Award Winning Yorkshire Bakery’s Festive Hampers

An award-winning Yorkshire bakery has launched a range of delicious, organic Christmas hampers. The Side Oven Bakery, based at Foston-on-the-Wolds in East Yorkshire has created the hampers in response to customer demand for its best-selling Christmas Stollen, mueslis, juices and cordials.

Simple Recipes For Four Festive Christmas Cocktails

Christmas is a sumptuous time of year for taste buds, but it’s usually the food that’s so tempting and Christmas drinks are resigned to a choice of wine, beer or spirits. Cocktails are often considered too complicated, especially when there’s the turkey and trimmings to worry about, but with a few simple ingredients it’s amazing what can be created in a matter of minutes.

Laverstoke Park Farm at Fifth Floor Restaurant and Cafe

February 2009 will see two renowned purveyors of food, Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor and Laverstoke Park Farm, join forces to showcase a new range of menus celebrating all that is good about comforting Winter eating. A hearty farm breakfast will be available at the Café and a stunning Market Lunch menu at the Restaurant, both created using the finest seasonal produce from Laverstoke Park, a leader in the field of ethical, organic and biodynamic farming.

Tibits

I don’t know about you, but when I raid the salad section at the local sandwich shop the name of the game is to force the biggest amount possible into the smallest box available. This is then squeezed shut so that all the way to the checkout it is humming with tension like an over wound spring ready to leap open at the last minute flicking sweet corn in all directions. It’s a situation that Tibits, the gourmet vegetarian restaurant, has found a solution to.

Eat From Head to Tail at The Devonshire Arms – Beeley

From January 2009 a unique ‘Head to Tail’ menu – offering customers cuts of meat from every part of various animals – is to be available at The Devonshire Arms – Beeley. Situated in the stunning village of Beeley, Derbyshire, the charming 18th century country inn is owned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and located in the estate surrounding their ancestral seat, Chatsworth House. Its restaurant is renowned throughout the Peak District for its beautifully cooked menus made from produce grown and reared on the estate – including incredible beef, lamb and pork.

Sherlocks Bar and Grill Restaurant

Calling a place Sherlock’s when it’s located on Baker Street is, I suppose, rather inevitable. Luckily though it’s not something that every local retailer has chosen to do There is no ‘Holmes 4U’ estate agents and no pub called The Moriarty’s Revenge. The hotel, which houses the restaurant, does have a silhouette sign of the great man hanging outside but that, thankfully, is the limit of the theming.

Tio Pepe Gourmet Grazing Box

Sherry and Christmas, it’s like pudding and brandy butter and sleeping in front of the Bond film on the telly – a UK institution. My parents had one bottle of Bristol Cream which along with Warnink’s Avocaat and Stone’s Ginger Wine lay unloved and stuck to the floor of the drinks cabinet the rest of the year round. Granny used to have the Bristol Cream before lunch and soon after that a choking fit which would last all through the prawn cocktail starter.

Heard it Through the Grapevine -Matt Skinner

Wine. The final frontier, this is the place where there is still trepidation to tread despite so many books on the subject by so many people. Even my old boss Malcolm Gluck has written one, having first in his smart ad-man way spotted a gap in the market with his Superplonk series. And of course there is Oz and Jilly and all the others who seem to come and go like bottles in the evening. I’m still none the wiser really

The Good Oil – it’s rather great

The Good Oil is made from hemp seeds. Yes the same plant strain whose dried leaves fuelled a thousand counter revolutions, or would have if the people smoking it had managed to get it together to get out the house. Of course hemp is not just a drug it is an ancient plant whose tough fibrous stalks made the ropes that fitted out the British fleet for centuries and the rope that made the noose for the pirates.