Pulled Pork

I do love a bit of barbecue. For me, the weather doesn't need to be doing what it's doing right now (blazing, eyeball melting sunshine) to make me want to tear open a bag of charcoal, light it up, and introduce some meat to the resulting heat.

It's not just about sausages and burgers for me; anything you can cook in a normal oven you can cook on a barbecue, it's just about knowing how.

Some food tastes better from a barbecue than it can ever taste done in an oven, and I want to share one of those things here: pulled pork.

It's a long time favourite in the US barbecue belt, and it's becoming very popular in the UK too. I've been doing it for the last couple of years now, it's simple, easy and delicious.

My recipe is adapted from the Weber Complete Barbecue Book, which you should buy if you want to progress from incinerating sausages.

Here we go then.

Ingredients:

The Meat:

1 Pork shoulder joint - a 2.5-3kg one will serve about eight people, generously.

The Rub:

2 tbsp mild chilli powder
2 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp sea salt
4 teaspoons garlic granules
2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
2 teaspoons fresh ground celery seeds
1 teaspoon mustard powder

The Sauce:

275ml tomato ketchup
175ml cider vinegar
100ml lemonade (not diet)
50g light brown sugar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon of your favourite hot sauce
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Other:

8 big soft white rolls
A big tub of coleslaw, or make your own (I can't usually be bothered...)

How You Do It:

First off, if you don't have a smoker, you can do this in an oven. It won't have the benefit of being smoked, but it will still be tender and lovely. It just won't be quite as lovely, and you can't pretend to be a Good Ol' Boy in North Carolina while you're cooking. Sorry, that's just how it is.

Mix all the ingredients for the rub together in a small resealable tub, like this:

All ready to rub your meat. Fnarr.

You may use all of it, but if you don't, it'll keep until next time (and there will be a next time, this stuff's addictive).

Take your pork shoulder and use a good sharp knife to trim the skin off. You should leave a layer of fat, around a centimetre thick if possible. This will help keep the meat moist while it cooks. I haven't left a layer of fat in a couple of spots on mine, because my knife skills are WEAK.

A big lump of pig. Skinned.

Place the meat in a nice big bowl, with room to move it around. Pour some rub over the top of the meat, like in this amazing action shot:

Then, rub (obviously) the rub into the meat. Don't be shy. You want the rub to coat the meat, but also to penetrate it as much as possible. Really work it in there. Get it into all the nooks and crannies, like this:

Once it's all nicely coated in the rub, cover the bowl in cling film. If you're going to be cooking it in the next few hours, leave it out to come up to room temperature. If not, pop it back in the fridge.

If you have a smoker, the next thing to do is set it up for a twelve hour cook. For my smoker, this means filling the coal basket with Weber briquettes, and filling the chimney starter with them too. I find that 7kg of briquettes will reliably give me twelve hours of heat. Light the coals in the chimney, and when they're ready (a coating of white ash) pour them over the top of the unlit coals in the basket. This is known as the "Minion Method", where the coals light over a long period of time, maintaining an even temperature. Throw a handful of soaked hickory wood onto the coals, to generate the smoke.

Fill the water bowl almost to the top with hot water. Don't use cold, as this means the coals have to heat the water up before the smoker reaches cooking temperature.

You want the smoker to be at a temperature between 200 and 250 fahrenheit for the duration of the cook. If you do it right you can pretty much leave it to do its thing for the whole cook. If it goes a bit wrong you'll need to fiddle with the vents to adjust the temperature and maybe add more coal too. This is a ball ache, especially if you're doing an overnight cook, because you won't know it's gone wrong until the morning, by which point it's too late.

Once the smoker's at temperature, pop the meat in, and go and relax for ten hours (I tend to start the cook at about midnight, and go to bed)

If you're using an oven, set the temperature using your fancy thermostat and wait for it to be ready. Pull a smug face at the people using a barbecue. Pop the meat in the oven, in a roasting tin.

