just thought I'd share a "makes it all worthwhile" evening. had a very busy day, doing normal tasks round the place, shovelling smelly stuff, planting, sweeping up, and chopping down a row of leylandii which were in danger of bocking all the light in our kitchen. I was assisted by the lady next door, who despite being very busy herself, stood in for her husband who decided to go on a pub crawl rather than help as he had promised. well any way, I am getting ready to send three pigs to the abattoir in ten days, so i am making room in the freezer. i found a UFO ( unidentified frozen object) which on closer inspection was a shoulder from last years pork. so this was defrosted for 36 hours and was weighed in at 3.5kg. it had it's tattoo clearly visible along with a scar. This meant it was gremlin my gos boar, bless him. i scored the skin with a Stanley knife and rubbed in a mix of olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and gave it half an hour on full heat while i ate my lunch and caught up with one or two things. then i turned the heat down to 170 and basted it. i left it in the oven for four hours while i got on with the tree felling, which was tough as my chain saw refused to start and i had to use my bow saw. after 1 1/2 hours Sarah from next door turned up, fresh from winning a Rosette at horse show, and turning her steeds out into the paddock. she provided the backup to drag the trees away and pull on the rope to make sure they fell away from our houses and cars. i was in the position to be able to say" don't worry about making any dinner tonight as I've got too much". so we all had the tastiest, softest pork ever, with fresh veg, mostly from our garden. i even let Gareth have some, even though he had let us down. i had two glasses of red wine and have just woken up from an indulgent snooze`on the sofa.Bliss.
