Love And Marriage, Love And Marriage....and Butchers.

I have had a few weeks of blogging hiatus. Firstly, we had to find a new house, which is obviously massively stressful, then I had surgery last Wednesday. It didn't really go according to plan, and has left me extremely sore and drug-addled, with a beautiful range of yellow and black bruising across my abdomen (I realise this makes me sound like a wasp, but the reality is far less poetic). Fortunately Mr H is really excellent in the event of a crisis. Where I tend to just crumple into a weeping mess, smeared make-up running down my face like an emotionally incontinent version of The Crow, MH is ever organised, calm, and methodical. So he has taken over the household chores and taken incredibly good care of me, whilst I have lain about like something out of a nineteenth century novel. Except whilst wearing Primark pyjamas. And obsessively updating Pinterest (if you have never tried pinning homewares whilst off your tits on morphine, I highly recommend it). I have quite enjoyed being cosseted and looked after (I probably could have done without the pain and burgeoning opiate addiction but every cloud). It has made me extra appreciative of Him Indoors as well, and got me thinking about how marriage is generally A Good Thing (for me, anway).

Being married is brilliant for many reasons. I find my husband to be literally the funniest man I have ever met. He is much cleverer than me at anything science-y. He makes the world's best cup of tea. He gives the best hugs that have ever been given by any human ever. He has lovely eyes. And a nice arse. And he also does lots of jobs which I cannot bear. He manages, down to the last penny, all of our bills and banking. This is joyous to me, as even thinking about finances makes me have an attack of the vapours. In a further 1950's demarcation of household duties, he deals with anything to do with the car. Or tradesmen. Before you all start uncontrollably vomiting at this unbearable smug marriedness, I should also point out in the interests of balance, that he also has the capacity to irritate me to the point of strangulation. Cases in point:

1. When opening a bottle of beer, ALWAYS leaves the bottle top in the cutlery drawer. WHYYYYYYYYYY?

2. Gets undressed in stages throughout the house. A sock on the sofa. Another sock halfway up the stairs. Pants on the landing. I'm not sure if its some bizarre mating ritual or what my sister refers to as Clothing Confetti. Either way, its fucking annoying.

3. When we are getting ready to go out anywhere, I organise everything (presents, card, wine etc), tidy the house, feed the animals, and get myself ready. In the meantime, he sits about in his pants, then at the last minute, swoops downstairs, fully dressed, and declares 'Oh GOD aren't you READY yet?' just because I'm not wearing shoes.

4. After winning an argument (usually by bamboozling me with scientific stuff, which I emphatically do not understand) he will trail off the sentence with 'Soooooo....' and do his patented Smug Face.

5. When looking for something he has misplaced, he will always either blame me for tidying, or come up with a conspiracy theory, rather than acknowledge that it might just be that he is untidy and slightly chaotic. Case in point: he once seriously claimed that one of the cats had taken his phone.

6. When asked to get something from somewhere, if the item is not immediately visible, his technique for retrieving it is what I like to call 'Bear Getting Food Out Of A Jeep'. This is named after some footage I once saw on the Discovery Channel, where a grizzly violently shook an entire vehicle with a puzzled look on its face, then punched at windows and doors, until it could get at whatever was in there (presumably a picnic). His technique employs a similar amount of confusion, lack of methodical thinking, and brute force, and usually makes me wish I had just gone and got the item myself.

Smug. Until The Harman Rage arrives, anyway.

7. This brings me neatly onto Harman Rage. This phenomenon appears in the menfolk of my husband's family, and is characterised by outbursts of physical and verbal abuse, exclusively directed at inanimate objects. It is usually caused by the slightest of provocations, and results in a disproportionate response.  Such is the white hot rage of the Harman that they never realise how horribly embarrassing the Rage is. My father once looked on, helpless, as MH screamed at a golf club and bent it into a perfect 'U' shape round the trunk of a tree. When the mist lifted seconds later, he seemed perfectly nonplussed about the number of elderly gentlemen in plus fours staring at them in silent astonishment. My own experiences are too numerous to detail, but I did once have to contend with standing next to a family with very young children whilst he called an Expedit bookcase a 'Fucking cock-sucking motherfucker piece of shit' in the loading bay of Ikea.

