The Pig Farmer - Introducing a new blogger…

Chris has a passion for Pigs. Oxford Sandy and Blacks to be precise. After spending many years working in the specialist food sector, Chris decided that he wasn’t cut out for corporate life and wanted to do something more wholesome and traditional. He moved his family to Devon, increased his numbers of quality breeding stock and started a breeding programme which now provides fatteners to the smallholder market and pedigree stock to breeders. He spent time with a good friend, a Q Guild butcher, learning the trade and now butchers his own pigs, makes tasty pork products in his purpose built butchery, caters traditional hog roasts and runs courses for other like minded individuals.

www.snoutandtrotter.co.uk

Tags: British Food, Food Blog, Inn Keeper, , Kitchen Blog, Pub Blog, Wild Game, Italian Food Blog, Drink, Food Bloggers

The Italian Personal Chef - How to try and scam a street wise ;-) personal chef and fail miserably :-)

This is a warning for those who might be contacted by a man pretending to be a “Rev Tegah Shenge” from “Salvation And Praise Ministries” in Uganda.
The man behind that name is very clever, and even if in the beginning I was slightly wary, I didn’t want to be prejudiced either…
Here is the first e-mail:
9th of February: “Hello Carlo Albertoli …. Actually, I and some member of our missionary team will be visiting London UK from the 23rd to the 29th of March, 2009 for a pastoral retreat. There will be 4 male and 3 female missionaries, making a total of 8 people. So we thought its necessary to make arrangement to hire some one to take up the job of cooking for us for those periods of time. …. I will be glad to provide you with more details about us and further information in regards to our visit as well as any dietary restrictions.

Very sensible and reasonable isn’t it? He even has a quaint little website: http://salvation-praise.we.bs/index.htm
We proceed to agree a fee for my services. I ask for the payment to be made by card but he insists on a cheque.
I decide not to worry because I can think of a few legitimate reason for this to happen.. and anyway I am not going to be providing my services if the cheque doesn’t clear.. Furthermore, in the current climate I WANT and I need to believe this is a legitimate request.

20th of February:HELLO CARLO, I WILL LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT THE PAYMENT HAS BEEN MADE OUT TO YOU THURSDAY THIS WEEK A… I WANT YOU TO GET BACK TO ME AS .. AS SOON AS YOU HAVE RECIEVED THE PAYMENT AND MAKE THE DEPOSIT IN YOUR ACCOUNT. I AWAIT YOUR IMMEDIATE RESPONSE BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

The tone is strange, the all bold urgency weird but sort of comprehensible (he “is” a few thousand miles away, he is paying in advance..) so as soon as i get the cheque I let him know. The cheque is drawn on Coutts, The bank of the rich and wealthy! Its clients are expected to have substantial income or liquid assets in excess of £500,000!!! No worries there then… Again, slightly worryingly the name on the cheque is decidedly not ugandan but , again, there might be several legitimate reasons: a solicitor, a donor, a wealth manager … I cash the cheque, keep an eye on the balance and on Tuesday the money is credited!!! Success! I receive another e-mail with detailed travel time and itinerary and other extremely detailed instructions. I am already planning the fantastic menus I will cook for them when this appears in my inbox:

24th of FebruaryDear Carlo, How are you doing? I am sorry I have a little bit of sad news. There has been a tragedy which had occurred on Monday. Three people from our missionary group were involved in a fatal motor accident while traveling back to the Village from town. Two of them died instantly, while the third person is at the hospital and in a very critical condition. Her left lungs were severely affected and have been placed on an artificial respiratory mechanism. Now the doctors says that immediate response will have to be taken to save her life and that the bills must be paid for them to operate on her immediately. There is not enough money to pay her hospital bills to get her operated on. And on the other hand we have to make necessary funeral arrangement to bury the two dead victims. Considering this new unfortunate development, we are grieving the loss of our members and doing all we can to save the life of the one at the hospital. And since all these three people contributed financially to this trip to the United Kingdom, it has been decided that two people from the group, (that is me and one other person) will have to stay behind to plan all necessary burial arrangements and to save the life of one of us at the hospital, while the rest 3 people will continue with the plans of making the trip to the United Kingdom. However, they trip will now only last for 2 days. In line with these new plans, we will need you to deduct charges/fees for cooking launch and dinner for only 3 people for 2 days and have the rest sent back to us. The money sent back is the share for the diseased people and we will need this money to pay for their funeral and also to pay the hospital bills. It is very important that the money is sent immediately to pay the hospital bills so that the operation at the hospital will commence and the life of the only survival of the accident can be saved. To make it all faster for us to pay the bills, please have the money sent today via WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER to my brother in the United Kingdom using this details:
name: DAVID SHENGE
address: 14 Heddon Street
Mayfair,
London,
W1B 4DA

