Slow Cooked Goat Shanks: Pt. 2

I got up to go for a wee at 2 am. Once a night, as you do, and that’s okay even before you get to a certain age – so long as it’s all pretty normal in terms of volume and flow.

I got to thinking about the number of times I pee in the wee small hours when I was checking on whether my shanks were still simmering. Two in the morning, as I say, and by the time I’d coaxed the dying embers into life and filled the firebox with logs, I was wide awake.

When I got back to bed, my to be relied upon combo of left side repose and the sleep-inducing mantra, “in out, deep soft, here now”, didn’t do the trick. Two hours later and I still hadn’t nodded off, what’s more my bladder was making me painfully aware that it needed emptying again.

Getting up to the loo again broke the spell and, back in bed, I went out like a light – in a blaze of cliches.

Next night I’m back to my usual eight hours sleep (give or take a little), and once a night is enough. Like the hoary old joke: “Once a knight, always a knight, but once a night is enough.” And lest I get caught in a lusty old lie: In the sexual arena, even in my youth, I was seldom a once a night man.

On the night of the double wee, a glut of runner beans had got me cooking up way, way more than usual for dinner the previous evening. The bean gurus singing from the same song book on this one: “Runner beans possess potent diuretic properties. Therefore, consuming runner bean seeds and pods helps to promote urination.” I rest my case, put it to bed.

When I’d got up at 2 am the oven gauge was reading 110 Celsius, quite a drop from the 160 Celsius it’d been at when I’d put the casserole dish in the oven at 9 pm the night before. By morning the cast iron dish had cooled to such an extent that I took it out the oven with bare hands.

The recipe had said seven hours in a slow cooker. Well I sure upped the ante on that one with my eleven hours of slow to super-slow cooking! What’s more I reheated it at 160 Celsius for an hour and a half before serving it up for dinner the following evening.

I’ll let it stand or fall on what my fellow diners had to say about my slow cooked goat shanks: June, Karen (her sister), and Joyce (their mum). I’ll share their feedback with you next week. I also made quite a few changes to the recipe I found online and shared with you last week: Slow Cooked Goat Shanks: Pt. 1. I was determined to make a very rich sauce – if nothing else, I sure achieved that!

That’s all on modern-day homesteading at Little Owl Gully for this week. Let me reassure you that I’ll be all shanked out after next Monday’s instalment: Slow Cooked Goat Shanks: Pt. 3.

Thanks for your company. Bye for now.