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...

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...

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. 

21 April 2010

Recipe for Tagliatelli With Mushroom and Truffle Sauce

Simple is best sometimes.  Last night, I was struggling as to what to feed the kids now they have gone back to school and time at night has been squeezed ever tighter.  So hunting through the bare cupboards, I found some unfinished mushrooms and the...

20 April 2010

Fairtrade Flowers And The Volcano

One of the consequences of the volcanic ash is that food and flowers from the developing world is not being flown in.  Now I don't buy vegetables out of season nor do I buy flowers out of season, but I worry about the impact this flying ban is having...

19 April 2010

Steenbergs Listed in Rose Prince's Latest Book

Rose Prince has been really lovely and kind and listed us twice in her new book - The Good Food Producers Guide 2010 - under Drinks and under Delis and Specialists.  We always feel flattered - and a bit embarassed - when someone so influential likes ...

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...

13 April 2010

Steenbergs As Recommended On Delia Online

Steenbergs Home Bakery range has been recommended on Delia Online as a Good Buy today which is pretty nice really:

11 April 2010

Pale Blue Dot

Sometimes you read something that says things so much more clearly and beautifully than one could ever hope to do oneself.  And I have recently read one of those - it comes from Richard Dawkins' brilliant anthology of science writing called "The Oxfo...