After ten hours, the internal temperature of the meat should be around 190 fahrenheit. Check it with an instant read thermometer, which you can buy for about a tenner. 

It'll look a bit like this:

Take the meat out and wrap it in foil for the last two hours of cooking. 

Combine all the ingredients for the sauce in a saucepan and heat it gently, stirring it to mix it all together. It's supposed to be thin, tart and a bit spicy.

Once the meat's been cooking for twelve hours, leave it to rest in the foil for half an hour, then unwrap it.

You should be able to pull the meat apart easily using your fingers, or use two forks. Remove the layer of fat from the top and pick out any large lumps of fat or sinew.

If you're writing a blog post about the recipe, completely forget to take any pictures of the meat as you tear it apart, ready for serving.

Once you've finished pulling it apart, it will look something like this:

Slice the rolls and chuck a big pile of the pork on them. Add as much or as little sauce as you want. Top it off with some coleslaw. 

Eat it. Then eat some more.

Pulled pork on a roll. Oh yes.

The Future

"Am I big enough to know how small I am?" - Babyhead

I'm quite carefree on a day to day basis. I'm not one of life's great worriers. But, sometimes, something will set me off worrying, and I can lose days to the sort of thing which I have no hope of doing anything about. 

Often, the thing I worry about is The Future, which I have capitalised for dramatic effect. Quite a broad topic, and somewhat unavoidable, like the result of a sporting fixture you're hoping to watch the day after it actually happens.

This worrisome aspect of my character has been noticeably more, erm, noticeable since becoming a father. This, I suppose, is because I no longer have the luxury of being able to stop worrying at some point roughly fifty years into the future. I now have to worry for (I hope) at least eighty years. And that's if Cam doesn't do any procreation of his own. 

Part of the trouble with The Future is that there will almost certainly be people in it. People like me, people like you, people like George Osborne, people like Eric Schmidt, people like Wayne Rooney. Countless other people. Millions. Billions. Too many. Too many people milling around on this little rock; eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, sleeping, shagging, consuming, wasting, creating, destroying. 

Did you know, that if every human currently on Earth consumed its resources at the rate at which the average American consumes resources, we would require 3.7 Earths in order to not run out of stuff? Now, I've checked under the fridge (where everything I've lost eventually turns up) and there are no spare planets under there. Fortunately, we are not all Americans.

So, no problem, right?

Well, not according to this article I read yesterday: Humans 

See, it isn't just the consumption being done by existing humans we need to be concerned about. There's around 7 billion of us at the moment. Apparently we'd all physically fit on Zanzibar, although I doubt the quality of life would be up to much. But, as a species, we are DAMN GOOD at growing our population. 

Yep. High fives all round for our procreative prowess. 

As a result of our collective horizontal jogging efforts, we'll soon (within our children's lifetimes) be sharing the planet with 9,999,999,999 other humans. Hold on, is that enough digits? I'm not sure I can even count to ten billion, or if I'd have time to get there before I died. Anyway, yes. TEN BILLION people. 

So, in The Future, I just don't see that there's enough Earth to go around. Enough water. Enough food. Enough fuel. Enough space. Enough of those little paper umbrellas you used to get in cocktails. Enough spokey dokeys. Enough, honestly, of most things.

So I worry. I worry that Cam will grow up in a world where there is increasing competition for the resources we do have. That he will see massive unrest unfold around him as more and more people wake up to the idea that we can't go on as we do now. Most of all I worry that the answer to the problem of too many people does not lie in a change in how we consume, I worry that it lies in how many of us there are doing the consuming. I worry that there needs to be fewer of us, and that somewhere in The Future we will have to confront that. 

I worry that we are not big enough to know how small we are, and that we will wander headlong into a need for drastic action to reduce our number, and we'll be too busy thinking about how important we are to see it coming.

I hope, now I've written this, I can go back to not thinking about it for a while. I am a part of the problem.

Door

Yesterday, I made my son cry.

My beautiful, perfect, delicate little boy. I scared him, and I made him cry.

