Posts Tagged ‘vegan’
Friday, June 25th, 2010
We have just put Just Wholefoods Organic Sprouting Bean Mix onto Steenbergs web shop. I remember my mum used to grow mung bean sprouts in a Kilner jar at home which was quite fun and tasted really fresh and crunchy in salads or used in a stir fry. So in memory of those angry days in the late 1970s, we have been growing the seeds in large jars in Steenbergs office to see how well they work.
Sprouting Seeds - Day One
Day 5 - Smaller Seeds Sprouted
Day 5 - Enjoying The Small Seed Sprouts on Spelt Bread
Big Seeds Starting To Sprout
Tags: Blog, cooking, eco, Environment, ethical, Food, foodie, foodie news, green blog, green way of life, lifestyle, organic, organic food blog, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian
Posted in Steenbergs | 3 Comments »
Monday, June 14th, 2010
I have been looking at our range of shaving and other mens products at Steenbergs over the last few weeks to see whether we can improve it further. As modern hippies, I like being clean shaven so growing a beard was never on the cards, but I have tried to pick some different products that are not available on the high street. For example, I like the Somerset’s range and have been recommended it by various punters as being great for sensitive skin, but you can get their products in Boots, Ocado, Sainsburys, Waitrose and on their own web site already, so I didn’t get the point of those as we could never get near their prices.
I – Axel Steenberg – like the Lavera range of men’s products as these have been devised by Thomas Haas at Laverana, who has been making natural cosmetics since 1987. As a sufferer of neurodermatitis, he is very aware of making skincare products that are delicate on the skin and moisturising. Laverana uses natural raw plant materials as the base of its skincare ranges, which are grown organically as much as possible, and their products are completely free from classic nasties like industrial chemicals such as perfumes, colourants and preservatives. And everything is tested on volunteers, as well as by skin and allergy specialists.
These Lavera Men’s Products are some of the most ethical products you will find on the market, and they work. I have been shaving with the Shaving Cream for some weeks now and it gives a great close shave that’s comparable to my normal traditional soap and brush shave, and is not as aggressive on your skin. I tend to finish the shave by using a natural coconut oil moisturiser that replaces the lost oils during the harshness of the traditional single blade razor that I use, but we also have the Lavera After Shave Balm for anyone who would prefer a more refreshing and disinfecting after shave experience.
These new Lavera shaving, after shave balm and deodorants complement very well Steenbergs Weleda range of Shaving Creams that are based on biodynamic herbal products. Both ranges are excellent and far superior for the skin and the environment compared to high street brands and own label supermarket brands.
I have also been trying the Thermal Mud Range of Male Grooming Kit that are based on thermal mud from boiling mud pools around Rotorua on New Zealand’s North Island. The thermal mud is sterilized, then refined to remove any traces of volcanic ash. The Thermal Mud is packed full of natural minerals and has a high affinity for moisture, so is highly restorative for the skin.
Parrs Shaving Gel gives a nice clean shave – it looks a yucky, grey sludgy colour that comes out clear on the skin and allows the razor to run smoothly over your face. It’s a bit strange actually seeing your skin whilst shaving, having spent the last 25 years scraping away at white foam or soap from a classic shaving cream or soap. I found that it was easier to shave with than the soap that I normally use and did not irritate the skin; overall, it gives a slightly less close shave than the Lavera Shaving Cream but the upside is that you will get fewer nicks while shaving. I then treated my face afterwards with the Thermal Mud Moisturiser which usefully comes with a sun protection in it – something I like all men are bad at putting on.
In addition, Steenbergs has included other Thermal Mud products including After Shave Balm, Soap, Shower Gel and a Facial Scrub.
None of these products need a shaving brush and can be used like a normal shaving cream from the high street, so you can replace your Boots or Gillette shaving foams with these. They are much less aggressive on your skin and pretty quickly will make your skin much happier, less dry and more glowing.
