Cornish Pasties

Friday, April 3

Now that a cold, northerly, weather system has returned, we are not getting many moths in the trap. We did have two Diurnea fagella this morning and the previous single figure Twin-spotted Quakers increased to two.

Yesterday we had a second Pale Pinion for the year. It was so dark that we suspected Tawny Pinion, but it wasn't. 

We tend to catch more of the brown satellite version of Satellite than the white. This one was caramel.

The new bird table is very sturdy and in a temporary space. I'm not sure that I like its whiteness. I may have to paint it brown! Not immediately ......... 

It may well make it easier for the Grey Squirrels and Jackdaws to feed but it's needed for the Robins and Dunnocks. Maybe if we put a bone on there we might attract a Vulture. Or a fish for an Osprey.

A local East Ruston pub has started delivering hot meals. Rai and Pam had a shout across the road this morning, the Hargreaves'trying one to-night. 

Last October, I ordered a surprise delivery for Pam. Ann's cornish pasties. She loves them, but they seldom come up to the standard of those cooked by her Cornish mother in law. 

Some years ago, we did an off-island twitch for the first and only time. From Scilly to Penzance for a Little Bustard on the Lizard. Helicopter fares are expensive, we bought a day return. Our helicopter was late. We missed the bird by a few minutes.

After a good area search, I remembered reading that a Lizard pasty shop had won a national competition, beating the Women's Institute winner into second place. We eventually found the 'shop', up a residential side street. It looked like someone's garage. We walked in to see pastry being rolled out on a large table, a huge vat of fillings nearby. The pasties were delicious, with chunks of meat rather than the minced usually found. 
Rick Stein still reckons that they are Cornwall's best pasties.

We returned to Scilly on the last flight of the day. As we landed, my pager informed me that the Little Bustard had been found. Flushed from a cabbage field by a dog walker. Bother. One of our very few failed twitches and we still haven't seen the bird in the UK.

All of the women in my mother’s Cornish family traditionally made pasties.

All of the women in my mother’s Cornish family traditionally made pasties.

I learned to make pasties in an emergency, I was summoned by my mother, Hettie Merrick, a professional pasty-maker, to a Breton agricultural fair, where demand was dramatically and unexpectedly outstripping supply at a stall mother had set up. At the end of a day of pasty-making, I could crimp them as fast as my mother, which was the perfect confidence boost and eye opener into the fact that there was a business to be had producing a good Cornish pasty.

Me and My Mum at the Breton agricultural fair

Soon afterwards I began making pasties for my neighbours, who’d bring gifts of fresh fish they’d caught or vegetables they’d grown, and who treated my living room like a waiting room, sitting around gossiping over cups of tea if the pasties hadn’t come out of the oven yet.
Inspired by the response, mother and I started selling our wares from a stall at the nearby market town of Helston. We soon found business good enough to graduate to a shop in Porthleven. But when juggling family and pasty shop became too much, my husband transformed the garage of our house at the Lizard into a pasty kitchen, where I was able to crimp with one eye on the family.