24 May 2010

Recipe For Pink Rose Macarons

Pink is one of those colours I have never really liked.  However, getting married and then having a daughter have made me accept pink as a colour and slowly but surely start to like pink as long as it is subtle rather than Barbie coloured.  Sophie ha...

22 May 2010

New Season Asparagus

There's nothing simpler, nothing more delicious than new season asparagus.  Some years ago, Sophie and I tried to grow asparagus, but we never had sufficient patience and that project came to nought.  But luckily there are loads of brilliant local gr...

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.

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...

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...

15 May 2010

Is There An Easier Way To Save The Planet?

I worry about the planet.  I worry about poverty.  I worry about freedom.  I want the world to be a better place, and I want the planet to be fit healthy and beautiful for my children when they grow up and for their children and so on for many thousa...

14 May 2010

Steenbergs In the Media

Lifestyle magazine has long been a big supporter of Steenbergs and use many of our products to be inspired with. Many of the products not branded Steenbergs are available in our online shop.  Lots of inspiration for everyone.

11 May 2010

Two Business Decisions That Will Shape Steenbergs Over Years Ahead

We've made a couple of small, seemingly innocuous commercial decisions in the last 10 days that will probably have a dramatic impact on Steenbergs as a business over the next 5 - 10 years.

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...

06 May 2010

I Just Don't Get Proportional Representation

As we're potentially heading for a hung parliament or a very closely matched parliament, I wanted in my mind to consider the idea of proportional representation as it is something that's going to be on the table in any post-election discussions that...

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.

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...

28 April 2010

Fairtrade Flowers And The Volcano - An Update

This is the response I got from Sainsbury's on Fairtrade Flowers:

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...

25 April 2010

Main UK Political Parties On Climate Change And Global Warming

There is a general political consensus that climate change is the number one environmental issue and there seems to be general agreement on how to address the problem, now that arch global warming skeptics like Boris Johnson and Nigel Lawson in the C...

24 April 2010

Global Warming And Greenhouse Gases

We've looked at whether there is global warming and there does appear to be global warming albeit not at such a dramatic level as we read about in the press - perhaps more like 1oC rather than 4oC or 5oC.