Tag Archives: UK

Fun

Pork Scratchings

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Pork ScratchingsWhile the United States celebrates Thanksgiving today (I do miss my brother’s Buffalo Fried Turkey) I picked up a couple bags of Pork Scratchings from the Saint Nicholas Fayre going on in York.  What are pork scratchings?  They are the UK equivalent of pork rinds in the US.  But while most of the pork rind products I’ve had in the US have been the equivalent of pork flavored puffs, the pork rinds from this particular vendor are MUCH better.

First, they are sold in paper bags.  The scratchings quickly soak through the bag turning it slightly translucent.   All fatty products should be sold this way, as putting them into plastic or mylar defeats the purpose.  Next a bite.  Hard and crunchy on the outside (some of the big ones can be almost teeth damaging), but rich and fatty on the inside.  The salty flavor isn’t over powering and almost has a slight season salt taste as well, just makes this pork scratching perfection.

Thankfully, for my health at least, the vendor is only in York on special market days, but it is the new tradition to pick up a bag (or three) when they are in town.

So while we aren’t celebrating Thanksgiving today in the UK I’m trying to keep up the tradition of over indulgence.   Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Fun

The Rag & Bone Men

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Horse Drawn Rag & Bone Man
Rather than the typical van that drove by we had a horse drawn Rag & Bone Man that came by

Since moving to York in the United Kingdom (since I used to live in the New York area I like to call this York the “original flavored York”) there have been several days when a large van would drive slowly by with a man shouting out the window.  From what I could make out he could have been yelling any of the following phrases:

“Fresh Corn!”
“Fresh Manure!” (the van had horse stickers on it and people do like to garden here)

When I asked our neighbour what he was yelling, he didn’t know either.

But yesterday there were several different versions of these guys drove by that I could actually understand what they were saying.  The phrase actually was:

“Rag and Bone!”

Turns out that these are Rag-and-Bone men, the scrap collectors of the UK, that drive by to pick up old unwanted items that they can sell for scrap.  Typically they are more interested in metal as it has a higher resale value, but will pretty much take anything.