All our posts - page 28
04 February 2010
Recipe for Traditional Pudding: Queen of Puddings
I was listening to Radio 4 the other day and they were talking about steam puddings and how it is a truly English traditional that is not found anywhere else. One of the puds they were talking about was Queen of Puddings which was being made at Riv...
Read more02 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...
Read more01 February 2010
Trying To Build A Better Spices Business
When Sophie and I set up Steenbergs, we were very clear in our own minds about what Steenbergs as a business wanted to offer as products - the widest and most exotic range of great spices, herbs, seasonings and teas from around the world that are gro...
Read more30 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...
Read more29 January 2010
Development thoughts about vanilla from the Congo
I like the vanilla beans from the Congo because of their story. I like the idea that the vanilla beans are grown in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Virunga National Park. I, also, like the fact that this is a fair trade story, where local p...
Read more26 January 2010
Recipe - How To Make New Mexico Red Chile Sauce
Here is a way to use some of the new chillis that I introduced in a blog last week. It is a traditional recipe for a New Mexican Red Chile Sauce (Chilli Sauce) that is preferred by northern New Mexicans and New Mexican old-timers, especially those w...
Read more24 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...
Read more22 January 2010
Hot Chili From Steenbergs
The snow may have gone but it's cold, dreich and miserable. But after a manic Christmas, it's given me time to do some of the boring, but necessary, things of business life - stocktake inputting, stock valuation and pricing review, plus I've just do...
Read more14 January 2010
Recipe for Chicken Nuggets and Chips
The roads yesterday were like an ice rink - there was a thin layer of black ice outside our house that made the road treacherous. No gritting of minor roads or housing areas seems to be being done. We're not that good in England at cold weather - o...
Read more08 January 2010
Recipes - Oranges And Lemons For Really Great Homemade Biscuits
While snowed in in the cold countryside of Northumberland, we enjoyed some warming chai as well as delicious mulled wine using our organic Fairtrade mulling wine spices. I also concocted a couple of citrus based biscuits, with one of them coming fro...
Read more06 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...
Read more05 January 2010
2009 - time to reminisce or glad it's over?
2009 has probably been one of the more challenging years for Steenbergs. Not because of the economic climate particularly but because the normally healthy fighting fit 9 people who currently make up Steenbergs went through rather more medical problem...
Read more01 January 2010
Recipe For Luxuriant Chocolate Chai Latte
The snow is still here and it's a white and cold Christmas and New Year period. We've travelled to Northumberland, my home county, where we have observed the traditional first footing in a harshly, cold and rural climate - I love it.
Read more21 December 2009
UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is the perfect example for the phrase "a damp squib". Squibs are small explosives that are used for special effects and in the past for clearing away coal in the mines when they were sold as "Miners' Sa...
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