Last Friday was a full day of meetings! We had some more dining vouchers donated to us for our Kickstarter pledges so we need to up the amount of vouchers available. So many awesome restaurants sharing our ethos of great food for not just adult dining! Thank you to The Grundisburgh Dog and The Strawberry Cafe for joining us on this venture. Check our highlights on our Instagram page to see all the restaurants involved so far.
The Angel Woodbridge has also donated Gin Tasting Experiences which will be added tonight too! Exciting times, we all love a good gin!
We have also been offered a permanent premises for our cookery school! We've not even launched yet but already have so much interest we're considering we might need a more permanent home to host more classes for all our tiny chefs. If we manage to exceed our Kickstarter goal this will certainly be a possibility.
New Street Market's social media guru got involved in our pop-up restaurant advertising and have also decided to open for some late night shopping for all you Woodbridge folk! If you haven't been shopping there with all the lovely offerings from flowers, to home wares, clothing and deli goodness; shopping after a tummy full of Italian street food and wine is surely the best way to do it?
Our induction hobs arrived ready to have our first test run through in a couple of weeks with some tiny chefs. We're still getting feedback from all the recipe development going on too, especially with British Pie Week last week! More recipes being written with some new little humans on board too.
In a bid to organise my office a little more, my brilliant husband has been busy building me some shelves and printer storage as flyers, recipe cards and resources for the school are being printed thick and fast. He does this as a hobby but should definitely be making money from it! (He's on facebook on @WoodingsWoodThings if you fancy checking his work out).
I am incredibly proud that my mother-in-law is adjusting all our aprons for the school. I have been keen that they are all cross-back aprons so they fit every child, with no more of the awkward tying and saggy fronts! We got our first aprons embroidered this week and they look cracking. Have been told the rest are ready to be picked up tomorrow. We're using Striptees.com in Diss and they have been so fantastic in their response and punctuality with everything, especially their accuracy in design. I can't wait for Amelie to see her own apron at the weekend, she is the first (naturally) to get her name on a bespoke TOK apron.
I tested out a couple of recipes for the pop up this week. King prawn, cime di rapa, chilli and garlic fettucine went down really well. The ameretti and saffron poached pear tart just didn't hit the spot so I've changed it to a vanilla pannacotta with the saffron poached pear (that part was still delicious!) but this means it's also gluten and dairy free too.
Also tried out the uova al pergatorio con Nduja (eggs in purgatory with Nduja). Essentially the Italian version of shakshuka that has been doing the rounds recently. Without the (delicious!) Nduja sausage it is both gluten free and vegetarian too. I really want to keep the menu short but also ensure all dietary requirements are catered for.
A competition launched yesterday to win a free meal for two with wine on Facebook too, you can enter by just going to our Facebook site @TOKcookery.
Booking is now live for the cookery classes! You can book online at TOKcookery.com, however you'd be daft to not snap up the discounted offers on our Kickstarter site before you go ahead on the website to save yourself (or a present for the tiny chef in your life!) They start on 24th April in Kesgrave's Millennium Hall from 11:30am. Get booking!
Finally! At the time of writing this we are 62% funded and have 23 days left. Please pledge anything you can to keep this awesome ball rolling!