The Famous Grouse whiskey is running a promotion pointing out Pubs around the country including Yorkshire that they say are famous. To my mind they are famous for selling this whiskey but anyway here is their Yorkshire selection

The Kings Arms York – famous for flooding as the river Ouse regularly entertains the weatherforecasters. Still popular with the Vikings who visit from Scandinavia via North sea ferries to pillage our shops.

Saville Arms Thornhill near Dewsbury. – One I now intend to visit, not because it is built on consecrated ground but for the untouched 1960′s decor and log fire.

The George and Dragon (of which there are many to chose from) in Hudswell North Yorkshire. A village co-operative venture that includes a very small shop and library.

The Minerva Hull – A favourite of mine for the Sea Shanty Festival in September. The fish and chips are to die for as many trawlermen must have done so in the past.

One of my pet internet hates is web sites that demand information and then still fail to deliver like Famous Grouse!

Do not bother visiting

http://www.thefamousgrouse.com – I have refused to give them a link, despite giving my date of birth and listening to an annoying trailer I wasn’t allowed further and I am over drinking age!

The most precise measurement of the Imperial Standard Yard is 0.914398416 metres or one stride as I was taught. The Metropolitan police HQ is to be renamed New Scotland 0.914398416 metres under EEC rules or New Scotland Murdoch Mansions under Aussie rules.

Other notable measures of length include Chain 22 yards as in cricket, a furlong one eighth of a mile as used at Yorkshires race courses and a league or 3 miles back to cricket again. I can’t fathom it out as 2 yards so I must ask Vince Cable 100 fathoms.
25 links one rod, 4 rods one chain but it is a bit fishy that a perch is a rod times a rod and an acre is a furlong times a chain – want to be in the land measurement gang?

Getting on to drink a Gill is 5 fluid ounces or quarter of a pint except in Yorkshire where a Gill is a half a pint! No half measures in Yorkshire.

An ounce is 28 and a bit grammes and stone me a stone is 6350 and a bit grammes. I hope that helps with those pesky metric recipes on the Rhubarb Triangle

Drinking Measures

Quart Pint is 2 Pottle or Half Gallon
Gallon has 4 Quarts.
Peck is 2 Gallon.
Kenning or Pail is 2 Pecks
Bushel is 2 Kenning or 4 pecks
Barrel is 36 imperial gallon
Hogshead is 72 gallon but in American beer 54 gallon
Butt or Pipe is 128 gallon
Tun is 256 gallon

I’d like a tun of beer for my birthday but will drink a Pottle or double pint at a time.

If you want to keep up with local developments on all things foody check out some of these links

Hello Yorkshire
Cooking Fairy
Vegetarian A-Z
Eating isn’t cheating but beer may be
Steel City Kitchen
Sustainable Food in Sheffield
Them Apples

I also liked The Caked Crusader but it hails from London and involves DIY cooking.

Rhythm and Booze born in Barnsley but ‘now Yorkshire’s finest.’

Walking into a Rhythm and Booze off-licence is like walking into a cosy, but extremely well organised Aladdin’s Cave. I am partial to an occasional tipple and their wine selection is wide and good value. I was put on to our new local shop by members of the bowls club who are a set of winos (only kidding hic!).

Encouraged by the initial success of the Armthorpe branch in Barnsley they have opened in Doncaster, Wakefield, Otley, Sheffield, Ripon, Hull and recently in Garforth. Lots of Yorkshire off licenses in other words.

Help Protect Your ‘Offie’.

• Patronise Rhythm and Booze not sterile Tesco, Co-op or similar supermarkets.
• Shop at your local off license or it may have to close down.
• Times are always tough for smaller players in a competitive field and they need your trade.
• Drink Canada Dry or at least drink your Offie dry.

It strikes me that many retailers are breaching the trades description act.

• Boots do not sell boots, Body Shop stocks no bodies and Selfridges don’t.
• Mountain Warehouse isn’t a big warehouse, Millets is for the birds, Burtons have gone for one.
• You don’t go to Currys for a Curry
• B&Q only have Q’s no Bees
• I can’t see the French Connection to Iceland when they are both in Yorkshire
• Superdrugs are Majestically available in Oddbins but will your Mothercare
• Top Shop is at the bottom of the high street, (enough this is getting silly ed) .

Gluten is a protein found in products made from wheat, barley, rye or malts . In severe cases of Coeliac disease and wheat allergy a gluten-free diet is the only medically accepted treatment.

The Gluten Free Kitchen began in Aysgarth in 2005 when Sue Powell, a qualified chef, became aware of the problems encountered by people with Coeliac Disease in sourcing quality gluten free food. You can now get pork pies, sausage rolls and even Yorkshire Puddings that are gluten free.

Against the Grain, from Wold Top Brewery, is gluten free beer that has been voted the most liked beer of all of the gluten free and low gluten beers in taste tests.

