Housewife!

I've had a busy day today; cooking since 11am this morning, preparing food for the freezer; yes it's that time of the month again.

I am still cooking in bulk, from scratch and filling the freezer up with food. I am very economically aware these days and very frugal with all my cooking.  I tend to buy all my provisions, once every few weeks; because food tends to go off quicker here. With shorter dates on products, I spend one or two days, cooking everything for the month ahead. It works well for me. I spent 80,00€ in Lidl last week and the items I brought, will last me for a month, for two of us; not bad going eah!

I have also been cooking some meals up for the freezer. Today I have made Spicy Paprika Pork, which really is a Goulash dish. I haven't used beef, due to the expense, so brought a joint of pork from Lidl, which cost me about 4,30€. I always source cheaper alternatives when I can; Lidl is a great place to shop for bargains!

I began by cutting  the joint into bite size squares. Whatever you do, make sure you wash your hands, after handling meat. I have, on one rare occasion, been poisoned, after accidentally licking a finger, whilst handling pork, needless to say, it never happened again!

Once diced, I marinaded the pork for three hours, in red wine, garlic, soy sauce, herbs and onions. i always tend to marinade meat, before cooking, due to the extra flavour. 

I brought a two litre bottle of red wine from my local supermarket UNIDE, for about 3,00€, Bodega Santa Cruz. I prefer using this for cooking. Personally I  always drink a better wine, but also have a glass or two of this if I run out of premium Rioja, which is quite often to be honest. 

While the pork was marinating, I got on and done other things. I finished off the roast potatoes and dragged out my hoard of Marmite jars. I am still making my own stock, from the Marmite left in each jar, after use. Marmite is great for cooking. It makes any sauce that much richer and when you are a fan of the black stuff like me, you get through a lot of jars, to make stock from. Today I got about two litres of stock from eight small jars.

Once the pork had been marinaded, I coated the pieces in flour before browning in a pan. 

To be honest I have never been sure why I do this, it was something I was always taught to do. I believe, coating the meat in flour, not only makes the meat browner, but the flour also thickens the sauce when you add it to the browned meat. Someone else may know different, please let me know. It is odd, how we continue to do things we were taught by our Mothers or at school, without really knowing why!

​Now, with Goulash, you wouldn't normally use root vegetables, so you couldn't call it as such, but fingers crossed it will turn out alright; it certainly was spicy when I tasted it earlier.

​Finally finished cooking; it's been a long day. Dinner tasted bloody lovely, even if I do say so myself. Time now to relax for the rest of the evening!