Had a lovely twiddly play in the kitchen yesterday. Made some more Fruit & Nut Case paste. I had enjoyed the last of the previous batch on a couple of crispbread. Spread generously, and topped with value soft cheese, it was a glorious interval in a busy day. When I made it this time, I used coconut oil instead of butter. So it even counts as clean eating!

Poking around in the fridge, I realised that I had the last of a pack of cooking bacon to use up. Having just made a paste, it occurred to me that a bacon one would be really good. As I was reminding myself of quantities, I thought I would tweak it and use the flavours of a classic bacon sandwich by substituting tomato ketchup for the sun dried tomatoes in other pastes.

Bacon and Tomato Paste

I wanted to use all the remaining bacon in the pack. There was 125g left, so I adjusted the qantities of the butter and tomato sauce to suit that amount.

Priced at Tesco using mySupermarket
125g cooking bacon, 60p/500g, 15p
50g butter 85p/250g, 17p
25g tomato sauce 42p/550g, 2p

Total cost 34p for 200g, cost per 10g less than 2p
Per 10g 35 calories, 3g fat, 2g protein, negligible carbs

Tesco value wholemeal loaf 50p, 2 slices are 5p, so a sandwich would be 7p.

Grill the bacon, just as it comes. Keep all the crispy rind, and all the salty juices too. Chop the cooked bacon into smallish pieces and put into a litre sized jug, together with the juices. Add a couple of tblsps of tomato sauce, about the amount that you would put in a bacon sandwich. Add the butter.

Now whizz to a Barbie pink smooth paste

The verdict

This morning, I had a couple of small wholemeal rolls, toasted, and spread generously with this, together with a couple of scrambled eggs. It was a wonderful breakfast!

The paste has that wonderful smoky savouriness of bacon, with the piquancy of the tomato ketchup. It was fabulous! I have a few little pots of it, but I mustn’t get any bacon to make some more as I shouldn’t have very much processed meat. I shall enjoy every morsel of what there is and savour it slowly.

This paste would make the very inexpensive cooking bacon go even further. Spread it thickly in a sandwich for a packed lunch, add a bit of shredded iceberg and you have all the flavours of a classic BLT for mere pence