A break in central Scotland helps me reconnect with natural food and (thanks to a bacon sandwich) chew over the writing that keeps me hungry. By David Burrows.
The moment I bit into the bacon on sourdough with lashings of salted butter I knew. This was a sandwich to be savoured. A sandwich I would regret taking away; that needed to be enjoyed sitting down. I found a bench and bit again. And again.
The ingredients – three simple ones – were only half the story, though. While it was being prepared I had chatted to the chef and co-owner of the deli – in the centre of Dunkeld, a village in Perthshire close to my heart for various reasons – as he lovingly prepared a range of breakfast plates.
He and his wife bought the place about a year ago in a bid to provide natural, ‘heremade’ food (‘homemade’ lends itself to greenwashing, while ‘heremade’ I feel describes food made on site with simple, sustainable ingredients). The butter, the cheese, the bread are all mostly made here. There is regenerative beef in the fridge and organic vegetables on the sprinkling of shelves. The organic milk comes in large 1-litre returnable glass bottles. This is about care over convenience, provenance over profit. This is not an easy path.
I won’t say too much more as I am hoping to head back for a proper chat (and second bacon sandwich) very soon, so I can provide more detail on this change of path for two hospitality veterans. But as I walked out of the village and up into the surrounding hills and forests, and away from the world, I began thinking about that sandwich. And its simplicity.
Can this approach to food actually feed the world? Maybe not. Will it feed more of the world? It definitely should.
Price of progress
This was a £7.50 bacon sandwich. You’d get three bacon rolls at Greggs for that and have some change. Or two meal deals at the neighbouring Co-op, again with change. Greggs has made improvements to its meat sourcing policies in terms of animal welfare, according to the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (and now ranks alongside Marks and Spencer and Waitrose). Co-op is widely perceived as one of the more ethical – or less unethical – supermarkets.
Scale of course helps these large companies keep costs down. But so too does a system that favours mass production over mindful production. As Patrick Holden, founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, told me during a visit to his farm in Wales over the summer, the organic cheese he makes on his farm (‘heremade’ too) is pretty pricey, but only because the ‘other stuff’ is too cheap. Holden isn’t remunerated for all the carbon he stores, the nature he protects and allows to thrive, the social opportunities his enterprise is creating. Neither do the mainstream cheesemakers pay for the heftier impact they have on the environment (and the lighter touch approach some of them have to ESG allowing them to dodge the true cost of food).
The price problem has plagued many pioneers of sustainable food over the years. And often gives me pause as I shop for food or contemplate the odd bacon butty. It plays on my mind as I walk further into the wild on this pleasantly warm September morning, with cues around me keeping my mind busy (as I pondered how to recharge my writing).
I bump into a group of naturalists – not to be confused with naturists – seeking out fungi as they took in all the splendour around them. Indeed, this is an area of beauty – forests giving way to hills and small lochs, the land farmed with the soil at the centre of everything.
“We are soil farmers first,” reads one of the notice boards, “working in harmony with the landscape we nurture and the livestock we rear”. The signs are placed to educate walkers, runners and mountain bikers about the electric fences that secure areas to keep livestock safe. “Fencing mobs of cattle in light grazing groups helps us to optimise grass consumption, trample surplus pasture back into the soil and subsequently recycle nutrients and carbon back into the land,” reads another.
As much as our farmers are the stewards of the land and storytellers of sustainable production, so the food makers and chefs are another connection between citizens and their food. The big corporates have (in some cases) attempted to shortcut this, by tinkering around the edges of regenerative approaches that will never change the status quo, nor come close to the changes needed to tackle the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. They have chucked these concepts into the mainstream, where we can challenge them and in some cases call out greenwashing, but they are stuck in a system that keeps their shareholders happy and true sustainability at arm’s reach.
Finding purpose in Perthshire
For the past 15 years I have unpicked the climate commitments and packaging promises of the big food companies. This is important (hopefully), fulfilling (mostly) and incredibly interesting work (the many publications I write for, including Footprint, deserve credit too for giving me this opportunity, because it’s undoubtedly difficult for some of their sponsors and advertisers to stomach).
However, as I walk and talk (to myself) I wonder: is spotlighting the heremade approach of the small deli in Dunkeld as important as exposing the greenwashing of a global behemoth? Maybe in pushing for progress on sustainability among the giants I have forgotten to focus on the ‘Davids’ that are doing so much despite the cards being stacked against them?
So, here’s to the food producers, the food makers and the food fanatics that are a force for good (and make a great bacon sandwich).
