If you are wondering why this blog hasn’t been updated for a while, it is because I have moved on to a new, exciting follow up project.
The Good Pie Guide is coming soon, and I am busy compiling details from hundreds of pie purveyors up and down the country. If you want to add your favourite or suggest a pie I need to try, just drop me a line here.
I am down to less than a hundred copies of Life of Pies, so you can still buy a copy here for […]
I’ve had previous with these chaps, I featured the Boxing Day Turkey Curry Pie in Life of Pies. I’ve always fancied their Lancashire Cheese and Onion Pie but it has always eluded me. Or rather, I have chosen a meat based option.
At the time, and I don’t know if this is still the case, they used to do a changing menu every quarter featuring four rotating pies with innovative flavours. As I recall, they did a pie with nettles in it once, ouch!!
Anyway, this one was purchased from Booths and although I can’t remember if it was identified as a […]
Saturday January 21st 2012
It’s highly probable that blood has been spilled over the debate as to who makes the best pies in Wigan. Or pie gravy at least. This is why the question needs answering. There are people who swear by the Muffin Man. Plus it’s in my village so giving it a shit review will see me ostracised by my local community and earn me the nickname “that pie wanker”.
Keep it simple for now:
“Right darling – going getting my hair cut, then I’m getting some petrol. Fancy a pie for lunch?”
It needs to be a local one given we’re […]
The beauty of my extensive research (2012-present*) is that whenever I find myself in a foreign town, I always know where to sniff out the best pies.
(*though if truth be known, like most Wiganers, I have been sampling pies for as long as I cut my first teeth)
So it was that after finishing a 10k in Lancaster in a respectable 47.06m, I needed to rebuild my carbohydrate store.
What better place to go, than an old favourite in the form of Potts Pies of Lancaster, Morecambe and Carnforth?
On my way out of […]
It’s Black Friday and soon enough Christmas is coming and the pie eater is getting fat as they say. The nights are drawing in and you’ll be needing a good book to read. Well, I can’t promise that, but I can promise you the opportunity to get hold of a copy of the Life of Pies for just £9.99 including FREE POSTAGE for a limited time.
So if you’re looking for a birthday gift or Christmas present for the pie lover in your life, and your budget is, let’s say £10, then Life of Pies could be the answer. Containing 388 […]
It’s time for the latest episode of my “pies which didn’t make it into the book (and probably deserved to)” series and today I’m sampling the pies from Derby House, or rather Taylor’s Farm Shop near Ormskirk, West Lancashire.
For all the pies I tried during the making of Life of Pies (copies still available here etc etc http://www.lifeofpies.co.uk/buy) I never visited my local farm shop, so it’s time to rectify that and dive back in on the pie trail.
Derby House is a place where the well-heeled “ladies do lunch” in the heart of rural (rich) West Lancashire, just a […]
It’s taken me a few weeks to catch up following my trip to Melton Mowbray but yes PIE FEST is really a thing, and it really is a festival of PIES!!
I was kindly invited there on the Sunday to talk about my book and my exploits whilst writing it, along with my experiences of pie traditions up and down the country and what I like to see in a good pie.
It was great to speak in front of close to 100 attentive people in the Pie Theatre and following my talk, I set up stall and managed to sell a […]
Welcome to Wigan – undisputed pie capital of the world! Maybe it is disputed though? The British Pie Awards are on next month and they are held not in Wigan but in Melton Mowbray, where the pies are very different but no less famous. The World Pie Eating Championships are however held in Wigan but that might imply that Wiganers go for quantity – or speed of consumption appears to […]
Looking for a literary treat for the pie lover in your life? Well, look no further as “Life of Pies” can fulfil your needs….
What’s it all about then?
At least I’ve finally got the answer to a question posed right at the beginning of Life of Pies, namely – when a pie shop sells a small and large meat and potato pie, why on earth would anyone order a small one?
The answer of course is that the large ones have run out….
And speaking of going right back to the start, the Muffin Man was one of the first places I visited when commencing […]
It’s just over 12 months to the day since I launched my self-published epic Life of Pies and I’d be lying if I said things had gone exactly to plan. I’ve not had the best year to be perfectly frank, in fact in a literary sense, it has been something of an unmitigated disaster.
It was a sunny, summer’s day when I found myself at the Table Table chain in the Stone Cross pub near Haydock. It was actually the same day as when I last updated the blog and I had already polished off a Greens Cheese and Onion pie for lunch yet as I found myself perusing the menu, I uncovered a fine selection of Dunkleys pies to be on offer.
Now me […]
A familiar establishment but a pie I’ve never tried before from there. It’s a cheese and onion pie from Greens which I think cost around £1.50.
If I’m honest, I didn’t taste and review anything like enough cheese and onion pies during the making of Life of Pies. The main reason for this being, I love meat! Ahem. Indeed, who doesn’t love meat?? Yes, OK thanks – vegetarians! They don’t.
The pie is of a hefty size […]
At last, 50up! This is still under 16% of the pies featured in all their glory in the Life of Pies, magnificent value for under a tenner.
Ahem, anyway towards the end of the book, I started to get a few recommendations coming my way, one in particular came from Mudhutter’s very own Orrible Ives who had recently decamped to rural Lincolnshire.
On a brief reconnaissance back to home turf, I met him in the car park of […]
After a long day procuring growlers on the other side of the Pennines, I found myself negotiating the labyrinth that is the narrow winding streets of Stockport town centre in search of one more pie. I parked on a meter outside a nightclub cum lapdancing bar and headed for the bright lights and noise emanating from Stockport market over the bridge. Lord of the Pies (ace literary pun there) is situated at the quieter end […]
I must apologise for not updating this blog for the past few weeks but as some readers may be aware, my pie eating mission was drawn to the attention of the national press during British Pie Week.
What should have been a nice relaxing birthday for me last weekend saw me shuffling in and out of the Post Office at Wigan Asda carrying boxes of books to be shipped out to all points north, south, east […]