The new men’s skincare products complement earlier additions to Steenbergs range of male grooming items, including safety razors from Parker and Merkur, traditional shaving soaps and creams from Cyril Salter and Taylors of Bond Street.
My top shave currently is: Parker 90R safety razor, Wilkinson Sword blades (simply, still the best), fake badger brush with traditional shaving soap, followed by after shave treatment with coconut oil to moisturise the skin. But I am about to trial a Mühle R89 that seems like another great bit of German engineering!
Tags: Aftershave, Blog, Deodorant, eco, Environment, Facial Scrub, green way of life, Lavera, lifestyle, Moisturiser, Parrs, Shaving Cream, Shaving Gel, Shower Gel, Steenbergs, Thermal Mud, vegan
Posted in Steenbergs | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Did you know that one of my first jobs was in the Pets & Cleaning Department in Fenwick’s in Newcastle? And ever since, I have had a strange and haunting obsession for Household Cleaning products. Well, I am not really that fascinated in them, but we have been keen to get our Household Cleaning products right, i.e. good for the environment and vegetarian and alternative.
Our biggest problem has been that Ecover has the largest and most easily accessible range, but their products are everywhere from Tesco through to small health stores, plus they do add some less than brilliant things into their products and are not vegan anymore. We’re down to a few pots of Ecover Stain Remover and then we’re done with them as a brand. Finally and this is a big one, the performance has to be decent as I have found some of the green Household Cleaning products pretty rubbish so you may as well not bother with them – your clothes go grey, your floor never gets clean and they sometimes even curdle in the bottle!
Steenbergs has now got a good range of alternative brands that we feel gives you - our customer – a decent choice of green and ethical alternatives. You may not like all of them or might find some do not perform as well as you would dream, but you must remember that our choice of Household Cleaning products will never be as aggressive in their action as the traditional high street brands like Domestos or Flash or Cif as these are packed full of industrial chemicals that we just don’t want. But we use these greener products at home and some of them – for example the Alma Win range – got me positively excited as the floor cleaner actually worked as I worked my mop around on our tiled floor.
The range is now based around cleaning kit from Alma Win , Earth Friendly and Ecoleaf (Suma’s brand of cleaning products). In addition, we’ve got natural incense based fresh smells from Colibri (incense sticks, shoe odour neutralisers and wool protectors), soap nut washing balls and dryer balls from Ecozone , natural fibre nailbrushes, vegetable washing brushes and washing up brushes and scourers made from luffas and coconut shells that do a pretty good job, plus recycled scourers and clothes pegs from Ecoforce – the clothes pegs are brilliant and come from recycled plastics while Traidcraft’s Fair Trade rubber gloves really got me jumping up and down for joy – loved them but then I am a bit sad about these things. Then there’s Veggi Wash to get all those nasty chemicals and waxes off your fruit and veg that you didn’t manage to grow in your allotment or garden.
For me, it was Alma Win that got me truly excited and finally happy that our range had become pretty much sorted. A few samples just came randomly in the post, so I tried them at home and found that they were better than most of the other brands we had come across and their range slotted in nicely, allowing us to drop Ecover dishwasher tablets that we had been finding a sticking point in our range.
Alma Win is a range of German products – in fact some of the things we’re selling only come with German labels so apologies there – and they’re biodegradeable and suitable for vegans and vegetarians unlike Ecover, and they’re kind to the skin and should over time help to reduce the UK’s high rates of allergies like hayfever, asthma and eczema. They’re also certified as organic by EcoGarantie in Belgium which none of the other ranges are yet, being based on organically grown plant ingredients and not made in a massive chemical plant in Ellesmere Port or somewhere like that. So their products don’t have any of the following nasty gunk in them that you will find in many of the high street brands – optical brighteners, parabens, petrochemicals, phosphates, chlorine, bulking agents, silicone, borium, colour additives, ethoxylated raw materials and genetically modified enzymes.
