10 August 2009

Recipes for Peppermint Creams and Chocolate Strawberries

It’s been a weekend of baking and cooking for Jay’s birthday.  He had some specific requests for things plus we needed to get the sausages and baps for the proper “hot dogs”, ie not with boil in the bag frankfurters but real sausages and decent bread...

07 August 2009

Recipe for Lasagne with Traditional Ragu

As promised, here is the meat lasagne for the committed carnivores out there.  It uses an old ragù recipe from Bologna.

06 August 2009

Recipe For Vegetarian Lasagne With Spinach

Personally, I have never been a great fan of lasagne even if it is one of those firm family and probably national favourites.  But then again, I don’t like spaghetti bolognaise.  I am in a minority of 1 versus several hundreds of millions of people i...

05 August 2009

Eat More Greens

In recipes that people talk about and write about, there always seems a big focus on the extravagant meat dishes, a bit about fish and almost never that much about vegetables.  We certainly eat far too much meat for the balanced human diet and should...

02 August 2009

Enjoy your local history and culture - St Wilfrid's day

Yesterday (1 August) was Yorkshire Day and also the day of the St Wilfrid’s Day Pageant in Ripon.  

31 July 2009

Recipe For Meatloaf - Ideal for a Cold Summer's evening!

The weather has been truly awful over the last few days – rain, rain and more rain.  It’s turned my mind towards thinking about terrines.  Terrines are really versatile – you can have the cold on a warm summers day served with new potatoes and salad,...

30 July 2009

Herbs and Spices for Your Health

Herbal medicine has historically been the primary approach to acute and chronic health problems - this remains the case still in many countries.  We often forget that herbal medicine is the most enduring form of treatment and is still used by 80% of...

26 July 2009

Observer's 50 best gourmet goodies

In case you missed it, Steenbergs was listed in The Observer in Caroline Boucher's 50 best gadgets and gourmet goodies on 19th July:

24 July 2009

Recipe - Sweet Oriental Duck

Cooking your own Chinese style food is amazingly easy and tastes a load better than buying something from the supermarket.  There are some truly simple & quick meals that you can make.

22 July 2009

Recipe - Fennel Braised In Milk

This is an unusual, but great, Italian style way of making fennel as a vegetable.  It’s really great with a traditional English roast chicken.

20 July 2009

Recipe for Fennel Salad

I love fennel.  It’s one of those underused but truly delicious vegetables.  I love its aniseed-like flavour and its texture.  It tastes delicious cold in a salad or warm cooked as a vegetable.  The Italians love it, so I love it.

18 July 2009

Some facts about Ripon

17 July 2009

Chinese Tea Ceremony

TEA CEREMONIES IN A MING DYNASTY STYLE

15 July 2009

How to Make a Good Cup of Tea

There is nothing worse than a dishwater-tasting cup of tea.

14 July 2009

Recipe for Yellow Sunny Quiche Lorraine

12 July 2009

On the Nature and Importance of Business Risk

11 July 2009

Some Good Books on the Environment

I have recently read Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance” which is a pretty good overview of the environmental issues facing the world.  It is lucid and comes up with some sensible political strategies to managing the potential ecological issues impactin...

09 July 2009

A bit more on Aspartame

I read this article in The Ecologist ages ago.  It’s a bit one-sided and perhaps a little over-excited, but it does give cause to concern.  Here’s the link to the article:  http://www.wnho.net/the_ecologist_aspartame_report.htm. And here for some bal...