21 May 2010

Recipe for Indulgent Coffee Cup Cakes

There's lots of fuss and carry on about cup cakes and how wonderful they are, so I felt I better try and make some.  I was, also, unsure what the actual difference between a cup cake is and a good, old fashioned fairy cake.

19 May 2010

Water Walks In Ripon - A Walk Along Borrage Lane

I have been spending a few minutes every day exploring the waterways of Ripon over the last month as part of some course work.  It has been really enlightening and an abject lesson in what you can miss on your doorstep when you keep your eyes closed...

16 May 2010

Two Thoughts On Nature After A Walk In North Yorkshire

I walked along the River Ure last night.  It was sunny and warm, albeit with a slightly brisk wind towards the south east.  I was amazed that no-one else was out walking along the embankments - there are about 5,000 locally - but I guess that the dra...

08 May 2010

Recipe For Rhubarb Crumble

Rhubarb is one of the first signs of the fruitfulness of the new season, and I really love rhubarb - we have always had lovely rhubarb at home.  There's a Steenberg family story that our sweet rhubarb came from the Russian Royal family, however I per...

03 May 2010

Great British Ice Cream Parlours

One of the great changes caused by the decline of agriculture in the UK has been farmer diversification, and one of the wonderful changes made by dairy farmers has been home-made ice cream.  Some of these are real gems.

27 April 2010

That's No McGuffin!

Is global warming the perfect McGuffin?  I have never really understood what Alfred Hitchcock meant by a McGuffin; for me it always seemed like the cinematic equivalent of the Zen concept of "the sound of one hand clapping", i.e. there is no sound an...

26 April 2010

Recipe For Chicken Breasts Stuffed With Sage And Onion Stuffing

Thursday last week was a gloriously sunny, late spring / early summer day.  The daffodils are looking gorgeous.  I am amazed anew every year at how the garden comes back to life, while I have been doing nothing to it, after a bitterly cold winter.  S...

16 April 2010

Sanity Check On Global Warming Numbers

As I have explained in several of my last few blogs, I have been looking more closely at the detail of the case for global warming.  I have analysed global average temperatures as provided by NASA that uses information from the Hadley Centre in the U...

07 April 2010

Recipe - Sweet Tart Dough or Sweet Pastry

I am not very good at making pastry.  Some people say that you need cold hands to make pastry and dough, but I have warm hands as I seem always to be burning away all that food - perhaps I just never sit still or my metabolism runs too fast. 

03 March 2010

Recipe For Yorkshire Salad

We have been discussing the ins and outs of Yorkshire Salad, and some of the different variations, including a very similar recipe called Granny Salad which Sandra (one of our amazing spice packers) was handed down from her Granny in Devon.  Sadie -...

26 February 2010

Saved - We've Got A New Milkman

We received a letter today with our milk and our milkround has been taken over by a gentleman from Wetherby, called John Moore.  He has been in the dairy trade for over 20 years and we hope that means this Great British tradition of a milk round can...

21 February 2010

How We Are Reducing Our Family Environmental Impact – Insulating the Loft

One of the major users of energy in a house is for heating the building.  Space and water heating in homes gives off about 20% of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions, which is about 5 tonnes CO2 per home every year.

18 February 2010

The demise of the milkman

Our milkman has decided to call it a day - bad back is his reasoning - and no-one wants to take over his route around Boroughbridge. 

13 February 2010

How We Are Reducing Our Family Environmental Impact – Getting Started

I thought we could share how we have tried to reduce our carbon footprint and what we are still looking at doing.

02 February 2010

Carbon Offsets and Steenberg Carbon Footprints

Every year on slightly ad hoc basis, I sit down and try and calculate our carbon footprint and then offset for the greenhouse gasses that make up our carbon footprint.  It's a guesstimate because it does not include all aspects of the Steenbergs busi...

30 January 2010

Reflections On Le Credit Crunch

I think I am now pretty much up to looking back on 2007 - 2009, and thinking about 2010 and forwards.  Le credit crunch and le recession have been a roller coaster, like surfing a bad set of hairy, tumbling roiling waves, but it's been a truly cathar...

24 January 2010

Recipe - Baking Chocolate Brownies For Haiti

Our children's school council have decided to run a cake stall tomorrow to raise money for Haiti.  I feel especially moved by Haiti as my grandmother was born next door in the Dominican Republic, which has escaped the horrors of their neighbours.  Th...

06 January 2010

The Three Wise Men Give Gold, Frankincense And Myrrh

We went to the pantomine at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle last weekend, and as usual it was fantastic with good songs, amazing costumes and some great contraptions - a flying pegasus that pulled Cinderella's coach was a highlight.  Then there were t...