Grey Day Comfort Food

This week has been a bit grey. The lovely sunny weather we had last week has been replaced with grey skies and gloomy days and it's really been a week for comfort food. On days like these, my go-to food is either a wonderfully warming casserole or a deliciously hearty pie. In my weekly shop from Aldi this week, I bought a pork joint for &1.99. It was a decent sized joint which I knew would make a couple of lovely meals.

First of all, I popped the joint into my casserole dish, added a good squeeze of BBQ sauce, a beef stock cube and some water and I cooked it on a low-ish heat for about 3 hours until the pork was falling apart, stickey and tender. Half way through, while I was turning the meat, I took off the skin, put it on a baking sheet, sprinkled it with salt and turned it into golden crackling which I then broke into pieces to snack on while the pork finished cooking.

Once the pork was cooked, I tore it into pieces and my first supper was pork and refried bean tacos with sour cream and salad. Completely messy to eat but totally delicious. I used tinned refried beans but there are plenty of recipes out there if you wanted to make your own. I just happened to have a tin in the cupboard and I was feeling lazy and hungry and I couldn't be bothered to go to the shop to buy the ingredients! Sorry but I didn't take any photos because after smelling the delicious pork roasting away in the oven all afternoon, I was absolutely ravenous and I was too busy scoffing my tacos to think about my camera. 

My second meal from the pork was a pie. Into a pan I chopped a sweet potato, 3 carrots and about 1/3 of a butternut squash. A little tip I have discovered about butternut squashes, If you buy one that has a small round bit on the bottom and a long neck bit (if you know what I mean), you get more flesh and fewer seeds so there is less wastage ...... I'm sure most people have figured that out but I just thought I would mention it. As they cost the same no matter what shape you buy it makes sense to get as much out of them as you can :-)

So buy one like this                                                        not like this

Anyway, back to the pie, I added a beef stock cube to the pan containing the pork, squash, carrots and sweet potato, along with some water and I cooked everything together until the vegetables were tender and the gravy had thickened up and then I tipped it all into a pie dish, added a shortcrust pastry top and popped it in the oven until it was golden brown. 

I just added some veg and there you have it, a delicious supper for about £2.00 for the whole thing.