Thursday, 3 January 2013

New Year and Using Stuff Up

The usual suspect Christmas leftovers are long gone - a turkey crown means that the meat is a memory well before it becomes a recurring nightmare, and what was left of our sirloin transformed into the traditional cold cuts on Boxing Day, fabulous butties the next, and a stir fry and Chinese soup another. Others remain, or remained, yesterday's main meal a determined effort to make the best of them.

Thus a chicken carcase (am using the alternative spelling in the hope a friend keen to help me mend the error of my orthographical ways will correct it - curses, think she may spot that trap now) sitting in the fridge after a weekend festive meal with mates became stock yesterday afternoon that then made minestrone in the evening (the rest for tonight's risotto). And the dog-ends of cheese, some of it rather fine cheese, flavoured a sauce that helped stretch the tinned salmon (how very 1970s again) and kippers in a fish pie topped with mash from same weekend repast.

When the good-housekeeper stuff of using up Christmas bits before they are only fit for the bin is done I will turn to my foodie New Year's resolution, which is to have at least two vegetarian evening meals a week, and one based on fish. The inspirations behind this are several: environmental guilt about using too much meat and meat-farming using too many of the earth's resources; economy; health matters; and stretching my culinary abilities and repertoire - it is too easy to fall into the routine of planning a meal around a slab of bloody protein.


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