers are experimenting with new recipes in 2020? 

Those who were eating out or purchasing meal prep kits are now finding themselves cooking meals from scratch and making good use of their kitchens! However, this isn’t just any home cooking, people across the UK are trying out new recipes that they might not have attempted before! That means it’s the perfect time to try a new ingredient, such as chilli sauce.

With this steep increase in home cooking, your gift won’t end up at the back of a cupboard, never to be used. Your giftee will be able to experiment with home cooking using chilli sauce to their heart’s content!

Chilli Sauce with Spaghetti

3. The perfect stocking filler or Secret Santa gift

Chilli sauce makes an ideal gift if you’re limited to a Secret Santa budget, or if you want to purchase your loved one a little something extra on top of their main gift.

Our prices range from £3.95 to £4.95 for individual bottles, to £20 for a Large Chilli Sauce gift set. With the latter option, you can cut out the hard work (and get more for your money) by purchasing a ready-made set, handpicked by our knowledgeable chilli sauce masters!

 

Click here to start shopping in our chilli sauce shop…

 

Have a merry Christmas

Whatever your chilli sauce selection, we hope that you have a wonderful Christmas this year. Don’t hesitate to browse our entire range, as well as our expansive list of chilli sauce recipes, to find inspiration for your chilli sauce gifting.

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ECCC Deliveries and Covid-19

A QUICK NOTE ABOUT DELIVERIES AND COVID-19

Many people are asking if it’s safe to receive and handle a delivery.

The WHO has stated the likelihood of transmission by touching cardboard is low, however our couriers will now make all deliveries contact free and we will never ask for a signature.

In the Order Notes field at checkout simply let us know a safe place to ask the courier to leave the parcel and we’ll do the rest.

Alternatively, when you receive your tracking reference from us and/or the courier please click on the link and choose “divert” to select a safe place.

If no safe place is chosen but there is a safe place available the courier will leave it there even if there is someone at the property.  They’ll take a photo which will be included in the delivery notification email.

If there is no safe place the driver will nevertheless attempt delivery three times but to be sure your parcel is delivered, please do follow the above.

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Chilli Sauce Recipes – TOP FIVE

chilli sauce recipes featured image

Chilli Sauce Recipes are not always difficult to make!

Chilli sauce is a bit of a polarising institution and there’s a lot of mystery around some Chilli Sauce Recipes. There are those that tremble in fear at the mere thought of any food registering on the scoville scale whilst others revel in the potential of a gateway to hell opening up on their tastebuds. We at the East Coast Chilli Company are certainly enthusiastic about chilli and its potential use in…basically everything.

We ultimately believe that the most important reason for adding a lashing of chilli sauce is simple: taste. That is why we have scoured the internet to bring you these 5 simple recipes to create our most beloved of sauces and turn flavours (and temperatures) up to 11. Keep that glass of milk on standby…here we go.

Peri Peri Sauce
By Chili Pepper Madness blog
Although popularised by everyone’s favourite modern day ‘Portuguese’ (…it’s actually Australian) chicken restaurant Nando’s, the traditional African sauce originates from the 15th century. Made from Birds Eye peppers this simple recipe that doesn’t actually require any cooking, just throw it all into a blender and you are done! Ideal for marinating and dipping, it actually works really well with seafood as well as chicken.
Get the full details here…

Peri Peri Chilli Sauce
Photo courtesy of Chili Pepper Madness blog

Sinus Aid Hot Sauce
As the name would suggest this sauce is intended to stimulate all the senses via fiery damnation. Boil the peppers up and blend with the other ingredients, add salt to taste and you are done. This isn’t the hottest sauce in the entire world but it is up there so prepare for some serious eye watering if you are not a chilli connoisseur. PS – considering that the creator had alleviating a blocked nose in mind when he created this sauce it might be an idea to some tissue handy…trust us, it works!
Get it…

Red Chilli Sauce
Conjured up by Hari Ghotra
The colour red brings with it connotations of danger so be warned…the hue of this sauce isn’t purely aesthetic. A blend of roasted habaneros, red birds eye chillies and garlic oven roasted, fried and then blended together it is utterly delicious but extremely hot. Birds eye chillies are small size but big in heat so watch out, this seriously packs a punch.

