Tamworth pig update

We have now got the bacon back from the butchers from our Tamworth pig. We picked it up yesterday and last night we had our first meal using the bacon – the classic British breakfast meal bacon and eggs though we were having it for our evening dinner. The eggs were our own as well.

The Tamworth is quite an old breed, predating the modern, commercial breeds and therefore the meat is considered to be much closer to the original forest-dwelling wild swine from which domesticated breeds are descended.

The flavour of the bacon was superb and there was a good layer of rind which grilled to a beautifully crisp texture.

The leg joint we roasted last weekend has now been fully used. The meat left over from the Sunday roast went into a pork and vegetable soup which we consumed through the week. The bone has gone into the freezer and at some point will be used to make more stock.

Alas, our cat has decided not to share our enthusiasm for the Tamworth. We cooked her some lung. She ate half of it and then refused to touch the rest. We tried to give her some more freshly cooked lung but she wasn’t having it. What we had cooked for her ended up going into making the stock for the soup. If anyone has any recipes for pig lung, please send them! Pushka is now back on to Whiskas, not exactly part of our plan to become self-sufficient, though she did rather like the bits of the leg joint we gave her!

Until 2009 I was working in London, UK, but I gave it up to pursue a life of self-sufficiency. My aim is to grow or forage for all my food, produce my own power and live a healthier and greener lifestyle. I left London to return to my home village of Sunniside, near Newcastle, in the North East of England. I have a couple of plots of land there as well as the garden of my house. Our village is a commuter area for Newcastle but we are surrounded by countryside which we use for picking wild foods. My mission in life is to show that it is possible to live well without destroying the planet in the process. I am also keen to ensure knowledge of historic recipes and cooking is kept alive. I regularly try out recipes from old cookbooks using the food we have grown. I make videos about our progress and about how to cook home-grown foods. These can be viewed on www.youtube.com/jonathanwallace.
www.self-sufficientinsuburbia.blogspot.com