Shropshire Fidget Pie

Here's a story I've always liked. When supermarkets introduced loyalty cards they couldn't wait to get all the data and work out what types of people bought what and when. On first sight, something really puzzled them. The reward card data showed the stores were selling hardly any pork pies, whereas the stores themselves reported normal sales of gazillions every week.

On investigating this, they decided as follows. Normally, it's women who are the keepers of the loyalty card, and doers of the weekly shop, and they appear to avoid those perfect little cupcakes of lard and gristle in favour of things more wholesome. Chocolate presumably. Whereas it seems working men spend their lunchtimes popping into Tesco, cash-purchasing half a dozen Melton Mowbray mini pork pies, and scoffing the lot in their cars, vans and offices before patting their tummies, burping contentedly and hiding the evidence.

This has seemed even more realistic to me since leaving the guacamole south for the mushy peas north. The butchers around here groan with pies. Hardly a customer leaves without half a round of poachers pie in their bag. Pork is king. Lunchtimes people queue out of the door of the butchers in Shifnal for roast pork baps - with stuffing, crackling and gravy. If you want a business idea I suggest you open sandwich shops in Holborn, The City, and Canary Wharf, specialising in pork products, fat and gristle, and I guarantee you success beyond your wildest dreams. Name them "Porkers". The shops that is, not the customers.

Anyway, after our solitary ramble over Wenlock Edge the other day we stopped off at the Craven Arms specialist butcher/slaughterhouse and picked up a couple of Shopshire's very own contribution to cancer and obesity - miniature "Fidget" pies. Like a mini pork pie, but the filling is more bacony, (ie - it actually looks like it may have come from an animal), and instead of a pastry-top there's some wholesome slices of apple. Frankly, they were bloody fantastic. I suggest, as the new proprietors of Porkers, you get a barrel-load in, and offer them as the healthy option.


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