Bruce and bacon

There was I talking about ‘finds’ and right on cue, there’s Bruce Napier sharing his butcher ‘finds’ in the pages of this month’s Waterways World. Bruce is the blogmeister of ‘Living in Sanity’, one of my favourite serial reads. I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it is that I like so much about it but I do commend it to the House. There is a clarity and concision to his writing that contributes to a very appealing style, and it wafts you gently along on his and Sheila’s journey. What could so easily be a rather prosaic cruising log is in fact elevated to something far more engaging, an intimate, warm and altogether charming diarising of events and people, family and places. As one who used to fall on a new entry from Snecklifter Mike, I now thank Bruce for stepping manfully up to the plate and filling the gap so many of us mourn now that the Holloways have squirreled themselves away in the Peak District.

But an encomium is not the reason for this blog. No, it was the butcher thing that caught my eye because yesterday, I made a declaration (to no-one in particular so I’ll share it now) that I would never again buy bacon and sausages from a supermarket. I know what they sell is a poor imitation of meat but I didn’t know how poor until I had a Damascene revelation over a bacon sandwich. The circumstances were thus: I had read of a cafe not too far away that was heralded as a beacon of porcine tastiness. A journalist said it so it must be true. Anyway, I finally got a chance to test out this assertion and shock, horror, yum, he was right! This was epic stuff, thick cut Jimmy’s Farm back bacon in a slightly herby triangular wedge, with a dab of brown sauce....unbelievably good! Anyway, I got talking to the owner and we were saying how nice it was to now have more of a choice when it came to humanely reared, locally sourced meat, stuff that really tasted how it should, and she mentioned how she got her stock from the butcher over the road as well as from Jimmy’s Farm (as in the TV Jimmy’s Farm). And as I left, I realised just what I had been missing out on by buying from Sainscos all this time and that I really should start to exercise my right to choose by supporting providers of proper food. So I’m off to the farm shop this weekend to buy half a pig’s worth.