cheese club and bronte

Our Bronte (standing, far right) popped around yesterday to help us enjoy a Scandinavian themed cheese club. She's a bit of an expert on all things Scandinavian, being from Denmark herself, and also starting her very own Scandinavian Kitchen last year.

You can read all about yesterday's Scandinavian cheese club and the cheeses Bronte brought along for us on her own blog here.

please say hello to the innocent band

Here's a very sneak preview of the innocent band who played for us here at Fruit Towers last Thursday lunch time. They'll be playing again at our village fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so keep your eye out for them on the programme.

Every single member works here Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm, so we're quite proud that they've managed to pull together a fully fledged 9 piece band in such a short space of time. In the blurry distance, you can probably just about make out Caroline, Cass, Ceri and Vic on vocals, Duncan on drums, Jamie M and Tim S on trombone and trumpet respectively, Ruvan on guitar, Malinna on bass and Ben T working his magic on the piano. Oh and there's a tambourine that gets passed around as well. We can't forget the tambourine.

And here's a chicken with his eye on some apples.

Unfortunately, he's already been booked for another engagement this summer.

long distance siobhan

On Wednesday we got an email from office favourite Siobhan. She's much loved here at Fruit Towers for her top notch fruit buying skills and feats of physical endurance.

She's currently doing a mammoth cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats all in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. You can read more here. Apparently her favourite cycling buddy is 'Big Bear Grits', a Latvian carpenter with mighty thighs. She reports that she has so far avoided getting acutely saddle sore and the temptation to get married to said carpenter in Gretna Green.

Here's Siobhan and crew at Land's End (our hero is on the far right).

Siobhan Linard. Legend in her own life time. Doing it for us so we don't have to (and so we can eat crisps and have a lie in this weekend).

please say hello to...

We're often introducing you to our drinks and our people on this blog so today we thought we'd combine both for a mighty 'please say hello to' update.

Hannah and our new smoothie for summer in a big carton

How long have you been at innocent?
Hannah: 5 days and 7 hours.
Smoothie for Summer: About 15 whole days now.

What were you doing before this?
Hannah: Working in a small but highly effective team of eight people at the international development charity World Emergency Relief who help a lot of very worthwhile causes in Central and East Africa.
Smoothie for Summer: My Alphonso mangoes were ripening themselves in the iron-rich volcanic soils of Ratnagiri, India.

What's your favourite thing?
Hannah: My mums carrot cake.
Smoothie for Summer: Sunshine.

Alison and our smoothie of the month

How long have you been at innocent?
Alison: 5 days and 8 hours.
Smoothie of the month: 7 days.

What were you doing before this?
Alison: For the past four years I've been developing my own project opticare eye drop dispeners, as invented by my father. The product won an award for medical innovations in 2005 and is still growing strong.
Smoothie of the month: My coconuts were swaying on trees in Indonesia.

What are your favourite things?
Alison: Rugged beaches/ big cairnes at the top of hills and mountains/ hugs from her kids
Smoothie of the month: More sunshine.

mixing with the stars

Our Rich spoke at the Yorkshire International Business Conference on Friday, and he met some famous people. Here is the proof:

TV funny guy Rory Bremner, and Richard

Boxer/electric griddle pioneer George Foreman, and Richard

Supermodel/knicker designer Elle Macpherson, and Richard

Yorkshire – it's where the famous people are at.

the man (not) from del monte

He say  'You know it's almost summer when the white jeans come out'

Please meet Simon F.

Chief fruit buyer at innocent, vision in white denim and the cause of many a swooning lady in FT today.

Summer's looking good.

breakfast of champions

So the answers to last week's competition

Mike had the toast with brown stuff.

Simon had the healthy breakfast of cereal, nettle tea and a banana.

And Abi had crisps and chocolate as she has a very high metabolism and a weakness for pickled onion flavoured snacks.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Renee's breakfast of ice cream, sausages and porridge aboard a pirate-ship-in-motion was a strong contender for best story but seeing as she'd already won a posh cruise for that and thought Mike was a crisp fiend, our breakfast panel chose Louise as the winner.

Louise not only guessed all three breakfasts correctly but also once ate hand caught frogs with rice and soy sauce, straight out the river in Northern Thailand for her first meal of the day.

Hopefully she'll find her prize (lots of smoothies) a bit more palatable.

team extreme

Tne innocent climbing club (aka Team Extreme) went on their first ever outdoor trip last w/e.

They've been practicing indoors for a few months now so decided it was time to hang out on some real cliffs in Snowdonia.

Jojo expertly organised the whole trip and Dringo Adventure provided everything from fit instructors (essential) through to equipment (also essential) and accomodation (comfy). Everyone had an excellent time and learnt lots more about climbing, like how to pose for photos mid rock.

On the way home, they decided to pop into the Cheese Rolling competition at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire. Tim R and Mav both entered the race to chase the cheese and despite the pouring rain and a very steep hill, both acheived respectable times (in that they didn't come last).

You can watch a little video of the cheese race here. Tim R is the chap in the bright yellow jacket, 28 seconds in.

He came second in the best dressed cheeseroller section though. That award went to the chap in the suit.

whose breakfast is it anyway?

It's been a while since we did a 'Guess whose shoes/hat/dog that is?' so here's a little competition.

Mike, Abi and Simon all had breakfast this morning.

But what did they have?

Someone had nettle tea, healthy cereal and a banana

Someone had toast with brown stuff on it

And someone had crisps and chocolate money

Just match the right person to the right breakfast and tell us about the most interesting breakfast you've ever had, in under 80 words. The best (and most correct) answer will win a crateful of smoothies.

Answers by Tuesday breakfast time please.

crisp anyone?

Sometimes bad news can be swiftly followed by good. Our Ailana has decided to leave us and set up her own little PR agency. Tomorrow is her last day at Fruit Towers and she asked one of her new clients to send in a few crisps for her leaving do. And he duly did so.

So thanks to Jonty at Burts we think we'll have enough crisps to get us through at least a week. And he's promised to send a box of crisps to the person that guesses correctly how many packets are in this pile. Your favourite flavour and everything.  Answers on a postcard (or as a comment below) by midday on Friday 23rd.

No more time to write, we've got lots of potatoes to get through.  PS if we get more than one correct answer, we'll draw the winner out of a hat.