Mardi DID chide me in that I should have cut off more of the fat…but leaving it on meant you can decide when cooking. Besides, I have a nice little tub in the fridge of bacon lard, which we'll use for cooking something else (tbd) to appear on this post.

There's two more sides of this in the freezer, PLUS the two pancettas (Basque and regular).

In fact, I think they are ready…we might need to bring them down and have a taste test this weekend. Cleo thinks they're ready, at any rate.

Penny – an egg on that would have been perfect, yes!

Conor – don't worry – that's my first taste of the bacon! The arugula is being grown by friends, the tomatoes are not ready yet and I haven't started the bread experiments yet so no fear of getting sick of it all.. Plus, there's the PANCETTA!!!

Geoff M – only in the States, huh? And that's how Neil likes his bacon cooked – crispy… Actually it's the little bit of fat that I allowed to be kept on for serving..

Anonymous 2 – well, we all ate it pretty fast (it was a small serve)