“So what?” you may be thinking. “Big deal? Kids cry all the time.”

Yes. They do. My son is no exception to this rule. He cries when I try to clean his face after a meal. He cries when I put him down for a nap. He cries when I get him up from a nap. He cries when I stop him chewing on the business end of a can of athletes foot spray (how dare I?) He cries for seemingly no reason at all.

He is very good at crying when he hurts himself. His mouth goes from its usual wide crescent smile into a downturned trapezium as he emits a primal sound which leaves no doubt as to its meaning: “that thing I just did really, REALLY hurt”.

It was in the process of trying to prevent one of those cries that I managed to make him cry myself. My vicarious fear for him causing himself pain transferred into real fear for him.

I feel lucky, and fortunate, to be able to say that in Cam’s year and a bit on Earth I’ve rarely had to shout at him. Actually, I’ve never HAD to shout at him. I’ve chosen to a couple of times. The times when the dark cloud of frustration comes over me and I wish with all my heart that he would stop doing whatever it is he’s doing. Just for a moment. Please. Stop winding me up.

But those occasions are few. And mercifully so. How easy it is for me to forget that my boy is tiny, and I am large? That he can be loud, but that I can be so much louder? That his actions may frustrate and irritate me, but that mine may terrify him?

Whoever designed folding doors clearly did not have children. Or hated children. Tiny gaps between wooden panels are seemingly irresistible to tiny fingers which are exploring the world for the first time. Cam has recently discovered the tiny gap, which can be peered through for “peepo” purposes. Soon, the peering gives way to pushing a tiny index finger through. At the same time, a barely perceptible shift in his position means the door begins to close.

The tiny gap gets tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier still.

I move my foot into the path of the closing door, stopping the immediate danger. But I am trapped. Sat on the opposite side of the door to him and unable to move to his side without removing my foot and  allowing the door to close completely.

I push his finger from the gap.

He immediately replaces it.

I push it away again.

He laughs. It’s a game now.

I wish he could talk. Wish he could understand EVERYTHING I say to him, not just “what noise does a pig make?” He can’t though.

He is in a giggling, ecstatic state. He bounces in excitement. This game is fun!

All I can think of is a tiny, crushed index finger and a frantic drive to hospital. This game is not fun.
I shout, because it is the only weapon I have left: “Cameron! No! DO NOT PUT YOUR FINGER IN THE GAP!”

The laughing stops. The finger remains. The smile is uncertain.

“CAMERON, NO!”

The finger is withdrawn. The bottom lip curls and trembles. The eyes well up. The noise begins its journey from his vocal cords to the atmosphere. His eyes question me: “who are you?”

I leap up and remove him from the vicinity of the door. The bastard, bastard door. I hold him tight and stroke his hair. I whisper comfort into his ear. Tell him I love him. Tell him I am sorry. Tell him I never want to scare him.

Ten minutes later we are playing happily together again. I hope he has forgotten all about it. That I am back to being the person who hugs him, tickles him, reads him bedtime stories in the softest tones I can muster. I hope that he is not afraid of me.

I consider smashing the door from its hinges.

I hope I never make my son cry again.

I Went to Britmums Live

Right, come on, settle down children, you're back to work now. Let's take a seat on the story mat and some of you can tell me what you got up to this weekend. Okay, who would like to go first? Lewis, stop fidgeting and pay attention, do you want to go first? Go on, tell us all about it...

*jiggles excitedly*

I went to that there London on the weekend, to that there The Brewery, for that there Britmums Live! blogging conference ting!

Five hundred odd people, including about fifteen men, descending on Londontown to spend a day and a half talking about blogging stuff. And other stuff. Also drinking. Oh yes. Drinking.

I met fellow dad blogger Ben from Mutterings of a Fool on the train (strength in numbers, see) and we chatted away the journey into the Smoke. Ben knew exactly where he was going, because he is a proper man who can navigate London. I just followed him, feeling exceptionally glad I hadn't had to brave much of the public transport on my own.

