If you are partial to a bottle of Jacobs Creek then you might want to check the label more carefully. According to this article there have been a number of cases of fake wine being sold under the label. The wine which comes from China has been sold to retailers for £2.00 a bottle. It does, however, contain inferior wine. The bottles which are sold for the same price as the genuine product often contains spelling mistakes in the small print on before the label so it might be worth reading the label more carefully before purchasing.

That’s according to this article which features an aquarium built by a man called Jack Heathcote. He has built a custom made aquarium underneath his living room. Measuring 12ft 6in x 12ft 8in x 7ft it is the same size as the room above. It also has a viewing window so you can see the fish inside. It currently houses two chainsaw doradids, three 2ft long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight enormous stingrays and two Fly River turtles.

This cat which has been nicknamed Scotty managed to survive a 30 mile journey trapped in a car engine. It is thought the cat crawled into the engine compartment when the car was parked in Carlton in Nottingham. He was later found by the driver of the car when he arrived in Hasland, Chesterfield. The cat suffered some burns to his paws but is otherwise unharmed. Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to find his owners as he was not micro-chipped.

If you have found Easter eggs to be a little more expensive this year then it seems  you are not alone. According to this article Easter eggs now cost up to 140% more. The rise is mainly down to the rising cost of chocolate largely caused by political unrest in the Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest supplier of cocoa. Higher production costs and the VAT increase are also factors that have made them more expensive. The rises mean that a Dairy Milk egg for example which cost £3.35 will now cost £5.50, a rise of 64%. Based on this I might be buying smaller Easter eggs this year.

If you have become a little tired of poor tasting supermarket chickens then you might find this article interesting. It looks at so called “designer” chickens as it calls them. What it means is birds that are raised in a free range environment and reach maturity slowly rather than those that are raised quickly and cheaply. The resulting chickens are much more expensive that your £3.00 supermarket chicken but what the article asks is whether they taste any better. Chickens from various suppliers are tested and not surprisingly are found to be full of flavour. Ranging between £18.00 and £31.00 they are certainly not cheap chickens are perhaps and are a little expensive for daily meals but I would rather purchase a good quality chicken on those occasions when you want something a bit tastier. I suppose if you can stretch it to provide two of three meals then it doesn’t work out as expensive, and personally I always make a salad with the left over chicken the next day and usually boil the bones for stock which I use as a basis for soup. I will certainly be ordering one of these to test the results for myself so watch this space.

The Cumberland sausage has recently been awarded protected status meaning that only sausages made in Cumbria can now carry the name. The move should be a major boost to Cumbria’s butchers. In order to display the PGI mark (Protected Geographical Indication status) the sausage must be produced, processed and prepared in Cumbria and have a meat content of at least 80%. The actual recipe does vary from butcher to butcher but the sausage also needs to include seasoning and be sold in a long coil.

I came across this interesting article about the benefits of gardening. It seems it not only makes you feel younger but will also help you to exercise and tone your physique. We have a large garden that takes up a lot of my time so it’s good to know I am getting some other benefits out of all that digging and weeding I keep doing. The article suggests doing at least 30 minutes of gardening a day for a beneficial workout and using as little machinery as possible. With 45 minutes of gardening burning as many calories as 30 minutes of aerobics I should start getting very fit as I dig my new vegetable patch. Just out of interest digging for 30 minutes burns off approx 202 calories whilst weeding burns about 182 and raking burns 162. Time to get out in that garden I think.

Is probably how you would describe this property. At just 7ft wide and 308 square foot inside it is one of Britain’s smallest houses. The house in Framingham, Suffolk has one bedroom with a kitchen, shower room and toilet and sitting room. It was originally part of an Victorian steam mill but the rest of the mill was redeveloped and made into new buildings.