We will be having an awesome January sale so watch out for details and in January and Februuary will be making plans for food shows for 2013.

Have a Happy Caribbean Christmas!

I've been sorting stock and updating the list of shows for the rest of the year ...check out News  section  shows 2012 ....and it looks as though I may even have to watch some football!!!!

Had chicken breasts marinaded in BBQ sauce last night .They were delicious! 

Last week a customer bought four tubs,one for herself one for each of her neighbours, who had gone on holiday and couldn't be there, and one for her mum!

The salt  can be used before or after cooking...as a rub or a condiment Angela Carrington has suggetsed using it with pitta bread and cream cheese ( see reviews in the news section) sounds delicious!

Whilst it looks rather like a typical British Bank Holiday weekend weather wise you can brighten up virtually every dish with the Garlic and Lemom Herb Salt..so go on Get Cooking!!!

The Bishop Auckland Food festival was as fantastic as ever ,well organised and in a beautiful setting but sadly the lightning ,hailstones and torrential rain brought the proceedings to a premature end at 4 p.m..

The Spring Fair at Bede's World in Jarrow was another lovely event.If you have never been do visit it is a great place devoted to Anglo Saxon Northumbria .It also has a farm to amuse the children.Go straight through the Tyne Tunnel take the road for South Shields and the turning is signposted just a few hundred yards along...entry is free when they have their special events .

Next week is the first Bank Holiday and we will be at the Bill Quay Community farm in Gatehead. A new venue for us, so we are looking forward to it.

20th May we are at The Kirkley Hall Open Day.Alawaqys well supported...come early the traffic queues can be busy.

We have opur usual popular suaces and rubs as well as fresh stocks of our sweet syrups which we trialled at the end of last year.Do Come and try! Further lists of our shows are in the News section!

Keep on cooking!

We presented a delicious selection of recipes using our fabulous authentic  hot sauces and rubs....see below!

We got rave comments about our products and now have a legion of new fans.

We also had lovely comments about how professional ( and colourful) our total presentation was.

PRAWNS IN HABANERO LIME HOT SAUCE (FROM ST MAARTEN)

CHICKEN IN GINGER PEPPER SAUCE ( FROM DOMINICA)

PORK IN GUAVABERRY AND PAPAYA BBQ SAUCE (FROM ST MARTEN)

CHICKEN IN HOT PEPPER SAUCE (FROM GRENADA)

BABY PEARL POTATOES IN GARLIC AND LEMON HERB SALT ( FROM ST MAARTEN)

JERK DIP , SPICY MAYONNAISE AND PEPPER JELLY

Chocolate may be tasty but it's fattening!!! Our sauces offer fabulous taste even to the lowest calorie meals.Go on spoil them!

We are well on the way to finishing our recipe book but in the meantime you can just let your imagination run riot!

Choose one of our baskets or bags or make up your own hamper selection.

And if you are really nice to them you may get to share in some of the fabulous tastes!

Orders take 3 -5 days to delivery so don't delay!

We are looking forward to continuing to offer you wonderful tasting authentic  products from the Caribbean.

There is nothing like the real thing!  Once tasted never forgotten! They knock all the made in the UK imitations well into touch!

We will be extending our range and regularly offering special deals...and hopefully the recipe book will be finished!

HAVE A HAPPY CARIBBEAN  NEW YEAR!

We have at last gone live with the photos of our product range from Grenada and I must say they look great.They have also been selling very well and we are down to the last few bottles of the sweet things.

People have been really been surprised that things are not all hot and spicy and that there are sweet things from the Caribbean.

So go on be daring and try them.

My one year old black labrador has decided to start chewing the posts on the straircase...so i am painting them with hot sauce! Wow that will be a shock for her.Aversive therpay here we come!

My old dog did it in my pre tastethecaribbean days and we used mustard but times move on.

On a different note we have just completed a hectic and very successful  6 week  schedule of Christmas Fairs, so now apart from sending out the internet orders we can focus on a bit of Christmas shopping ourselves.Although we wil be sending a few of our own hampers as presents...well the products are just so fabulous! 

We are working very hard to complete orders in good time for Christmas but woul;d advise that allorders need to be with us by 17th December to guarantee delivery for Christmas

We are in danger of losing our first show as a casualty of the weather.We are due to be in a marquee in South Shields Market Square  tomorrow but  the wind is just a bit strong!Keep your fingers crossed.

We completely sold out of the Garlic and Lemon herb salt so are awaiting the rush order from St Maarten.Unfortubatley it means we cannot sell several of our gift selections  until the consignement arrives but we will blog as soon as it arrives.

The pepper jelly from Grenada sold well and we do it as a gift set with the Hot |Pepper sauce from Grenada as well as in gift bags in various combinations.Indeed we are encouraging customers to design their own gifts by choosing the contents and we throw the bag in at no extra cost. 

I have just spoken to someone who bought the bBQ sauce yesterday .They used it last night and said it was scrumptious! The kids described it as 'Lush!'

Certainly the first question from a lot of chaps who visit our stand at shows is " What is the hottest?"

There are certainly some very hot sauces out there ...ones that just burn the lining off your mouth and give you no flavour. 

We choose to import hot sauces which are hot, maybe not the hottest ,but they still have a subtelty of flavour.We love to use then in cooking and use those subtle flavours to enhance our food!

Wev have met sopme ladies who like the hot stuff too mind you!

