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. 

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.

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...

02 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...

01 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...

30 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...

29 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...

28 January 2010

Vanilla, Gorgeous Heady Vanilla

I love vanilla.  I really do.  I blogged about it as a spice back in May 2009 under Vanilla - the temperamental diva.

26 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...

24 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...

22 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...