13 September 2009

Turner's Rain, Steam, Speed - The Great Western Railway

Last weekend, we spent in London at The Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2009, where we had a stand displaying our wares to UK trade buyers.  It was a good show, with numbers slightly down, but the quality was there; the froth has gone out of the mark...

06 September 2009

Footprints in the sand

Earlier this year, anthropologists announced the find of ancient fossilised footprints in Kenya dating back about 1.5 million years.  That's 1.7 million years after our major prehistorical ancestor, Lucy or Australopithecus afarensis, whose skelton h...

05 September 2009

STEENBERGS SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER

Beat the autumn blues with Steenbergs

04 September 2009

Fairtrade spices standards - a reprise

Steenbergs is a commercial enterprise.  We operate in an economy based upon free market economics and that is something that we are completely comfortable with.

02 September 2009

New Spice Standards for Fairtrade

Fairtrade has issued new standards for Fairtrade spices which seem to be a recipe for chaos.  They basically say that you can trade any spice or herb as Fairtrade and that the Fairtrade price is the price agreed between the buyer and the seller.  A p...

26 August 2009

Back on the shop floor at Steenbergs

I am currently working back on the Steenbergs shop floor as our chief blender, Alan, is on his annual holiday somewhere in Greece.  It is great fun to be back where it all began, blending the blends that I’ve created over the years and grinding organ...

19 August 2009

Steenbergs is product of the day at Woman & Home

Steenbergs Home Baking range of organic extracts, including organic Fairtrade vanilla extract and our natural almond extract, is featured as the product of the day at Woman & Home today.

17 August 2009

Goethe and an afternoon walk at Harlow Carr

We went as a family to Harlow Carr Gardens on the outskirts of Harrogate this weekend.  We go every so often to enjoy a quick walk in the gardens.  It's pretty small and really quite genteel, which is just what you would expect for Harrogate.  I pref...

16 August 2009

Ignore the FSA and continue to believe in the best of organic foods

I have reflected further on the Food Standards Agency ("FSA") report on the nutritional and health effects of organic.  And I have 2 further thoughts, being, firstly, that the concept of the report is irrelevant, and, secondly, there is probably no p...

15 August 2009

Photo ops at Steenbergs

I am slightly apprehensive about having had my photo taken this week.  We have been suppliers of spices and sea salt to Tanfield Food Company since they were established a few years back.  They make ambient convenience meals in a pouch under the bran...

12 August 2009

Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits - my personal response to the Review Authors and the FSA

A couple of weeks back now in July 2009, the Food Standards Agency ("FSA") issued a press release together with the publication of a scientific review of the published science on investigations into the comparison of the nutritional composition and h...

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...