"Famous" Cheese Wedding Cake

With all the excitement of Christmas I didn't mention that one of the cheese wedding cakes we created last summer appeared in Martha Stewart Weddings. The American web site is a planning portal for weddings, and includes a section about overseas and destination weddings. Rory and Lisa's Berkshire wedding is recorded beautifully; all the little details which went into the wonderful day (managed by wedding designer/planner Mary Herrington of Forever & Ever Events) and photographed by Chloe Browne of Caught the Light. It's all there, the invitations printed on baloons and vintage hankercheifs, pub-inspired table names, the dress, the shoes, the flowers, the table cloths, the place settings, and there, towards the end, is the cheese wedding cake I made!

The credits:
WEDDING DESIGNER & PLANNER: Mary Lee Herrington of Forever & Ever Events (http://www.foreverandeverevents.com)
PHOTOGRAPHER: Chloé Browne of Caught the Light Photography
CHEESE CAKE TOWER: Tastes Delicatessen
STATIONERY, SIGNAGE & PHOTO BOOTH PROPS: Hello Lucky
VENUE: The Olde Bell
FLORIST: Chantal Flores Design
GOWN: Britta Kjerkegaard of The Couture Gallery
SHOES: Christian Louboutin
FURNITURE HIRE: Theme Traders
HAY BALES: Holdshott Farm Shop
MUSIC: New Hot Cross Band, represented by Sternberg Clarke
CEREMONY SINGER: Sara Al-Qaiwani, bridesmaid
PHOTO BOOTH: Say Fromage
MAKEUP/HAIR: Kaz Fernando
LIGHTING/DJ: Gosh Management

Welcome Back

I will open the deli tomorrow for the first time this year. I love running my own shop, but have to admit I've enjoyed not setting an alarm, and not wearing all my clothes at once and still being cold. I've been hard at work today refilling the shelves with some wonderful produce. And I've been rewarded with the most beautiful sunset over the river. I'm feeling thoroughly pleased to be back and looking forward to 2012.

The Turkeys are here!

It's that time of year when I regret telling the guy at the gym that I wasn't interested in weight training. Here I am again with enormous turkeys to move! Everyone else at the turkey farm seems equipped with forklifts and muscles, I had neither. But I got them loaded and unloaded, and with the help of the lovely Jo and H, they are now all tucked away in a variety of chillers ready for collection. Merry Christmas!

More new toys!

Just a few weeks after receiving a proper stand to display my seasoned pioneers spices, along came a stand for the Quaranta torrone (Italian nougat). Rather than displaying lots of different flavours on one cake stand, now I can spread them over three tiers. Now it looks even more tempting!

The nougat itself (torrone) is a soft sweet mix of sugar, honey, egg whites, hazelnuts and almond into which chocolate, or fruits are swirled. The softer fruits like the berries and the chocolate create a beautiful marble effect in the nougat. The cakes of nougat are cut into slices and individually wrapped in cellophane, so you can see the whole slices in all their glory.

The nougat is a really popular gift throughout the year, but especially so at Christmas. It is a grown-up confection, and perfect for sharing.

Christmas is coming

Don't forget that tonight Eton's Christmas Lights are officially switched on. Our festive window displays are ready, and my tiny white lights will be illuminated from this evening.

A New Toy!

Today I received a new toy! My first piece of "proper" display equipment. Never before have I had a genuine "retail display solution" to present the excellent produce available at Tastes. All the shelves in the shop are made from wood or MDF and started life as my sketches. I felt like a child playing shop as I hooked the arms onto the metal frame and hung the extensive range of hard to find spices from Seasoned Pioneers. It's great to have a display worthy of these fine spices.

Christmas Lights

This year the Christmas Light switch on is Thursday 24th November. Full details can be found on the new Eton web site: www.eton.co.uk.

Is Tastes the Best Small Food Shop?

If you think Tastes Delicatessen is the best small food shop you can vote for us in the Telegraph Best Small Shop Awards . This year's awards aim to recognise the small local shops which make high streets like Eton special. If you place your vote for us before 5th December 2011 you'll be entered into a prize draw and could win a fabulous mini-break!

Vote for Tastes Delicatessen as best food shop and you could win a three-night stay for two at Hacienda de San Rafael, southern Spain, including flights.
Or..
A two-night stay for two at Hotel L’Avenida, Majorca
A two-night stay for two at Château Saint-Martin & Spa in the south of France
A two-night stay for two at Linthwaite Country House Hotel in the Lake District
A four-night stay for a family of four at Polurrian Bay Hotel, Mullion, Cornwall
A case of wine worth £180, courtesy of Bottle Apostle

(Oddly enough I've been to weddings at the Linthwaite and the Polurrian and can vouch for how gorgeous they both are.)

You can tell all your friends and ask them to vote for us as well!
www.telegraph.co.uk/shopawards

Thanks for your support!

I may have mastered Excel!

I do like spreadsheets. And I do like to organise. Which is probably why I like spreadsheets. This year I wanted to improve my Christmas turkey order sheet. And you know what, I think I've done it!

Last year I managed to get the list of people and birds to generate the order sheet which the turkey supplier needed (I.e. counts by size). Quite happy with that. It reduced the opportunity for human error and missed turkeys. But it wasn't all that useful when the customer placed their order. Too many details needed to be input. Free-range bronze, organic or white turkey. Breast roast, crown or whole bird. Small, medium, large or 4, 5, 6 kg etc etc. And once I had all that I had to look up the price per kg of the appropriate combination on a list blue tacked to the wall! Then multiply it by the size. etc etc. This year I wanted my spreadsheet to pull its weight and do a greater share of the work.

And so begun my exploration of the nested if. And they aren't all that scary. I may need to talk out loud when writing them. But I can do it. So now when you order your Christmas turkey from Tastes*, I merrily enter the type you would like, the starting size, be that in kg or small/medium/large. And that is it. My lovely spreadsheet tells me the average size of the bird, the price per kg, the estimated price for your bird, the minimum and maximum size and the approximate balance once the deposit is paid. I'm pretty pleased with myself. And if anyone else wants a nested if, below is my largest combined if statement. But be aware, being an impoverished independent retailer I don't use Miscrosoft Excel, this is OpenOffice Calc and I think the semi-colons might need to be commas in Excel:

=IF(G17=$Summary.A$6;$Summary.C$6;IF(G17=$Summary.A$5;$Summary.C$5;IF(G17=$Summary.A$4;$Summary.C$4;IF(G17=$Summary.A$10;$Summary.C$10;IF(G17=$Summary.A$9;$Summary.C$9;IF(G17=$Summary.A$8;$Summary.C$8;IF(G17=$Summary.A$7;$Summary.C$7;"Error")))))))

Please don't write and tell me I could have done this much more easily!
Please do come and order turkeys and put my spreadsheet to the test!

* Tiny bit of subliminal marketing there.

British Cheese Awards 2011

The British Cheese Award winners for 2011 have been annouced. One again the award for Best Blue Cheese went to our most local cheese; Barkham Blue, from Two Hoots near Wokingham.

Some of our other cheeses were also "bests", including:
Dorstone from Neal's Yard Creamery which won Best Fresh Cheese (Sponsored by MCE Engineering Ltd)
Devon Blue from Ticklemore Cheese which won Best English Cheese - Patrick Rance Trophy (Sponsored by H - E - B)

Other gold award winners included the Rosary goat's cheese log, Tunworth, Keen's Traditional Mature Cheddar, Lord of the Hundred,
Spenwood, Blacksticks Blue, Isle of Whight BLue, Cornish Yarg.

Well done everyone!