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Hamper Blog alex.walker on 08 Sep 2010
Virginia Hayward is proud to be home to several high quality brands of our own. From Maxwell and Franks puddings and brandy butters, through to our own ranges of sweets and fudges, we’re very pleased to be able to pack some of our favourite flavours into our Christmas Hampers.
In the run up to Christmas, we are of course busily packing away and putting hundreds of ‘Just Fudge’ bags of fudge into their brand new packaging.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 02 Sep 2010
It feels like a lifetime away, but with just 113 days to go until the 25th of December, Christmas is just around the corner. 10 days ago I could have been convinced that Christmas was only moments away, thanks to the cold and dreary weather that we all experienced last week, but looking out of the window today there’s a glimmer of hope that we might enjoy even the briefest of Indian Summers.
We are of course well prepared for the upcoming season, whichever way it goes, as we have plenty to offer for those of you who can still squeeze in a picnic this summer, or choose something from our range of Christmas Hampers and gifts, if you’re getting the Christmas shopping done early. You can schedule your deliveries to be on a time and date which suits you, or have your gifts delivered directly to your recipient.
To see more from our Christmas range, click here.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 27 Aug 2010
We’d be the first to admit that the Chocolate Box sounds understated… However, the simplicity of its name belies the complexity of the delicious contents. The idea behind the gift is, like all the best ideas, quite simple and is based around the idea that you simply can’t have too much fine chocolate, presented in a neat chocolate coloured storage box.
Naturally, extensive testing has been carried out to make sure that this gift will satisfy your chocolate requirements. A slab of Gwynedd Dark Art on White Chocolate Bar, Chocolate Cake, Luxury Chocolate Fudge Sauce – what more could anyone want? Except perhaps Burnt Sugar’s Chewy Caramels, the most deliciously chocolatey chews that we have ever discovered.
Perfect as a Christmas hamper, or in high summer. There’s always time for chocolate.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 20 Aug 2010
It’s been a little over a year since we launched our first sweet hampers, starring the ‘Tear and Share’ in a ‘sweet’ 12″ basket and Haribo Hamper, not to mention the other gifts in the sweets range. We’ve gone a little bit further this Christmas though…
Amongst our new range of Christmas Hampers you’ll find many things, from traditional lidded hampers stuffed to the gunwales with festive foods, through to tower gift boxes and our range of sweetie gifts. Brand new for this year though is the ‘Personalised Sweet Cube‘. If you’re wondering what a sweet cube and precisely how you might ‘personalise’ it, read on.
We’ve taken our favourite sweets and arranged them with our renowned attention to detail inside a generous transparent cube. When you give us your personal message through the website or on the phone, we print that message onto the brightly coloured cube label and attach it to the cube.
With the amount of sweets that we’ve squeezed into the box, we can only hope that your recipient doesn’t eat them all in one sitting and will be reminded of your gesture every time they go back for more.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 11 Aug 2010
Entering into its twenty sixth year of trading, Virginia Hayward has once again produced a fantastic range of Christmas hampers combining traditional values and fresh modern produce.
These values are all reflected in the hero products within the range:
The Merry Christmas Basket arrives in a seagrass tray with red rim. This festive piece of artistry is perfect for any Christmas snacker and includes two half bottles of wine, a fruit and nut mix, shortbread biscuits, mince pies, truffles and an iced fruit bar. This hamper is priced at £29.99.
The Season’s Greetings hamper is presented in a classic lined wicker basket. A combination of sweet and savoury products, including wine, crisps, crackers, jams, biscuits and Christmas desserts, this hamper is the perfect gift for a luxury loving family member or friend. The hamper is priced at £50.
The Christmas Cracker hamper, available in a traditional lidded wicker basket or carton option, really is a cracker! Featuring Virginia Hayward’s recently launched ‘Just Chocolates’ the hamper also includes an array of after dinner treats and wine. The hamper is priced from £52.
The Taste of Christmas hamper comes in a dark wicker basket with seagrass rim. Including champagne, wine, nibbles, sweets and condiments, this hamper provides everything that you need to complement a perfect Christmas dinner. This hamper is priced at £100.
Alex Walker, Marketing Manager at Virginia Hayward says: “Our Christmas hamper range has grown year on year and we’re very proud of the 2010 selection. Our buyers rely on their expert knowledge and wealth of experience to handpick each and every product that goes into our hampers and gifts. At Virginia Hayward we believe that our hampers provide a gift for everyone – and what better way to say Happy Christmas to the important people in your life?”
The range includes a further 16 different hampers ranging from an entry-level Christmas Box at £14.99 up to the stunningly extravagant Celebration hamper at £500. Virginia Hayward also provides a selection of fresh food hampers, range of sweet and sparkling gifts and a variety of attractively presented wine gift boxes.
You can see the full range at www.virginiahayward.com/occasion/christmas/
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 03 Aug 2010
In the final part of this series, we’ll be looking at the flowers and fruit that will have appeared on your Chilli plant by now. A final big thank you to the team at The Chilli King who have offered their expertise on how to grow chilli plants.