We had a pre-conference beer with a few fellow bloggers (three men, about forty women at this point). The third member of our Y-chromosome triumvirate was Tom Briggs, who I've wanted to meet ever since he was kind enough to give me my FIRST EVER comment on this blog. Anyway, he's a thoroughly nice chap. You'd like him. Katy Hill liked him enough to sit next to him at the Friday night award ceremony, and if he's good enough for her, I dare say he's good enough for you.

Anyway, prior to the awards there was some conference gubbins in the afternoon. Prior to that I had my photo taken to appear in a national newspaper. Y'know. As you do. No big thing. Also in the photo were Darren from One Dad Three Girls (also lovely) and the BEAUTIFUL daughter of Me and the Tiny Three. She was lovely. So was her mum. Sensing a theme yet?

Our little group expanded to include the frankly awesome Lizzie (@eliza_do_lots), who has many websites, including this one, the absolutely delightful Lara Golden (@APluckyHeroine) who blogs over here, and the equally delightful, totally hilarious in person and on her blog Hannah Smith from www.mamabearwithme.co.uk.

I didn't feel I took all that much away from the sessions on the first day, the exception being Pippa from Story of Mum, who gave a great talk on storytelling. It was really good stuff. Also, guess what? She was lovely!

We bunked off the last session, like naughty school kids. Naughty school kids who wanted to check into their budget accommodation and try to quickly eat some food. We only managed the first of those things. Oops.

Awards happened, some extremely talented bloggers stood up and accepted some shiny things, lots of clapping, several glasses of prosecco, white wine, and red wine. Katy Hill was badgered into following me on Twitter six minutes after I tweeted that I didn't actually know who she was. AWKWARD.

We fleetingly met lots of other people (who aren't getting hyperlinks, because I'm tired now) and then decamped to the pub, where we met Andy Harris (a man who trusted me enough to take my advice on what bike seat to purchase, which was nice) of Always Time for Biscuits and the vision of beauty that is Ella Shaw from Trying My Patients. Fucking. Hot. Saynomore.

We were soon joined by EXCELLENT dad blogger Sam Coleman (@DustandLove) who made the effort to come and see us even though he hadn't been to the conference itself. I'm truly glad he did. Great chat. Great beard. Great blog.

There were more people than I've listed there, and they were all just totally great. It was like meeting up with old friends, yet aside from one person I had never met any of them before. There were laughs, there were hugs, there were surprises, there was even some drooling.

No dinner until I managed to order in pizza at about 12:20am. More bloggers in the hotel bar. More great chat. More. More. More.

It. Was. Fantastic.

The following morning, with its five am wake up call from some bastard in a tower crane, wasn't quite as fantastic. But it was okay. Cooked breakfast. Lots of water. Lots of tea. Reconvening at the conference venue. Better sessions on the second day (still not all brilliant though). Meeting more online friends in real life (special mention for @SonyaCisco and @glosswitch, two of my absolute favourite bloggers).

A bit of a blub over some of the blogger keynotes, and the conference was done.

I went and got some proper barbecue at Bodean's then met up with the few remaining delegates in a bar for more booze. Among them, ace new blogger Ruth who writes A Pencil Skirt and is just as funny in person. I spent much of the evening catching up with Annie (www.mammasaurus.co.uk). She also squeezed my bum and told me about hitting seagulls in her car. Good times!

Fate brought me and Her Royal Hotness Ella Shaw back together to finish the evening, as well as gorgeous Julie from www.mamaowl.co.uk. More excellent chat and more tasty drinks. A general sense of all round winning.

So, yeah, in summary: Britmums Live, really good, especially the bits that weren't really anything to do with Britmums Live.

I hope I won't have to wait until next year to see everyone again.

Britmums Live

In just a couple of days time I'm heading over to that London, famousest place in all of England, for some blogging conference good times.

I'll be honest, I don't really know what to expect. I've been to a few conferences for work before, and I usually spend them sitting on my own, wishing away the minutes until the next time I can get a cup of tea and check Twitter on my phone. This time though, LOTS of the people who usually live in my phone will be IN THE SAME ROOM AS ME. Eek.

