Posted by Ed Kiser on March 11, 2005 at 05:04:52 from 152.163.100.6 user Kisered.
In SWALLOWDALE, Chapter 22, as they were getting ready to leave their camp and start out on the treck across the fields to meet with the Amazons for their trip up Kanchenjunga, Susan prepared BACON for them, "fried till it crackled, and lots of it."
As they prepared to leave, they left the parrot in the Peter Duck's Cave, and he "had been given a lovely piece of bacon rind to tear at."
These two statements are the only places in that book that mentions "bacon." In listing of their stores and supplies, there was no mention of such being in their inventory. Obviously, not everything they had was mentioned.
This meat had been with them for the quite a few days of their encampment in Swallowdale. This is in August, the warm Summer days, and they had no cooler to preserve this bacon. It had been in the cave, along with their supplies. It could be that this location was perhaps not as hot, being underground, and so was hopefully a cool enough place to store such perishables without spoiling. It would not do to try to use bacon after it had turned rancid, or as we used to say down on the farm, "after it had grown its second coat of hair." (gotten mouldy...)
The reference to "bacon rind" that was given to the parrot makes me wonder if perhaps the bacon they had was a solid slab that of course would include the rind as well. This would mean that Susan would have to slice off strips of bacon in preparation for cooking, but there is no mention of her having to slice the bacon before cooking it.
In our modern convenience of food supermarkets, the bacon comes already sliced by machine in very even thickness. Hand slicing with a knife is apt to produce some rather substantial chunks of bacon. Our bacon today also has no rind on it at all, whereas the slab that Susan dealt with apparently still had the rind on it. She would have to slice off that edge prior to the cooking, as trying to get it off after cooking with it being hard and brittle can cause loss of part of the good stuff as well as the rind.
Being raised on a farm, we were quite familiar with a slab of bacon, which we referred to as "sow belly". That is the way it comes with you kill and dress out your own hogs to eat. It was hand sliced with a large butcher knife, and the rind cut away prior to cooking. The rind actually had some hairs protruding from it, as it was the underside of the pig. I do remember that the slices were delightfully THICK, something not available in the modern supermarket. But when you made a bacon and tomato sandwich with several of those chunks of bacon, you really had some BACON in there to really enjoy. One advantage to it being "home grown" is that there were no such things as "preservatives."
I was wondering if perhaps in this present time, that bacon was available in the Lake District in slab form, to be sliced by the customer just before cooking it. I could not get such from any food store here (Florida, USA).
But then, I cannot get whole rabbit either, skinned or unskinned. Not that I miss having it...
But that is the difference between Now and Then, Here and There.
Ed Kiser, South Florida