Get it direct from the ‘sauce’…

Bajan Pepper Sauce
From Eat Like a Girl
This yellow sauce is essentially made up of scotch bonnet peppers, onions and vinegar. It is coloured yellow with a generous dashing of fresh turmeric (famed for its health benefits as well as great taste) and balanced with a little pinch of brown sugar. This particular variety is an old family recipe – I love the thought of generations of chilli lovers sharing in the euphoria of a delicious chilli sauce.
Click here for the Bajan Pepper Sauce recipe…

bajan-pepper-sauce recipe
Photo courtesy of Niamh at Eat Like a Girl blog

 


Shatta
Found at Cookie and Kate
An interesting Middle Eastern recipe (and name) for spicy jalapeño sauce. It goes great with hummus and nachos but can be added to any Middle Eastern or Mediterranean dishes that need a little spicy helping hand to reach the correct levels of deliciousness. This recipe’s walnuts give the sauce a pesto like consistency and unlike the others on this list it is green in colour. Don’t let that fool you though, it still brings the heat. Utterly delicious and daringly different, give it a try!
Get the ‘how to’ from here…

jalapeno chilli shatta recipe
Photo courtesy of Cookie and Kate
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Made for the Taste

“What’s the hottest one you’ve got?”
When we’re selling direct to the public with tasters available, that’s a question we get asked a lot!  My usual response is “Well, that’d be our Habanero and Naga Sauce but none of them are crazy hot; they’re all made for the taste rather than the pain factor.  There’s no chemical extracts used, it’s just the natural heat of the chillies.  It’s still hot but there’s bags of flavour too.  It’s not going to feel like someone’s driven a nail through your tongue for 2 hours after you’ve tried it”  Or something along those lines…

Why “Made for the Taste”?
Before I got into the business I’d tried a lot – and I mean A LOT – of hot sauces and most of the time all I was tasting was vinegar with heat, leaving me feeling somewhat underwhelmed and disappointed.  So when I first started making chilli sauces that was something I wanted to go all out to avoid.  We’ve since won Guild of Fine Food Great Taste Awards and had unsolicited online reviews like this one from The Norfolk Chillihead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBPapUBFHes so I hope that all goes to show we’re doing something right.

So why no extracts?
Look, don’t get me wrong – and I certainly don’t want to alienate myself from some of the other great UK hot sauce makers out there who I’m sure use it to great effect – sauces with extracts have their place.  It’s just for me that tends to be sat at the back of the cupboard for all eternity!  It might possibly get to see the light of day when the lads come round and then it surfaces for a few moments of “fun” whilst everyone tries to prove to each other how hardcore their heat tolerance is.  Personally, I can smell it a mile off and will have a good idea what it’s going to taste like.  And besides (and I know this might well be somewhat controversial) from a hot sauce manufacturer’s perspective, isn’t it kind of cheating?  I came across a sauce the other day made with Reapers, Nagas and extract.  For the love of God, why do you need to add the extract!?

Do you completely rule out ever using extracts?
No.  At the moment though I’m just having too much fun creating real flavours from natural ingredients.

So how are your sauces best used?
Well, each sauce has its own distinct flavour, character and heat level.  Each one is so different from the others and were carefully put together with a range of uses and recipes in mind, so much so that we’ve put a bunch of them on the website.  We even brought out our own Recipe book on the Amazon Kindle Store.

What’s the best part about your job?
That’s a tough one!  Coming from a corporate background where a daily dose of bullsh*t, b*llocks, backstabbing and posturing is de riguer, anything else is great!  So that’s everything then; I think I even enjoy the labelling!