If you see me standing on my own, please come and talk to me. I'm really very friendly once I get past my shyness.

On with the questions for the I'm Going To Britmums Linky Meme Thing

*sings* Getting to know you, getting to know all about youuuuuuuuuuu...

Name: Lewis

Blog: Erm, this one.

Twitter ID: @babberblog

Height: 6ft

Hair: Very little on top of my head, a bit more on my face, some in other areas which I won't be displaying during the conference.

Eyes: I have two. They will likely be the bloodshot red of a person with a serious pollen allergy. Because that's what I have. Or, possibly, I've got the rage virus but haven't turned all "fast zombie". Yet.

Is this your first blogging conference?

It is. I'd only been blogging for a few months when last year's conference happened, and wasn't sure I'd still be doing it a year on, but here I am.

Are you attending both days?

Yes. Unless I get so devastatingly drunk on the Friday night that I can't face any more new knowledge. I'm sure that won't happen.

What are you most looking forward to at BritMums Live 2013?

Meeting people for the first time in real life, catching up with a couple of people I've met before, learning some stuff.

What are you wearing?

Nothing special. Jeans. A t-shirt. Trainers. I don't really do dressing up. I might bring a shirt, just in case I'm feeling flash.

What do you hope to gain from BritMums Live 2013?

A hangover. Some friends. Bloggy tips. 

Tell us one thing about you that not everyone knows

I once got so drunk at a Christmas party that when my girlfriend (now wife *fist pump*) phoned to ask if I was okay I couldn't work out whether I was stood up or lying on the floor. Proud moments. I was lying on the floor.

There we are, that's a bit about me. Come and speak to me at Britmums Live to find out much more. Some of it may even be interesting.

Loan Moan

Something which has really been invading my brain space and fucking me off recently is people who have never known hardship thinking it’s appropriate to tell people who do, or have done, or may do sometime in the future, that they shouldn’t moan about hardship.

Most recently, this has been done by whichever person wrote the Rothschild investment bank’s report on how best to remedy the fact that investors aren’t interested in buying the MASSIVE student loan debt from the government (who will use the money to line their dishonest, career politician, detached from the real world pockets, or to pay consultant friends vast sums to tell them how they can fuck up the NHS, or austerity the fuck out of everyone’s benefits payments, or just generally spunk it up the wall in some other way which makes the general public wonder what in fuck’s name we’re doing voting for these tossbags anyway)

*breathes*

Anyway. What? Oh yes. Selling the student loan book to private investors.

Apparently the private investors don’t want it. Because it’s been set up in a way which means it wouldn’t make them enough money to be interested in it.

Obviously, I’m crying into my Tesco Value cornflakes over that predicament, but there we go.

How nice to be able to turn down an opportunity to make money, because it wasn’t going to make you ENOUGH money. I’d just like something to make me any money. But I digress. Again.

Obviously, the solution to the problem of the loan book not making enough money is to shit on all the people who took out the loans (because they had no choice, because it was the only way they could afford to go to university) by increasing the interest rate.

Which is FINE, by the way. I’ve always expected it would happen eventually. It will probably make little difference to the fact that I’ll likely be paying that bastard loan back at a rate of bugger all pounds per month for the rest of eternity, before passing the remainder on to Cam like some horrible parting anti-gift.

That’s probably not how it works, does it get written off at some point? Or do they come around and chop off your arthritis riddled legs in lieu of cash? Or maybe put you to work knitting Shreddies?

So, yeah, one option is to increase the interest rates. In some truly “of the people” thinking, the author of the report recognises that perhaps this won’t go down too well (he should have asked me, I’d have told him I’m cool with it *eats beans on toast for a week*) and has included useful suggestions on how the government could bring us graduates around to the idea:

"We all live in difficult times, you havea deal which is so much better than your younger siblings (they will incur upto £9,000 tuition fees and up to RPI+3% interest rates)". (The Guardian) 

SOLD!

