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Happy Customer of Cousins Butchers... all the way in Canada!


We were really surprised but very pleased to receive this letter from another happy customer of Cousins Butchers. At Cousins we always try hard to provide the best quality and service, and it sounds like we'd succeeded again. Here's the letter that came to Newnham all the way from Canada! Dear Mr. Eales, Master Butcher Supreme, Greetings, Sir General Manager, from the Colonies! Here in Ottawa, Canada I hold your business card dear to chest – COUSINS BUTCHERS. I lived with my family of four at 17 Chedworth Street for an entire year while working at The Plant Breeding Institute on Trumpington Road for 1984-85 academic year. Next to us were also renting, a visiting sabbatical professor from Kyoto, Japan, Shigehiro Futamura, his wife Hiroe and their two children Madoka and Atsushi who were close friends with our two, Eva and Alexander. All four kids were powerhouses at Newnham Croft School because of the Power Breakfasts we would feed them! Yup, you guessed it, your very own Breakfast Sausages fried up to perfection on the gas skillet! But were they Plain Breakfast Sausage, or Olde English, what's the difference? I cannot recall so i guess Plain they must have been - about 4-5 inches long links, about 1 - 1.5 inch n diameter. Mr. Eales, listen to me please, I do not want to die without being able to enjoy the equivalent exquisite taste here in Ottawa where I have been slaving way as a teacher and researcher since 1977. How can you help me? Importing frozen breakfast sausages by FedEx or DHL courier is probably not on. But what about you pointing out to me a publically available recipe that you think approximates your masterpiece mixture, Oh My God in Heaven, when I just think of your breakfast bangers my mouth waters! This is crazy!! After 30 years of savouring the memory of your meat-magic, - … juicy, chewy, mouthfeel better than mangoes …. How are we ever going to enjoy breakfasts again? Or, out of the kindness of your heart you can save my savoury-loving soul by sending me one step closer to heaven by allowing me to read your list of ingredients, in order to ask our local butcher to see if he might try to capture the cunning Cambridge cleverness with local Ontario provincial farm meat products and ingredients. This is an opportunity to prove your own international reputation, Sir Tony. Adam and I will let you know how your recipe “translates” with North American mincer/mixer technology and how it sits on Canadians’ tongues. Surely to goodness I cannot be dreaming that your sausages are the very best in the world? My wife Tiiu has been forced to buy every possible concoction wherever we have lived in the intervening years, and nothing, absolutely nothing comes even close to mimicking your product’s marvellous taste and mouthfeel. As a food biochemist myself, mind you now, a plant-sourced protein biochemist, I am in awe of your prowess in the butcher shop! Respectfully yours, Illimar P.S. I did drop into your shop March 2011 to reminisce with your staff, and have kept your business card since then meaning to write you. P.P.S. Back in 1985 the Shigehiro’s would ask you to almost-freeze chill your best sirloin and then shave it raw so they could cook us ‘sukiyaki’ thin-sliced beef with sauces. Illimar Altosaar, Ph.D. Professor Dept of Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology Faculty of Medicine University of Ottawa 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa K1H8M5 Canada


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