I planned for this, the very first post of 2014, to be a lot different that what it turned out to be. I've been working on a recipe for four weeks and it is nearly ready to publish... yet something happened that distracted me from my culinary fine-tunings: I got an e-mail through the shop from a customer, there's nothing new there, I get plenty of them every week with queries about ingredient substitution, product availability, suggestions and plenty of thank yous.

This particular e-mail was different. I am not publishing it and before you jump into conclusions, it wasn't a nasty one, in fact, it was a good e-mail: a rational, polite and well composed one, it was overall positive. The lady in question found our products 'extremely expensive' compared to the offering by the Asian shops and thought that although she liked what we were trying to do with Mexican Food and she understood we have to pay import duties and the lot, she felt we were really not competing.

The e-mail couldn't have come at a worse time: I was dealing with a silly swollen foot and with the prospect of having to bring down Christmas decorations before I was meant to go back to my full-time position and to the stressful days of having to juggle bill paying jobs and long evenings and weekends trying to get the business to a point were it allows one of us to go at least part-time on the venture. At first I was annoyed. Then I had a panicky few hours full of self doubt and gloomy prospects. Then I got angry and spent a few more hours going through the reasons why we price our offering the way we do it. Then I spent a few more hours thinking about ways to reduce our costs so we can compete. Then I got a headache (always happens after I pack too much stuff in my poor head) and then I went to bed feeling miserable. Needless to say I didn't answer the e-mail that day, or the day after. I just didn't have it in me, I was exhausted!