Meal Planning Monday: if you change your mind

So, I wasn't going to meal plan yet this week - we have next to no food in the house and I was waiting to do a shop with M. But then today turned into a really crappy day - I had two allergic reactions this morning and ended up taking Piriton, I travelled to one of our satellite offices only to be caught in some kind of freak blizzard which ended in me having to cut my trip short, then it took me double the usual time to get home because it never snows in this country*, wasn't even forecast** so the train company couldn't cope*** Then M found out he needs to work away this week. We haven't seen each other for 2 weeks, and he's away again tomorrow. *sobs* 

So yep, crappy day. So I am now cwtched up under a blanket with my peppermint and licquorice tea watching old episodes of How I met your Mother and meal planning. 

This week's meal plan is going to be creative... 

Breakfasts: poached eggs, or porridge, or a toasted bagel with peanut butter.

Lunches: soup is still the order of the day. Tomato and cannelini bean or Split pea and frankfurter

Dinners: 

Monday: I would love to put something healthy and well balanced in here. Truth be told, I've just eaten two crumpets with marmite and a fairy cake.

Tuesday: Smoked haddock, peas, bread & butter

Wednesday: Slow cooker sausage and sweet potato casserole (recipe to follow)

Thursday: We're doing a sponsored walk for Comic Relief, so an after Brownie supper of Pantry pasta

Friday: Pork carnitas (recipe to follow) made into fajitas. 

Saturday: I'm at ICANDO all day with the Brownies so maybe a takeaway as it's guaranteed I'll be shattered

Sunday: A rare day together so I think a roast. 

A busy week as usual. We've got Comic Relief fairy cakes in the cake tin, and I've got a Simnel cake to make ready for Easter. 

Enjoy your week, and be sure to pop over to At home with Mrs M to see what all the other meal planners are up to. 

* This is a lie
** This is also a lie
*** This isn't

Meal Planning Monday: absence makes the heart grow fonder

Or so they tell me. In my case it just seems to make me feel guilty. My absence from the blog that is. It's as though the longer I don't write, the worse I feel. But an infection in my wisdom tooth as well as a heavy workload of late just seem to have sapped my motivation, for blogging, for running, you name it. I'm on antibiotics at the moment, which are making me feel rotten; nauseous and just - heavy. I'm sure it'll pass soon enough.

This week is a working away week. I'm hoping to catch up with a good friend one evening, and the other will hopefully involve a hot bath and an early night. We don't celebrate St Valentines, not least because love should be something you do everyday not just once a year - but more because we celebrate the Welsh St Dwynwen's day in January. However we do celebrate my birthday which is also this week. I suspect I'm getting too old to be excited about getting older, but I do have a day off which is exciting at any age!

So, now onto the business of meal planning:

Breakfast: I'm continuing with poached eggs and porridge - not together! Rather on alternate days.

Lunches: I've made some more spicy root vegetable soup

Dinners:

Monday - Leftover pork and vegetable hash, with baked potatoes

Tuesday - I'm away, but M is having pork and apple burgers that I made and froze tonight

Wednesday - Still away, I can't quite think what M's going to have. I vaguely feel there's *something* in the freezer, but I should probably check on that

Thursday - after Brownies so it'll need to be quick and easy. Maybe pasta something? Pantry pasta with added bacon.

Friday - as it's my birthday I'm pitching to go out, but just in case it's horribly busy I may crown off my day with a trip to Sainsburys. I know how to live!

Baking wise, we've still got the last of the Christmas cake to eat up, but hopefully I should be baking again in the next week or so!

So that's this week - be sure to pop on over to At Home with Mrs M and see what everyone's up to.

Meal Planning Monday: How long till next year?

Well that flew by in a flurry of mince pies, Christmas pudding, an immense amount of turkey, two families and some presents. I think I can say we all had a lovely time, seeing my nephew on his first Christmas (paper is the best present) and having some quiet days with M's parents were both fabulous. All too soon, I'm back to work; hair has been washed, bag packed, and clothes out ready for the morning. 

I actually did the meal plan on Saturday night - clearly, living life on the edge as always. It's a week of comfort food I've cooked (and in the main blogged) previously, food that's not poultry, dishes which will make leftovers to give us time for a couple of runs, a swim and hopefully even a cwtch. 

