pork and asparagus
I don’t usually eat pork – I normally try to limit my meat-eating to zero-carbon meat such as wild rabbit or pigeon with the occasional bit of grass-reared beef – but today, my first day of the Summer Eating Local challenge, was an absolutely delicious exception. My daughter Rachel has friends who had just slaughtered one of their free-range pigs and she asked if I wanted any of it, so we had a wonderful roast belly of pork with superb crackling. Mmm…. irresistible! And very local, organically farmed on a very small scale. As I’ve said in previous blogs, we have to be a bit careful with meat – just because it’s local doesn’t mean it’s low in greenhouse gases – beef, for example, is always pretty high in emissions because of the methane the cows produce, even if they mainly eat grass and sileage rather than grains (which push the emissions up considerably). Dairy products are high in emissions, too, for the same reason. But eating this kind of meat as an occasional treat seems fine to me, and completely different from eating imported grain-fed beef that has been reared on cleared rainforest land. (Pork is actually a bit lower in GHGs than beef, and a pretty good bet if it’s kept as a cottage industry and fed on kitchen scraps, but that’s difficult to do since BSE and new regulations – such a waste, as pigs kept in this way can form part of a good mixed farm, with their manure used for growing vegetables and other crops.)
So what else did I eat on my first day? With the pork I had steamed baby leeks and a salad made with Little Gem lettuce and radishes from Mayflower Organics at the Sunday Farmers’ Market in Cambridge. (For those of you new to our Local Eating blogs, the vinegar for the salad dressing is Aspalls cyder vinegar from Suffolk, the salt Maldon Sea Salt from Essex, the oil rapeseed oil from Munns in Chatteris, which I get from the egg stall at the Sunday market, where you can get a refill if you bring back your bottles, and pepper is part of my Exceptions list.)
Rosegate Farm in Swavesey
Rosegate Farm strawberries
I also had a big helping of fresh strawberries, picked that day at Rosegate Farm in Swavesey, where we went to visit our daughter Rachel and family. The strawberries are heavenly (they also do raspberries a bit later) and they sell delicious asparagus as well – that’ll be tomorrow’s supper, with the rest of the pork. When I talked to the owner, she said they’d been growing fruit for two generations, but that her son had just started a butchery and they were selling their own free-range meat on the farm – pork (including sausages) and lamb from their own small herd. They do PYO strawberries and will be having an open day as part of the Swavesey Festival next Saturday 15th June from 2-4pm.
Still waiting for new potatoes
For supper I had potato salad, using last year’s charlotte potatoes from the farmers’ market – they were surprisingly good, but I’m very much looking forward to the new potato season. (W e grow our own charlottes, but they are very behind this year, what with all the cold and wet weather.) For breakfast I had my regular garlic and honey tea followed by gluten-free porridge oats from Glebe Farm near Huntingdon (just made with water with added local honey).
Posted by Bev