This year we are pleased to announce that Stephen and Juliette the owners of Pho Cafe are sponsoring the event by supplying  us Vietnamese Beer and are judging the competition which will be held on September 25th.

The Berkhamsted Chilli Growing Society would like thank Stephen and Juliette for the beer (especially the beer) and their judging skills and look forward to spending some social time with them on the 25th.

This year the Society has been growing Apache chilli plants to win the honour of owning Gordon the Trophy for the forthcoming year.

A little information about Pho Cafe our sponsors.

Locations

• St John Street, Clerkenwell
• Great Tichfield Street, Fitzrovia
• Westfield Shopping Centre, Shepherds Bush
• Black Lion Street, Brighton
• Wardour Street, Soho

Burt’s summary

Pho is my favourite London restaurant, it’s run by nice people, they sell healthy yet delicious spicy food and have some great locations some really convenient for getting back to Euston.

Some well written marketing copy lifted from their web site

Pho opened in Clerkenwell in June 2005 as London’s first Vietnamese street food restaurant. We’re family run, small, informal and serve great value, deliciously healthy and authentically prepared Vietnamese food in an environment we hope you will enjoy.

We specialise in the Vietnamese national dish, pho, an amazingly tasty and nutritious noodle soup, as well as other wonderful Vietnamese foods, coffees (served Vietnamese style including the renowned weasel coffee! ), beers and fresh juices.

We now have 4 restaurants in London and one restaurant in Brighton.

At Pho we keep it simple

Our specialised menu focuses on a small number of Vietnamese street foods and ensures that we have the time to make everything in-house from the highest quality ingredients delivered daily.

Unlike traditional Vietnamese restaurants in London we don’t serve any Chinese dishes or offer a mind boggling menu of choices. We don’t buy in pre-packaged processed meatballs and frozen spring rolls – instead our Vietnamese chefs make everything using authentic recipes.

Pho [fuh] is Vietnam’s national dish.  It’s their national obsession – often referred to as the “soul of the nation”. It’s quite simply a delicious and nutritious noodle soup dish eaten every day by the Vietnamese for breakfast, lunch or dinner – or sometimes for all. It’s the ultimate street food.

Pho (in fact the vast majority of our menu) is really good for you. Just as in Vietnam our stocks are made from scratch and take many hours to prepare – it’s this authentic preparation that’s key to the stock retaining all its goodness and developing its subtle and distinctive taste. So it’s extremely healthy, brimming with fresh ingredients and very low in fat. The perfect comfort food, hangover cure or cold remedy.

If you are interested in sponsoring next years competition drop Burt an email. Typically we require seeds, compost, beer and food.

If you would like to support the worthy Break Through Breast Cancer cause you can donate at our Just Giving page.

Start to finish took 5 hours 10 minutes . 3 hours 51 minutes was spent cycling the rest of the time was extended toilet breaks due to Tims as he was wearing some sort of lycra mankini wrestling out fit under his T shirt which meant he wasn’t prepared to publicly pee in a bush so he queued like a lady waiting for the toilet at the opera.

There was some over lap with the Chilli Growers and Team Leesman so we joined forces.

The ladies from The Berkhamsted Knitting Circle laid on a terrific spread to refuel the exhausted cyclists.

After lining our stomachs we rushed back to Berkhamsted as we had a meeting that night in The Boat. Aunty Dee nearly got slapped by an old drunk bloke whose ASBO Mrs got the hump with his arrogance before she stormed off in a strop, which makes a pleasant change from fighting amongst ourselves.

We also met the nice manager of the Old Mill and discussed using our chilli’s in their menu later in the summer.

This year some of us are doing it again please help us along by donating to this worth while cause on our Just Giving page.

http://www.justgiving.com/BerkhamstedChilliGrowingSocietyPeddlingForThePuppies

The Monster Truck in Action.

The Rocket Car.

Thank you Gerald.

www.chilliseeds.co.uk

To get your chilli sausages visit Eastwoods

15 Gravel Path
Berkhamstead
Hertfordshire
HP4 2EF

Map

Serano Chilli Plant

Grown from seed in fertile Berkhamsted by the Berkhamsted Chilli Growing Society.

The Serano Chilli originates from mountainous regions of the Mexican states of Puebla and Hidalgo. The Serano is a prolific producer of bullet shaped fruit which resembles the Jalepeno pepper but they are notably hotter.

Serano seeds are given to diners at Wahaca restaurants across London.

A silver and gold whip tray beautifully engraved, By Shoecare on the High Street, with society’s name an mantra.

Berkhamsted Chilli Growing Society

We sow the seed, right.
Nature grows the seed, and then, we eat the seed.
And then, after that, we sow the seed, nature grows the seed,
and then, we eat the seed.
And then, after that again, we sow the seed, nature grows the seed……………….
Neil, 1984

Shoecare
‎177 High Street,
Berkhamsted
HP4 3HB
01442 873 867‎

As well as engraving, Shoecare also repair shoes, cut keys and stock an impressive range of nick-nacks.

The Berkhamsted Chilli Growing Society Whip Tray in action in The Goat last week.

(sorry to The Goat for swapping their cue ball with a trick wibbly wobbly one)

chilli, chili, chile or chilly

So, as with other spelling variants, it wouldn’t be right for us to say there’s only one correct spelling, but I would suggest that chilli (as spelt in your society’s name) is your safest bet. As my Oxford Dictionary gives the only plural form as chillies, with the ‘e’, I’d go for that too (though the British National Corpus shows about the same number of entries for ‘chillis’, so you’re obviously not alone in finding the ‘e’ superfluous).

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So there you are. It would appear there is a choice – but we may have made the correct one!