Local Food for Local People

In our bid to savour the finer things of our new life – and ward off that deep-fried Mars Bar moment as long as possible – we made the trip to Notso Bigtown in search of good food. Notso Bigtown fancies itself as a foodie haven and it has no fewer than four butchers which we’ve been working our way through gradually in a spirit of elimination. It’s complicated, being green in the country. Driving to Notso Bigtown takes more petrol than just heading to the Bigtown Tescos (whose commitment to local produce doesn’t extend beyond slapping the Saltire on anything remotely Scottish) so we have to weigh in the balance all the putative foodmiles of the actual food, versus the known personmiles of ourselves getting there and back. Throw in a detour to the local creamery – which sells delicious cheese and sourdough bread produced on the premises but also organic new potatoes freighted in from Egypt – and it’s all just too complicated to work out, so we said what the hell and went anyway. The last butcher we had tried had sold us 28-day aged ribeye steaks so good they could have airfreighted them from the moon and I wouldn’t have minded. This time we wandered into a different butcher to give him a crack at winning the coveted town mouse household meat supply contract, and I asked if he had any free-range chicken.

‘Not free range, as such,’ he said, prevaricating and pointing to the chicken he had. ‘That’s better than free range, that is. That’s Scottish.’

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