Come and see us at Abergavenny Food Festival’s spectacular Christmas Food and Drink Fair

SUNDAY 5 DECEMBER 10.00am to 5.00pm

What are you going to eat this Christmas?

Come to the Abergavenny Food Festival’s spectacular Christmas Food and Drink Fair on Sunday 5 December (10.00am to 5.00pm). Whether your taste runs to the rare and exotic, the innovative or the traditional, this is the time to fill up your cupboards, firm up your menus, liven up your culinary plans and have fun while you are doing it!

There’s so much on offer. From an unrivalled foodie shopping experience to inspirational masterclasses, tutored tastings and demonstrations, there really is something for everyone. And it’s very much a festive family event, with free entry to all children under 16 (if accompanied by an adult).

Featuring over 60 of the best local and regional speciality food producers offering fresh and cured meats, poultry and game, cheeses and chocolates, gourmet teas, cakes and desserts, wines and liqueurs, ales and ciders and more.

Come and join us for a cup of Spiced Chai

Buy your entry wristbands on-line here >

Or follow the action on Facebook and Twitter

Enjoy seasonal food: teatime apple and pear cake

This is an adaptation of a recipe I found in Marie Claire ‘Fresh’ by Michele Cranston. It’s the perfect seasonal cake for those in-between meal times – elevenses and afternoon tea!  Easy, quick to make, tasty and perfect with warming black and oolong teas. Put the kettle on!

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 50g ground cashews
• 3 free range eggs
• 125ml organic milk
• 400g caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, sliced
• 250g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons ground chai tea leaves
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 pears, cored and sliced
• 3 apples, cored and sliced
• icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c (350f / gas 4). Using 1 tablespoon butter, grease a 20cm round springform cake tin and sprinkle with half the cashew nuts to coat the tin.

Put eggs, milk,sugar,ginger, flour, chai tea and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and blend to make a thick batter.

Fold the pears and apples into the batter carefully and spoon into the cake tin. Sprinkle with remaining cashew nuts and dot with remaining butter.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours, remove and cool. Put the kettle on, put tea leaves into the pot, brew the tea then pour into your favourite cup or mug. Sprinkle cake with icing sugar, slice a wedge and serve with a dollop of natural yoghurt. Now sit, relax and enjoy!

29th September – National wear a tea cosy on your head day!

Life is meant to be fun and tea filled and we love it when fun things come along to brighten up our week. This is no exception!

We are joining our friends at White Stuff to take part in their fun, if slightly wacky, charity day tomorrow – ‘National Wear a Tea Cosy on your Head Day’.

Kate will joining all manner of other folk, celebrities and all (including June Brown, Ben Sheppard, Jo Wood, John Rocha), and donning her tea cosy tomorrow (photos of Kate in her tea cosy tea cosy to follow).

With tea cosy on, Kate will be grabbing a tea trolley and serving up cups and cups of Lahloo Tea to the 180 tea cosy wearing team at the White Stuff HQ, all for charity.

Don’t panic, you can join in too:

10% off when you visit us wearing a teacosy on your head on Wednesday September 29th. Or buy one in store for £2! All proceeds go to charity.

If you can’t get into a shop? Simply submit a photo of yourself wearing a teacosy to ivyandlil@whitestuff.com and we’ll automatically send you your 10% off code to use at the online checkout on Wednesday!

Go on, you know you want to!

10% off when you visit us wearing a teacosy on your head on Wednesday September 29th. Or buy one in store for £2! All proceeds go to charity. Can’t get into a shop? Simply submit a photo of yourself wearing a teacosy to ivyandlil@whitestuff.com and we’ll automatically send you your 10% off code to use at the online checkout on Wednesday!

You can sponsor us on our individual shop Just Giving sites http://www.justgiving.com/whitestuff <insert shopname> e.g. Cardiff would be http://www.justgiving.com/whitestuffcardiff Get friends and family to sponsor you to wear a cosy, they can donate on the Just Giving site

Host a grown up tea party or one for the kids Visit us with a cosy on your head on 29th September and we’ll give you 10% off for looking silly We’ll also donate 10% of the day’s sales to charity

Tea and shopping? Lahloo Tea and White Stuff are putting the kettle on!

After a summer of Jubille celebrations for White Stuff and a tea odyssey for us, we’re ready for a cuppa! And what more could you want! A cup of the tasty Rosey Lee while you ooh and ahh over the lovely new Autumn collection at White Stuff‘s spangly new stores.  The first one is tomorrow, 2nd September, in Horsham. Come and enjoy a Lahloo cuppa as we join the lovely people at White Stuff and put the kettle on.

White Stuff’s clothing has something for everyone, for everyday whatever the weather or the occasion. Girls, whether you’re having a girlie afternoon tea and gossip, releasing your inner tea lady chic, indulging in a little hoi tea toi tea or just in need of a good brew White Stuff have it covered!

Boys, it’s all about enjoying the great outdoors. Grab a mug and escape to the shed or fill a flask and take the dog for a walk!

Put the kettle on, make your favourite cup, mug, flask or pot of Lahloo Tea and love life!

Lahloo Tea wins Gold in the Great Taste Awards 2010

We’ve done it! We have won GREAT TASTE GOLD for 4 of our sensational loose leaf teas . We got the exciting phone call the other day and have been dancing around the room since with huge grins on our faces!