And the worst?
Going back to the first question, it’d be the time wasters at the direct sales events.  Chilli festivals excepted – where the public are generally quite knowledgeable – it does sometimes seem like we’re a free sideshow or all-you-can-eat buffet.  However, you can usually pretty quickly tell people who are genuinely interested in your products and you learn to turn a blind eye to the others.  It goes with the territory and hell, often they can be hilarious!  However, touching on Sidekick Sauce’s James Bryson’s piece on Lick My Dip, for what it’s worth my opinion is that until the British public can distance themselves from the Richmondesque man test mindset born from Man v Food, I think we still have a way to go…

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Another Great Taste Award!

Extra Hot Habanero and Naga chilli Sauce

Hey, we did it again!
Hot on the heels of last year’s award for our fantastic Habanero and Lime sauce, Essence, this year we won a gold star for our hottest sauce yet, our Extra Hot Habanero & Naga sauce, Reason.
This year’s award is doubly pleasing in that it goes some way to prove what we’ve been saying about our sauces all along; they’re made for the taste, not just the heat!

Here’s what the judges had to say about it:
“This sauce is not for the faint hearted. The Judges who enjoy heat really enjoyed this sauce. It has a great smokiness from the Habanero chilli and a bit of acidity on the palate before the heat kicks in. We felt the sauce was very well balanced. Table 2: We agree with table 3 in terms of “not for the faint hearted” – it really packs a punch but the unique flavours of each chilli really do sing, the slight sourness and acidity work well and are well balanced.”

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Summer 2015 – a review

Flew by, didn’t it!
May:
3-4th.  We kicked off May with the Ely Food & Drink Festival with the lovely backdrop of Ely Cathedral and a chance to catch up with traders not seen since Christmas and wish them all a belated happy new year.  The first time we’d done this event and the first morning greeted us with a steady drizzle as we drove up the A14, looking clearer towards the horizon only to bucket down as we were setting up!  Nevertheless, it was a fantastic show, with the weather improving as the weekend went on and one we’ll definitely be doing next year.

16th  Hadleigh Show.
Our first “country” show of the year and what can I say?  As good as last year and can’t grumble with that.  Same spot next year please.

30th  Woodbridge What’s Tasty Market.
Hmm, maybe Woodbridge just isn’t ready for chilli sauces yet…  I feel sure if we’d been selling asparagus or strawberries it would have been a stonker, but we don’t and we weren’t.  No offence to the good people of Woodbridge but the demographic just wasn’t right for us.  Maybe it was the setting at the top of the hill or just the time of year.  Whatever, we’ll be back for their Christmas Market!

June:
6-7th.  Essex Maritime Festival, Southend Pier.
This was billed as the replacement event for the annual air show, which allegedly attracted 250k people last year, so hopes were high and well, it was an interesting one to say the least.
Fab weather and a potentially fab setting, right at the start of the pier.  However, as much as the sun shone down on us, the wind blew like you wouldn’t believe.  Now normally, setting us a gazebo is a pretty straightforward affair, but when it’s attempted in near storm force winds on a mile-long promontory sticking out into the Thames Estuary it can prove a little more challenging.  With 100lb of weights for each gazebo leg we were relatively OK but oh dear, as for the majority of other stallholders…  There were bits of cloth and canvass flying around, tables blowing over, gazebos ripping, produce smashing.  I felt sorry for the organisers, unlike a few others and as I understand it action was taken by some in the Small Claims Court for recompense following what proved for some to be a downright dreadful event!  We did OK, especially on the Sunday when we were able to move position into one of the gaps left by stallholders not coming back for the second day, so that we were more public-facing (the first day we’d been placed off the main public access route).   It’ll be interesting see whether they hold this event next year and if so what the location and layout of the “food court” will be.
For one unlucky stallholder it got even worse as I offered to help her push her cage full of stock up onto the exit ramp to pack away.  I was doing the lady a good turn; it was a heavy cage-full and the ramp was pretty steep.  There was no way I was going to be able to push it up the ramp so obviously pulling it up was the order of the day.  But then the cage opened up and smash…  Oh dear!

