Although I’m quite centrally located – indeed I’m based in the pie capital of the country that is Wigan, there are certain places that I had to visit yet were quite hard to get to. It’s not easy to get to Inverness and back in a day just to get a pie and whereas Mrs T is an understanding girl, I’d possibly be pushing my luck a bit there.
So I hit upon an idea: if […]
From one Thomas to another….with the main consistency being that it’s an awkward bugger to spell and say. Is it Thomas Butchers, Thomas the Butchers, Thomases Butcher, Thomas’s’ Butchers, Thomas’ Butchers, Thomases the Butcher oh my head’s gone….for a veritable wordsmith this ties me in knots.
I made several trips to marvellous Barrow during the course of the book, it turns out that the longest cul de sac in the world is a veritable pie hotbed.
The half dozen or so pie purveyors present in the peninsula all lay claim to make the best meat and potato pie, so what to make of Thomas the Bakers of nearby Ulverston?
Yesterday I revisited my trip to Corfe Castle to get a Bridport Gourmet Pie. That wasn’t all that I picked up on my travels there. You see, the small general store at the foot of the castle, Clealls (which I believe has since shut down) had a wide range of pies and my natural gluttony meant that there was no way that I was stopping at just one.
However, the second purchase was no ordinary pie. […]
As I’m a third of the way through this little appetiser now, I perhaps need to iterate that the pies featured in this blog are not necessarily the best 100 I had, and they are featured in NO PARTICULAR ORDER as they say on those cheap gameshows you people seem to like watching.
They might be, they might not. I just dip into my pie archives and see what comes out…..if you want the full story […]
What? Fish & Chips? Yes Fish & Chips!
If myself and my fellow cohorts from Wigan have a secondary obsession apart from pies, I think it’s safe to say that it’s fish & chips. Open warfare and a large portion of ridicule can be thrown about on social media when it comes to debate and quality of the infamous “chippy tea”.
Every good book needs a pantomime villain and somehow Greggs seemed to inadvertently fit that bill. I’d be rambling through some town centre, searching for that elusive traditional butchers or bakers and I’d get hit with a wall of garish blue whether I was in Barrow or Basingstoke.
The ubiquitous Greggs. Their only crime was to get too big. And now they get blamed for the fact that people are too big. The thing is I […]
Every good book needs a pantomime villain and somehow Greggs seemed to inadvertently fit that bill. I’d be rambling through some town centre, searching for that elusive traditional butchers or bakers and I’d get hit with a wall of garish blue whether I was in Barrow or Basingstoke.
The ubiquitous Greggs. Their only crime was to get too big. And now they get blamed for the fact that people are too big. The thing is I […]
It’s getting closer. It started with a pie, and a spreadsheet, nearly three years ago and the culmination of this madcap idea is getting ever closer to fruition.
“Life of Pies” will be released in just under two months’ time and the closer it gets the more nervous trepidation and excitement builds (for me at least!).
You may well have gone past Hollingworth Bakery. Indeed, I did several times without noticing it. The one thing that my frequent trips to Barnsley, Sheffield and all points east involved was a traverse of the infamous Snake Pass which connects Manchester with the White Rose County.
I recently wrote an article for excellent Barnsley fanzine West Stand Bogs all about pies and my forthcoming book. It was the least I can do after it’s editor tipped me off some time last year about Percy’s Pies.
A small butcher situated in the South Yorkshire town of Jump, Percy’s is a local institution. Enough of the pre-amble though: they sell pork pies for SIXTY FIVE PENCE!!!
The first few weeks of “Life of Pies” were spent sneaking around the North West mainly eating meat and potato pies (because I hadn’t yet told the missus what I was up to).
It soon became evident that I need to spread my wings beyond the safety blanket of my native North West and thus began the GREAT SEARCH in earnest. With wife and baby now in tow it became necessary to source a “family day […]
If I’m honest I don’t envisage a massive market in this book for vegetarians for fairly obvious reasons. And even though I’m partial to a cheese and onion pie, I would nearly always overlook it for a meatier option when selecting my prey.
So I’d say vegetarian pies make up no more than 5% of the book and even so, it’s more a case that it was a quirky meat-free flavour like a butter or macaroni […]
The main premise behind the book was to seek out hidden treasures, yet if I’m honest, 80% of those treasures were probably found via the marvellous medium of Google. It would be completely impractical to set off in the car without a clue as to which place I was heading.
On the occasions where I just turned up somewhere on spec expecting to find a pie shop, I invariably ended up frustrated and disappointed. So, it’s […]
I’ve only a vague idea how this Scottish baker made it into the book. As I went on quite a direct and demanding tour over the border I was perhaps looking for a more standard chain to augment the more specific pie objectives I had set myself and I believe Aulds of Greenock Morton are one of the bigger independent chains with a presence in Scotland (excluding the ubiquitous Greggs obviously).
I had a few language […]
Following yesterday’s post extolling the virtues of Galloways, I got a tweet off @IlfordDaveSCFC (married to a Wiganer @catalinar) who had excitedly spotted a box of Pooles meat and potato pies in the freezer aisle in Beckton Tesco’s. Thus making today’s pie of the day a shoe in.
Far be it from me to dampen the enthusiasm of exiled Northerners unearthing proper meat ‘n’ tater within the sound of Bow bells but the “since 1847” on […]