Wine Society, Welwyn Garden City Costa Coffee, White Lights

Wine Society
The Wine Society is a co-operative with lots of events at the warehouse cum shop and tasting room in Stevenage. Membership currently costs only £40 to join for life but you get back £20 to spend on their wines.
The wine shop has a tasting dispenser called on Enoteca. You pay for a card which is topped up with however much money you want to put on it. You can then help yourself to glasses of wine costing various prices by putting the card in a slot by the bottle.
The wines are changed regularly.
Within the shop is a bin end shop.
I recently went to their pre-Christmas tasting event. In addition to dry wines, I tried four sweet wines and liked the muscat.
I also got free tastings of their Xmas gifts: super smoked salmon, wild boar pate, good, pudding - can't go wrong, chocolate sticks with mint in the middle and yummy chocolate truffles. Did I mention the nuts, large, more-ish nuts.

Welwyn Garden City Coffee Stop
On the way up we hit traffic and diverted to Welwyn Garden Suburb town centre looking for coffee. Welwyn centre has a John Lewis and Debenhams department stores, a central green, assorted charity shops and several restaurants including Ask, and several coffee shops including Cafe Nero and Costa. We found a parking place for one hour near the Costa which had indoor and outdoor seating and was large and spacious. We shared my favourite raspberry and almond slice. I had a tall hot chocolate. The city centre had white lights for the winter-Xmas holiday season. In Singapore lights come down the day after Xmas, sometimes on new Year's Day, but it the UK they usually stay up until the 12th day of Xmas, January 6th. I sat reading the newspaper and could have stayed all day if the wine tasting hadn't beckoned. the toilets were upstairs, good for me to get exercise. I wonder whether they have a downstairs toilet for wheelchair users. But I had other things on my mind, wine tasting ahead, as we diverted down country roads to avoid the jams. I wrote a little ditty:
Jag-ged Journey
by Angela Lansbury

On winter days I love to drive
And hear old winter tales re-told
Where bright lights bring windows alive
I buy red hats, I leave, all's sold

As autumn nights grow short and cold
Out in the dark countryside
The driver is too late, too bold
Headlights' white glare, I duck and hide

We fly past every dark, deep ditch
The ghostly clouds and dead black trees
I dream of cities where the rich
Enjoy silver and gold cream teas

I dream of log fires, mulled red wine
Of singing by the Yuletide tree
The joy of crowds at Christmas time
Where friends and strangers smile at me.














At the Wine Society the entrance had white winter lights on fir trees.

Xmas gifts in the Wine Society shop included damson, fig, gooseberry, lime or quince chutney.

Vancouver's Ban On Door Knobs

What starts in America spreads to London and worldwide. Vancouver city council plans to ban circular door knobs and install horizontal levers because they are easier for the elderly.
The elderly population is increasing in the affluent countries. (In the newer, poorer countries, with high birth and death rates, the youngsters have ten children and the average age is under thirty. In the USA, UK and Japan, there are more elderly people and in years to come there will be still more. Back to door knobs.
I was fed up with catching my sleeves and cuffs belts and dressing gown belts anything else projection or trailing caught on levers. I was about to change lever handles to knobs. Now I shall reconsider. A half way solution is the same as taps. You can have circular one if they have indents you can grasp. But I have found lever taps much better. Less likely to be left half on dripping or turned off so tightly that you cannot turn them on.

Xmas dinner and dessert in two cheeses

Love the Pilgrim's Choice cheese company idea for a cheese with British Xmas dinner flavours and another for dessert. As I'm cook-shy but love eating.
Great for the elderly, those who hate cooking, extra visitors, a novelty, the blind and those with impaired vision, very simple if you are half way to Alzheimer's - not a joke - I mean those who refuse to move into sheltered accommodation but their descendants are anxious about them eating properly, and singles who can't be bothered to do all that for one and it makes a change for boxing day or a seasonal meal during the holidays.
It's not yet in production but if we all encourage them with demands I'm sure by next Xmas it will be. 

New home UK/USA/Asia or overseas? Old Mail? How Do You Know The Previous Owner's Business?