14th. Sudbury Food Festival.
Fantastic!  Again!

27-28th Colchester Food and Drink.
Good.  Better than last year.  Someone thought it would be funny if, for a £5 bet, they drank our hottest sauce straight from the ramekin dish we use for the samples.  Not exactly health and safety compliant and I did ask him not to and I did let him know what I thought of him after he’d done it.  Not the first time I’ve felt like a free side show and unfortunately it won’t be the last.

July:
1st-2nd.  Royal Norfolk Show.
I hadn’t planned on doing this one but got a call from a fellow stallholder who had to pull out, so nothing ventured, nothing gained and I took over his spot.  My word it was hot!!  So hot in fact that it seemed like a general lethargy ensued, with no-one seemingly bothered buying anything they couldn’t eat or drink on the spot.  Still, met some nice people and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.  Must have lost half a stone packing up, too!

4th.  Tendring 100 Show.
As it seems with most summers in this country, 2 or 3 days of blistering heat is followed, as standard practice, with thunderstorms and a general cooling down, and so it proved for the 100th anniversary of this event.  Last year it was sweltering in the food hall.  This year it was almost pleasant.  I think the new lay-out helped.  It certainly did with sales; our best showing at this event to date.

18-19th.  Essex Food Festival.
If you haven’t been to this event yet, please make an effort to come along.  A fab setting at Cressing Temple Barns, a fab line up of celebrity chefs and wonderful producers, and very reasonably priced.  Quite simply, our favourite show of the year.  I even saw Jodie Marsh there, although it did take a couple of seconds for me to recognise her, about the same amount of time it took for me to manage to raise my eyes to her face…

25-26th.  Holkham Country Show.
It rained.  The wind blew.  Weather warnings were in force.  We arrived on the Friday to be advised not to set the gazebo up until the following morning because of the forecast.  Now, if I’d have pre-bought tickets for this event I’d have looked at the weekend’s forecast and turned up late morning on the Saturday for a few hours in the only reasonable-looking weather window there was and I think that’s what everyone did.  Sunday was a complete washout after about 11am and we got absolutely soaked packing up.  We’d intended camping on the Friday but I managed to get a last minute B&B and then again on the Sunday with a view to having a little explore of the beautiful North Norfolk Coast on the Monday, but as it was we ended up wet and thoroughly miserable back at home on the Sunday evening.

August:
7-9th.  West Dean Chilli Fiesta.
Due to a mix-up on dates (my fault no doubt) Leanne couldn’t make this one, so whilst I was withering away in the face of the hot August sunshine for what I think were our last 3 good days of summer weather this year, she was living it up with a stay in London and afternoon tea at The Ritz with her friends.  Still, she didn’t get to meet Darth Naga, did she?  And what a thoroughly nice chap he is too.  Top beard, to boot!  We don’t normally do the whole chilli festival thing (a concern about over-proliferation of similar produce and the resultant competition I suppose) but boy are we glad we did this one!  The only downside to the whole thing was the lack of control over noisy neighbours in the “quiet” part of the campsite, resulting in my direct intervention at 1.30am on the Saturday night and giving up altogether on the Sunday night to cart my bedding half a mile to the van and sleep in the back!  If you’re reading this and as I said to you on the Monday morning, it was nice to meet you and I’m glad you had a great time but please have a little bit more consideration for your neighbours next year or at least until they start manufacturing sound-proof tents.

15-16th.  Ipswich Maritime Festival.
Another good one and a shame the powers that be have decided not to put it on next year in favour of something else yet to be decided.  If you know Ipswich you wouldn’t be surprised if it was a traffic light festival!

