18 Mar 2023
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, has been juggling visits to A&E with trying to run her own business…
Speaking as a small business owner, this week is proving to be one of the most trying since I started FOOD by Elena. Granted, I haven’t had many real battles thus far, and so the bar is low, but the proverbial poop is pelting that fan this week.
Kicking off the (bad) week were two phone calls – one from each of my children’s schools on consecutive days. That’s right: double trouble. My son had tripped backwards and thwacked his head on the playground concrete, of all forgiving materials (playground: 1; skull: 0), and my daughter managed to face-plant the ground whilst cheating on the daily mile run (by cutting a corner over tree routes, blackening an eye and a couple of fingers in the process. Karma’s a b*tch…).
Even though my instincts told me there was no great emergency in either child’s case, I nonetheless experienced a surge of mother’s guilt, as heady as it was inconvenient. So I trekked twice to the urgent care clinic and sat for what felt like the Triassic period in the waiting room.
Thank goodness for The Beano, in which both my children can lose themselves for a good while before emerging for something electronic to pass the time.
Neither child had done any lasting damage, fortunately, which is of course paramount, but damage was nevertheless done to my productivity levels. Sledge-hammer damage, in fact, from which I couldn’t recover and had to outright cancel the corporate lunch I was due to deliver. I’d worked so hard to make up for child one’s trip to urgent care only to find that child two’s trip meant the hard work was all for nothing, as I still couldn’t physically make the final preparations or the delivery. Fortunately, the client was extremely understanding and kind about it.
To add insult to injury (pun intended), there’s of course the extra child-care needed this week for the two days of teacher strikes (both my children will be home). This leaves me with, well, woefully inadequate time to get my catering jobs done.
Of course, in typical fashion, this week is particularly heavy work-wise, with the aforementioned corporate lunch, a mid-week evening grazing table to deliver and also a buffet for no fewer than 50 on Friday.
At times like this, I panic-write lists in the hope that itemising tasks will somehow eliminate them, but funnily enough the workload remains the same. You just see the sheer enormity of it more clearly, mocking you from your Pukka Pad.
It’s very tricky to make things work sometimes, when you’re both a primary carer and a small business owner. I imagined, when I began FOOD by Elena, that being my own boss meant being able to say no to work if I wanted to, but I’ve never once done that. I never want to relinquish an opportunity to either earn or increase my visibility. I imagined I would have the flexibility to ‘be there’ for assemblies, extra-curricular activities, or when school needs you to pick your child up suddenly.
But I have learnt this week that my situation isn’t more flexible: you must either find a way to squeeze in the unexpected (usually by sacrificing sleep, I’ve found) or else you have to not deliver on a job, which means letting down a client and not being remunerated for what’s already been spent in time and on ingredients. It’s no small price to pay for so-called flexibility.
In case I sound like a bit of a misery-guts, here’s a bit of exciting news that I’m near giddy about. I was chatting with a lovely friend of mine
I’ve known since our firstborns were in utero and who has been a staunch supporter of my little business since its inception. Her name’s Leisha and she’s a wonderful cook. In my early catering days, she effectively initiated me into all things pastry. I was nervous and unsure, and pastry can sense that, you see. Every attempt was failing and I had a deadline.
Now my friend is something of a pastry expert, regularly making show-stopping centerpieces like salmon Wellingtons in the form of actual fish (scales and all), or the most beautiful savoury tarts piled with tempting fillings from roasted squash and chard to vine-ripened tomato and basil, depending on the season, by and large. She also makes a mean pecan pie, heaving with unctuous, nutty sweetness.
I remember having to make six quiches Lorraine, and Leisha swept in and saved my – and their – bacon.
Anyway, back to that chat we were having… it was all about supper clubs. She and I were musing on how much fun it would be to host one for our mutual friends and our families, because we’ve hosted each other many a time, but never joined forces. We have a good spectrum of culinary differences, but also similar tastes and vision, so we hope it might all combine to make our guests very happy. And us, too.
Our excitement has overflowed into my considering setting something similar up as part of FOOD by Elena’s offering, with menu consultation (and the odd pastry-rescue) from Leisha. I got so excited I spent my Sunday playing about with a potential menu that Leisha and I had been dreaming up – think beetroot and black sesame dip, roasted carrot smash with pomegranate and pumpkin seeds, a lovely charred aubergine salad that’s already on my menu but would go so well here, and a warmed pistachio and rose cake with a lemony syrup for pudding. Something redolent and ras-el-hanouty for main, too… the options are endless.
So that’s the project in the pipeline for me and there’s no better time then the start of spring to start something new. And, gastronomically speaking, it’s the ideal time of year for fresh, zingy dishes made with the abundance of seasonal produce about to hit the shelves.
All that said, as I write this sentence, it’s actually sleeting outside my window. Someone needs to tell the weather what season it’s meant to be.