Please I expect that you get this done TODAY …. Right now the only thing that maters now is paying the complete hospital bills for the operation to commence on time, and to bury the remains of our diseased members. Thanks for understanding and expecting your mail soonest.
Remain Blessed
Rev Tegah Shenge

For those who do not know: - a bank will credit a cheque into an account BEFORE is fully cleared. So what you think is rightfully yours might be taken away if the cheque bounces.. I deposited the cheque on thursday 19th of February, the funds were credited and available Tuesday the 24th of February, but according to my bank the cheque is not going to be fully cleared until Tuesday the 3rd of March!!! And when the cheque doesn’t clear, the money is taken away, no question asked. The scammers exploit this gap and this is why he had to come up with such a full blown dramatic excuse: there is a limited window of opportunity and I have to literally RUN to send them my cash before the cheque bounces back.
And what about the Mayfair address I hear you ask??
Google it and you’ll understand..

One final note:
I am now available between the 24th and the 29th of March…

Tags: Tea Blog, Kitchen Blog, Food Blog, Italian Food Blog, British Food, Food Bloggers, Inn Keeper, , Recipes, Drink

The Food Stylist - thailand

Welcome to my first blog. I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to spare as I’ve been preparing for a big project based out in Thailand, as I type I am surrounded by backpackers in an internet cafe. I am working with a comapny based out here and assisting them …

Tags: , Kitchen Blog, Wild Game, Tea Blog, Inn Keeper, Drink, Recipes, How to Cook, Coffee Blog, Italian Food Blog

The Traiteur - Home Delivery up & Running…with a twist!!

Madame Gautier Home Delivery

Well we are into Feb and I will keep this short and sweet… Above is our first statement to take on 2009!!  We have set up a unique Home delivery service that provides some of our favourite French dishes for people at home to order and have arrive at their doorstep ready to cook!!  Starting off in the West & Central area of London, we hope our traditional style of menu will get the tastebuds flowing and get people ordering!!

Be great to hear any reviews from you guys too!

Bon Appetit!!

Tags: British Food, Wild Game, Kitchen Blog, Coffee Blog, Pub Blog, Drink, Tea Blog, Recipes, Italian Food Blog, Food Blog

The Inn Keeper - Pubs and Political Philosophy

Pubs and Political Philosophy

Rousseau –

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains…

We have allowed our bureaucrats to increase our tax burden and add the costs of red tape regulations. These are chains of our own making, forged by our snout-in-the-troughs-no-value-for-money-governments and their public servants, which result in extra costs in running a business.

The most annoying of these “chains” are the costs on the taxpayers for these bureaucrats, the job-for-life-pension-for-ever-civil servants who justify their role and existence by inventing more regulations that we have to pay for in following them.

What ever happened to common sense in health & safety – doing things at your own risk? Why are we treated as children in an increasing Nanny State?

An example is drinking glass regulation.

Why can’t I sell my beer or wine in any glass I choose to sell them by? Regulations state I have to have my glasses stamped or lined in certain measures. This adds a cost of 20p each.

My pint beer tankards cost £2.21 from Germany, but if I could use the open market then I can save over £1 each on them. This means a saving of £2500 a year – which the cost of a job for 2 students in the summer holidays. UK suppliers charge more for the same glass up to £2.50 because we have to sell by the regulation pint – where everywhere else in the world is free to choose what vessel they sell booze in. If this was de-regulated we could get the cost of drinking glasses down as we could choose any supplier so competition would be better.

To obtain a license to sell alcohol we have to pay £150 for a course that is a requirement by the local council. This course takes 1 day and you have to pay staff to travel and take the time off to do the course. Then you need to pay £20 to a monopoly for a certificate of disclosure to prove you have no current criminal record – valid for one month. Clutching these two certificates you then pay a fee to get license from the council £37- a total of £207. Some public paid Bureaucrats are now advising that all staff have to go through this process if they want to work behind a bar. I employ 20 staff, some are part time students who come and go as customer volume demands.

The point is with all these costs that are regulated by law are added to running a pub; this means they get passed onto what our customers pay in the pub.

Marx & Engels –

There is a spectre haunting Europe…

This spectre is the anti alcohol Bureaucrats and Puritanism.