Oh no, wait, I mean: SHUT UP.

Because it’s stupid to suggest that the reason I ought to suck up an increase in the cost of my repayments is that my younger siblings have a worse deal. By that logic the next step will be to ask the generations who got grants for their university education to retrospectively pay some money back, because they got a much better deal than I did.

A moment of fairness: we weren’t supposed to see this report, it was all written in secret. Even when a Freedom of Information request meant it was sent into the public domain the vast majority of it was redacted (oh, how I loathe that term). It just wasn’t redacted with a dark enough pen. That’s the calibre of redaction the government has working for them. Perhaps I could get a new job as a professional redactor? I’ll even bring my own black markers.

But now the report is out there, and I know there are likely to be loads more documents, floating around the shadowy halls of power, describing ill-conceived ways of letting the plebs and proles know that they’re coming for you. The country is bankrupt and fucked and has no solution aside from taking more of your money.

Because we’re all in it together. All of us. Except those that aren’t. The twenty plus members of the cabinet who are millionaires. The potential investors (who the report suggests are the least good option to bear the brunt of any financial risk, after the government and graduates). I don’t think they’re in it with us. I think they’re eating five course meals and pissing themselves laughing at all the little people.

One day, I’d like to get the opportunity to tell them to fuck off.

Sorry, that was a bit ranty and incoherent wasn’t it? I’ll post a picture of Cam looking cute tomorrow. Cheerioh.

Love

Funny old thing, innit, love?

Makes you feel all gooey inside. You ARE all gooey inside, whether you’re in love or not. Don’t think about it too much though. Urgh, nasty gooey people innards. Erm, anyway, when you’re all loved up and wotnot, the ever present gooiness is foremost in your consciousness, replacing whatever mundane crap it was you were thinking about beforehand. The latest episode of Hollyoaks. What you’re having for dinner. How awesome it would be if you could fly. All these things pale into insignificance when love is in the air.

It’s one of those things which, no matter how old and wise we may get, it can still creep up and confuse us, like a ninja with a book full of brain teasers. And if adults can find love a confusing thing, what chance to babies have? No chance, that’s what.

Now, you all know I’m a confirmed liberal, so I’m all for a bit of tolerance and acceptance when it comes to love. But there are certain things which are plainly still off limits. The loves which dare not speak their name. Forbidden loves.

I always knew that being a dad would bring with it new challenges, but I didn’t expect that barely a year into my parenting career I’d be having to think of a way to tell my son I didn’t approve of the object of his romantic feelings.

You see, Cam is smitten. Utterly smitten. She’s small, perfectly formed and wears a permanent smile. A little noisy at times, but utterly reliable and well known to the family.

She is also a vacuum cleaner.

They (who?) say you can’t help who you fall in love with, and Cam is living proof of that.

Love is... a household appliance?

Whenever Hetty (feminine sibling of Henry) comes out from her home under the stairs, my son is transfixed. He maintains a distance at first, having clearly inherited his father’s shyness. He looks on, rendered motionless by the intensity of his interest in the bright pink vision as she whisks about the living room carpet, feasting on the assorted detritus of our lives.

Eventually, he plucks up the courage to make contact, approaching her carefully and placing his hands on her. Sure, it would probably be more polite to start up a conversation, but when your vocabulary is limited to three words it can be a little difficult, especially if your conversational partner can only make a loud whooshing noise.

When the time comes for Hetty to return to the cupboard, he waves a sad goodbye and looks doleful for a few moments. Lucky for him, his attraction to inanimate objects doesn’t end at pink vacuum cleaners, he quickly moves on to something else: Mrs L’s hairdryer, a bedside lamp, the Xbox controller.

Woe

It’s all training for the eventual, inevitable, real deal sometime in the future. A time when I will lie awake at night worrying about him, worrying about what mistakes he may be making, thinking back to the (many) that I made.

I’m glad I don’t have to think about that for a while. I think it might make my brain melt.