Breakfasts: Porridge without a doubt. Brown sugar and vanilla for me this week I think. 

Lunches: I made a batch of Nigella's split pea and frankfurter soup this afternoon, so that will be going into my trusty flask. Towards the end of the week I'll make some Lifechanging soup. I'll also make a couple of batches of soda bread. 

Dinners: 

Monday: New Years Eve, we'll be indoors having steak, wedges, veggies and bubbles to see in 2013

Tuesday: Sausage hotpot with braised red cabbage

Wednesday: Leftovers of above

Thursday: Freezer surprise for M as I'm out at a planning meeting

Friday: Lentil ragu with chorizo

Saturday: Leftovers of above

Sunday: Slow roast shoulder of pork

So that's our week in the pantry, nice and simple. What are you up to in the wake of turkey leftovers? If you have a meal plan, don't forget to hop on over to At Home with Mrs M and join in the blog hop.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes - seriously slow cooked Pork shoulder

OK, it didn't take that long, that's 8 thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours (or a year for those familiar with Rent).

This is a recipe I dreamt up last weekend courtesy of a vague memory of a television programme from some years ago (something about eating British Pork). Do you ever have that? Or is it just me? You know where you wake up thinking about something and know that you 'need' to cook it just so that your internal dialogue stops prodding you and suggesting - try slow cooked shoulder of pork, try slow cooked shoulder of pork.

Truth be told I woke up last weekend in serious need of comfort food, the cold I had had over Christmas has alarmingly mutated into one of those viruses I get from time to time that fells me completely and on Saturday my need for comfort food was immediate and clear. M was working and so I spent my day indoors, pottering around the kitchen (in a vague attempt to ignore the need to hoover. I capitulated on Sunday) I believe that the slow cooked, hot food really helped although I was lost to the virus, hence the quietness on the posting front this week.

So Slow cooked shoulder of pork. I asked my butcher to score the fat as I definitely wanted crackling (diet? What diet? This virus is doing it all by itself). Normally I'd ask him for cooking tips, but the plan in my head was already fairly formed.

I started by rubbing the pork skin with salt (generously) and seasoning the meat with salt and pepper. It then went into a preheated Gas mark 7 (225 degrees ish) for about 45 minutes, after which I turned the oven down to Gas mark 3 (150 degrees ish) and covered the meat tightly with a double layer of foil. The high heat at the start was to get the crackling well and truly started, and I felt that by then covering the meat over it would prevent the juices/ fat from evaporating in the oven. I'm not very scientific I could be completely wrong.

I left the pork in the oven cooking for 4 hours, whilst I napped, tidied and generally pottered (I love days like that, it could have only been better if I'd stayed in my pyjamas. But don't tell M, I don't think he's picked up on my slattern-like tendencies yet). I think this is what makes this an ideal weekend recipe, once it's in and the oven turned down, you can just leave it be.

After 4 hours I basted the pork with the fat that had rendered out from the joint and turned the oven back up higher to cook the roast potatoes. I popped the pork back in, minus the foil, but on some veggies - celery, carrots and onions, just roughly chopped, a bulb of garlic broken down into cloves (the cast is good for something) and a couple of bay leaves. This was purely because that was what I had in the fridge, you could easily amend it to suit you. I intended to recreate my get-ahead gravy by bashing these into submission with my potato masher to make gravy, but next time I might add butternut squash and parsnips which I would take out first.

When the meat went back in, I turned the oven back up to crisp up the crackling - and as a happy accident the edges of the meat. About 15 minutes before the potatoes were done I took the meat out, wrapped the joint back up in the foil and left it to rest. I added about a pint of water to the meat tin, and as with the get ahead gravy, bashed 7 bells out of the veggies, scraping up the goodness from the bottom of the tin, until it was all combined, and then strained it through a colander into a jug. I didn't add flour this time so it was more watery gravy than the Christmas one, but I enjoyed this as it was.

I served the meat and potatoes with some steamed savoy cabbage and carrots, tart applesauce and it made a lovely, undemanding comforting dish. Just what is needed at this time of year. And cheap, as I didn't buy any veggies or anything other than the pork. The meat was so well cooked that it just fell apart and I shredded it with 2 forks (bearing in mind one of those is still encased in purple plaster) before serving. The combination of the soft yielding meat with crispy crackling, flavourful gravy, with lightly steamed veggies and crispy potatoes was just what the doctor ordered. Although not quite enough to ward off the virus it did set me up for a week in which my staple diet has been marmite toast and tea 

This would work equally well with a lamb shoulder, although I'd be inclined to make small cuts and put extra garlic and rosemary inside them.  