We are paying job-for-life–pension-for-ever-after-civil servants to advise us to drink less. The government increased the tax on booze and brewers have raised their prices more than they used to before. The bureaucratic advisors are paid by the public purse, and are justifying their lucrative positions by hitting those of us who like to drink. They have not targeted the cause of the increase in alcohol consumption in the UK, and have been for some time blaming this as the fault of pubs. Pubs have been declining and beer sales have fallen. Wine consumption has increased and ill informed bureaucratic advisors have tarred there whole industry rather than specifically looking at why wine has increased. Does it matter how much an informed grown up independent adult drinks? Yes say the bureaucrats. They also say – (another report) - the Mediterranean diet is best, which means drinking more wine. We get mixed messages from tax paid advisors – where is the value for money here? Fewer bureaucrats should mean less tax.

Nietzsche

Genealogy of the Morals - The Morality of the Herd

The job-for-life–pension-for-ever-civil servants are spreading their morality onto us. This is the morality of the herd. The public advisors and government are killing off the right to be a human and make choices at your own risk.

They become a Herd -the public paid Bureaucrats or Public Servant Class - pass a succession of regulations that start the processes of subduing our independent human nature and self-help culture, grinding down any resistances they encounter, to transform our society by assimilating us into a common herd that changes direction as soon as one of the herd is alarmed. They create a society where we absorb what they think is right and wee all do things the same and in obedience to the conforming morals of the Herd.

The Public Servant Class have inverted the morality of the nobility of independence and established a system which places value on the lower order of mankind. We have allowed our slaves to rule us. This changes the way we see the world. Everything pertaining or belonging to the slave is “good”, everything to do with the noble – the non–slave is “bad”. I guess this is why they reward themselves well with huge final salary pensions and high pay in the public service for administrating and taming us. Their anti-drink and puritan morality is not good for my pub business.

My concern is that pubs are known historically for beer sales – real cask ale made in Britain – made by local craft brewers, making local jobs too. Cask ale is unique to Britain and it is odd that it is legislated against by public paid officials. These public paid Bureaucrats are killing off the culture of the pub. Are they paid by someone else to destroy us or is it a herd instinct of common bureaucratic morality they read in civil servants news?

In Canada they have an intelligent tax. They charge a higher rate of tax for take home bottles than draught beer sold in bars. This is a simple tax method that protects jobs in breweries, bars and restaurants.

The French, too, have only 5% VAT on dining out to protect local jobs. All we get in the UK is more beer duty promised and more regulations for the drinks industry. These paid advisors are putting the UK out of business- see what is happening currently to the banks and its regulators.

Why are the bureaucrats compensating themselves with an imaginary revenge on drinking in pubs.

Do they resent us for drinking? Drink is noble and good – over history it has been aristocratic. While we have been asleep the bureaucratic Herd have started calling drink “Evil”. Is this the start of bureaucratic civilization’s taming of man the animal? Is the meaning of all politically correct bureaucracy going to be the reduction of the ‘beast of prey’ in man to a tame and docile animal, a domestic animal who carries the tax burden for his own destruction. We are beginning to live in a country intertwined with priestly bureaucrats in the civil service and Government a forming a power aristocracy.

What can we do to prevent it?

Matthew O’Keeffe

www.rsoe.co.uk

Tags: Inn Keeper, Italian Food Blog, Restaurant Blog, Drink, How to Cook, Pub Blog, Wild Game, , British Food, Food Bloggers

The Inn Keeper - Feudal Pub Contracts - Peasants Revolt.

Feudalism is still with us in merry England.

Owning a centuries old pub makes me see our past still evident today. Pubcos were created by a Government’s error in 1990, who like a medieval King sold a monopoly of pub properties to the highest bidder. Since then the pubcos have not invested in the pubs they owned – this was done by it’s licensees - they just take the money from them. The pubcos borrowed more to buy more pubs and now as property prices fall there is no more cash available to expand. They have to reduce their debt levels.

On the local level this meant the pub rents are high and the beer tie doesn’t give the leaseholders much profit to have a good business. You have to sell wine and food to adapt and survive. The biggest harm to pub users is that the pubcos have no contact with pub customers. And they treat their own lessees as feudal peasants to fill the lord’s coffers. Unlike shop landlords who just charge a rent. Pubco landlords also sell the stock.

This would be like a M&S being tied to buy its clothing range from the shop owner. You can rent and open a clothes store but you have to sell the clothes the landlord chooses. Who in their right mind signs up for that sort of deal?

