I thought long and hard about this posting... stared at the blank page for a long time. I've been wanting to tell you all for weeks about this, but I couldn't. I've been bursting with excitment for a month and I had to keep it under wraps. This was a real killer for me, but we had agreed to wait till it was all official and that was that! The last week was torture, but now that it's all done and official, I simply don't know how to go about to tell you! So, I'm going to spit it out plain and simple:

My Mexican Shop Ltd.

is open for business!

A month ago, shortly after returning from my summer in Mexico and totally out of the blue, the lovely people from Almacen Latino asked us if we were interested in buying the Mexican Food side of their business as they wanted to concentrate their efforts on their Argentinian side and felt they couldn't give the Mexican side the attention and loving care it required. So after recovering from the shock, the other half and I sat down and had a few scary nights weighing the options.

Food has been a passion of mine for the last decade and sharing the joys of cooking authentic Mexican food (and non of that 'Tex-Mex' nonsense that often misrepresents Mexican cuisine) was the reason why I ended up writing my blog. So all of a sudden, I could find a way to do what I love (in a round about way) and get some money out of it (or so we hope!).

So we took the plunge and said yes; today we signed the contract and it is pretty official now: I am a business owner! We have tons of plans for the new business. We have changed the name; we are developing a new and improved website and a logo to go with it and we will get a proper business e-mail address. We will expand the items on offer, we will be stocking what I call 'perfect matches', which are some of the many wonderful Irish produce that I've been using for a long time in my Mexican cooking and we will be offering the Mexican classics such as 'chipotle chilis', 'corn masa-harina', tinned and bottled salsas, authentic corn tortillas ready made, Mexican drinking chocolate (no offence Butlers drinking chocolate, but you don't stand a chance!), 'mole' pastes, dried chilis and many, more!

So I hope you bear with us for the next two or three months while we sort out all of this. The existing website will work as usual until we have the new website up and running so you'll still be able to get the items there as normal. It's a big step, a scary one as well; my heart in pounding, my head is spinning and I hear a voice screaming inside my head saying 'BUT WE'RE IN A RECESSION YOU FOOL!!' - and I get frighten and panicky, and I start losing sleep... and in those terribly lonely, just before dawn hours I ask myself - what if it doesn't work?! what if no one wants to buy anything of me? what if I make a fool of myself? WHAT IF I FAIL?!...

And then I remember why I'm doing this, and the excitment of it all, and the wonderful people, bloggers, foodies, producers, friends, family, total strangers that have come to me over the years and say: "So you are from Mexico, aren't you? I love Mexican Food!'.