Enameled Pie Dishes and Wood Serving Boards

This week’s products are slightly less eclectic than last, but before I get to this, I wanted to tell you about an observation I made, of myself, that I thought was interesting...you may not, in which case skip the next four para's and go straight to the Falcon Pie Dishes.
 
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Steven Bartlett, who interviewed Julian Treasure, and I gave you a link to his 10 minute talk on "How to speak to make people want to listen to you", this has now had well over 100 million views across a number of platforms, with 40m on YouTube alone!

Well, in the interview (1 hr 40 mins!) with Julian, he talks about his values and the acronym he uses to remember them. I'll quote it here now, as I think they are interesting in their own right, and it’s one of them that I want to make my observation on.
 
The acronym for Julian’s values is FLAG, and it stands for
•    Faith (that all will be well)
•    Love (Thinking well of people) (Saying Bless You and being generous to people who are complete strangers, whom you come across and maybe get in your way)
•    Acceptance (things come to us for a reason, go with the flow, or in Babette’s words “everything that happens to us in life is good”)
•    Gratitude (Do a gratitude list, even in the worst cases there’s usually something you can be grateful for)
 
..and it’s the second of these, Love (…thinking well of people and being generous to strangers),  that I want to pick up on. Julian maintains that it’s important to be non-judgemental about others that we meet, and who perhaps get in our way in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and so instead of judgement, just say (in our head), “Bless you, I wish you well”. He says it makes an amazing difference to our lightness of being. To us feeling good about ourselves. 
 
I was sitting in a short queue of cars a few days later, on my way to our warehouse in Redhill, when the driver of the car in front of me slowed to a stop to let someone out, that he need not have done really. Honestly, my first reaction was mild impatience, but then I thought of Julian’s words and thought to myself, “what a nice thing to have done”. As I was waiting at the next lights I was presented with an opportunity to do the same, which somewhat to my surprise and delight, I did, and I felt really good about it. When I got to the warehouse, I felt on a bit of high, feeling really good about what I’d done that had cost me all of 10 seconds.
 
We all live out of our experiences, and my experience had been a warm fuzzy feeling when I saw what the driver in front of me had done, and wanted to emulate that. Given the opportunity only minutes later left me with another warm fuzzy feeling. Acts of kindness beget more acts of kindness. A very nice chain reaction. I hope you agree?
 
To product!
 
Falcon Enamel Oblong Pie dishes
These Pie Dishes are old favourites of mine, and Babette’s in fact. They are the traditional white enamel pie dishes, with a blue rim to them, that presumably used to be made over here, but for decades now (certainly sine the 70’s) Poland has been producing them in huge quantities. They come in 9 sizes, of which we currently have the best-selling 6 sizes, 22cm to 32cm in stock.

Why are they a favourite? Well, they are enamelled, which is very tough and easy to clean. Being steel, unlike glass (Pyrex) or pottery, they transmit heat well. They don’t break if you drop them, (although you might chip them as they are fairly light quality). And finally they are dishwasher safe and of course freezer safe, probably doesn’t need saying you can’t put them in the microwave.

And finally finally, they are very good value for money, the 20cm one is £4.99 and the biggish 32cm is only £11.99. Not a king’s ransom by anyone’s standard. Doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see a steak and kidney pie grinning up at you as you’re about to make the first incision…!

Milton Brook Pie Funnels  
…and of course, you will need to buy a pie funnel to support the pastry in the middle. Naturally, we can also help here, although I can’t make the same comment about value for money in this instance, as the ones I have in mind will set you back more than the pie dishes at £14.95 a pop. They are lovely though…or kitsch, depending on your view. There’s a Sheep, a Cow, a Black Bird and a Rooster, all made in Stoke on Trent. I dare say we’ve got some more reasonably priced, unadorned ones but as the pie dishes are so cheap, I need to make up the sale average value somehow … sorry, only available in the shops.

T&G Woodware Acacia Wood Boards
Patrick Gardner started T&G Woodware in 1975 when I was knee high to a grasshopper….no you don’t believe me, ok then I was twenty. He is still running the business today, in his eighties, and I want to follow in his footsteps and still be running (or at least involved) in Art of Living when I get to his age. I can of course just picture the look on Jeanne’s face as she reads this….
 
Anyway, we started dealing with T&G again a couple of years ago, after a long interregnum. They produce, amongst other things, a small range of boards made from Acacia Wood, a hard wood grown in the tropics, that is exceptionally hard wearing and like many woods, has antibacterial qualities. It has a very varied grain colour, going from a pine like yellow, to a dark teak red brown. It is a fast grower and, in fact, in some countries of Africa it is actually categorised as invasive, so no concerns about deforestation with this wood I’d imagine.

I’ve got four examples adorning my desk this morning
 
1.    T&G Baroque Rectangular Paddle Board £12.99. It measures 46cm x 12cm. Not sure what I’d do with it... serve Cheese or Baguette maybe? Quite a distinctive look! Oh, and it has a juice groove on one side.
2.    T&G Tuscany Round Board £15.99. This board is plain on one side and on the other, has a groove cut around the circumference to enable a dome (sold separately) to be deployed. It’s a foot in diameter or 30cm across.
3.    T&G Baroque Pizza Serving Board. Which is a smidgen under 14” diameter (35cm) plain on both sides. And would you believe its intended to serve pizza!
4.    T&G Baroque Handled Round Board, which is smidge under 12” or (30cm) (Excluding the handle) it’s plain on both sides.
 
As I’m a self-confessed devotee of Epicurean Boards (that I talked about in my email 2nd September thin, light, dishwasher safe etc. etc.) I chose these boards as they aren’t duplicated in the Epicurean range, as they are more suited to serving, rather than chopping.
 

Icing Free of Charge
Lastly, we have some icing that has gone out of date in both shops. Between you and I, I find this a bit ridiculous, it’s solid sugar for heaven’s sake, when did you last see sugar with mould on it… Anyway, we can’t sell it and I’d be most grateful if you can make use of it, come along and help yourself.  Could be quite exciting…coming in and walking out without paying for it…legalised shop lifting. If you’re an online shopper I’m a bit reluctant to send out the icing FOC, but if you’re buying other stuff then by all means ask us what colours we’ve got available. Ring 01737 222996.
 
Now, apropos of nothing at all, other than a connection with my first observation of kindness to others, I’ll leave the last word to Arthur Brooks, taken from his book “Love Your Enemies” in which he is referring to Nelson Mandela.
 
“Mandela had a conviction that only goodness could win in a moral struggle. He believed that even under unjust persecution, people should treat others with kindness and respect, that anything less was a failing of his own character.”
 
Quite a standard to live up to, especially as he was unjustly imprisoned for almost 30 years of his life and applied this attitude and discipline to his captors as well!
 
I hope you have pleasant and peaceful weekend.

Kind regards

Andrew

Andrew Bluett-Duncan

Director