Page 45 of Rachel’s Pudding Pantry

Chapter 19

RENOVATIONS AND ROULADE

Rachel was bristling, sat with a steaming mug of tea at the kitchen table. To her annoyance, another email had come in from Jake, asking for news on Maisy.

She’d been so cross after getting the last one, she hadn’t known quite how to respond, and life had been hectic when it had landed in her inbox. Then, when Maisy made a thank-you card for her daddy with glitter and stickers and a drawing of Pete the lamb, she realised they had nowhere to post it. You can’t send a handmade card to a bloody email address. It had made Rachel so angry.

But she recognised that Maisy should have some contact with her father, if that’s what she wanted. Maybe she’d respond this time and attach a recent photo for him, and mention the thank-you card to try and get a postal address. Arrgh, if they hadn’t had Maisy together, she’d have been happy to never see or hear from him again. Jake ready to come knocking on the door, showing renewed interest in Maisy, gave Rachel a headache that she really didn’t need right now – how could he presume that he could just jump into her and Maisy’s lives whenever it suited him? Bloody selfish, that was Jake all over, Rachel raged to herself.

At least she had an exciting project to distract her from the emotional tribulations with her ex. After a busy few weeks on the farm, the day had finally come for the wheels to start turning on the Pudding Pantry plans. Not to mention for the farmyard to become filled with dust and building debris. The noise of drilling, clanging and hammering filled the air, and Rachel’s head, which was already in a spin after hearing from Jake, was banging too.

‘Oh my God, I can’t handle this noise!’ Rachel broke away from her admin tasks at the laptop.

Jill quickly went to close all the windows of the kitchen, despite it being a warm day, realising that plumes of dust were already billowing in.

‘Ah no, the puddings will be full of grit!’ she groaned. Her latest batch of chocolate puddings for the Deli were sitting cooling on the side.

‘They’ll have extra crunchy toppings!’ Rachel said wryly, adding, ‘Well, at least it means we’re on the way.’ After a week’s delay on their agreed start date whilst the builders were finishing off a previous project, it was great to see, if not hear, some action.

‘Yes, I know, we couldn’t afford to have wasted much more time. It’ll be a busy, noisy month, but it also spells progress,’ added Jill. ‘Just think, when we get through this, we can get everything up and running and we’ll be opening soon.’

‘Yes, it’s really happening, Mum.’

The electrician they’d hired was also coming in to get the wiring to the barn checked and improved. Rachel was quite looking forward to the electrician coming back actually. He was friendly and chatty and seemed to know his stuff when he’d called at the farm to give a quote a few weeks ago. His name was Carl, and she could picture his blond hair and grey-green eyes that had a bit of sparkle about them. It gave her a jolt of surprise to acknowledge that his face had stuck in her mind …

‘Can I help you with anything here, Mum?’ Rachel asked, bringing herself back to the here and now.

‘Not just now thanks, love. I’ve got all these made. But I am going to experiment with some new puddings and desserts ready for the pantry’s opening. We’ll need an exciting selection to tempt our customers, so I’m thinking about how we can push the boat out.’

‘Ooh, what are you thinking?’

‘Well, we’ll be right in the swing of summer when we open, won’t we. So, I’ll have to try a summer pudding, I haven’t made one of those for ages, and I’ve just found this recipe for a dark chocolate and raspberry roulade.’

‘Now that sounds divine!’

‘Hey, come and look at this, too. I was hunting for something traditional and old-fashioned and I remembered Ruth’s scrummy spotted dick recipe, so I’ve been looking through the old Baking Bible, and there it was. But see this …’ Jill was smiling broadly as she pointed to the open page.

There was a loose page tucked there with Grandma Ruth’s unmistakeable neat handwriting … and then, beside the title of ‘Spotted Dick’, written in a childish scrawl, was ‘Hahaha!’ and a cartoonish – but unmistakeably crude – drawing! Rachel grinned – that so must have been Dad as a mischievous boy.

‘That’s hilarious! I wonder if Grandma Ruth was cross.’ Rachel could almost picture the pair of them: Dad and his mum here in the kitchen baking together, or most likely Dad meant to be doing some schoolwork at the kitchen table and naughtily scribbling in her margin when she wasn’t looking.

‘Well, I’ll have to give this a try, won’t I, and some of the others to see if they work out all right. Let’s see what works best and what you all like.’

‘Great, so, are we going to have to be pudding guinea pigs for the next few weeks?’

‘You are indeed.’

‘Blimey, the things we have to put up with for the sake of the business.’ Rachel gave a mock shrug. ‘It’s so tough, this pudding malarkey.’

Jill smiled.

‘Right, well I’ll get back out with Moss and start rounding up the sheep and bringing them down ready for shearing. We’ve got Big Bob in tomorrow,’ Rachel said.

Big Bob travelled around the area at shearing time. They had the ewes to shear, all one hundred and ninety of them, plus three tups, who were far stronger and harder to wrestle to the ground. It’d take a whole day. Shearing helped to keep the sheep cool for the warm summer months, and kept the flies from settling in the fleece and causing all sorts of bother. She and Moss would go out and herd them up today, so they were ready in The Stackyard – which was the field nearest the farm and lambing shed, soon to be the shearing shed.

Like Jill, Simon would be helping tomorrow as well – it’d be all hands on deck, with Big Bob doing the bulk of the shearing. Rachel did know how to shear, but there was an art to it and her fleeces tended to look a bit scruffy, as did the animals thereafter. It also needed a lot of physical strength for the numbers of sheep involved, so she worked better as ‘shearer’s assistant’, rolling and stacking the fleeces. She still used the same old wool needle that her grandfather had used to sew up the wool sacks, ready for collection.

It was hard and smelly work – Rachel was already thinking about the hot bubble bath she’d no doubt be craving afterwards.