Please tell us what we are missing in this range and we will see what we can do.
Tags: allergies, Alma Win, asthma, Blog, Earth Friendly, eco, Ecoleaf, Ecover, eczema, Environment, green blog, green way of life, hayfever, household cleaning, lifestyle, Steenbergs, Suma, vegan, vegetarian, wildlife
Posted in Ethical living | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
I read a book last year called “The Scents of Eden” by Charles Corn – it’s a history of the spice trade. It was great as the perspective was different from the histories that I had read in the past which always wrote them from the angle of European spice traders – including British, Dutch and Venice. It’s written for an American audience and talks about the first American exploits into Indonesia and the history of Salem (other than it’s infamous one about Salem’s witch trials), plus the founding of Yale University with the proceeds of Elihu Yale’s generous gifts of East Indian exotic and books; none of which I knew much about except the odd snippets here and there.
As much of the spice trade had been carved up between Britain and the Netherlands, there were slim pickings for relatively new global traders like America. As a result of this together with happenstance, most of the original spices for the American market came from Sumatra, with the result that the new and growing US developed a love for the intensely hot black and white peppercorns shipped in from the East Indies – now Indonesia. It was in 1790 that Captain Jonathan Carnes sailed back his ship the Cadet after 2 years “lost at sea” and had found Sumatra. So here we are experimenting with Indonesian flavours rather than the Indian style pepper that we usually deal with.
Steenbergs Lampung Black Pepper comes from a small region called Kota Bumi in Lampung Utara on the southern end of Sumatra in Indonesia. Here spice farmers still use the old farming practice of growing pepper vines on shade-growing trees. Glossy leaved pepper vines grow up the trunks of tropical shade trees providing protection from heat and harsh sunlight. On the forest floor, nitrogen-fixing legumes are planted in rings around the pepper vines, providing a constant source of nutrients and protecting valuable biodiversity such as beneficial insects that act as natural protection against diseases that affect these pepper vines. While not certified organic, these spice farmers are having a damn good stab at earthy, natural farming.
The black pepper berries themselves are incredibly pungent when grown like this, developing intense heat like chilli pepper fruits. The quality of this Lampung black pepper compared to the kit you get from high street stores is amazing – like the difference between home grown tomatoes and the junk you get from the supermarket. Steenbergs Lampung Black Pepper comes from only 1% of the total available pepper harvest in a shade-grown pepper field, with higher quality Steenbergs pepper berries specially selected and harvested at the peak of ripeness.
Steenbergs Lampung black pepper has a bold, pungent flavour – even stronger than Malabar black peppercorns like Steenbergs luxury black pepper berries. Lampung black pepper starts warming with a classic aromatic, appetising flavour before I got a sudden numbing heat on the tongue that built in intensity around the mouth; the heat lingers a bit but leaves an appetising, mouth-watering taste for a good 5 minutes. Steenbergs Lampung black pepper is versatile like all good pepper and great with red meat, poultry, grilled vegetables, marinades and dressings, soft cheese and even on strawberries!
Steenbergs Muntok White Pepper - a close relative of Lampung black pepper – is a normal vine pepper but one that has been grown exclusively for making white pepper. This white pepper is grown in the hills behind the village of Muntok on the Indonesian island of Bangka. The pepper growers wait until the pepper berries have matured a bit longer than those in Lampung so that they are mainly red and so give a fuller flavour and then start the harvesting. The pepper farmers use traditional bamboo tripods to climb up the trees and then hand-pick pepper fruit spikes of red ripe pepper berries. These fruit spikes – that are reminiscent of bunches of grapes – are packed into rice sacks and soaked in slow running streams that flow down from the mountains above. Seven days later the outermost skin of the pepper has disintegrated and the peppercorns are piled together for a traditional trampling called Nari Mereca or the Pepper Dance which is a bit like the classic stamping on grapes to make wine – the technical name for this process is a rather bland decortication. The dancing separates the peppercorns from the fruit spike and after a final washing the berries are left to dry in the sun where they naturally will bleach to a creamy white.
