Not another brick in the wall

We burnt the jus that is used to finish the Pork Othello this week. The jus is made by reducing the juices from the very slow brazing of Country Cuts belly pork. However, there is reducing to a thick concentrate and reducing until there is no liquid at all. mmm.. we asked Country Cuts for some pork bones and voila, made a new stock that was used to make the new jus - fantastic.

It is interested though, talking to butchers, how much care now has to be taken over the waste from a butchers shop. Once over every part of the animal was used to make food. Nothing wasted. Now, with the various bureaucratic legislation surrounding food, it is staggering how difficult it is to do some authentic practices. All because of BSE, CJD, blue tongue, foot and mouth.....

The sad thing is that it was never the hill farmer, or small butchers shop, or the local abattoir, or good old fashioned baker or the traditional chef that caused this in the first place. Really the problem was caused by the large scale production of food to reduce prices. Now we ship live animals halfway across the country for slaughter and waste half of the animal so we need to do it twice as much. Plus, we probably all eat too much meat, promoted by the "go large" and "2 for the price of 1" marketing of the big multinationals.

In days gone by great armies of men built the many thousands of miles of dry stone wall in the Lake District. The farm kitchens produces home made bread, probably from grain farmed on the land and ground at the local mill.

Today the cost of labour for building drystone walls results in fences being used much more. Today, of course, it is not generally considered cost effective to make ones own bread.

The good news is of course that the value of human life today is significantly greater than 400 years ago. Most people would not thank you for a job building drystone walls in exchange for home baked bread - irrespective of how good the bread was.

But you can't beat home baked bread. It costs a whole lot more than the stuff in the supermarket, partly because of the increased value of human effort, but you can be assured that the price is worth it - if you are wise enough to see that value.

New brew
Today we were honored to have the Cumbrian CAMRA beer tasting panel visit us. They ended up with a selection of 9 ales to try, 6 of our own. 2 brand new which have yet to go on our bar. But look out for Pride of Eskdale at The Prince of Wales in Foxfield if you can't get to us. They have 72 pints, but Stuart won't let it go on sale till he's sure it's got enough condition.(1) The other is Saazy's Wiesse. A wheat beer.

Now you might think that a group of 9 people sat around a table with 1/9th of a pint of ale each and making comments about astringency and phenols and mouth feal (2) and writing it all down is a bit anoraky. But this is the start of the road to getting an ale represented at the Great British Bear Festival (GBBF) and so into the competition for champion beer of Britain.

But more importantly, it is the enthusiasm of these volunteers(3) that keep the market for real ale going and protect us from the bland, mass produced (and cheap) products of the big producers.

The reason mass producers have been able to make things so cheap is the relatively low cost of fuel. Maybe, because fuel is going to be come more expensive to get out of the ground, we will find mass production and transportation less viable, and us, non-wall-bricks do better. Perhaps Pink Floyd new more than we thought.

(1)The result of secondary fermentation.
(2)Now your imagination is just too much...
(3)Yes it's true. You really can volunteer to taste beer. Just contact your local CAMRA branch.