Carrot Cakes come in many guises and they seem to me often to go strong on other ingredients. Leafing through our recipe books I’ve seen cinnamon, oranges, lemons, desiccated coconut, ground almonds, bananas, pineapple chunks, nutmeg, vanilla essence, ground cardamom. This seems to be in order to disguise the taste of the carrot, which defeats [...]

On Saturday we were in Bruges (a Christmas present from our sons) and as we had not paid for the Eurostar or hotel we treated ourselves to a decent meal. Not a cheap experience, by the way.  Being by nature not one who likes to be ripped off on the wines in restaurants I’m always looking [...]

A friend’s 19 year-old son got a job at the local branch of a large Off-Licence chain and was given half a day’s induction/training to equip him for the in-depth wine knowledge he would soon be required to dispense.
“Don’t worry about that.” said his manager, “All you need to know is; the deeper the punt, [...]

When I used to work for Hardy’s there was never a visit to Australia without a few offers to join a vineyard investment scheme. An easy way to make quick money, such was the unsatisfied demand for Aussie wines, especially reds.
The huge forecasted sales volumes did not achieve their expected levels, but the vineyards had [...]

 Now that the soil is no longer hard with frost our first plantings have gone in.