Introducing Bella and how to quickly rally food for a search and rescue mission.
SERVES: 4
PREP TIME: 5 mins
COOKING TIME: 10 mins
IDEAL FOR: search and rescue, quick breakfast
DIFFICULTY: easy
BUDGET: £
Look, this is probably more about introducing you to our little ginger-nutter.
Bella.
She’s taken over our family – and a lot of our friends – lives now.
So if you’re a bit bored, or just waiting on someone, a bus, train or tube, then this might help lose a few minutes and make you smile a bit.
Owning a dog is amazing. But...
My Bella is the heart of my family. She is super loyal, loving funny and keeps us zen when the household get a little stressful. And this cheeky little staffie gets us out in the fresh air when we want to stay on the couch just that bit longer. But…
When there is a storm, then we have a different story.
Last Thursday the wind started to shake the trees in our quiet Devon village while Bella was tucked up in her cosy bed next to the Aga in the kitchen.
The wind was forecast to peak at 80mile/hr on the Friday night so, knowing Bella panics when the weather goes wild we decided Bella would sleep in our bedroom.
Plan in place, all good. Except it wasn’t.
The storm came in early. On Friday morning when we went down to the kitchen to see the kitchen door had flown open. Bella’s basket was empty.
What’s this got to do with food or cooking?
Well… how to you rally an entire village at 7am? Encourage them to forget the school run or barely awake children – and search for a ‘Bella’ instead?
Answer: Bacon baps. Fast and delicious… people will drop anything for a salty bacon strip on a buttery warm roll (at least they will in my village).
The promise of a freshly made bacon bap from our kitchen before or after finding Bella was incentive enough to get our neighbours moving.
There’s just one secret to a good bacon sarnie. Quality bacon.
Fry or grill your streaky bacon, load up each bap (or thick fresh bread), squeeze on loads of brown sauce. Done.
So what happened to Bella? To cut a long story short…
Two hours after social media lit up – even as far as London it turns out – and ‘Operation Rescue Bella’ started, our little ginger adventurer was found. She was in the Post Office 3 miles away being smothered with treats and cuddles.
Not a mark on her, not even a splash of mud or her coat drenched from poor weather. Did this dog hitch a ride??
And what a village! Big thanks to Stoke Fleming for helping look for our beloved ‘ginger-nutter’ and for all the social media shares.
As for the bacon baps… they went down a treat. I’m not going to lie though, the kitchen that morning looked like a hurricane had blown threw it and not from the actual storm.
So, if you need to do a ‘search and rescue’ mission or rally a group of people fast, make bacon baps for on-the-go.
They’re a winner
It was a big day for her after all
TIP: Storing meat correctly in freezers makes life a lot easier. It never takes long to defrost bacon if stored the right way – see my post on Golden Rules of Freezing Meat
Send me your favourite bacon bap and any funny story you have where they saved the day…