Thursday, September 16, 2010

Is it too soon to mention Christmas?

Would you believe it, we're almost ready for Christmas? That's what happens when you start planning in July! It's all quite exciting, but now the ordering is complete, we can sit back and wait a couple of months before the stock room fills up with tinsel covered stock. This year we are expanding our Christmas range quite dramatically and trying to stock everything we are legally allowed to (so sadly no fine wines*). We’ll have fresh, locally reared, free-range Turkeys available to order, all the vegetables to roast including stalks of brussel sprouts, chestnuts, cranberry sauce, Christmas puddings, brandy butter, mince meat and mince pies, sides of smoked salmon, whole cheeses such as Baby Stilton and Mont D'Or, alongside an extended selection from our usual range of artisan cheese, whole hams (Serrano and British honey roast), pickled onions, crackers, Italian panettone, handmade fruit cakes, brandy snaps, mulled wine syrup, and more.

And then we also have some great gifts, from sugar mice, candy canes and gingerbread men, to gift bags and boxes of chocolates and confectionery, and of course our usual range of fabulous preserves, oils, vinegars, biscuits, teas, coffee... We'll also be offering our popular hampers and gift boxes, along with gift baskets.

But I don't want to wish the autumn away, so now the orders have been placed with our suppliers, that's the last time I am going to think about Christmas for at least a month.

*But the Eton Bridge Wine Company has moved even closer to us so you can always order your wine from Mark and pick it up when you collect the turkey.

Friday, September 03, 2010

Summer is for Weddings

Cheese Wedding Cake.I love a good wedding, and I really enjoy making unique wedding "cakes" from beautiful artisan cheeses. I like the giant logic puzzle that the task involves, finding a cheese that is "just right", not to big, not too small, not to mild, not too strong, not too yellow, not too grey, not too soft, not too hard, but "just right". I like combining all those "just right" cheeses to create a balanced cheese board and I like meeting the couples that love cheese so much, they are making it a feature at their celebrations.

It feels as though the big wedding/civil partnership season is drawing to a close. We've had a good "season" with plenty of orders for a variety of differently themed weddings. Far more than in previous years. I can't deduce that the fashion for cheese wedding cakes is growing. We have done a lot more (i.e. some!) marketing this year, we're now selling cheese wedding cakes online and we've also built on our reputation, providing cheese towers for couples who attended weddings where we had provided the cheese in the past. Now I just need to get photographs of the cheese towers we made this summer online, in time for next summer's orders.

There must be another family gathering in the winter months? Cheese Christmas Cake anyone? New Year's Eve Cheese Tower?