Didn't we have a lovely time?

What lucky picnic-ers we were last Sunday. Fantastic weather, a great turnout and a wonderful band playing great music all afternoon. Over £400 was raised for the "Breath of Fresh Air" Campaign for South Meadow Surgery and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Eton Picnic

It is the Eton Picnic on Sunday 23rd August

From 2pm picnic-ers will be gathering on the Brocas (the grassed area west of the High Street to the bank of the Thames). There will be some entertainment; music, games and a raffle.

Open to everyone.

(You don't need to buy your picnic from us, but if you need anything, you know where we are!)

To Fill or Not to Fill

A comment from a customer recently has made me question whether my "efficient" shelf filling is such a good idea. We fill the shelves daily (sometimes more often if I get a chance to go to the stock room). But apparently, it makes it look as though nothing moves! Particularly with really popular lines that I always have a stockpile of. To a customer these never appear to run low. I tried to be more relaxed with my shelf filling, but find gaps on the shelves unappealing. Not sure what the solution is. I would just like to reassure you there is nothing on the shelves that was there when we opened. That jar of honey you saw last year has gone, and a hundred or so very similar looking jars have in turn taken its place.

Onion Marmalde - available in Eton for 2 years!

It was June 2007 before we started stocking an old favourite of mine: Onion Marmalade. I don't know why it took so long, but seem to remember being in a rush to get my first order as I had run out at home!

Tracklements have been making outstanding products in Wiltshire since 1970 and took their name from the term used to describe condiments other than salt and pepper. They aim to be the best on the market, as good as the very best home-made products and use only natural ingredients and traditional methods.

Their Onion Marmalade is deliciously sweet and sticky. It's quite impossible to have just a small amount. Each jar is just crammed with long thin, slivers of onion, and no matter how small a spoon you intend to take, once you’ve dipped in, it just keeps on coming.

I tend to use Onion Marmalade for "dolloping"; in a sandwich with some farmhouse cheddar, on a crispbread with some chicken liver pate or on the side of a plate of egg and chips (once you've tried it there is no going back to ketchup). The people at Tracklements suggest putting it on sausages for their last 5 minutes in the oven and have now produced a recipe card showing how to turn it into gravy. Mmmmm

Henshelwoods Jams and Mustard

We are often asked where we find all our stock. And to be honest I'm always on the look out for new products and find them all over the place. One range in particular, has a particularly unusual source...

I use the post office in my home village (as well as the one in Eton, of course) and the postmaster knows who I am and all about the shop. A few months ago a regular post office customer came in to excitedly collect a parcel, got chatting to the postmaster, Raj, and told him all about the contents of the box; jams and mustard from Henshelwoods. She loved the products but couldn't get them anywhere locally so had them sent from Scotland. Raj suggested she contact me. A letter was written and passed to me, on my next visit to the post office. I contacted Henshelwoods and before long their award winning jams and mustards were making their debut in Eton. (And I was providing a mail order delivery service to my home village!).

March Hare Food

After much searching and tasting, we have decided to sell the frozen meals made by Julia and Colin Whitham of March Hare Foods in County Durham. By freezing the food, they don't need to pack it full of preservatives. The meals can even be cooked straight from frozen (30 minutes in an oven, 8 in a microwave). Every meal we tried tasted great and was quick and easy to cook. Most of the meals are generous single portions which (depending on the meal) can be served with potatoes, rice, cous cous or one of the delicious March Hare accompaniments such as colcannon or sherried lentils. Some of the meals are complete as they are: Salmon Laksa which comes with noodles, or Mushroom & Spinach Lasagne. They were just what we were looking for.

I've put a list of the meals we offer online so you can browse at your leisure by visiting: http://www.tastesdeli.co.uk/shop/pages/PreparedFrozenMeals.pdf

Cheese & Wine – Very Fine

On the 15th May you will find me at the Laithwaites wine festival in Savil Gardens. There will be lots and lots of wines available to taste and wine producers there to talk to, and also a stall of cheeses to try (and buy). The event starts at 6pm and is open to everyone, although tickets are limited due to the space available. Contact Laithwaites in Windsor for tickets (01753 866 192).

New and Old

I've not done very well keeping the blog up to date with new products. For the whole of the first year we took on at least one new product every week, sometimes entire ranges of products, but by the time I get them on the shelf, make the little cards, put them in the database etc, they are old news. Seeing as it has been two years now since we opened I thought I would instead use the blog to talk about items on their 2nd anniversary as well as the new things. Eventually I might catch up!

Vive's Friday Grab

Vive Magazine has started a new initiative to source three special offers every Friday and offer these to their fans via facebook. And to kick the initiative off we are offering 10% OFF of all our chesses for one week only (until Friday 20th March). Now I've not yet got to grips with facebook, so can't post a direct link, but if you can find the profile for "Vive Magazine", on Friday you will see a link for "Vive's Friday Grab #1" and in there the code you will need to mention to obtain your 10% Discount.

Lessons from Last Year

Christmas is a huge event in the deli and we certainly learn a lot each year. The year before last we stayed open far too late on Christmas Eve and were still cleaning up well into the night. Last year we were much better at closing the door and getting on with the clean up (whilst periodically opening the door again for last-minute emergency purchasers).

Where we fell down was that a lot of the Christmas stock, which had sold out, had been on shelves near the front of the shop and once it had gone the shelves were bare. Now a shop with bare shelves always looks like a shop that is struggling, a shop that can't afford to re-stock. In our case the opposite was true - the shop had done well, exceeded our expectations. We didn't have much left. And it was Christmas. We couldn't restock. But I couldn't leave a bare shop for two weeks. So I moved things around to fill gaps.

So on my first day back in chilly January, I had to move it all back again. All done now, and I can concentrate on sourcing some wonderful new products for 2009. And there is Valentines coming up, and Easter, the Fourth of June picnics... Better get organised.