Starting Up with Lucie Greenwood @ The Milk Shed

Well, I’m dictating this to a bored teenager as I make the journey down to Cornwall for what I hope will be a far more successful holiday than last summer’s, when everything that could have gone wrong did!

Looking back it was probably too soon to go swanning off, but as anyone who’s started their own catering business will know, after working 24/7 you owe it to yourself, not to mention your family, to try and take a break eventually.

So with every last square inch of freezer space crammed full of what I sincerely hope will be enough ice cream to last for the next 10 days, we’ve made a dash for it and hopefully in eight hours time I will be half way through my first bottle of wine, feet in the sand, Atlantic waves crashing in front of me and have a couple of fish grilling away on the dodgy beach barbie.

One of the things I really miss and a casualty of working ridiculous hours is dining out, something I used to do loads, especially when I lived in London Bridge and was spoilt by a multitude of awesome bars, cafes and restaurants on my doorstep and a disposable income – oh, how times have changed!

As a substitute I now devour food magazines like a trainee vicar studies the bible, whenever I can snatch five minutes, and subscribe to my favourites Donna Hay and Food and Travel.

So I’m really looking forward to spending the next seven days eating out as much as possible when we’re not barbecuing on the beach (it’s in the hands of the weather gods) and either way as far as I’m concerned, a win-win situation!

Considering after my ski trip last Christmas our specials board read like a Swiss chalet theme night, and for weeks our customers were treated to the likes of goulash and tartiflette while I consoled my post holiday blues with the comforting smells of smoky bacon, melted cheese, and paprika stew; for the tail-end of summer expect to see mussels, sardines and maybe even a mackerel pasty!

One of our regular specials is a gorgeous Basque squid stew which I first tasted 15 years ago in St Petroc’s Bistro in Padstow, which also happens to be where I’m having supper next Monday, so perhaps a new Milk Shed future classic will be discovered!

On more of a downer, soon I’m going to be losing my best girl, my wing-woman. Hattie, who’s been with me since the start, is off to spread her wings and take on the world, and I will be bereft without her. In the end the reality is that having the right people with you is the most difficult thing to achieve, but singularly the most important.

Your food can be fabulous, the atmosphere lovely, the decor gorgeous, but without them it’s nothing. Here’s to the team.

TRY IT
The Milk Shed is in Northampton Road, Weston-on-the-Green.
Call 01869 351387 or see themilkshedstore.co.uk

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