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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

17 July 2009

Chinese Tea Ceremony

TEA CEREMONIES IN A MING DYNASTY STYLE

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...

05 July 2009

Britain Will Go Nuclear

30 June 2009

New Study into Aspartame

Artificial sweeteners are one of my food paranoias that, in my view, rank up there as one of those danger signs hanging over modern living; they are something that purport huge health benefits versus the issues supposedly attached to natural sweetene...

14 June 2009

A walk on the River Ure

28 May 2009

Steenbergs Organic Web Site Buy of Day

Our web site - www.steenbergs.co.uk -  was the Buy of the Day on the Woman and Home web site yesterday (26/5/2009).  It's good to get genuine, strong independent feedback that we're doing the right thing. 

27 May 2009

Chief Seattle's speech in 1854

This oft quoted piece from 1854 is attributed to Chief Seattle as his response to President Franklin Pierce’s statement that he would buy the land of Chief Seattle’s tribe.

27 May 2009

Vanilla – The Temperamental Diva

A brief history of vanilla