Market stall fun again

So - we are there again.  You have another chance to get your xmas presents.  Saturday Duke of York Market off the King's Rd.

Here, we did the last day of olive picking yesterday and washed the crates, brought in the ladders and the nets.  Next week like fishermen of olives we will stitch up the holes in the nets and roll them up until next year.

These are the thousand year old olive trees.  Rather scary to pick from, so I hope you all realise what a risky business it is getting you that delicious oil!

Market Stall

This is Rohan looking very ready on Saturday morning.  I gather there was a good turn out and some people turned some lolly out of their pockets.  Excellent stuff chaps. 

More blooming olives!!!

So, more olives.  Olive oil is delicious.  I hope you all appreciate it.  We are up the trees all the time and it is very exhausting.  Beautiful weather though as usually this time of year, the cutting wind from Siberia is blowing one out of the trees.  This year it is nearly tropical.

Hot from Pot - Last bunches

This is the last bunch of Charlotte's little helpers with the last bunch of grapes.   The Pinot Noir variety leaves a lot of 'second growth'  bunches on the vines.  These are not part of the main harvest as they are acerbic and grow off tributary shoots.  Being rather parsimonious, I used to look at all these grapes and wonder what to do with them...  raisins...  chutney...  preserves...  a sweet wine?   Guess which I choose?  Well, we leave them on the vines until they are sweet and make WINE out of them funnily enough.  It is usually a curious dry white amber semi-sherry which everyone imbibes happily enough.  We make a bit for private consumption in the castle.  Waste not want not, I say!

Hot from Pot

There has been blog silence from the Castle for a while, I know you were all on tenterhooks waiting for the next installment.  I got 'flu.  Not swine it seems but I was laid low in bed for a few days and emerged on Monday swinging back up into the olive trees with vim and vigour (not icelandic eco-slaves).  And we are picking like it is the end of the world which I gather is supposed to be ending for all surviving Aztecs in 2012. According to an unreliable sauce who wishes to remain anonymous,  the aztec calendar ends in 2012 because they ran out of stones and could not be bothered to find any more since 2012 seemed a long way away as did the stones. 

So in my bed,  I got rather bored and grumpy so watched bits of early and surrealist cinema on youtube.  I can highly recommend Hans Richter and Fernand Leger.

The dogs would not leave my side.  

News

Super exciting funtime for all of you in LONDON.  Potentino stall with a beach umbrella at

THE DUKE OF YORK MARKET (off the KING'S ROAD) Saturday 21st and 28th of November, 10am-4pm

Tasting and especially buying is the idea. Wine and oil galore.

Rohan (our 'agent') and Alexander (my 'little brother') will be be standing at the stand all day for you.

I hope it is not raining.

Alexander is in the photo in a merry yule time mood with a false moustache so you can all get in the right frame of mind for purchasing christmas gifts from us. (moustaches on order)

Giacobazzi's Delicatessen and Osteria Emilia

For those of you who live in North London, we have a few new treats in store for you- Giacobazzi's Delicatessen and Osteria Emilia on Fleet Road in Hampstead will soon be receiving their first delivery of both the Sacromonte and the Piropo. Giles Coren's review of Osteria will whet your appetite...

These jewels in the London food scene were recommended to me a number of years ago by John Owen, one of the fellow founders of the Frontline Club. Thank you very much for the recommendation!

If anyone would like to recommend us to their local restaurants and delis. do post a comment and Rohan or I will drop a sample off to them.