Saying Goodbye to Breakfast

I'm not going to beat around the bush, this week has been quite emotional.  I've known that it would come ever since I first set eyes on my tiny one week old piglet, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier.  During every visit to Swillington Farm I have reminded myself that ours was only a fleeting relationship and that one day he, along with his brothers and sisters, would be sent to slaughter.

For Breakfast that day has come.  Monday was my last visit to see him running around his field, it was also the only time that I have been to the farm without R in tow.  Still in my work attire of shirt and tie, I donned my wellies and, like a stock footage image of a quantity surveyor, I helped to get Breakfast and 4 other pigs into their trailer.

On Tuesday morning, while most people were tucked up in bed, they made the short journey to the abattoir and that was that.  I had wanted to go along for the ride, not out of loyalty towards Breakfast, but to have a look at one of the places where our animals become meat.  Call it morbid curiosity.  Sadly I wasn't able to make the trip this time.

I spent most of the rest of the week wondering what I was going to do when I took delivery of a pig's worth of meat.  While I have spent the last year trawling the internet for interesting pork recipes I had missed one very vital bit of information, how did I want Breakfast to be butchered.  I had a date on Saturday with Simon, Swillington Farm's resident butcher, and he needed to know what I wanted.

A side of Breakfast I hadn't seen before.

Along with the usual chops and roasting joints I did have a couple of more unusual requests.  T-bone steaks, leg steaks cut in an Osso Buco style and double thickness loin chops were all on my wish list.  I have been fantasising about making my own bacon since before this adventure started, so I made sure that I had the thick end of belly prepared specifically.  I knew what the trotters were destined for so they were the first things to be bagged up for me.

It took Simon, a professional butcher, almost two hours to deal with Breakfast.  I'm sure he would have been faster without me standing over his shoulder taking photos and making stupid requests.  I'm also sure that it would have taken me a couple of days to get anywhere close to what he achieved.  There also would have been a whole lot of wastage, especially if I had attempted to bone out the shoulder.

But sadly, even with Simon's expertise with a knife, there was a lot of wastage.  Of the 5 pigs that went to slaughter from Swillington Farm on Tuesday, the only offal that came back was Breakfast's kidneys.  Simon put this down to a lack of common sense on the part of the abattoir's vet.  In years gone past the slaughterman would cut out potential bad meat from livers, hearts and kidneys but now everything is discarded if the vet, in the interest of hygiene, decides that there is potential for contamination.

Not quite all of Breakfast.

I was lucky to get the kidneys but this does leave Everything But The Oink on a knife-edge with only a couple of months left of 2013.  I can't see how I'm now going to secure (and find the time to cook and eat) the more unusual cuts of pork.  While I'm trying to work that out, at least I have a house full of pork to process and eat.  That all starts tomorrow.