Do you love bacon? We do! Do you LOVE Lamb? Us too! We also love duck but that is a different tale. I also have a passion for cooking delicious foods. I have a lot of love.
For almost 12 years I worked on remote mine sites over Australia where I rarely had opportunities to for fulfil my yearning to cook. Operating countless enormous machines has been fantastic: I had real life experiences and made treasured friends over the years.
The mining years were not kindly, however, to the viewing times of fashionable food reality TV shows. I was either on long day shifts, on night shifts or travelling from one end of country to the other.
I always yearned to be settled back home in Maryborough and also near a kitchen of my own. Here I could again be hands-on preparing and cooking delicious foods. Especially meat. I also LOVE meat!
Rattling around in the back of my cranium was the vague recollection of a conversation I had about macon, a bacon-like product made from mutton meat. What a marvellous creation! Turns out that the Scottish also thought it was tasty and a suitable substitute for bacon in WWII when pork was scarce.
I was given a meat smoker for my birthday (best pressie ever!) and chased up some cure and set to creating macon of my own. Sadly, the macon image I had created in my head was not at all what evolved from my first efforts at making macon.
So while I was still playing with monster Tonka toys and commuting to the Pilbara on the opposite side of the country I kept chasing the dream. I used my spare transit time to research and explore the world of healthy curing, processing and tenderisation of meats.
After more than two years of experimenting with recipes and processes, I created my masterpiece, Mary Macon!!! I have been overwhelmed by the enthusiastic feedback from early consumers in our trial batches.
Mary Macon’s recipe has been patented and is now being made under licence for me by The Butcher’s Shop in Tinana.
And now the next stage of this exciting journey is about to unfold after enthusistic receptions for Mary Macon at markets and food festivals. Watch this space for developments, faithful followers.
