Sunday 9 November 2008

Mini Melton Mowbray pies

Another new pie to taste this week: Mini Melton Mowbray Pork Pies from Tesco’s Finest range. But first we headed south from Lingwood across fields to St. Mary's Church Hassingham, this was closed and had no scratch dial. Aluminium cans in the hedgerow were abundant so we started collecting these as Charles filled his bags with various mushrooms. Heading west to Buckenham passing the magnificent 1827 old rectory, we came to St. Nicholas church. This church had two scratch dials by the main entrance and judging by their location this had been rebuilt – one dial facing east!
The two scratch dials at St. Nicholas church - the one on the right faces east!
The church was open and this provided a convenient location for lunch. The church boasted some great tombs on the floor, an ornate piscina and wonderfully piscina and wonderfully decorated ceiling. On the octagonal font, I spotted a carving of a former Pie Master with his chopping board and knife. After lunch, we ventured north over Strumpshaw Hill and to St. Peter’s church (closed and no scratch dials) so we made a beeline to the Shoulder of Mutton where we sampled a selection of their beers. Finally, back to Lingwood passing Uncle Stuart's microbrewery on the way, we returned to the playing field car park with a collection of 32 Aluminium cans for Don. Tesco’s Finest Mini Melton Mowbray pork pies did not find favour with the munchers; a dry pastry with a filling of little flavour other than pepper scored 5.57143, with a standard deviation of 0.60749. So a normalised sore of 5.5 for the Mini Melton Mowbray pies.