Pulled pork

Having first heard about pulled pork a year or so ago, puzzled over what the hell it was for a while and finally started searching the internet for pictures and recipes, I decided it was about time I gave it a go myself.  There are dozens of recipes out there, all somewhat similar but not quite and, if I could get my hands on some pork shoulder, I thought it'd be worth a try.  One of the things most of the recipes said was that it always serves more than you think and that it freezes really well.  Sounds ideal.  Of course, when looking at these recipes I wasn't really looking at quantities, just making sure I had most of the stuff.  When I asked for pork shoulder at the market yesterday they apologised that they only had a small piece left but, since it weighed just over 500g, about the weight I had been planning on buying, I was perfectly fine with that.  Only to get home and see that almost all the recipes I had found call for a whopping four pounds of meat (and those that don't call for six!).  No wonder people think it goes a long way - that's two kilos of meat.  I'm planning on at least four or five servings from my 500g.

Reducing the spices to suit the smaller amount of meat isn't difficult but I am a bit nervous about the slow cooker being far too big now.  But I'm going to cook it during the day so I can keep an eye on it while it's cooking.  At the moment, I've rubbed in the spices and the meat is sitting in the fridge settling.  That gives me another hour or two to decide exactly what to use for the liquid part of the cooking.  I haven't followed any one recipe exactly so far, more just read an awful lot of them and then thrown together a spice rub based on what I have on hand.

Spice rub for first attempt at pulled pork
1 teaspoon each of ground mace, BBQ powder, cumin, mustard powder, cayenne, coriander, black pepper, salt
4 teaspoons sugar

Update with the rest
I chopped a couple of onions and a small bunch of fresh garlic (the smell when I cut the garlic was wonderful) and fried them gently in some sunflower oil.  I put them into the bottom of the slow cooker, they made a decent covering of the entire bottom of it and I think less wouldn't have done (good thing I like onions, I'll have more than I need really for that amount of meat) and placed the pork on top.  Then I added about half a mug-full of cider vinegar and a bit more than that of chicken stock to the pan that I had cooked the onions and garlic in.  Let that boil and reduce for a while and then I poured it in to the jar of honey I had just used the last proper spoonful out of.  Well, a touch of honey's nice with pork and it's as good a way as any to clean a jar.  Once it was back in the pan, I added a jar of very runny tomato ketchup and a generous splashing of worcestershire sauce.  Let that all simmer for a while and before I added it to the slow cooker, I measured it.  There was about 350ml of liquid.  It covered the onions and came just a centimetre or two up the side of the meat, which is about right for braising, I reckon.  Have it on high and it should be ready in a few hours.  Between the pork and the apples I have going in the dehydrator, it's fairly delicious smelling around here at the moment.

And since I was in the kitchen anyway, I washed the salad, boiled myself some potatoes to have with some salad for lunch, washed everything up and then finally moved the jars of stuff I processed this summer and autumn out to the shelf in the hallway.  Until I clear out the big cupboards and/or find somewhere else to store stuff, this will have to do.  I rarely turn the light on in the hallway and there's no natural light, except for what comes in from other rooms, so it's about as dark as most cupboards most of the time anyway.  This isn't everything as I've already used up a good bit of stuff - this year I'd prefer to run out because I've used everything up than forget I have it and just buy things in to use.

Not an exact list but: vanilla sugar, 3 attempts at tomato ketchup, spicy tomato sauce, dried apples, dried strawberries, dried peaches, dried plums, raspberry jam, bottled peaches, bottled strawberries and lots and lots of tomatoes

Saturday shopping and an expense I should have avoided

Well, the farmers' market is back, and lovely it was to see it this morning.  Even if I did get up a bit later than planned and even if the temperature was still hovering just above freezing when I went out.  I kept to my list fairly well again and only bought two things that weren't on it, one of which I did need but had forgotten to write down.