Readers of news stories about the McStay family queried how the new occupier of their former rented home would know what was in their mail. Even thought it's illegal to open it.
Easy. Not wicked to have opened a piece of mail accidentally, nor to read the return address on the front or back hunting for a tick box for return to sender.
1 After the companies' billing departments has got the previous occupier's new address the marketing department keeps mailing your address.
2 You return or forward mail.
3 But it keeps on arriving.
4 Some of the coupons or offers are now duplicates of people sending to you as new owner or occupiers.  So you open all those addressed to yourself. A dozen of them. You slit open all and don't notice one of them is for somebody else. So you open one of the envelopes by mistake - find you opened something addressed to previous owners.
5 Then you worry bailiffs or police are about to break down your door. So before re-sealing and returning to sender you you look for the sender's phone helpline to tell them no use calling here. You want to save debt collectors and utilities trouble as well as help previous householders who seem to be missing out vital mail.
6 You start to chuck out the circulars and trash coupons.
7 But, just in case, you open something which might not be a circular.
Still, with goodwill to all, meanwhile anything important you try to return or forward.
Assuming you have time to deal with all your own bills and circulars and still have time to deal with somebody else's as well!

The Good Food Show London Food Highlights - Chocolate And More

Green & Black's chocolate paired with wines.

Go to their stand for lots of free tastes.

Who would guess that chocolate was the size of a coconut with teeny beans inside.

Speciality popcorn by Garrett in special tubs made for this Xmas.

Caramel crisp was one flavour. The savoury one was even better. 

Did I mention the samples of fudge?

Absolutely the best new chocolate in all sorts of weird and wonderful flavours, such as cinammon.

Floral tea. I saw this years ago in China. You put the dehydrated flower in your glass of tea and watch it grow.

Amusing sculptures holding bottles.

Gold in wine.

The Good Food Show London Wine Highlights

My top ten memories from the Good Food Show London

1 The wine map based on the map of London underground, which shows you which grapes and varieties are similar so you can see that if you like a dry red or sweet white or sparkling rose which other wines you might also like. 

2 Oz Clarke's Wine Guide. It comes out every two years and tells you which year wines from all round the world were best. Trevor Sharot who bought a signed copy uses it every time he goes into a wine shop or checks a wine to buy or research on line. Oz told us that his name Oz is a nickname because of the way he played cricket.

3 Wine tasting pairing wines with Green & Black's chocolate. 

4 Wine tasting of Hardy's wines of Australia, comparing chardonnay wines. Chardonnay is used in Champagne but only wines from the Champagne area of France can use the name. 

5 Wine tasting of three kinds of macaroons paired with three sweet wines. The Cordon Bleu school of cookery demonstrated how to make a macaroon. Then we tasted three macaroons, the first with foie gras and fig was the best. You could hardly taste the pate but the fig was heavenly.

6 Hattie's wines - the most amusing with the hats.

7 The gold wine containing gold.

1 Wine tube map webpage  conviviumwine.com or twitter @WinetubeMap or Facebook WineTubeMap

6 Webpage Hattieswines.co.uk

 Twitter @HattiesWines facebook HattiesWines webpage hattieswines.co.uk

See my next blog for foods at the show.

More shows around Britain including Birmingham and in Scotland. If you missed this year's in London be sure to go to the next one.

Christmas Gifts Problems & Prizes - Problem Solved With Booklist or Book

Gifts. The Asians are great at gift giving. Give somebody a gift and they give one back. At Christmas and parties the host has to keep gifts ready to reciprocate.
At Christmas 2013 Camilla is reported in the Daily Mail online as not knowing what to buy for Charles. he already has everything he needs.

Just do what we do. Each member of the family makes a wish list through the year of things they'd like but don't need urgently. Amazon and other opine companies let you create wish lists. Then print off the list. Other families tick of what they've got you and pass on the list to each other to avoid duplication. On the day it's a surprise because you've forgotten what you wanted three months ago and had no idea what you would get. Some people are satisfied with the surprise of not knowing a or b, boy or girl, heads or tails. This way an added surprise is which colour, or how many items. An extra surprise is the wrapping. What's inside this square box with the bow on top?
When I was a child I was given a book token and we would travel up to Foyles during the January sales and I would buy a one-volume encyclopaedia. Now the option of gift token is less secure, not just because you might lose the gift card - thrown out with the envelopes, or lost until the card is out of date, but because companies can go out of business.
If all else fails, print your own book about the recipient, a history of the recipient's life about them, their family, their whole life or their year. I am writing a booklet on how to self-publish your life story. I have done the history of a 90 year old relative, my next of kin, and myself and ancestors, and my Toastmasters speakers' club. If you have any questions about publishing, send me your queries.

Photo of Stanmore Xmas lights 2013 by Angela Lansbury

Wonderful Wines at World Travel Market

Wines, white, pink and red kept me busy all day at the World Travel Market. The best for me was the first I tasted, a tokay on the Hungarian stand. Sweet and delicious. They seem to produce all kinds of wine, something for everybody, including me.
On to Slovak wines.
Lebanese wines had the most amusing labels, classy, artistic, unusual and delightful. Symphony wine has a musical instrument on the label. I met the maker.

We also saw wines from North and South America.