Thanks to IanVisits for reminding us yesterday that today is Collop Monday. I agree with his suggestion that it should be restored as a festivity.

For those who might have not forgotten about Collop Monday — or more likely have never heard of it — this is the day preceding Shrove Tuesday when the remaining pieces of bacon or pork from the winter store, which would be “life expired” by Easter, were traditionally eaten. It was sort of the feast preceding the feast before Lent.

As Wikipedia says “The British name Collop Monday is after the traditional dish of the day, consisting of slices of leftover meat (collops of bacon) along with eggs”.

So having been reminded of the feast what could we do but … feast! After all one never needs much of an excuse to eat bacon.

We always have a large pack of smoked bacon offcuts in the freezer. The local supermarket near where my mother used to live nearly always has these packs. They’re cheap and usually contain lots of half rashers and/or thick ends of bacon: brilliant bacon but not uniform and nice for supermarket packaging. Who cares?! They’re tremendous for just about anything you want bacon for: there are scraps for quiche or risotto or to use as lardons; rasher-ettes for bacon butties; and chunky bits you can chop up, fry for jumbo bacon butties, for breakfast or, well, just eating. So whenever we’re there we buy a couple of packs.

This evening we cracked open a pack of said bacon offcuts. It contained the usual selection. So we ate our fill of a good English fry-up of bacon, eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms; with lots of bread and butter; and a couple of beers.

What better way to celebrate an old English tradition!