Slurp are bottling beers from 30 other Yorkshire breweries but in 2005, ‘Hambleton Ales Gluten and Wheat Free Ale’ (GFA) was launched. It claims to be the first British brewed beer of its type, providing the full flavour and satisfaction expected from a beer but in a gluten free formulation. There is now a sister product, GFL – a gluten free lager.

Sign up for the Gluten Free Kitchen newsletter

Recipe for Gluten Free Yorkshire Pudding or buy the Great Book of Yorkshire Pudding £5.99. Or buy Phil Vickery’s book in association with the Coelica society £10.59 from amazon

Weeds you may think! but connoisseurs think Dandelion think drink! or think wine to be more precise.

Dandelion wine is made from the flower petals and you are recommended to pick flowerheads mid- to late-morning. Remove the bitter stalks and depetal if you are keen.
Resulting dandelion wine is light and as it lacks body it can be beefed up with raisins, oranges or other fruit. Light it may be but potent it certainly can be.
After adding sugar the many yeasts in Dandelions get to work. The must starts cloudy but rapidly settles when fermentation is finished.
Traditionally picked on St Georges Day 23rd of April this may be a bit early for Yorkshire crops of Dandelions. Best to pick a time in early May when the fields are a mass of yellow (and I don’t mean from buttercups).

Eat dandelions if wine is not your cup of tea. Dandelion leaves contain abundant amounts of vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A , C and K. Leaves are also a good source of calcium and iron, higher than spinach and good in a mixed salad.

Kill or cure dandelions if you are a gardener who has had their fill of dandy wine and faddish salad leaves. In these garden circumstances you will want dandelions to pop there clogs long before they seed and turn into clocks.

Roundup Weedkiller concentrate. Good for large areas which need treating at Amazon.

Related Posts

• Controlling invasive weeds
• Definition of a weed
• Dealing with Dandelions
• Weedkiller for Dandelion

If you are eating a steak from a horse that had a very long neck and a small head ‘You’re Avin’ A Giraffe’

The Adelphi Leeds is tucked away at the bottom of Leeds City Centre just over the Leeds Bridge.
A fine example of Victorian sumptuousness, the Adelphi is both everybody’s ‘local’ and one of Leeds’ best kept secrets. Two Yorkshire meals and a bottle of wine for £25 seems just about OK but the menu has foreign food like Cumberland sausage, West Country Beef burger and Cornish Brie & Leek tart.

The Adelphi Comedy Club brings you some of the country’s top stand-ups. So I would not be wanted then? Mondays have never been so much fun the landlord says but he is so busy serving good beer that he has no time to listen.

Join the Adelphi club for a cheap meal deal voucher

Back a few years there was an Adelphi club in Hull. I wonder if anyone knows what has happened to it?

This is a picture of the Adelphi’s neighbor and local solicitors who supply some of the drinking customers and are the butt of many jokes.
Yorkshire solicitor takes his cat to the vet.
Yorkshireman: Ayup, lad, I need to talk to thee about me cat.
Vet: Is it a tom?
Yorkshireman: Nay, I’ve browt it with us.

I am a fervent masher of tea although I have a brew in a mug on occasion.
‘Make us a mash’ is an invocation to perform wonders by pouring hot water onto tea leaves and leaving it to mingle until it turns to nectar.

For a horse, a mash is a warm mix of grain or bran and to brewers of beer a mash makes a wort from warm water and malted barley.

No sooner have we resolved to mash instead of brew our Yorkshire Tea when along came a learned article that recommends ‘steeping’ your tea. Steep it too long and it becomes stewed but you never stew your, tea or do you?

Teaology

• Most tea leaves will produce a decent cup if you steep them all in boiling water.
• ‘Many of the finer teas will do much better at lower temperatures. Green and white teas, for example, are more delicate and you get more flavour if you brew in slightly cooler water.
• These steeping times are only approximate, and you should adjust them depending on your own personal tea taste.

Black tea – Black from Ceylon, India or Kenya is the most robust of the tea varieties and can be brewed in truly boiling water, usually steeped for 4-6 minutes.

Oolong tea – As to be expected, oolong tea falls between green and black. The best temperature is around 190F. But oolong should be steeped longer than black tea, for around 5-8 minutes.

Green tea – You will need to be more gentle with your green teas. The water temperature should be around 150-160F and only steeped for 2-4 minutes.’ In my local Chinese the the steeping goes on until the tea has all been drunk or has gone too cold to sup.Read more from Ask.com

Most average teas are brewed for 4-5 minutes to bring out the best flavours, any longer the tea over-brews and becomes bitter and stewed.

So that is settled ( or not) – let’s have a cup of char.

Teaology 2

The Daily Mash ( and that is for real) reported in 2008;
‘Strong tea is to be reclassified as a category B drug’.

Since tea was downgraded in 2004 there has been widespread concern about the increase in stronger varieties including Purple Haze, Tetley Red Bush and the infamous ‘skonk’.

Rejecting claims that the Home Secretary had been influenced by the Daily Mail‘s Campaign for Weak Tea, Ms Smith added: “Our police forces are all too familiar with the consequences of tea that has been left to stew for too long.”