Tomorrow we are off to Brocksbushes Farm shop Christmas Fair .We are there Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th .Its a fantastic event in two huge marquees and all of their suppliers are there to showcase their products.We are particulary looking forward to showing off our pepper jelly from Grenada,its sweet initially with a kick from the peppers coming on after a few seconds.We have been using it at home in the place of mustard ,with cold meats and cheese.Its great in sandwiches.We have taken extra stocks of the Garlic and Lemon Herb salt and the BBQ sauce since they were so popular last year.

On Sunday I am doing my splitting in two act...I am off to a Christmas Fair at Carlisle Raccourse in aid of Action for Children.We did the County Show there in July.Its a great venue with loads of parking .Just hope the weather is better than July when it persisted it down all day.

Then Monday is a day of rest ..well not really I have booked myself in for a power pump class..haven't been for 5 weeks but hate to reduce the weights but I suppose I should. 

Remember stay saucy!

Our gift bags and baskets proved very poopular for Christmas presents and of course all our products are exclusive to us since we have sole import rights!

Check out www.tastethecaribbean.org

We went to the indoor craft fair at North Shields Fish Quay on Sunday and had a great time. Boy does that sea air bring on an appetite!

We had a fabulous evening at Seaham Hall last night.What a classy venue...doing lots of special deals .Definitley plan to pamper myself.

Today we have been to an expo at Durham Cricket Club  arranged by the Mussel Club...again a great venue and fabulous opportunity to swap share and generally network with a wide range of other businesses.

Check out the news item entitled Shows for dates and places http://tastethecaribbean.org/news/2-shows.aspx

Even our loyal customers are in for some new treats with our new goodies from Grenada.Check out the catgory Grenada in the shop on our website http://tastethecaribbean.org/category/1-grenada.aspx

We are gearing up for a great Caribbean Christmas!

It's all too easy to become isolated when you are running your own business so networking is very impoortant.Last week I went to Gateshead Thunder and also the Stadium of Light fot Mussel club meetings.I certainly get about!Don't tell them I support Newcastle Falcons will you?

Its never too early to start shopping.

We are getting ready for lots of Christmas shows and we have also extended our range of gift bags and baskets whcih make great presents for all the foodies out there.We have also introduced a DIY hamper for a really individual gift.Check out the category Gift bags and baskets!

We are attending 16 diiferent shows over the next couple of months so hope to see lots of TTC devotees on our travels.Do come  and say hello.You can't miss our stall .It's the really colourful one with lots of fabulous samples to taste (and of course stock to buy!) 

If you can't get to any of the shows we are doing remember YOU CAN BUY ON LINE!

The inspiration to import Caribbean sauces sprang from my (and my family's) love of all things from the islands and I am really passionate about our products.We are having another busy year doing lots of shows to introduce our products to the public as well as actively engaging with retail outlets (delicatessans/butchers/speciality food outlets)to get our fabulous sauces and rubs more widely available. 

The new look website is still a bit of work in progress; some glitches re sending e mails from it still needing sorting out.

We are also busy writing our first cookery book which is very exciting.

Anyway back to the day job;have spent the last 3 hours on the train wrestling with the ideas of Frederic Bartlett who suggested that most of our memories are unreliable and we just make up bits to fill in the gaps through something called effort after meaning(please don't mix this up with false memory  which is different!) A solicitor is using the Bartlett theories to discredit a claimant in a civil litigation case. I can accept we may not recall all the details of individual incidents but I believe we recall critical details......I remember my car crash, my injuries but cannot remember what the policeman looked like!.The latter does not mean the crash didn't happen! Just wondering how to succinctly word my repsonse to the solicitor. 

Anyway time for lunch and then my clinic.

We did introduce our new products from Grenada which proved very popular particularly the nutmeg syrup.The nutmeg syrup has inspired my son to mix up a batch of pancake batter and it is all he has eaten for days,

They have just arrived (26/08/11) and are all delicious!We will be trialling them over the next few weeks at vaarius shows and getting them on line as soon as possible.

Guavaberry is an essential part of local tradition and folklore on Sint Maarten/St Martin. The Guavaberry Emporium is a treasured and protected National Monument.

While Stephen Thompson has been making Guavaberry for 40 years, around here the older folks call him the newcomer. Guavaberry is the local abbreviation for Guavaberry Rum Liqueur. It has been made in Sint Maarten/St Martin since whenever rum was first made and available here, about 300 years ago, we think. Guavaberry is made from the local guavaberry fruit, and cane sugar and rum. The fruit has been around since the beginning of time. Archeologists have found the spicy seeds in ancient Carib and Arawak Amerindian village settlements.

If you look it up in the library or on the internet, you will read that the Guavaberry fruit grows all over the place, South & Central America, Cuba, the Far East, Mid Pacific etc. Steve says that he has been  to these places, one by one, and it doesn't. The Encyclopedia Botanica got this one wrong.

Many years ago he started to turn this ancient island tradition into a business. The idea sparked a lot of enthusiasm. They started small and they are still small. Every bottle is made by hand. They expanded the product line and have a variety of ever-changing fruit, nut and spice liqueurs and rums..

Soon they were whipping up Old Man Guavaberry Gourmet Sauces, BBQ, Pepper and Hot Sauces, some made with Guavaberry itself. Hot peppers grow wild throughout the Caribbean and form an essential component of authentic native cooking.

Sint Maarten. Dutch Caribbean. November 2010.