In the land of Pork Scratchings

As today is St George's Day (the patron saint of England) I thought I would say a quick word about porky scratchings.

The English claim this snack as their own - and indeed, the average English male does enjoy a bag or two of them with a pint of beer - but there are pork scratchings/rinds/cracklings all over the world.  So I hope our American and Australian cousins will not mind that the English get a bit proprietorial about pork scratchings on this particular day.

Actually, the picture attached to this posting is from the cover of 'Lessons from the Land of Pork Scratchings - A miserable Yank discovers the secret of happiness in Britain'.  This book is written by Greg Gutfield, an American himself, who came over here to edit a men's magazine and learned a few lessons about the way we brits go about things.  Hilarious!

The Dutch also have a name for these revolting snacks - Knabbelspek - available in Albert Heijn.

I am not particularly enamoured of these snacks as they are ferociously salty - but today, faced by a calorie deficit I bought myself a bag in my local Tesco.  I must admit they were very flavoursome and definitely something to put on my list of emergency snacks - I will forego the compulsory pint of beer to go with them though.

Happy St George's Day to any English readers from this Irish/French pork scratching convert.

Keetje