Last week there was a peasants revolt, the pubco lease/tie protestors went to both Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns head offices (castle or manor house) to hand a letter of protest, both the pubcos refused to accept their petition letters.

Lord of the manor -what was the point of not accepting a petition?

Funny thing is it reminds me of the refusal of King John and the Barons before Magna Carta was signed.

To keep in favour with the shareholders the pubcos are shedding many of their failing under invested pubs fast to reduce their debt. Pubs need a Landlord/lady to champion the pub and its customers to make a thriving local business. Running pubs without consideration of its customers have at last been shown to be wrong.

The balance of power is now in the hands of the conquerors of England – the banks who control money supply. And as property prices have fallen the value of the pubcos has tumbled too. Banks are holding onto their cash these days with much stricter assessments of their customers’ cash flow and ability to pay off their debt. They are the new kingmakers now.

Debt reduction is the future for the pubcos, so rise up ye peasants and buy your local pub….if you can get the mortgage money….talk to Robin Hood!

I read a telling comment by a pubco ex-area manager who said -

“We were given more training in bailiff’s procedures than on how to produce a balanced wine-list!”

Matthew O’Keeffe

www.rsoe.co.uk

Tags: Inn Keeper, British Food, Restaurant Blog, Food Blog, How to Cook, Coffee Blog, Drink, , Kitchen Blog, Pub Blog

Introducing A New Blogger - The Food Stylist

Over the past few years Kate has been working within the food industry for some of the uk’s leading brands including big name supermarkets. Using her passion and flair for food she has created countless polished images designed to tantalize the public. Using her background as a chef and a …

Tags: Drink, Kitchen Blog, Recipes, Restaurant Blog, British Food, Wild Game, Tea Blog, How to Cook, Food Blog, Pub Blog

The London Forager - 2009 and all that

I haven’t written anything recently, due in part to the lack of anything current to talk about; it’s high Winter, and there’s not much to forage at all.  Aside from work, tax returns and other mundane stuff, I’ve been twiddling my thumbs in anticipation of the first signs of new life. It’s February, so not far off at all now.

Snails will break out of their sealed up shells as soon as the temperature begins to rise, but they won’t have eaten since November, so it’s best to wait until March to start gathering them up.  You’ll be surprised by how worthwhile they are.

Our garden snails are considerably smaller than the typical French eating snail, so serving them in the traditional way with garlic butter is less effective. Fry them in butter, garlic and a little vermouth or white wine and add them to risottos and linguines instead, or, best of all, make feuillettes d’escargots; a puff pastry parcel filled with snails in a cream and wine sauce.  Allow 10 snails per parcel, and a parcel per person, and serve with a green leaf salad for lunch.  I won’t give a full recipe here and they need a fair amount of preparation, but it’ll be in the London Forager cookbook if it ever finds its way to print, and on our website once it’s had its revamp.

The credit crunch/economic downturn/death of the British economy has been much on my mind (as it has on everyone’s I should imagine). With regards to foraging, it’s hard to tell what the effects will be. I’m sure there’ll be a surge in interest (though perhaps not just yet) in foraging as a pastime, which I am very excited about. It can only have a positive effect on one’s life as far as I’m concerned, being a means to eat free, nutritious and delicious food, get out into open spaces and take part in the natural cycle.  

I am concerned however about the effect that a large-scale surge might have on London as a foraging ground. There are only enough green spaces in London to support a light harvest. If people are respectful, and are careful not to take more than they should, then the land should cope. But if hordes of millions storm the parks and heaths of London and strip it bare, then it will be damaged.

I’m aware of the irony at play here, and it all throws the validity of the London Forager into question somewhat! Is it right to evangelise about something that is necessarily niche? I think I’m on the right side of the ethical cusp, but I’ll have to be careful, because I don’t think it should be in any way exclusive.

As for the London Forager itself, we’ve been contacted by some television producers since the New Year, so there are opportunities to spread the word and bring foraging to people’s attention. But will people pay a premium for artisan food and drink anymore, or pay for guided walks? There are marketing issues to think about, but I don’t (and am unlikely ever to) make my living from this.  The motivation for doing it all is to garner interest in foraging, so I’m prepared to ride a dip in trade if there is a rise in interest in foraging as a pastime.

I’ll be doing guided walks on weekends from April. They’ll be limited to 4 people per walk and will include lunch on the hoof.  When I’ve got the dates/areas sorted I’ll put them up.

Tags: British Food, Inn Keeper, Wild Game, Kitchen Blog, How to Cook, Recipes, Drink, Pub Blog, , Italian Food Blog