Keep Warm In Winter, Crabbie's Down Under & Flavoured Sausages

Hotlips Pizza is rapidly making a name for itself in the USA for its all-natural carbonated beverages. The Oregon-based business was last year named 'Best New Carbonated Beverage' by Bevnet for its fruity sodas. In an interview last week with Oregon Live, joint owner David Yudkin was asked whether the company was still experimenting with flavours. He replied that their most recent experiment was habanero ginger ale which was delicious but people could only drink about 10 ounces (1.25 cups?) of it. If you are reading this Hotlips, don't give up with this flavour.

Now that we in the northern hemisphere are heading into winter should we not take notice of the advice provided by the Japanese government. Each autumn, the government launch an energy-saving campaign called Warm Biz. The campaign advises on expected topics such as temperature settings and warm clothing. But it also advises on eating root vegetables and ginger to help "warm the body". So when the weather forecasters predict a cold snap go and buy some ginger.

Halewood International has announced a distribution deal which will see Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer become widely available in Australia. The brand will be stocked by one of the country's largest off-trade retailers, Woolworth's. I don't know whether the deal covers the non-alcoholic John Crabbie’s Cloudy Ginger Beer which, if it does, would put it in direct competition with Bundaberg Ginger Beer. Bundaberg products are already on sale in the UK.

Still with Crabbie's, their Alcoholic Ginger Beer has been announced as the sponsor of Christmas programming on ITV, the UK’s major commercial public service TV network. The sponsorship will feature the increasingly popular George and Camilla, the 'Tickety Boo' couple.

The Jamaican government's official policy of growing more food and reducing the volume of imports has resulted in the spread of greenhouse technology. The Miami Herald reported on the benefits of growing a range of crops, including ginger, under glass. Researchers have found that the quality of greenhouse-grown ginger is just as good as traditionally outdoor-grown ginger but with the added benefit of being protected against adverse weather conditions.

Further to my post a month ago regarding Ford's new Ginger Ale colour, I've now discovered from a number of sites that the colour was "inspired by metallic running pants and Balinese idol paints". I don't know what it means either.

I do like to look for novel and inventive uses of ginger and so my attention was drawn last week to the online UK meat trades journal MeatInfo.co.uk. It contained an article about a Yorkshire quality food provider, Keelham Farm Shop, which has brought out a range of pork sausages, and you can't beat a good pork sausage, to celebrate British Sausage Week. One of these sausages, I was pleased to read, is honey and ginger. Now, I know that ginger sausages are not entirely new but they are still relatively rare, or so I thought. A quick five minute search of the Internet revealed a number of award-winning ginger sausages from earlier this year. The UK National Meat Products Competition awarded a gold medal to Greenfield Pork Products for its Pork, Pear & Ginger speciality sausage. It also awarded silver medals to both the Welsh Sausage Company and Chalcroft Farm Shop for their Pork, Ginger & Spring Onion speciality sausages. If you've never tried flavoured pork sausages (and it doesn't have to be ginger), you don't know what you're missing.

Unless I've made a mistake, I thought that last week's launch of Crabbie's Spiced Orange had already happened a month ago.

You may have noticed that I've mentioned Crabbie's a number of times since this blog was launched. I feel that I ought to state that I am not employed by and have never received any payment from Crabbie's. I shall continue to cover Crabbie's when the need arises as I consider the company to be the standard-bearer for ginger products, in the UK at least.

Ginger Coffee, 18th Century Ginger Tea And Hydroponically-Grown Ginger

Last week Nestle reported increased global sales with the emerging markets being the most profitable regions. Emerging markets are classed as those economies undergoing rapid growth and industrialisation. One area the results highlighted was adapting existing products to suit local tastes, such as adding ginger and honey to Nescafe coffee in sub-Saharan countries. Ginger coffee has been common in the Middle East for many years with Qishr from Yemen being very popular. But ginger coffee in the West? I'm not aware of any products but if Nestle would like to send me a sample I would gladly conduct a survey, albeit small, on the UK public.

There were many reports last week in the US media about a University of Maryland archaeological dig at the 1785 Wye Orangery, the only 18th century greenhouse left in North America. What took my eye in particular was the evidence that the African American slaves, who played a major role in the construction and operation of the greenhouse, experimented with ginger root to make tea. It is believed that ginger was being grown in West Africa and the Caribbean by the 15th century so making ginger tea would have been a skill possessed by many slaves by the time of the Wye Orangery.

Two years ago the Jamaican government launched a project which involved growing ginger hydroponically in perlite in greenhouses. This has proved so successful that the project has now been conferred with research centre status. The project was started after farmers suffered poor harvests through lack of crop rotation. Coincidentally, scientists at the University of Arizona in Tuscon have also been experimenting with growing ginger and found that the hydroponic system with perlite produced the best results.

I made a mistake in the Latest News section on www.allthingsginger.co.uk when I stated on 18-Feb-2011 that Ajegroup, the Peruvian drinks company, had developed a ginger ale which would be the ideal ingredient in the popular cocktail Chilcano de Pisco. I should have written that development is still ongoing. I'll let you know when it is ready.

Much needed rains have arrived in southern India whilst dry conditions with temperatures reaching 40C are still affecting the north of the country. Unfortunately the rains weren't welcomed by everyone. Four women were injured when they were struck by lightning whilst harvesting ginger.