Slow Cooked Pork Recipe. And a bit about Facebook.

So this month, not only am I detoxing from alcohol and sugar, but I am also detoxing from Facebook. Yep, no Facebook for a month. My husband keeps giving me a hard time that I am still using Instagram and Pintrest and asks me "What's the difference?" Well the difference is that really, they're just picture sites. Facebook, as I am sure many would attest to, is a "Time Vampire". It eats your time. You log on for a quick brows and the next thing you know 4 hours have passed. Or like me, you flick through on your iPhone. But you do this every few minutes. And a recipe pops up, and someone posts an article about food toxins which you read because it's just SO URGENT that you learn that information RIGHT NOW before it is lost somewhere on your newsfeed. And then someone makes an OUTRAGEOUS statement on a parenting page, & you just HAVE to be the 34,892nd person to have their say and make a difference. I mean, it is SO IMPORTANT.

Get the picture?

My consumption of Facebook was another "substance" I am totally incapable of moderating my use of. I have come up with various hair-brained schemes over the last few years to try to cut down on usage; only checking at lunch and after the kids go to bed, only checking when the kids are napping, only checking on work days in my breaks, only checking on weekends, deleting the app off my phone (I just browsed using Safari). It doesn't work. I don't want to stop using Facebook completely but I don't know how to moderate it. I am trying to work out now what alcohol, sugar and Facebook have in common. What do I get from these things that cause me to overuse them? And how do I break the habit?

I can't believe how slow life is when you're not living it online. I can't believe how much I can get done in a day. Today was a day at home with the kids. Ordinarily, if I'm totally honest, that would mean a day mostly spent on Facebook. But today? Today I managed to clean my entire downstairs lounge room, I deep-cleaned my kitchen (including doing 3 dishwasher loads of dishes which I collected up from various areas of the house, God bless my children), cleaned the dining area, scrubbed the toilet, took two huge boxes of things to goodwill, & gave away four old dining chairs on Gumtree. And we sat down to a delicious meal of Slow Cooked Pork Hocks with Fennel and Cabbage.

Whenever I cook with pork (and I do so a lot... mmm, bacon...) I do my best to use the amazing meat produced by our friends Shane and Jules at Backfatters. They breed free range, rare heritage breeds of pigs, and treat their animals with the highest respect. Not to mention their farm is about an hour up the road from us, bringing a whole new meaning to "eating local". And, their double smoked maple cured bacon is a finalist in the ABC delicious. 2013 Produce Awards.

Slow Cooked Pork Hocks with Fennel and Cabbage

INGREDIENTS

Four pork hocks, the best quality you can afford.
1/2 sugarloaf cabbage, shredded
1/2 big fat fennel bulb, shredded
2 big carrots, roughly chopped
1 sweet potato, roughly sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock (preferably home made)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tsp fennel seeds
Good grinding of black pepper
2 bay leaves

METHOD

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. Put all the ingredients except for the hocks into a large pot. Add the hocks, nestling them in & making sure they're mostly under stock. Spoon a few big spoonfuls of the stock over the bits of the meat poking out, just to moisten them. Bring to the boil on the stove top, then place into the oven. Cook in the oven for about 6 hours, or until the meat is falling off the bone.

Take the meat out & shred, carefully removing the fatty skin & bone. Serve meat with vegetables and stock. Include a piece of hot buttered toast, if desired, to mop up the delicious juices (we used gluten free brown bread).