30-31st.  Bury Food Festival.
Whoever thinks it’s a good idea to put on an outside event on a bank holiday Monday in August can only, surely, be tempting the rain gods into putting on a hell of a show.  So for the second year running Monday saw the heavens open and at one point we had a river running through our gazebo.  I think it stopped raining for about and hour, total, on the Monday.  However, apart from that, it’s a free event for people to attend, right in the centre of town and if the weather gods were kind it could prove to be one of our best of the year!

September:
4-6th.  Chatsworth Country Fair.
A last minute call from the organisers to host another chilli-eating contest unfortunately had to be turned down due to lack of time to source the chillies but, with a little more notice, hopefully next year!  This is probably the biggest show of the year we do in terms of shear scale and numbers attending, although the Friday was dreadfully quiet this year.  Whilst Sunday was our best day yet at this event we never quite caught up.  Did thoroughly well however and it was a delight to see all the hot air balloons up in the sky first thing in the mornings, even if one did nearly land on our tent only to miss us by a few feet and crash-land next to us in the river!

12-1th.  Barleylands, Essex Country Show.
Bit of a disappointment compared to last year but still well worth doing, although from what I can gather from speaking to other stallholders about the success (or not) of their weekend, there may be a few less of us next year…   Still, much to Leanne’s chagrin, I got to listen to Slayer’s new CD all the way there and back.

26-27th.  Aldeburgh Food Festival.
Our final show until November and off the back of last year’s a bit disappointing.  Fantastic setting at Snape Maltings but just not the numbers there were last year, one theory being the rugby union world cup.  They probably have a point.  We’ll be back next year.

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Free mango chilli sauce!

Mango Chilli Sauce

Mango Chilli Sauce
We call our Mango Chilli Sauce ‘Passion’ for a reason – people really love it!

We’re so sure you’ll love the fresh, zesty sweet heat of this mild sauce that we decided we wanted as many people as possible to experience it.  So to celebrate summer, great food and fun times we’re giving away a free small-size bottle of our Mango Chilli Sauce with every order over £10.

Just add your favourite chilli sauces to the basket and check out as normal and we’ll automatically pack a bottle of our Passion Mango Chilli Sauce as a thank-you for your order*.

Start shopping…

Read more about our popular Mango Chilli Sauce…

 

*while stocks last
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November to December 2014, part 2 of 2.

Ipswich Christmas Market Friday 21-Sunday 23 November.
New lights!! I bought new lights!! We had to beg and borrow some last year (after 6 hours I was still waiting for the festoon lights I’d bought to “warm up”!) so after a lot of research (with telephone conversations usually taking the form of, me: “Are you sure I can’t get it wrong?  I’m rubbish with stuff like this.”  LED salesman: “YOU CAN’T GET IT WRONG!!)  I bought an LED plug-in-and-play set up this year along with two mini flood lights that clamp to the gazebo frame.  Just had to buy some clamps that’s all and luckily I found myself setting up next to a hardware stall.  Happy days.  Planning ahead?  Waste of time!
Last year this market went from Thursday through to Sunday so we thought we’d get ahead of the game and do the Thursday as well on Ipswich Borough Council Market.  Beautiful day it was Thursday, sun was shining, not too cold.  The day started exceptionally well, which for some reason always seems to transpire to being a bad thing.  Today was no exception…  After last year’s market however, hopes were high for the rest of the weekend.  We were in the same position and confidence was good.  However, whilst last year there were a lot of continental stalls giving an eclectic and Christmassy feel to things, this year none of them had turned up and the vibrant mix of stalls was replaced with a homogenous line of council-owned gazebos and a couple of rides for the kids tagged on to the end of the market like an afterthought.  It wasn’t visually appealing and it didn’t seem to catch the public’s imagination.   For the second Sunday in a row the heavens opened and packing up on the Sunday evening wasn’t an experience I savoured.  Not as good as last year and our target looked further away than ever.

