12/02/13: DAY 8

As is normal, I've been a bit off the ball this last week. Due to a series of social events, I ate pub food over the weekend, though my lack of need for huge quantities of nutrition meant I could limit myself to one meal a day without getting hungry.

I've continued cooking flatbreads, and they have essentially replaced normal bread as a staple. They are very good with bacon grease as a simple topping. I've also tried adding sugar to make a more pancake-like meal.

As for other food I've tried, there has been a bacon and kidney fried dish I've made. I washed the kidneys, and chopped up the bacon. As I fried the bacon, I chopped some potatoes and carrots, only a few. I used three rashers of bacon. I plonked in the kidneys and as they browned I added mustard and vinegar. When they looked brown, I threw in the carrots and potatoes which I had boiled until they were soft. A lot of fluid came out of the kidneys (not that kind of fluid thank goodness). When that fluid has boiled away, add some of the dripping (I saved some from frying the bacon) and give it a last couple of minutes on a high heat stirring continuously. At this point I added a single diced onion which fried quickly in the fat. I divided this into two portions and it was delicious. It was all I could do to stop myself from eating the second portion immediately.

In an effort to acquire more dripping, I've also made my own pork scratchings, which would likely have been a staple in the old west. Bar snacks were often free, and salty to encourage drinking. What bar snack is saltier than pork scratchings. I sliced the pork rind into finger sized pieces and stacked them, adding olive oil and a sprinkling of salt with each layer. I put it in the oven for about forty minutes at 200C, flipped them, and after that flipped them every twenty minutes ensuring all got equally cooked/burned. When they were sufficiently crunchy, I put them in a bowl and stuck it in the freezer. The fat in the tin I transferred to a jar, planning to render it down later.