Hi Rich
You might have gathered I didnt get there but after a 10 hour journey last Tuesday from Nottingham to Inverness - nearly 2 hours circumventing the Edinburgh bypass due to an accident I had enough of driving.
So despite giving up what I thought would be nailed on making the final table for me
decided to enjoy the weekend in Inverness dog walking and watching as much rugby as possible.
Look forward to your Malta trip and big bucks return from the EPT.
Cheers
Malcolm
Cheers Malcolm, I was hoping to share a beer or two with you and Vinny but obv you were busy and Vinny bluffed he was doing some work! (Maybe UKIPT in Nov we can catch up)
So having got back from Edinburgh on Sunday life has been pretty busy as my "gardening leave" has now officially ended and for the first time in 13 years I am officially unemployed so have had to create a CV as my last 3 positions were just done on word of mouth and an interview with the companies approaching me.
I have only made one call so far as there are only 2-3 companies that I will approach and having met them twice I was offered a position this week which is a backwards step but to take a big forwards step within 6-12 months so I will be going back to them after the weekend and I have a meeting with one of the guys from my old company who was made redundant last week also (current total is 5 inc me in a business that we have grown 20% minimum this year) and we may do something together but will let you know if that turns into anything soon.
As I said the best thing about this situation was the time I have been able to spend at home with Petra and the kids and we are fortunate that getting straight back into work was not the priority so with Max starting school it's been great to take him to school and drop Ivy at preschool then pick them up with Petra being able to develop her business a touch by taking more jobs on or doing some extra social media stuff and me some time to research/develop my ideas.
In non manly stuff I have been able to help a bit more round the house also and cook a bit of dinner here and there (see below) as well as maintain my healthy gym regime which I will post more about in 10 days time just before I head to Malta with some photographic evidence and believe me there are a couple of horrific weighty/podgy photo's of me before I decided in April/May to do something about my expanding waist line.
We eat pretty well at home and I am lucky that Petra has been brought up the way she has as everything is freshly cooked with very little if any processed food in the house and her mum/grandma taught her how to cook from scratch plus we intermix Slovak dishes with our dishes too.
Today I decided to cook a Slovak dish called Zivanska which is a meat and veg dish that is prepared in a foil parcel and then placed in a bain marie and cooked and due to limited time with our busy lives we often cook for a couple of days so I today prepared 6 parcels for today and tomorrow when my Mum will also be with us for dinner. You can do this dish with most meats and I used pork loins chops today but you can use Chicken, Venison or even fish and adapt the dish as the principle is the same.
So I started out preparing all the meat and veg by slicing Onions, tomatoes, peppers, sweet and regular potatoes, cut some bacon into strips, cut up some frankfurters and gherkins then tenderised the pork with a mallet so we had this
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Click to see full-size image. |
Then after cutting the fat on the pork at 1" intervals to stop it curling I prepared the parcels by cutting two lengths of foil per parcel with each piece a bit smaller than the size of a red top newspaper and folding two of the top edges together like so
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Place a piece of meat on each double bit of foil (obv the other 4 parcels are dotted around the kitchen) and season and spread a layer of mustard (optional) on the meat
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Then you can intermix the veg and meat as you please so today I went for bacon, gherkins and the frankfurters first
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before adding the tomatoes, onions and peppers
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finally add the potatoes around the edges and on top finishing with a final season, some soy sauce and a drizzle of olive oil
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before wrapping it all up like so, folding the ends in to finish
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and then place in the deep sided oven dish before adding water and placing in the oven for about 45 minutes
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The result I will post later when we cook and eat it (the Slovaks just transfer the foil parcel onto a plate and open it up and eat) when you should be greeted with a steaming plate of lovliness with all the flavours and veg along with some tender meat.