On the way back from the market I stopped in a shoe shop to try on some shoes - I really could do with a second pair suitable for winter weather but okay for wearing in the office, too.  Unfortunately, my big feet continue to be an issue.  Either manufacturers are making their shoes smaller or I've gone up another half-size.  There was a pair that were kind of nice and not too expensive but the 43 was just that bit too long and the 42 was just that bit too short.  Oh for the days when I could just buy a size 41 and it always fit.  I may just bite the bullet and go to the shop I got my last boots from.  It's a proper shop with trained staff and since almost everything is expensive (in the really good quality kind of way), they don't specially try to push you towards one thing or another based on price but rather really spend their time finding you a shoe that fits well.  It's run by the people who manufacture arch supports as well and I badly need new ones, too.  Might try and fit in a quick appointment with the orthopaedic doctor next week to get myself a prescription and then head there next weekend to organise new arch supports and check out the shoes.

I also stopped off at the library to drop back some DVDs I borrowed last week.  Stupidly, I forgot that since I wasn't working last week, I had actually gone to the library on Friday and not Saturday so I had to pay 6 euro late return fines.  It's very annoying to have to pay money that I could easily have avoided having to pay.

On the whole, I'm doing alright budgetwise.  That may have something to do with having given myself a very, very generous budget this month knowing that not only is January always just a generally grey and depressing month that can be tough to cope with but also that following a long holiday, it might take me a while to get back to a normal routine.  Here's what I spent from last Saturday to yesterday:
25.30 transport
37.18 food necessities
9.62 food luxuries
21.00 lunch x 2 (one nice lunch out, one pizza at my desk)
0.00 toiletries
0.00 gifts (incl. postage)
0.00 clothes
6.99 house/garden (this was a small first aid kit on special offer in one of the local drugstores)
9.45 medical (sinupret tablets)
5.50 other (this was for 11 cards for various occasions that were also on offer in the local drugstore - handy to have in the drawer in work)
Total: 115.04

And here's what today's shopping looks like:

Price list for today's shopping:
Straetmans (at market)
2 x 1 litre milk - 1.20 (plus 1.50 deposit) each
456g apple bread - 2.69 (this was the unplanned item - 5.90/kg)
262g butter - 2.49 (the forgotten item - 9.50/kg)

Etzold (at market)
Red cabbage 1.408kg - 2.82 (2.00/kg)
Onions 914g - 2.29 (2.50/kg)

Vennbachhof (at market)
Pork shoulder 534g - 4.01 (7.50/kg)
Speck 188g - 162g - 1.62 (8.60/kg)
Small piece of Fleischwurst thrown in the bag for free

Thees (at market)
2 x small bunch fresh garlic - 1.80 each
Very large handful lamb's lettuce and a smaller handful of a type of purslane - 6.90 (2.00/100g)

Flassrath (at market)
Apples 2.5kg - 4.00 (on the left of the picture are boskoop and one smaller rubinette, which I got mostly for drying.  On the right are golden delicious, jonagold and elstar)
Potatoes (afra) 2.5kg - 3.00

Reformhaus
750ml cider vinegar - 2.25 (this goes under the category of toiletries in my tracking spreadsheet as I'll use it as a conditioning rinse for my hair)
370g jar of pineapple pieces in juice - 2.85

Chemist
Nose salve - 10.42 (that's the white bottle at the front of the picture.  I was at the throat, nose and ear doctor during the week to get a prescription for the hypersensitisation I'm going to try this year for hayfever.  Since I'm still struggling a bit with this cold/sinusitis he told me to take more of the same sinupret build up your defences tablets and also prescribed this salve, which is supposed to help with my dry nose.  I hate, hate, hate having to stick or spray things up my nose but I suppose if it helps...)

I'll post my meal plan up on the other blog again.  I mostly kept to last week's one although there were an awful lot of celebrations in work this week and yesterday I had several glasses too many of Sekt (sparkling wine), which led me into a very bad snackfood kind of place.  Not the healthiest dinner ever, I must say.