Bury Christmas Market, 27-30 November.
We’d heard A LOT of good things about this and for the cost of the pitch it HAD to be good!  We’d been told it would be the best event we’d ever done.  Based on our experience of the Essex Food and Drink festival back in July where we literally didn’t stop for 5 hours from the opening bell we felt a bit nervous about it really.  Had we got enough stock?  Would it live up to expectations?  It felt a bit like our first ever show, like a child going to a new school.
Set-up was a bit chaotic, thanks largely to a one-way system being blocked by not one but two broken down vans and another that was trying to squeeze under an archway that was way too low!  Ho ho ho!
We needn’t have worried.  Yes, it did get very busy at times but nothing we couldn’t manage between us and the trading days being 10 hours long meant that traffic was steady but never manic.  Part of the deal for this event was that we had to dress in Victorian/Dickensian costumes.  I enjoyed wearing my Jack the Ripper Costume (complete with 1918 hallmarked silver-headed cane fresh from Ebay) although bearing in mind they never caught him, how they knew what Jack the Ripper wore is beyond me!  Leanne hated wearing her costume so subsequently, for much of the time, didn’t.  It was a pleasure working opposite Allard’s Farm Butchery – lovely people and entertaining with it.  (How many packs for £12 again?) Late nights and early starts to ensure a parking spot meant that beer was out of the question for the weekend (most unwelcome!) but we had a ball and I’m already looking forward to next year.

Stock-take on Monday morning broke the unwelcome(?) news that I needed to get back into the kitchen but thankfully not before the next two events at least!  Thankfully the internet orders were more spaced out this year so that we didn’t need to spend too much time on any one day bubble-wrapping, cardboard box making and posting.

Ipswich Council Christmas Show, lunchtime, Wed 3 Dec, Endeavour House, Ipswich
Only 2 hours this one, but with setting up and take down it probably takes most of the day.  Last year, hour hourly take for this one was right up there but I guess with the same employees buying for the same people as last year, they can’t all buy chilli sauce gift sets again.  The people selling bags and scarves however couldn’t go wrong; everybody could do with a new bag, right?  We did OK though.

Ladies’ Night, Thurs 4 Dec, 6.30 to 10, Ipswich College
By all accounts this was a roaring success last year and we were very pleased to be invited along for our first time.  Extensive, targeted and clever advertising and a ladies night too; I was looking forward to this one!  Once I managed to get across town (40 minutes for a mile’s drive, I ask you!) set-up was dead easy although the look and smell of the place reminded me too much of being back at school.  A trickle of people came through the doors and then the rush…just didn’t happen.  Apparently prices on the door had increased from £3 last year to £7 this year, which is something we’ve learned always to ask about but of course didn’t on this occasion.  I guess money’s tight at the moment (especially at this time of year) and people just don’t see the increase as value for money.  I can’t blame them.  There was a food show we did last summer, beautiful surroundings, lovely weather, cleverly considered lay out, well advertised, £7.50 for adults, £3.50 for children, £4 a pint, £3 a Coke for the kids, burgers at a fiver; you’ve done over £50 before you even think about buying any produce.  No wonder people come up and say “I love these events!  Beer, a band, and all this free food!!”

Jimmy’s Farm Christmas Fayre, 6-7 December, Jimmy’s Farm/Woodbridge Christmas Market 7 December
One of our better ones last year and so it proved again this year.  In fact we did even better than last year.  Free entry for the public you see!  With our stall facing south and not a cloud in the sky Saturday we should have brought our sunglasses.  Not something you think about in December is it?  Well, I don’t.  Damn though, it gets windy up on that hill! One of our flags blew down at one point.  Luckily no eyes were taken out.  And as for the person who thought camping out was a good idea this time of the year…  You could barely see the tent for the frost covering it.
Woodbridge, sadly, wasn’t such a great success but the weather was pretty rotten on the Sunday when the market was on, which didn’t help.  Can’t complain about it though.