Smith also unveiled a new Home Office guide to drug terminology in a bid to keep vulnerable young people fully informed. The latest terms include:
Skonk: Tea that has been left to stew in the pot for more than half an hour and then served with just a tiny drop of milk ………..

Also good reading whilst drinking on International brands like Yorkshire Teaw

Double Top Yorkshire Pudding what a way to serve them with double filling.

Over the top and out of the tin – very light!

A squeeze to get it on to the plate.

‘First Attempt’ but needs to keep practicing- what have you been eating until now Rhiannon?

‘The best Yorkshire pudding ever’ – Where did this title come from?  France obviously.  A Yorkshire sounding chef Jean-François Chénier, Mmmm tasty.

Done to a fine turn by Oriental fortune cookie.

Toad in The Hole is cheating but Su-Lin’s dish looked so good it was worth including.

Sources Flickr creative Commons
1.SkyFireXII
2.jonarcher
3.Phil_Parker
4. rhiannonstone
5.Jean-François Chénier
6.bizkit@tw,
7.su-lin,
More photos to get your saliva glands working overtime

Yorkshire folk are not fetishists but we do love or at worst like our pork pies. Why not ask John Prescott!

In April 2010 pie fans, including superhero Pie Man, lined the cobbles outside the Old Bridge Inn, Ripponden, to sample  entries in the 18th annual Master Pork Pie Maker competition. The 2011 competition will be held at the same venue on Saturday 16th April 2011 at 2.30pm. Get along to snarf a great pie from around the country and remember last years overall winner was Simon Haigh of Hinchcliffe’s in Netherton near Wakefield.

Growlers

• ‘When it comes to finding a great pie, you are never going to go too far wrong if you ask a Yorkshireman.

• According to the concise gentlemen of Oxford and the Yorkshire Post, a growler is a small iceberg or a four-wheeled cab. They do not know what they have missed. Anyone from these parts devoid of vegetarian tendencies would tell those who write our dictionaries that a real growler is a thing of beauty, rare personality and infinite variety. It is a pork pie’. read all the Yorkshire Post article.

• Growlers are apocryphally named as they cause and or stop the belly growling. A double whammy in the noise stakes but lets not go there.

• The stand pie is a bigger version and an essential part of Christmas with triangular wedges for all comers complete with home-made piccalilli.

• Gala pies seem to end up with an egg cooked into the middle of the meat but no matter how you slice it I always get a bit of white and no yoke.

• A good pie has a crisp fresh hot water crust, plenty of liquefied jelly and a solid clump of juicy pork and fat with a secret mix of spices.

• Condiments and accompaniments should be mushy peas and mint sauce but I am happy with brown sauce, pickled egg or a couple of pickled onions. Of course if you want to get ‘Pie Eyed’ the best accompaniment is a pint or three of Best or Bitter.

• I did my courting in the 1960′s at  Pie Herbert’s on Carlisle Road in Bradford but sadly it hasn’t lasted as long as my marriage.

• Wilson’s small traditional pork pies, known in Yorkshire as growlers, use only locally sourced meat, have won numerous national awards and range in size from2″- 9″  in diameter.  

• Visit Wilson’s Butcher’s and see the Pork Pie Wedding Cake.
  

• Skipton butcher Farmhouse Fare in High Street reigned victorious in a ‘War of the Roses’ battle to find the best pork pie in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Meat Trader December 2010 Great Northern Pork Pie Competition.

• Delia Smith reckons the most famous English pork pies come from Melton Mowbray and traditionally, a very small amount of anchovy essence was used to add subtle additional flavour. Seems a bit fishy to me!

• There’s nothing like a homemade (in Yorkshire) ‘raised pork pie’ and Rick Stein shows us how to do it properly.

• Telling Porkies comes from Cockney rhyming slang  Pork Pie a lie but it is no lie that Yorkshire pies are great – who ate them all?

• Telling Porkies Pork pie or Porkie pie, often shortened to porkie, is the Cockney rhyming slang term for lie.

The other results for 2010 from the Pork Pie Appreciation Society site were

• 2nd WILSON’S OF CROSSGATES, LEEDS.
• 3rd BENTLEY’S OF PUDSEY, LEEDS.
• 4th PETER MIDDLEMISS, OTLEY.
• PETER MELLOR OF NEWARK.
• ANGELA DANSKIN,OF INGLETON
• KEITH DYSON OF ALMONDBURY
• BROSTER’S OF LINDLEY, HUDDERSFIELD
• WILSON’S OF CROSSGATES, LEEDS
• BOLSTER MOOR FARM SHOP, GOLCAR, HUDDERSFIELD
• SIMON HAIGH OF HINCHLIFFES’ FARM SHOP, NETHERTON, HUDDERSFIELD
• LINDA’S FARM SHOP OF NEWARK, NOTTS
• Where were Weegmans my own favourite from Otley?

Love food
Photo source hardillb’s on flickr under creative commons license