Butcherish

I decided it was time to change our butcher. You would think that as a consumer voting with your hard earned dosh would be simple. Alas, no, not in my case anyway. I have been to the new butcher before as a trial run. Asked for a pork loin. He started cutting up the meat, scoring it and asked me if I would like the bones. Which is when I made my mistake. I said something worse than declaring myself a vegetarian. I asked how big the bone was (which is where I should have stopped the sentence) as I had only ever bought pork loin, without bone from the supermarket. He looked up from the hacksaw and said I should not have told him that. I heard myself say ...."but I am now antisupermarket for meat". He then looked up again, this time approvingly. Phew. The next test was when he asked me what I planned to do with it. I replied that my master plan was to marinate it in rosemary, thyme and garlic overnight, sear it then throw it in a claypot for an hour. Again an approving look. Whooo, we were doing well.

Until he told me the price of the meat. Now, you should know that I am going to, somehow or other reduce our weekly food shop to £60 excluding nappies and cleaning products. If I am successful then Mr Brown, I would like to be treasurer. This is partially beacuse Cameron likes expensive food: fillet steak, duck breast, parma ham, etc. Our jolly butcher charged me £12 for a joint of meat for lunch. In hindsight, it was actually me agreeing to take the bones which racked the price up. If I had just taken the meat, sans bones it would have cost half. But now I know for next time. I am going to learn the language which I have named butcherish. Luckily my trusty Hungarian cookbook starts each meat section with a lecture on how to get the best cut of meat, what it should look like, along with an anatomy picture of what part of the animals body it came from.

I am glad to report that the meat was really good. The bones unfortunately went in the bin as they would not fit into the pot. Typical.