happy halloween

thanks to Sulu for the pumpkin and Eleanor for the modelling

special prize

We'd like to say well done to the folks at Moluka Coffee, who were recently awarded a Heartbeat award from Stratford upon Avon district council for their healthy food and drink options. In the email they sent us, they went on to say that "one of the main contributors to winning this award were your smoothies and juicy waters (we don't half sell a lot of 'em)."

Glad we could help.

Ben the manager receives the award from Mr T a local councillor

keep driving

A car powered solely by air? Now that would be nice. More here.

beside the seaside

This picture of our smoothies in supergran hats was taken by Paul in Porthleven, Cornwall and posted to our supergran flickr group. In his own words he "just perched them all on a table and that was it, apart from sea breeze blowing the hats off the Curlys". I love the quality of light in the shot, it's the sort of light you only get on a crisp autumn day by the sea, you'd spend a good few hours getting the same effect in a studio or with proper lights I expect.

The hats were knitted by Paul's mum (pictured below with hats and her cat marble) who is just recovering from having broken her arm. Get well soon Paul's mum.

And here's a nice big wave crashing on Porthleve beach just incase you don't get to go for a walk after your Sunday lunch today. (I imagine the red flag on the left means that it wasn't safe to swim on that day.)

all about the apples

As we're smack in the middle of the apple harvest, we've been trying loads of different varieties to pick the best for our smoothies. We had some from Germany and some from the UK and we've whittled it down to our favourite 11 - there's still a way to go.

Lucy E (far right below), our chief apple taster, says that each variety has really different characteristics. The Bramley is very acidic (makes your mouth water apparently), the Cox is very sweet with hints of nuts and honey and the Russet is "really, really brown in colour, but gosh, it reminds you of an English country garden". Knows her stuff does Lucy.

"how do you like them apples Penny?".

the power of pink

For one day only Fruit Towers became Pink Towers to support the Breast Cancer Campaign "Wear it Pink".

We stocked our chiller with only our pinkest recipes, played Pink's album back to back and got a little mention on Capital Radio. We even had our Amsterdam office turn pink too, Daphne wore her pink ski suit (bottom left below).

Jacob won our Prettiest in pink prize for his Gary Glitter style ensemble and bagged himself a pink pair of trainers.

put the kettle on

A nice man called Giles (strong no sugar) from Tetley got in touch with us to see if we were interested in meeting up to talk about tasting tea. You see, we taste a lot of fruit and they taste a lot of tea - we thought we'd see if there was anything we could learn from each other.

So we went over there for a visit.

The method of tea tasting hasn't really changed over the years. What you do is make a strong cup of tea (double normal strength) with a dash of milk.

You then taste with a big slurp and then spit the tea into a spittoon. The people at Tetley are very accurate with their spitting technique.

Apprentice tasters spend a lot of time in the sourcing regions (3 months to a year), helping them to learn all about the tea. The chief taster said that when he tastes a tea he can picture the garden it came from.

We heard about the ethical tea partnership that Tetley are involved in and we learned a couple of new things. Call us dumb, but we didn't know that Earl Grey isn't a special variety; it's actually black tea with bergamot oil. Most importantly, we all agreed on our favourite tea - Oolong, which is delicate, fragrant and well balanced. A bit like our ladies of the kitchen.

wonderwool

Helen and friends recently held a knitathon at Wonderwool, Helen's new knitting shop in Rugby. Here they are having a go at knitting some little Supergran hats. Marvellous work.

my crane

Peter made some cranes out of the boxes that our kids' smoothies come in and sent us a picture of his work. Thanks Peter.

caption competition - results

We're a bit late with the results of the caption competition, but here they are. And here is the photo again, just in case you missed it:

First of all, some of the entries that almost made it:

"How're we meant to put the fire out with one of these?  We're obviously going to need the big cartons" by Ally

"Apparently a guy called Matt made the hoax call. Something about wanting to take the spotlight off a pair of tartan pants" by Jo.

"Fire service cut backs reduce extinguisher size dramatically" by Sandra

"This is almost as good as last weeks false alarm at the brewery!" By Bredo

But the winner is...

"This week’s special offer: FREE FIREMAN - in fruit colour-coordinated outfit - with every Innocent Smoothie" by Lucy.

Well done Lucy.