JC's Traveblog

I run Google Analytics on my web site, more out of evil curiosity than anything else. It’s not as if I’m trying to sell anything so I don’t need to know anything about “conversion rates”, whatever they are. It’s just nice to know that a few people are finding me and reading my musings. Typically, my site bounces along with 10-15 hits a day some of which, I’m sure, are due to myself checking or referencing my own material.

Having just returned from our lambing trip in France complete with wi-fi and blogability, I thought I’d spin into Goggle Analytics to see what the form had been. The summary page instantly had be wondering: it had a green arrow and number indicating visits were up 78.5% (over the previous month, I think). I clicked on the “view report” link to see the graph. Sure enough, for the lambing week I had the usual 14, 17, 13 kind of numbers. The weekend we were travelling home from lambing, though, showed a dramatic and quite extraordinary peek looking like the Matterhorn towering over the surrounding plain:

1. Saturday 5th – 165
2. Sunday 6th – 85
3. Monday 7th – 28

What?!

The most popular page was shown as a recipe in Gastroblog – www.curdhome.co.uk/recipes/?p=67 [note to self: I really must try to get the WordPress pretty hyperlinks working one day] which turned out to be the eminent Mr. Rick Stein’s Ragout of Lamb from his French Odyssey. Whilst in Gastroblog’s administration pages I spotted a new comment awaiting moderation though, for some reason, WordPress had not notified me of it [note to self: must try to find out why notification emails are not getting through]. I read the comment and light began to dawn:

Saw Rick Stein make this on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen this morning and decided to look it up.  Off to the butcher’s now to get the lamb.  Drooling already!

- Nancy, SW France

Ah ha, so maybe that’s it! Folks could have been watching Saturday Kitchen, leapt onto the Internet in search of the recipe and found me.

I did a quick test: into the Google search page and enter “Ragout of lamb Stein” and, lo and behold, #1 on the list of hits – JC’S Gastroblog.

Bingo! Isn’t television wonderful?

Well, we’re back for our first full day back at home after a wonderful trip around France and feeling a little cool. The larder was bare so we popped out shopping to get supplies. Carol fancied something warming and suggested a Spaghetti Bolognese so I popped the ingredients into our shopping trolley … or I thought I had. It was down to the frozen brain again probably but, when I came to begin preparation I discovered that “Mr University Challenged” had forgotten the bacon. Drat!

Carol ran me quickly round to the local Co-op and I bought a pack of “The co-operative British unsmoked rindless back bacon”.

The package appeared to contain nothing but rashers of bacon. Therefore it came as something of a surprise when I noticed that the very next line on the package label, in relatively large print, read:

86% Pork
 

What?!

The following two items on the labelling were “Quality Bacon Standard” and “Assured Food Standards” marks.

The back of the packet, in rather smaller print, made it clear that the vast majority of the missing 14% was water. I realized water was frequently injected but I don’t think I realized to what extent. 1/7th of what I’d bought and paid nearly £5 per pound for was water.

In my humble opinion, “Quality Bacon” is 100% pork, allowing a few decimal points to cover necessary preservative for shelf life, of course – I still don’t want to eat mould.