For those of you who don’t know, the GREAT TASTE AWARDS, or the “the Oscars of the Food Industry”, happen every year and are considered by many to be the most important for speciality food and drink. Completely independent and uncompromisingly rigorous, a GREAT TASTE GOLD is trusted by retailers, buyers and consumers alike. For tea a GREAT TASTE GOLD is what a MICHELIN STAR is to a fine dining chef.

Before Gold is awarded, a minimum of 8 experts – usually as many as 16 – taste, discuss and agree.  This year, the Guild recruited even more experts who, worked with key buyers, retailers, chefs and food writers, blind tasted the 6000 plus entries (wow what a task) to ensure they were skilfully and independently assessed.

I’m so happy to say that despite us and our loyal fans being confident that Lahloo Tea has a damn fine and tasty range of loose leaf tea, we can now proudly say we have an award-winning range of really tasty tea! Thank you everyone and don’t forget to celebrate with your extra special cup and saucer and a biscuit or two!

A round of applause please here they are…. the award winners!

Afternoon star!

Lovely oolong!

Cinnamon gold!

Golden nibs!

We’d love to hear which Lahloo Tea you’d love to see here next year. Please tell us below…

Tea with a twist!

Last July at the Bristol Wine & Food festival we served up Long Island Iced Earl Grey Tea and Amber Mojitos and they went down like a storm in a teacup (sorry)! So we’ve been working on new recipes for this years’ events – including Bristol Wine & Food 2010, Clinger Farm’s Harvest festival and Dartmouth Food Festival – with  our friends at The Rummer Hotel.  Fabulous bar tenders and mixologists and last night I invited a very select twitter crowd (@cowshedbristol, @pearcafe and @essexeating) to give me their verdicts.

It’s a tough job but someone has to do it! We tried these delicious creations:

‘Caviar’ Marteani – Didi’s clever and unique molecular competition entry. Dry gin martini with fabulous little black salty pearls of our cinnamon Smokey tea ‘caviar’ to give you a burst of flavour. Crazy but a little tricky for us to replicate!

Smokey Margarita – Martin’s amazing twist on a classic margarita using tequila infused with our smokey tea (they all loved the smokey tea)! Sensational and definitely coming to a festival near you soon! Here’s Elly sipping away…

Dragon Pearl Vespa - Joe’s chose the stunning fragrant jasmine Dragon Pearl tea to infuse vodka and created a jasmine and apricot Vespa with a burnt orange twist. I could’ve sipped it all evening! Dan and I loved this one and it will also be making an appearance…

Join us for tea in Cheltenham

This week is looking busy but really lovely. I am going to be spending rather a lot of time in and around Cheltenham. I love Cheltenham and despite there already being some lovely spots in other parts of the Cotswolds that serve and retail Lahloo Tea, we haven’t taken our lipsmackingly tasty tea to Cheltenham yet. Don’t panic Cheltenham we are coming this week!

I’m starting by sharing a lovely cuppa at elevenses with The Daffodil to tell them more about serving really delicious tea, then I’m going to train the wonderful team at Cowley Manor Hotel and C-Side Spa on serving Lahloo Tea (they are serving it in the really cool Tovolo tea infusers rather than tea pots so it’s going to be great) and finally I’m delivering new tea orders to the gorgeous Bob Parkinson’s Made By Bob and SallyAnn Bliss’ gorgeous PUREbliss Organics barn.

18th, 19th and 20th June 2010

Then on Friday we’ll be at the 2010 Cheltenham Food Festival sharing Lahloo Tea with festival goers.The Cheltenham Food and Drink Festival 2010 returns to Montpellier Gardens in the summer, for more gastronomic delights, a celebrity guest appearance from Antonio Carluccio and the chance to eat, drink and be very merry. Come along to stand E17 and find our more about how delicious Lahloo Tea is.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Meet Kate – the lady behind Lahloo!

Beans and buds!

Although it’s really a celebration of really good beans (with the likes of illycaffe, Bristol coffee roasters Extract, Bath boutique coffee roasters Lazy Jose and Cornwall’s Origin coffee) at the UK’s first coffee festival in Bath on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th May, we are going to be there to celebrate the true taste of tea buds!

You see, there is so much to discover and the tea that is generally on offer is really disappointing. So we’ll not only show you that you can love really good beans as well as really good buds (we do!) but we’ll also show you with our unique Forlife infuser teapots and tea infusers just how easy it can be to enjoy delicious leaf tea from fabulous producers.

It’s free to come along and there’s also ice cream, chocolate and gorgeous kitchen textiles to keep you busy. So head to stand B37 and open you eyes to the epicurean delights of tea with Lahloo Tea. We look forward to seeing you there.

PS mention the words beans and buds and a gorgeous Lahloo cotton shopping bag is all yours!

We love real food so much we’re ranting about it!

Whether it’s a mug of really good tea with a piece of real crusty bread and jam, a bowl of cereal, artisan cheese, wine, chocolate or vegetables only real food with nothing nasty lurking will do for us. So, we are joining over 400 fabulous producers and taking Lahloo Tea to the Real Food Festival this weekend, 7th-10th May 2010 at Earl’s Court, London.

Not only can you come and say hello over a cup of tea at stand P152 but come and hear us rant! Last year we ranted with Rude Health, our favourite breakfast cereal people, at Abergavenny Food Festival. Listen here.

We’re off again so head to the Rude Health stage at the Real Food Festival on Friday 7th at 14:40h and see what gets us going!