26 August 2015

Steenbergs Spice Taster Panel: organic Garam Masala & Madras Curry

Recently our taster panel had the joy of trying out 2 different spice blends: Madras Curry and Garam Masala.    Curries are very popular in British homes and Steenbergs aims to create authentic yet versatile curry blends to make enjoying Indian cuisi...

07 August 2015

Recipe For Fragrant Rose Rice Pudding or Rose Kheer

Rose Rice Pudding With Raspberries

19 July 2015

Cinnamongate: is cinnamon safe to eat?

We regularly get asked questions about the safety of cinnamon, e.g. “is cinnamon safe to consume?” or “how much coumarin is there in Steenbergs cinnamon?”  There's a lot of chatter about this issue in webworld and in blogs.

07 July 2015

Matcha Chai Smoothie - A Morning Pick-Me-Up

I was feeling a bit jaded this morning, so I needed a pick-me-up to kick start the morning.

24 June 2015

Cacao Chai Smoothie - A Quick Breakfast

This morning we made this dairy-free chocolate flavoured smoothie using almond and coconut milk.

13 June 2014

Spice Taster Panel - Ras Al Hanut and Organic Harissa with Rose

26 March 2014

Looking back over the past 10 years ... part 1

Steenbergs began life in the late autumn of 2003. Our youngest child had just had her first birthday and wasn't walking on her own. Steenbergs has now been going for around 10 years (our 2 children are nearly taller than Sophie) so we thought it was...

05 February 2014

Steenbergs Tasting Panel results - Spices 1

Spice Tastings

04 January 2012

A Little Bit About Myrrh

I wrote some time back about gold and frankincense, so to complete the trio, here are some notes on myrrh.

30 October 2011

Our Agony With Peppermint

Peppermint has been giving us here a headache over the last few months.  Somehow our peppermint just was not quite good enough and we have spent lots of time trying to work out why and what we could do about it?  Firstly, the peppermint tea was minty...

13 May 2011

Spices, spices everywhere

We had a visit recently from Helen Best-Shaw of FussFreeFlavours, who is a lovely lady - other bloggers welcome.  She asked many interesting questions and one of them got me thinking and that was why are we so interested in spices.  It certainly is n...

29 October 2010

Pepper Review - Kampot Pepper Notes

15 September 2010

Vanilla - A Beautiful And Sensual Spice

Vanilla comes from the vanilla orchid, called Vanilla planifolia, which is native to Mexico, but is now indigenous in many tropical parts of the world, for example Madagascar and surrounding islands.  There is a second vanilla orchid called Vanilla t...

01 August 2010

Nutmeg And Mace Spice In Photos

Nutmeg and mace are two of those mysterious spices that are really, unusual in where they come from.  They also have many strange stories attached to them - they used to be thought of as part of a cure for the plague and are reputed to be a key ingre...

15 June 2010

Pepper Harvest

I have just been cleaning out one of the drawers in my desk and found this old CD of photos from Kerala.  I thought it would interesting to put up a couple of photos of farmers harvesting the pepper from the vines.

20 May 2010

New Indonesian Pepper Just Arrived at Steenbergs

I read a book last year called “The Scents of Eden” by Charles Corn – it’s a history of the spice trade.  It was great as the perspective was different from the histories that I had read in the past which always wrote them from the angle of European...

02 May 2010

New Organic Vanilla From Tahiti

We've had a delivery of some gorgeous fecund organic vanilla from Tahiti.  It's brilliant kit and it's totally different from normal organic vanilla from Madagascar - firstly, it's a different species of vanilla orchid, called Vanilla tahitensis as a...

31 March 2010

New Penja Pepper from the Cameroon in Western Africa

I’ve got some new peppers and as usual I am bit over-giddy about it.  These ones are classic Piper nigrum – the traditional pepper plant for normal black, white and green pepper.   Usually, we get our black pepper from India and Sri Lanka, but these...