Penelope's Pantry patient pork
(picture free, because it was just that good, that we started picking as soon as I put it on plates)

Shoulder of pork - ask your butcher to score the skin, and to advise you on how much - I went by size which is probably of little help but it was about a six inch wide piece
Sea salt
Pepper
Vegetables: I used celery, carrots and onions
Bulb of garlic
Couple of bay leaves (truly I added these because the packet keeps falling over in the cupboard and annoying me. I keep adding them to things at the mo purely for that reason)

Apple sauce, I cooked down 2 eating apples because that was what I had. Just peel, chop and cook with no sugar until they're pulpy. 
Vegetables and potatoes to serve.

Make sure your fat is scored and rub in salt
Cook in a preheated (225 degrees) oven for an hour
Turn the heat down (150 degrees) and cover the meat in foil tightly
Put back in the oven for 4 hours
Baste the pork with the fat from the tin
Remove from oven, put veggies, garlic and bay leaves on the bottom of your roasting tin and put the pork back on top
After an hour (or so, I went by eye) remove the pork, wrap tightly in the foil and add water to your baking tray. Put it on the heat and bash the veggies, garlic et al up with a potato masher. When you're happy with the consistency strain through a seive or colander and pour into a warmed jug.
Shred the pork with 2 forks (remove the crackling first)
Serve with your chosen veg, potatoes and applesauce.

Hot sausage and mustard!

Sadly no pease pudding and saveloys on the menu this week... well actually not sadly in the case of the saveloy as I'm never entirely sure what they're made of. I know I could Google, but quite frankly I just don't dare!

As I mentioned previously I was out for the whole day on Monday, and needed to take a packed lunch and tea as a train with hundreds of Brownies isn't likely to have somewhere to buy coffee on board which is my usual fuel of choice when proper eating isn't an option. As mentioned in my previous post, I had cooked/ made/ baked (??) the Nigella ham for sandwiches, I also packed some yoghurt and stewed fruit and a large bottle of water. This left me a small dilemma of what to have for the tea part of the equation - I couldn't face sandwiches again, but knew I would need something. There's no way soup would stay hot in a flask all day (mind you I shall doubtlessly bore you with my quest for a flask that actually keeps soup hot another day) and although I toyed with the idea of a pasta salad, I neither the ingredients nor the desire for one. A friend who's also a Guider mentioned that she would often take a Cornish pasty on days when she's out all day and may need more than a lunch, for the same reason as pasties were invented, they are their own plate, you don't require cutlery and they are a whole meal (I do sometimes wonder how one that was split as traditional with a savoury and sweet filling would taste). However, as regular readers will know I'm a bit dubious about meat that comes already in things, so was intially planning on making my own. A desire to be thrifty (it just sounds so much better than broke doesn't it?) meant that I poked around in the freezer and realised I had the ingredients for sausage rolls which made that decision for me.

So sausage rolls it was. I was using bought pastryInitially I was tempted to split my sausages (Morrison's 'The Best' pork sausages, which were originally bought while reduced and promptly frozen) and then just put them in the puff pastry, but dug out a Jamie Oliver recipe, that suggested adding grated lemon zest and herbs, I had a potter around the very wet garden and snipped off some sage. I chopped up the sage leaves and mushed the sausagemeat and spicing in. I then rolled this into sausage shapes and laid it down the middle of the rolled out puff pastry. I then wrapped the pastry over the sausagemeat, sealing it with some beaten egg, and pressing the seal down with the back of a fork. I then eggwashed the sausage roll, chopped each roll into 4 peices, and baked then in a 200 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Now, I know as well as you do that sausage rolls are hardly haute cuisine, and even the most basic cook could assemble them without a recipe, but as they are what I spent part of my Sunday making, and I wanted to blog them, because simple they may be, but home made means you know what is in them and in that way if nothing else they have to be better gor you than shop bought. The light buttery pastry, and the simple flavour of the pork that is lifted by the addition of lemon and sage make these incredibly tasty and a fantastic addition to a packed lunch (or tea!)