Muntok white pepper smells faintly foisty but nowhere near as badly as some white pepper which smells of dirty, sweaty football socks – yuck – and doesn’t have that warming aroma that you would expect from black peppercorns. The white peppercorns are crunchy to bite on and quickly build to a numbing heat that makes your eyes water - I started coughing but god was it a great feeling – and the heat numbed the mouth and top of the throat. Muntok white pepper is perfect with pork and veal, poultry, white fish and shellfish, rice and pasta, steamed vegetables, blue cheese and great in white and cheese sauces.
PS: I wouldn’t advise anyone to chew on the Muntok white pepper on its own as it really was numbing and hot, but the Lumpung black pepper would be fine – I only chew on these things because it’s what I do.
Tags: black pepper, Blog, cooking, ethical, Food, foodie, foodie news, green blog, green way of life, Indian cooking, Lampung, lifestyle, Muntok, organic, organic food blog, pepper, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, white pepper
Posted in Spices & herbs | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
I’ve got some new peppers and as usual I am bit over-giddy about it. These ones are classic Piper nigrum – the traditional pepper plant for normal black, white and green pepper. Usually, we get our black pepper from India and Sri Lanka, but these are from Africa – from the Penja Valley in the Cameroon. The Cameroon is a former French colony and is squeezed between Nigeria to the North-West, The Central African Republic and Chad to the East and the Congos to the South. They have a wonderfully colourful football team – the Cameroon Lions – who are my non-England team to follow in the South African World Cup this year (see http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/teams/team=43849/profile.html).
The Penja Valley is a great place for horticulture, a remote valley with only 30,000 people living there. The terroir is a fertile volcanic soil and the climate is ideal for tropical plants, like pepper vines – loads of humidity and rainfall and masses of hot sun. It’s a steamy, sweaty place. Like a niche estate wine, only 18 tonnes are grown on this 100 hectares plantation and no chemicals are used in the growing, processing or post-harvest processes, so while not organic they are free from nasties.
The rich volcanic soil creates flavours and aromas that are soft and refined with a delicate musky, mysterious perfume and lots of hot, African heat that lingers bitingly at the back of the throat.
We have bought some Penja Green and Penja White this time.
Penja White And Green Peppercorns
The Penja Green is picked while the berries are not yet fully mature and the oxidisation process is stopped by blanching the green berries in boiling hot water. They are bright lime green in colour with a light, faint peppery aroma and the taste starts with a clean, slightly sweet flavour but this builds up quickly to a bright, bitingly hot and vivacious heat that lingers at the back of the throat and on the tongue.
The Penja White is matured longer than the black, dried as above, and then the skin is removed in water to reveal the bitingly hot core of the berry, which becomes quite hard and crunchy. The berries are smaller than the green due to the processing, giving a creamy white ridge shape reminiscent of big coriander seeds. The aroma is strong, fusty and peppery and the taste is of a truly hot pepper that makes you sweat, quickly getting to an intense, searing white hot heat that lingers around the whole mouth, numbing the tongue. It’s a really great white pepper and I like it better than many of the Indian ones I have tried, although there is perhaps less depth of character than a classic Wayanad white pepper.
Try Penja green pepper and Penja white pepper for some variety to you cooking – more mystery and a bit less refined than Indian peppers but full of great joyful heat.
Please find below the links to buy these peppers – let us know what you think of the pepper:
http://www.steenbergs.co.uk/product/1072/green-peppercorns-single-estate-from-cameroon//4
http://www.steenbergs.co.uk/product/1073/white-peppercorns-single-estate-cameroon-africa//4
Tags: Africa, African, Blog, cooking, Food, foodie, foodie news, green blog, green way of life, lifestyle, Penja, pepper, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Spices & herbs | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Today it’s a sunny day with a warming, clear fresh light and a blue sky. This is great weather to look at tasting oolong teas from China and Taiwan (sometimes called Formosa by tea drinkers). The clear light allows you to see the subtle colour differences between types of teas being cupped, while the fresh light air marries really well with the taste of oolongs. Oolong tea is sometimes called wu long which is perhaps a better transliteration.
