spicy pork in a citrus sauce

First, a question – does anyone else make the car dance around when they’re driving along and a particularly good song comes on. I almost crashed before coming back from Tesco making the back of the car boogie along to Funkytown. Honestly imagine that on my death certificate – cause of death ‘Lipps Inc’s infectious grasp of beats’. Mortifying.

Hey, we’ve been gardening today. Outside of our kitchen is a square of soil that nothing other than the rosemary beast seems to grow in – it’s exceptionally thick clay and well, I can’t be arsed to treat it. So, we dug everything out, buried these nice coloured plant pots, filled them with compost and have replanted the rosemary, bay, thyme and chives and added garlic, mint, parsley, oregano and sage. We’ve then covered the soil around the buckets with bark. It needs levelling out and the bricks pressure washed and the fence painted (that’s for the gardener to do) but it got dark and we got lazy, but it doesn’t look too bad!

11034345_854518837955054_877800817927080296_o

Anyway, I forgot to mention yesterday that we actually went back for our weigh-in to our NEW group – Saturday morning. We did try a couple of others during the week but they’ve either been too big or don’t quite marry up with our availability. Problem is…it’s 8.30am in the morning! The plan is that it’ll encourage us to use up the remainder of the Saturday instead of languishing in bed until 1pm and then sitting naked until one of us ventures to the shop for breakfast.

So how did we do? Well, badly!

james – 2lb on; and

paul – 1lb on.

Fuck. Well actually no. It’s not suprising – I’ve been eating all sorts of crap at work given I’ve been working crazy hours (almost 90 hours overtime in two weeks) – I’m actually pretty chuffed it’s only 2lb! I’ve had Wagamamas, a Chinese, Dominos pizza, more chocolate than I know what to do with (and wait until you see tomorrow’s post). I’ve been eating healthy at home, and I can only presume that Paul has been comfort eating through the lack of my wobbly arse blowing around the house. Plus, without wanting to be crass, both of us had brown dogs scratching to be let out but hadn’t had time to free them, so there’s probably a good 1lb for the each of us right there. I do think the damage could have been so much worse if we’d been eating crap at home too.

However, we’re not going to be able to weigh in next week because…we’re going on holiday! Here’s the twist – we have absolutely no plans. We both finish work on Friday at 5pm and then we have ten days off. We could end up absolutely anywhere – the only thing that we’ve done is set a budget. We might turn up at the airport and jet off, we might hire a campervan, we might get a train into Europe, who knows? Given our maximum level of adventure is normally eating an after-eight mint at half seven, this is new grounds for us. OH and before anyone thinks of burgling our sweet little home, my cousin is staying here for the week to look after the cats. SO THERE.

So our next weigh in will be Saturday 5th – but with a week of holiday AND my birthday, it might be catastrophic. But after that, we’re doing our Nuclear Week (see the 7777 banner above) and we will still be posting recipes until we go away – and if you’re really good, I might even queue up some recipes to come on when we’re away!

Speaking of recipes, this was a beauty – pork carnitas made in the slow cooker. It’s pork cooked slowly in orange and lime juice, with a blend of spices and a little bit of stock. Tasty and although GASP you’ll need to count syns, you’re only using…1.5 SYNS. Call the motherfucking police!

10448395_854580994615505_6472965687348151254_o

to make spicy pork in a citrus sauce, you’ll need:

four pork chops with all fat removed and cut into little strips, two medium onions (diced), 4 garlic cloves (minced – how many times have I told you about these? Get one!), 1 tsp of cumin, 1 tbsp of chilli powder, 1tbsp of chipotle mix (we found ours in Tesco), 1tbsp of finely chopped oregano from your herb garden or dried from the cupboard like a pleb, 1 tsp of salt and one of pepper, 100ml of chicken stock, 4 tablespoons of lime juice (microwave your lime for 5 seconds and then squeeze, you’ll get shitloads more juice) and 250ml of Tropicana 50/50 orange juice (1 syn for 100ml – so 2.5 syns for this, which serves two).

NOTE: Batchelors Super Rice is now 2 syns a packet. Boo. But haway.

to make spicy pork in a citrus sauce, you should:

chuck everything into the slow cooker, stir, and whack on high for six hours or low for eight. Then, scoop the pork and onions out and shred the pork with a fork. Set the juice aside. Put the shredded pork back in the slow cooker on high for fifteen minutes just to dry out a smidge and put the juice into a pan and heat on a medium to high heat for that fifteen minutes to thicken the sauce. Combine the lot and serve with rice! We were lazy and used Batchelors Super Rice which is syn free.

TASTY.

J