As your pepper plants begin to mature you will start to notice flowers appearing on your plants. This is the sign you have been waiting for as it means that your first chillies are not that far off. All that stands between you and fresh chilli pods is pollination.
Pollination will be taken care of naturally by bees and other insects if your plants are kept outside. If grown inside your plants may suffer from flower drop, in which case you may want to consider hand pollination. Don’t worry, this is not as sordid as it may sound. All you need to do is wait until you have a few flowers on your plants then lightly rub your little finger inside the flower heads on your plants. Alternatively use a small artists paint brush or a cotton bud. This will do the bees job of moving pollen around from flower to flower.
Eventually you will see that some of the flowers will go brown and drop off. This is usually no need for alarm as the cause will be a chilli pushing its way through the flower. All you need to do now is to keep up the water/food and wait for your chillies to ripen.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 29 Jul 2010
In our continuing series about growing Chillies that you’ll find in our Chilli Cube Hamper, we’re passing on advice from The Chilli King about the very best tried and tested methods for growing fiery chillis! Today’s post is about what you should feed to your chilli plants.
How often should you feed them and what with? In the early stages and while the weather is quite mild you can give them a bit of tap water every 2-3 days or whenever the soil is looking dry on top. As the summer temperatures increase, you can increase this to once a day.
Once the flowers start to flower you can introduce a few drops of liquid tomato food into their water during every other watering, using half the dilution strength recommended for tomato plants. Doing so gives the plants the extra energy required to keep producing fruit over the summer months.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 26 Jul 2010
The team at The Chilli King are giving us lots of tips on the best way to go about growing Chillies that we include in our fiery but delicious Chilli Hamper.
Once the seedlings have developed their second set of leaves it is time to re-pot them. The Chilli King recommends pots about 10cm in diameter. Be careful not to damage the seedlings during this process. One good tip is to avoid touching them altogether by re-potting the area of compost around the seedlings roots. By doing this hopefully you will avoid damaging the roots of the plant.
Depending on the time of year, your location and amount of light available you can keep the plants on you windowsill, in the greenhouse or under artificial lighting. Pepper plants love light, so the more they get the faster and stronger they will grow.
Depending on the variety you may need to re-pot the chillies on again in a few weeks time. It is a good idea to avoid potting on to early as there are many theories that potting on too early into too big a pot focuses the plants growth on growing the roots rather than stems, leaves, flowers and ultimately chillies. A general rule of thumb is to only do this when roots are appearing through the drainage holes at the bottom of the pots.
Once the risk of frost passes you can put the plants outside. Initially you might want to harden them off by placing outside for just a few hours a day. This will get the plants used to the direct sunlight and wind that they may not have experienced so far during their indoor life.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 22 Jul 2010
Thanks again to the team at ‘The Chilli King’ who are kindly offering their advice and experience with regard to growing chilli plants. You’ll find a packet of seeds in our Chilli Cube Hamper, which means that once all the Chilli flavour goodies have gone, you’ll have your own stash of homegrown Chillis!
Once your seeds have begun to germinate they suddenly have a new requirement to fulfill, light. Depending on where you are and which way your windows face, the windowsill or conservatory may well be adequate and provide your seedlings with enough light to flourish. The Chilli King warns that one problem with growing plants this way is that as they reach up to towards their light source (the sun) they can grow tall and spindly.
Growers can avoid leggy plants is by introducing artificial lighting. The simplest, and by far the cheapest option, is simple fluorescent tube lights bought from any DIY store.
The one downside with fluorescent lighting is that it tends to give off lots of heat which can scald or even kill the seedlings, but this problem can be eradicated by using bulbs that are called ‘cool white’. From experience most light fixings will come with normal bulbs so be sure to spend an extra couple of pounds on cool white bulbs.
Next all you need to do is to rig the lights up above your chilli seedlings. This can be done many different ways and much will depend on the resources and space available. One thing to bear in mind is that ideally whatever you mount your lights to should be adjustable as you will need to move them higher as you little seedlings grow into big strong chilli plants!
Ideally the lights should be positioned between 5-25cm from the top of your plants and you can use a simple timer switch so that the plants receive 18 hours per day under the lights. Alternatively you can put them by a window during the day then move them under the lights during the night.
Hamper Blog alex.walker on 20 Jul 2010
It seems that despite the heat outside, we just can’t get enough warmth if the demand for our ‘Chilli Cube‘ hamper is anything to go by. As well as the delicious Chilli Jam, Chilli Chutney, Chilli Chocolate and hot Habanero Chilli Sauce, we’ve included a packet of Chilli seeds which you can grow yourself.
Growing chillis is quite an art, so over the next few days we’ll be bringing you some hints and tips, inspired by The Chilli King.
The first step is germinating your seeds. The Chilli King recommends:
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