Oolong tea is called a semi-fermented tea, where green tea is basically unfermented (or lightly processed) while black tea is fermented (i.e. fully processed). Oolong tea sits somewhere between a green tea and a black tea with exactly where they are in that green-to-black tea range having a lot of effect on the end tea.
Oolong tea has the smooth, light and refreshing characteristics of green tea with some of the additional depth of character provided by the firing process to give it hints of black tea – so you will hear people talk of oolong tea being “sweet” or “refreshing” or “flowery” or that it has hints of “spiciness”, “warmth” and a “light flavour of heat coming through”.
The tea leaves are picked from a special type of tea plant with large leaves, which are then withered and allowed to oxidize in carefully controlled air conditioned rooms. When ready (and this is part of the art of the tea maker), the leaves are steamed at a high heat to stop the oxidation process.
I just love them. For me, they have more character than green tea and white tea and are like a premier cru wine from a really small, specialist wine estate that’s been given extra love, care and attention. Or perhaps they are like the mystery of a Rembrandt or Titian painting over the perfectly clean lines of a Raphael. They are darker than green teas in colour but still often have silvery white tips coming through.
Some Oolong Teas
I have gone for the following types – an everyday Chinese Oolong Tea and a Taiwan Baihao Oolong (or Bai Hao Oolong) and two flavoured Oolong Teas . So I have chosen a classic style China Osmanthus Oolong Tea that’s been flavoured with delicate Osmanthus blossoms, and a China Milky Oolong Tea that has a silky, milky, sweet taste that’s weird – but beguiling – and has a round mouthfeel.
The Baihao Oolong tea comes from Xinhui in Northern Taiwan, which is humid and wet compared to the rest of the country. This creates an oolong that’s really smooth and sweet, with almost no astringency, with a lovely flowery aroma of ripe peaches and sweet magnolia-flavoured honey. Bai Hao Oolong is sometimes known as
Dong Fang Mei Ren or Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea because Queen Elizabeth II loves the special aroma and taste of Bai Hao and so she named it “Oriental Beauty”.
As you can see from the picture below it has a redder, darker and fuller colour than the green teas that I tasted a couple of days ago. However, this does not translate into a bitter drink and it should be drunk fresh and without milk, sugar or lemon. And while it costs a bit more than normal teas, it is really a treat for when you’re in a quiet, contemplative mood plus it brews well a second time on the same leaves – in fact I often prefer the second brew to the first as more character comes through.
Delicious Cup of Bai Hao Oolong Tea
Tags: Bai Hao, Baihao, Blog, Environment, ethical, Food, foodie, green blog, green way of life, lifestyle, Milky Oolong Tea, Milky Tea, Oo Long, Oolong, Oriental Beauty, Osmanthus Tea, Steenbergs, Steenbergs Tea, Taiwan Tea, tea, vegan, vegetarian, Wu Long
Posted in Tea | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Following on from the recipe for Yorkshire Salad, my mum makes a wonderfully refreshing cucumber salad, which has a similar sweet and sour flavour. It’s lovely in the summer for al fresco dining and great with fish all your around.
Ingredients for Cucumber Salad
What you will need:
1tsp caster sugar
1tsp warm water
3tbsp cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
2 – 4 spring onions, chopped finely
½ tsp sea salt
2tsp dill herb (fresh)
Half cucumber
Firstly, peel the skin off the cucumber and then slice very finely into thin rounds of fresh cucumber. Place these on a plate so that you can see the tops of all the slices of cucumber, then sprinkle over some sea salt and leave.
