Mickey

Mickey in the church of St. Peter & St. Paul, Mautby, on 31st August 2008

Today, the Pork Pie News learnt that Mickey was put to sleep last week. Mickey occasionally joined us on our pie munching expeditions with his “girl friend” Giada. Mickey had lived a long healthy life and deteriorated quickly at the end. I know all pie munchers will be saddened by this news and our sympathy goes to Wendy and Tim.

Roys Hand made pork pies

The last pork pie to be tasted in August were small hand made pork pies from Roys, purchased by Josie, from the deli counter in their Hoveton branch. To work up a good appetite – and boy did we need one, we set off on a clockwise circular walk from the West End Caravan club site in West Caister. We were accompanied by Giada, who took every opportunity to get wet regardless of the state of the water, and Mickey, plus masses of butterflies, mainly Tortoiseshell.

   

Tortoiseshell                                                   Peacock    

The lunch stop was at the church of St. Peter & St. Paul, Mautby, round tower with thatched roof, but no scratch dial. Just under a mile to the Kings Head, Filby only to find it was closed due to licensing problems. We returned to the cars for another feast to accompany our cup of tea... First up were two huge bags of tortillas to dunk into Butter bean & roasted Garlic, and Lemmon & coriander Houmous. After tackling that, we had to squeeze in a portion of pork pie! These looked the part, but opinions varied widely - scores ranging from 2 to 8, giving in a massive standard deviation, even greater than last weeks! The pies were judged to be better than last week’s coming in with an average of the scores of 5.44444 and a standard deviation of 2.11312. So a normalised 5.5 for Roys. But we hadn’t finished; shortcake from Clarkes Quality Meats to finish off with – it was very good. So a pint on the way home, at the Filby Fox and Hounds was called for to wash it all down!

   

Abbotsford Pork Pie

The final pie of the month was yet another new pie to us – an Abbotsford Pork Pie. This was sourced from Netto on the site of the former water tower at Swaffham. Only four braved the rain for this weeks pie tasting, Margaret was visiting Berchtesgaden and Charles was in New York, we did have Giada & Mickey though. We parked at Roughton church then headed south, then west to cross the A140 where we walked to Metton church for lunch and to be serenaded by Mickey. We returned via the New Inn at Roughton, which now sold real ale, where we watched Lewis Hamilton drive the last few laps at Monaco, to win the Grand Prix. Then on to Roughton church where we sampled this weeks pie: The pie was large but lacked the usual gloss finish, inside there was a little air and a small amount of Jelly around the pink meat filling. The pie tasted good, though the pastry was a little soft, rather than soggy, scoring 7.5 and a standard deviation of 0.40825. So, a very respectable score of 7.5 for Abbotsford, especially considering the pie only cost 99p and was purchased on Tuesday (use by date was the 26th). The Walk Master & Weather Wizard spared us from any extreme activities this week and also managed to dodge most of the rain, we had some very light rain where as Norwich had heavy rain most of the day.

Sainsbury’s medium pork pies

Our fifth new pie in a row was the object of the appetite creating walk on Sunday 18th. Giada brought her boyfriend, Mickey, along – a trail hound with a voice & a half! The nine of us and two dogs set off from Mileham, and soon we were walking through fields of chest high oilseed rape. We initially thought this was yet another one of Ricky’s commando training exercises – advancing on heavy artillery, after last week’s encounter with small arms. The artillery turned out only to be bird scarers! The church at Tittleshall provided the lunch stop and two scratch dials for the collection.

Giada & Mickey rest in the cool porch of Tittleshall church

We now only had two miles to walk to this week’s pies. The Sainsbury’s medium pork pies "with cured seasoned pork filling" had a low profile, slicing easily. This revealed a smooth pink filling with no jelly and no taste! The pastry was crisp though to rescue this pie, scoring 5.777 with a very high standard deviation of 1.20185. So a normalised 6 for Sainsbury’s medium pies. We washed the poor pie from our palate with a beer at the Brisley Bell on the way home.