Book lists

When I first starting reading blogs I often came across book suggestions and reviews and started to keep them all in an email draft.  I can't quite remember why I decided an email draft was the handiest way to do this but looking through some old emails today, I found that draft and decided to post the list here.  That way, I know where it is if I'm looking for it.  It's also interesting to see that even though I hadn't thought about this list for years, I have read some more of the books on it since then.  Links may or may not work, they're not ones I have added (because if I was going to do that I'd try and figure out how to get that amazon associates thing working again :) ) but rather ones that may have been in place on the original postings that I copied from.  It's interesting to look back and wonder what I was doing or thinking about over the couple of years that I kept this list.  And I don't feel like I'd particularly cross any off today, either - they still all sound interesting.

1. The Envelope Mill by Haila Harvey- I do search for this occasionally on abebooks but have never seen it at anything less than an exorbitant price
2. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures & Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan  OWN (the kindle version)
3. Moosewood Book of Desserts
4. John Seymour's The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency OWN
5. Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
6. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan OWN
7. Gaia's garden ?? (Why the questionmarks?  No idea.)
8. Putting Food By (Plume) (Paperback) by Janet Greene
9. Putting It Up With Honey: A Natural Foods Canning and Preserving Cookbook by Susan Geiskopf
10. Clearly delicious, an illustrated guide to the art of preserving, pickling and bottling, Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz And Judy Ridgway Publication Dorling Kindersley, 1994
11. Preserving by Oded Schwartz, read, not great (vaguely remember this now - I think I managed to find it in the library and obviously I wasn't too impressed)
12. This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow - OWN
13. Harold McGee's "On food and cooking".
14. Mike and Nancy Bubel, Root Cellaring: The Simple No-Processing Way to Store Fruits and Vegetables, Rodale Press, 1979 ISBN 0-87857-277-5 - read, need to buy OWN
15. Preserving Nature's Bounty" (ISBN 0-87596-979-8)
16. The $50 & Up Underground House Book - Mike Oehler OWN
17. The Hippy Survival Guide to Y2K - Mike Oehler
18. Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan
19. 'build your own earth oven' by Kiko Denzer
20. Slug Bread & Beheaded Thistles by Ellen Sandbeck
21. Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte
22. 'The Woodland House' by Ben Law
23. Living the Good Life: How One Family Changed Their World from Their Own Backyard (Paperback) by Linda Cockburn OWN
24. Scenes from a Smallholding by Chas Griffiths
25. How to Make Sewing Patterns (Paperback) by Donald H. McCunn
26. The Fragrant Pharmacy by Valerie Ann Worwood its ISBN is 0-553-40397-4
27. Creating Learning Communities is published by the Foundation for Educational Renewal (www.pathsoflearning.net) ISBN: 1-885580-04-5
28. The Simple Living Guide – Janet Luhrs
29. How to Live Off-grid Nick Rosen
30. Keep Chickens! by Barbara Kilarski was the book that got me started with chickens. It's by Storey Press, who publish books about gardening, soap-making, brewing, livestock etc. (this is someone else's comment, no idea now where it's from)
31. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver OWN
32. Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture (Paperback) by Dale Allen Pfeiffer (Author)
33. The one pan Gourmet by Don Jacobson
34. The Backpacker's Handbook by Chris Townsend
35. How to be Free by Tom Hodgkinson and How to be Idle OWN (both of them)
36. You Can Save the Planet (Hardcover) by Jacquie Wines (Author), Sarah Horne (Illustrator)
    
37. Seed to Seed Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners Suzanne Ashworth OWN
38. Carol Harris’ book A Guide to Traditional Pig Keeping
39. Making Stuff: An Alternative Craft Book by Ziggy Hanaor and Victoria Woodcock,
40. Four-Season Harvest, by Eliot Coleman
41. Home Comforts, by Cheryl Mendelson OWN
42. Madhjar Jaffries 'World Vegetarian' cookbook (not yet but I did get a second-hand copy of her Ultimate Curry Bible)
43. Mary Norwak’s The Farmhouse Kitchen (1994 edition, ISBN1-85891-238-5) OWN
44. Celebrating the Great Mother
45. The After Dinner Gardening Book by Richard W Langer
46. The Preserving Book", by Mackinlay and Ricketts, Pan book ISBN 0 330 25563 0
47. The encyclopedia of country living" - ISBN 1-57061-377-X
48. "The Complete Herbal handbook for farm and stable" - ISBN 0-571-16116-2