Now make the sweetened vinegar, by first dissolving the sugar in warm water and then adding this to the cider vinegar. Stir it up thoroughly.
Chop the dill herb up finely and then the spring onions.
Sprinkle the vinegar over the cucumber slices, then sprinkle the chopped spring onion over this, followed by the dill weed.
Cucumber And Dill Salad
Serve immediately.
Tags: Blog, cooking, cucumber, cucumber salad, Food, foodie, foodie news, Granny Salad, green way of life, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, salad, salad recipe, spice, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
We have been discussing the ins and outs of Yorkshire Salad, and some of the different variations, including a very similar recipe called Granny Salad which Sandra (one of our amazing spice packers) was handed down from her Granny in Devon. Sadie – who does all our labels and web site photos – prefers it without onions but says that it definitely wouldn’t be Yorkshire Pudding without an accompanying Yorkshire Salad made by her mum.
Yorkshire Salad
You will need:
1tsp caster sugar
1tsp warm water
3tbsp cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
2 – 4 spring onions, chopped finely
8-10 fresh spearmint leaves, chopped finely
A green leaf lettuce (not an iceberg), shredded
Ingredients for Yorkshire Salad
Onions and Mint for Yorkshire Salad
Chop all the salad ingredients and place in a salad bowl or other bowl; I have given some flex in the ingredients as you should really just go with what you feel – I like it quite minty and without too much onion. Make the dressing by adding a bit of warm water to dissolve the sugar in, then add the cider vinegar to this. Adjust until you are happy with the sweetness – basically it’s sweet and sour, so not too sweet and not too sour. Chuck in the dressing and mix well.
You can serve it not only with Yorkshire pudding, but with other salads, or it goes really well with fish, especially smoked fish.
How do you make yours?
Tags: Blog, cooking, Food, foodie, Granny Salad, green blog, green way of life, recipe, Recipes, Ripon, salad, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe, Yorkshire, Yorkshire Salad
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 4 Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
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.
Steenbergs new spice tins
Part of what we have been seeking to do is to pull out parts of our long list of spices and seasonings that can either sit as a standalone range, such as our Home Bakery products (which we relaunched in August 2009), or added value blends that differentiate Steenbergs in the spices and seasonings world.
We have a range of over 200 blends that we make in small batches by hand which is way more than industrial spice blenders and packers can hope to do – they just don’t have the ability to work on small batch runs nor the inclination.
So during 2009 we redesigned the spice tin, which was originally a spice dabbah made for us in Mumbai in India, to a rolled tin that is now being made for us in China. This new tin was launched in mid 2009 and looks much smarter and more elegant than the old tin that we felt was a bit shiny and the shapes of the actual dabbahs were inconsistent.
In the latter part of 2009 and through to early 2010, we have created a new look label for a few of our most popular blends – Steenbergs Signature Blends. These labels are brightly coloured, individual for each seasoning and now include a recipe idea.
The labels were printed last week and are now launched on the web site and will be officially launched at the forthcoming Organic & Natural Products Show at Olympia in April 2010.
They have great shelf presence and we expect to add maybe another 5 – 10 more over the next 2 years. The blends that are currently available are:
Organic Fairtrade 4 colour pepper
Organic Fairtrade curry powder (a new blend!)
Organic Fairtrade garam masala
Organic Harissa with Rose Petals
Organic Herbes de Provence
Organic Italian Herbs
Organic Mixed Herbs
Ras al hanut
Zaatar
Tell us what you think, and what other Steenbergs products we should add to this range of Signature Blends – I am thinking China 5 Spice, Dukkah, Jamaican Jerk and Mexican Chile Powder.
Tags: Blog, cooking, curry, Fairtrade, Fairtrade blog, Fairtrade spices, Food, foodie, foodie news, harissa, herbs, Indian cooking, lifestyle, organic, organic food blog, pepper, recipe, Recipes, seasoning, spice, spice tin, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Steenbergs | 3 Comments »
