11 March 2010

Enjoying Tasting Oolong Tea

Today it's a sunny day with a warming, clear fresh light and a blue sky.  This is great weather to look at tasting oolong teas from China and Taiwan (sometimes called Formosa by tea drinkers).  The clear light allows you to see the subtle colour diff...

09 March 2010

Tasting Japanese Green Tea

At Steenbergs, we are undergoing some changes to our loose leaf specialist teas.  Last year, we redesigned the labels to be bespoke for each tea type and with better descriptions on making tea, as well as being bright and fun looking.  Next week, we...

09 March 2010

Two Media Mentions In The Guardian

Steenbergs was mentioned two articles this weekend in The Guardian which was most kind of the two authors - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Yotam Ottolenghi - so thank you both. 

07 March 2010

Beautiful Early Spring Day In Northumberland

Today, we were visiting with my parents, who live on the Roman Wall near Hexham in glorious Northumberland. 

05 March 2010

Recipe For Granny Salad Or Cucumber Salad

Following on from the recipe for Yorkshire Salad, my mum makes a wonderfully refreshing cucumber salad, which has a similar sweet and sour flavour.  It's lovely in the summer for al fresco dining and great with fish all your around.

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...

25 February 2010

Recipe for Vanilla Fudge and Coconut Ice

I know this is really quite pathetic but I have only just cracked how to make fudge in the last year.  It always seemed to burn every time I tried to make it - the problem is that most recipes don't give the mixture long enough for the sugar to be tr...

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. 

16 February 2010

BT Has Let Us Down

Many apologies for anyone trying to reach us by email at the moment but currently Steenbergs has no internet service at the factory. The website is not down and is still fully functioning and we are able to access orders from a site elsewhere - this...

15 February 2010

Recipe - Pancakes Stuffed With Mixed Mushrooms In A Cheese Sauce

Following on from making pancakes per Sunday's post, we used the 8 pancakes, or crêpes, that this made by stuffing them with a mushroom filling, covering them in a cheese sauce and baking them in the oven.  This is how we made it. 

14 February 2010

Classic Pancake Recipe

Shrove Tuesday is the traditional start of Lent.  It has become associated with pancakes in Britain and so everyone spends the day making pancakes.  We regularly make pancakes for breakfast which the kids then top with cinnamon sugar or lemon and sug...

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.

11 February 2010

New Information About Global Warming

I've been reading New Scientist this week (6/2/2010) and there were 2 interesting articles on climate change this week:

09 February 2010

Recipe For French Macarons

I came across this recipe on the truly amazing food blog of the Californian pastry chef living in Paris - David Lebovitz - which can be found at http://www.davidlebovitz.com/.  And I have been meaning to have a crack at making his chocolate macarons...

07 February 2010

Follow the frankincense trail

05 February 2010

Steenbergs Launches New Design For Spice Tins

At Steenbergs, we have been doing a lot of work trying to refresh parts of our organic spices and seasonings range.  Now we have relaunched our spice tins into a bright new label and an elegant rolled tin.