Tough getting back to work

I really didn't plan on spending longer than a normal eight hours at work on my first day back but the fact that it is quarter end, we have a narrower than usual window to finish billing (1.5 days rather than the usual 4) and that I was away for a few weeks as well as, admittedly, spending quite a bit of time answering questions about my holiday, meant that it was a ridiculous thirteen.  Tomorrow is looking like being quite a stressful few hours until the twelve o'clock deadline but it was undoubtedly worth it to stay longer this evening.  Staying late did put the kibosh on my no-spend day though, as I got a taxi home.  I suspect I may not have been able to resist the desire to stop and buy a kebab if I had walked to the tram stop because I could feel that urge to stuff my face that the stress and unexpectedly long day was bringing on.  So I'm feeling kind of happy with myself for managing to keep on track with my food, even if I didn't stay quite on track with my spending.

Sunday night chit-chat

I've enjoyed reading these posts on I'm Losing It Here over the last while and finally got around to clicking through to see who hosts this (My 1/2 Dozen Daily) and join in.  I assume that given the time difference between here and Canada I will be posting before the original post goes up so I will come back to edit this post with a proper link-up and the bonus question. 

Ice-lollies made from the free sample of elderflower and apple tea that I got yesterday. 

What are you:
Reading?
Die große Liebe - Hans Josef Ortheil

Watching?
I think I'm going to watch Death at a Funeral, one of the DVDs I got out of the library on Friday.  But first I'm going to watch just one more video at Feminist Frequency (LEGO and gender part 2), which I've been getting to know (again) this weekend.

Listening to?
I was listening to Imelda May's "Love Tattoo" while I tidied up a bit and finished unpacking.  Now it's just the sound of my fingers on the keyboard.

Cooking/Baking?
Pinto bean and chickpea casserole with onion, carrot and tomatoes (some of those that I canned during the summer)

Happy you accomplished this week?
Unpacking.  Writing a menu plan and shopping just for that, including not buying any sweets.

Looking forward to next week?
Catching up with people I haven't seen since the end of November

Thankful for today?
Slowly returning health.  And even more than that, being in my own home again.

Bonus Question:
What is the "minimum" # you feel comfortable with sitting in your bank account/piggy bank? 
This is a tough question, given that I'm still in debt. But if I include immediate access to credit then I suppose the minimum amount I feel comfortable with is between 1,000 and 2,000.  There have been times where I didn't have access to that much as I just didn't have much of anything in my current account and my overdraft and credit card were maxed out and I found that extremely stressful.  I am definitely more familiar with feeling uncomfortable!  But once I had cleared more than 1,000, I did relax more.  I'm taking that as a sign that when I am debt-free in a few months, my aim, once I've built up an emergency fund, will be to have about 1,500 sitting doing not much but ready to be transferred in and out of my current account as required.  

If you want to join in with Sunday night chit-chat, head over to My Half-Dozen Daily and leave a comment and link on this post.

Blogs come and go

And sometimes I miss it.  There are a few blogs I used to read and enjoyed very much which have since been deleted or made private.  Blogs that are made private often have posts that request regular readers to apply for access as, for one reason or another, often privacy around use of photos) before it is taken private.  Or some people, having decided not to blog, let you know in advance so that you can exchange private contact information, find out where they'll be posting in the future or at least just give you the chance to say goodbye.  Having not really spent much time in the blogosphere for periods of months at a time over the last year or two, I've obviously missed out on quite a bit.  I'm removing these blogs from my read list but if any of them are still going and would like me to continue reading/would like to give me access, please just comment here and we can sort out email contact.

And, to all of these, I wish you the very best in your endeavours and would like to thank you for sharing parts of your life in such a lovely way.  Take care.

http://lewislovingthelife.blogspot.com

http://satisfying-journey.blogspot.com/

http://saving4later.blogspot.com/

End of Ordinary: One Kid Against Climate Change

I found this blog post so inspiring, I felt I should share it.  I can't even describe to you the feelings this brings up in me.  So impressive and so humbling.

One kid against climate change