The Saturday Foodie Bit! Newmarket Sausages!

National Sausage Week and the Newmarket Sausage!

The past week (from the 5th November to 11th November) it has been National Sausage Week.  On Tuesday I was in Newmarket, the place of my birth.  Tuesday is market day in Newmarket.  You still see old guys (getting fewer by the year) who wander in from the Fens and potter about the market.  The more eccentric still wear leather gaiters and look as though they have just come off the field or the fen.  They often look as though they have been collecting produce;  wild fowl, fresh caught eels or fresh dug vegetables.  

 Stroll just off the market down a side street and you start to come across two local butchers Musk's and Powters.  Recently the age old argument of who has the real Newmarket sausage recipe has been slightly resolved between the two.  The Newmarket Sausage has now been granted protected status. Three butchers applied for the status the two pictured left and Eric Tennants featured in the video attached to the BBC series.  The Wikipedia article on the Sausage gives some information but does need revising.  The area is not just Newmarket itself but Dullingham, Woodditton and Kirtling (over the border in Cambridgeshire).

Having wandered down the street to Musks they had an offer to try a sausage in a roll to celebrate their new status.  Who has the actual authentic recipe? It is probably lost in time, now probably largely irrelevant as you buy the one like. The sausage Queen Victoria enjoyed is probably subtly different since the Pork used today will not be the same owing to diet and progressive breeding of pigs.  If the regional foods of England are to survive PGI status is route. 

                                          

                                                  

The Saturday Garden Shed 2

Started Saturday 19th February 2011 0627 GMT

The Sweet Pea Sowing Season

Saturday has come round again.  This time of year is the time when the sweet pea can be sown.  The town of Wem where they were developed was the district "county town" for North Shropshire.  This was the district that I lived in at the time when I was carrying out the agricultural research phase of my career.   This is an incredibly rural area much like West Suffolk.  Shropshire at that time was billing itself as the undiscovered county.  I would say still that most people of any age would be hard put to state where Shropshire is on a map.

I remember when I was younger Sweet Peas were one of the plants that my maternal grandfather always grew.  After a career in the Customs Service chasing gold smugglers around Bombay (Mumbai now) he arrived in this country in 1955,  along with my grandmother and mother, the elder children were already here joining the Royal Navy and doing other things.  This was a few months before the Suez Canal, through which they passed, was closed to shipping.  A little reminiscent of times of today.

I say arrived because he was part of that generation that had been involved the British Empire.  Born in what is modern day Pakistan from an Irish family who supervised building the Railways he married my grandmother in 1931 who herself was from an ex-pat family and born in Simla.  Her mother was the Governor of the Women's Prison in Lahore.  After arriving in the Port of London he took up the post at the BBC News department that he came to England for rather going to Australia, where many of my relatives ended up after Indian Independence.   After retiring at the age of 70 with his house paid off within fifteen years he then set about gardening for the next nearly 30 years or so before passing at the, we usually say now, grand old age of 99.  A pretty full and eventful life life even by today's standards of global society.

Visits when I was a child from my grandparents often included a trip Robert  and Sons in Sturmer, the same place that I blogged about nearly three weeks ago,  Sweat Pea plants  were bought and then taken back to their house in Ponders End.  So with a view to continuing my own gardening career,  although being born in 1966 I have a long way to go before officially retiring (sorry there is no retirement age anymore for those of my age), I have some of Mr Fothergill's  of Newmarket  seed.  So today is sowing day to produce the plants to produce that traditional cottage garden effect and to enhance my sense of Wellbeing which I have to say 2 weeks into a running my own business is starting to be high.
  

The Saturday Garden Shed

Started Saturday 5th February 2011  Started 0634 GMT
Words 409

Is it a shed?
This is obviously not a garden shed but an (
I'll let you think about this one.  The structure as it is not a dwelling was rambled past a few years ago.  This is the Moulton and Three churches walk (walk number 48).  The village of Moulton lies on what was the superhighway of it's day the packhorse track between Cambridge and Bury St.Edmunds and which ran south of Newmarket.  The next picture shows the packhorse bridge a triumph of medieval engineers and not a skate board ramp.  It certainly didn't wobble with the frequency of feet passing over it.

  So the shed,  this is Malt Kiln used to dry out the malt produced as the barley was malted.   This was an essential part of the local economy in the production of beer.  Beer was a relatively weak beast (< 2.5% abv) when used for everyday consumption  compared to today's brews.  The beer could also be guaranteed to be less likely to kill you than some of the drinking water of the day.

The presence of Malt kilns in the area were one of the reasons why the Abbey at Bury St Edmunds (once the resting place of England's original patron saint) was the premier medieval Abbey.  Prior to meeting at Runnymede to sign the Magna Carta, meetings were held at the Abbey.

Saturday's Gardening slot is going to be a little shorter than I intended on Monday (will have to upload missing posts over the weekend).   We have had Chinese  New  Year which is based on a Lunar Calendar (13 months).  This has been accompanied by some of the windiest weather around the world, not unrelated to the fact the moon is pretty near to the earth.

On the theme of calendars I have just received the growing year planner from the Growing Schools network.  a publication that may not be repeated as cuts bite so maybe a little fund raising for the appropriate charity that takes this in would be appropriate.

Today I have officially started trading in business.  This free blog will continue to be maintained each day.  More content will start to appear on the two blogs and sites where the information may be more economically expedient for me to place.

Tomorrow we will have a look at Roast Bacon and it's place in the Suffolk food economy.

The Sunday Foodie bit part 2

Started Sunday 23rd January 2011   Time 0655 GMT
Words 289

Cretan food - from the oldest civilization in Europe


Minoan civilization, our name we do not know what they called themselves, was the cultural root of  the tree of Greek culture.  Zeus was born on Crete.  A possible reason why this happened is that  the soils of Crete have been extremely productive over the millennia.  If you do not have to work too hard to feed yourself you then have time to invent and tell stories to explain where you're from both to others and yourself.

Crete apparently has the most wholesome cuisine in the Mediterranean.  The book in the link provides some very good recipes, some of which I have tried.  The use of good olive oil does add to your Wellbeing.  Thus using natural products to ameliorate some of the effects of our normally highly processed life.  This morning I had a Greek omelette and salad for breakfast.

As much as I like Newmarket Sausages,every once and a while a degrease can be useful.  Using locally grown produce (ie your own) is also beneficial.  With stories of food supply shortages in the East Anglian Daily Times it makes sense to start growing a little yourself.  Starch rich vegetables such as potatoes can supplement wheat flour in a number of dishes, gnocchi being an example.  This use of potatoes is very topical as National Potato Day approaches.  Have a look at the Dipity link above to see when and where this takes place.

Further Blog posts will appear on my Blogs 2pointfiveageofman.net and kritirecharge.co.uk.  Follow the links from the bar near the title of this blog.

I am going to finish now and walk down to my favourite local Garden Nursery in Sturmer, just over a mile or so down the road to Colchester.