Ipswich Borough Council Market, last two weekends before Christmas
I’ll not lie, Ipswich has it’s detractors, but our home town has always been pretty good to us and my goodness is the pitch rent reasonable!  Taking that into account, four average days elsewhere turn into four very good ones here, helping us to hit our target for the festive period and retire for the year knackered but happy.

I find it hard to just switch off though.  When I used to “work” for a living if I took a week off I’d just about stop thinking about work by the end of the Tuesday and start thinking about it again on the Thursday.  Leanne and I had our “Works Christmas Meal” down at Ipswich Waterfront (I even paid!) put our plans for 2015 in place and I eventually got round to wrapping the presents on Christmas eve.  Typical bloke.

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November to December 2014 – part 1 of 2

We just didn’t stop!  It all went by in a bit of a blur though and here I sit in January wondering where the last two months of 2014 went.   Most of it was spent cooking but that’s just day to day stuff you’re probably not interested in.  I’ll take you through my thoughts (and these are indeed my thoughts only) on the shows we did instead, warts and all.  Much more interesting.

Brentwood Festive Show with Aztec Events, 1-2 November.
Now these sort of events are, by and large, if I wasn’t working there, my idea of a living hell and something I’d avoid like the plague!  Unlike outdoor markets, there’s no scenery to speak of other than row upon row of stalls.  However, if you like your shopping and want to get all your Christmas presents ticked off the list in one fell swoop then they’re the place to be.
Quite expensive ones to do, the Aztec shows and with no camping available (or indeed desirable at this time of year!) a bit of travelling to and fro with some early mornings thrown in.  Not my favourite combination…
Arrival and set up was straightforward enough but with limited space available for offloading there was quite a bit of hauling involved.  Speaking to one particular stallholder we know, he told us that this was his 3rd best show of 2013.  Our first thoughts were that we just hadn’t brought enough stock but oh how wrong that proved to be!  Plenty of people there but with I guess about 500 stalls a hell of a lot of competition for people’s money.  We did OK, well enough to book it again for 2015 but not in our top ten, especially taking into account the cost of the show.  Every stallholder we spoke to said it wasn’t a patch on 2013 so here’s hoping 2015 will be better.  I think the only winners in 2014 were the organisers…

Southend Festive Show, again with Aztec, 8-9 November.
Much the same as the one above, only it was worse.  Stallholders had told us that this one was the poorer cousin to Brentwood but when we booked it we’d heard that the Aztec Festive shows were very good.  Don’t get me wrong, we still turned a profit but for 2 long days with 2 people manning the stall, not really worthwhile.  I always think to myself, “How much would we have taken on our home town Council Market for a fraction of the cost involved?”  If the answer is much the same or better then it’s not a good show.  On this occasion of course, had we been at Ipswich Market we’d not have been placed right in front of a speaker blaring out Christmas songs on a loop for 2 full days!  Not one we’ll be doing next year and I was left at the end of the weekend having to reassess our targets for the month.

Co-op Christmas Show, Wherstead Park, Ipswich, 15-16 November.
More Christmas music!  AAAAAAGH!
This was one of our better shows last year and being right on our doorstep was one we were looking forward to.  First hour there though and we couldn’t even persuade anybody to try any of our sauces let alone buy any!  For once though, the weather helped us out: it p*ssed down!  Being an inside event people turned up in numbers and we ended up doing even better than we did last year.  Things are looking up!

I know I said I wouldn’t but a bit about cooking now.  The busiest period of the year was nearly upon us now with 13 event days in 18 days and internet orders now about to hit peak for the Christmas season.  With stock-takes and sales traceability to do in between shows that meant not much time for production.  The plan was to cease production for the year before the next show.  We’d planned ahead though with minimal events booked in September and October to allow us to produce enough stock.  Neverthless, it was a funny feeling switching the blender off for the last time, or so I thought…