But back to his excellent qualities. MH also deals with the butcher.  This may not seem like much of a big deal, but it really is. For some reason, I have always found butchers deeply intimidating. Part of this is because I fear they will cross examine me and find my food knowledge wanting, and part of this is the butcher sense of humour. They all seem so incredibly dry and sarcastic that I, ever gullible, am never sure when they are massively taking the piss. It creates a lot of anxiety. So when we decided, about two years ago, to make sure we went from occasional butcher visits to getting all of our meat from them, I was immensely relieved when The Bear offered to take charge. He works in the food industry anyway and as a result had actually been on a couple of butchery courses. This meant he could talk knowledgeably about obscure cuts of meat to impress the butcher, and win his trust. So our Saturday morning routine would consist of MH travelling out on his own, to acquire whatever I wanted to cook that week. Often I would offer to accompany him but always be told to just stay home and relax. How considerate, how kind. Not so.

We had occasion to visit the excellent breakfast place opposite our butchers with some friends, about six months after the butchers visits became a regular thing. It seemed natural afterwards for me to wander in too. MH became visibly agitated at this suggestion, insisting I sit in the car, or go and get the newspaper. I was by now hugely suspicious, and insistent on coming in. MH grumpily acquiesced, until we drew level with the door, when he hissed at me 'You can come in alright, but whatever you hear in there, don't say anything'. I was befuddled, and wondered what I was entering into? Some sort of Fight Club, but with meat involved? (the first rule of Meat Club...) Some sort of Mrs Miggins set up?

Turns out...it was just the butchers. Everything passed normally until the butcher took the money from my husband's hand and loudly said 'I tried your recipe for that Italian chicken stew, it was bloody gorgeous'. At this point I turned purple and nearly swallowed my tongue. MH is emphatically NOT a cook, but had been using MY recipes as some sort of bonding exercise with the butcher. Unbe-fucking-lievable. Still, I considered this deception a small price to pay for not having to talk to the butcher.

Another reason people are frightened of butchers is cost. This is a legitimate concern. I once airily sent MH in for a rib of beef, and he said the price made him rock back on his heels like he had just been punched in the clackerbag, and made his voice go all squeaky. But all is not doom and gloom. For one, the meat will taste better for not malingering under plastic and lights. It is usually more ethical, obviously. Things like mince, bacon, and sausages are no more expensive than a major supermarket, and are way better quality (certainly from ours anyway). The butcher also does some lovely cheap cuts that supermarkets don't always stock. Things like beef short ribs, or indeed, ham hock. Here is a recipe for ham hock soup that I made a few weeks back. A large ham hock in my butchers is £2.50 and this will make a good 6-8 portions, depending on how greedy you are.

Ham Hock Soup - serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

1 x ham hock
3 x carrots
2 x white onion
1 x leek
4 x sticks of celery
300g yellow split peas
150g orange lentils
peppercorns
bay leaf
vegetable bouillon powder
white pepper

Method

1. Put one of the onions, cut in half, one of the carrots, and two of the celery stalks into a large pot with the ham hock, a few peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Cover with water, put a lid on, and simmer the hell out of it, topping up water as and when you think it is running low.

2. After a two to three hours, turn the heat off. Once cool enough, remove the ham hock and start to remove the meat from it. This will: A) take forever B) thanks to the amount of sinew, be so grim you genuinely consider vegetarianism C) coat your hands in a weird oily substance that no amount of Fairy liquid will remove D) make you smell like a ham for days. Both my dog and husband found this irresistable, which was puzzling and distressing in equal measure for all concerned.

3. Now to the stock. You need to fish out the peppercorns and bay leaf. If you want to chuck away the very limp veg feel free to do so but I leave it, although I smush it up a bit.

4. Now to the stock add the rest of your veg, chopped a little neater this time. Add a decent pinch of bouillon (not too much as it is salty and so is the ham) and a shake of white pepper, to taste. Then in with the peas and lentils.

5. This will take a good hour to hour and a half, on a low simmer. For personal preference, once cooked and slightly cooled (when the pulses are soft) I tend to put two thirds of the soup into the blender. Then add the shredded ham back in at the last minute and reheat. This soup is not the prettiest. If you wanted a more ectoplasm vibe you could do what my mother in law does and add real peas instead of split peas, but I prefer the baby-foody texture you get from a split pea.

6. To serve you could gussy it up with some chopped chives/creme fraiche I suppose but this just makes me think of something Keith Flloyd would do whilst half cut on a trawler somewhere. Serve warm with wholemeal bread, or even soda bread, like what I made here

He has probably passed this off to the butcher as his recipe too.