An Austerity Christmas Meal

We are incredibly lucky that we eat well, and don't have to count every penny. In spite of that I like cooking what I think is good food without spending a fortune. A debate on Radio 4 the other day set me to thinking - one panellist said he dealt with people left just £5 a week to feed their family - about the cost of the Turkey course for Christmas lunch for those on very tight budgets, and I reckon I could do the Turkey and trimmings - not the whole week - for under £5. Filling and tasty, and nothing I hope wasted - heard again about Britain throwing away seven million tonnes of food a year. Shaming. The planet can't take the over-use of resources, and nor soon will the landfill be able to take such huge amounts.

A turkey drumstick is about £2.20 from the supermarket. Season with salt and pepper and a dash of oil over it and roast wet in a covered dish (lid or foil) with a carrot or two and an onion chopped in and a chicken stock-cube for about 80 minutes at 180 centigrade. Turn the drumstick once or twice as it cooks. With its several sinews this will need carving in the kitchen, but there's plenty of good brown meat on it.

The real treat for me at the Christmas table is the stuffing, a version of which I made on Sunday to go with chicken. Chop in the processor or very finely by hand: 1) pack of smoked 'recipe' bacon £1.40 from Sainsbury's, rind removed if there is any, leave the fat though; 2) Two large onions; 3) Three medium carrots; 4) Four slices of bread, ideally a bit stale. So 1,2,3,4. Mix together well in a bowl, add an egg and stir in, season - not much salt, the bacon has plenty - drizzle (sorry) a few drops of oil on and cook in the oven in a dish about 1" - 1 1/2" inches deep, covered with foil, about the same length of time as the turkey drumstick. It is moist and really flavoursome, and you can play tunes with herbs - a few sage leaves is excellent - or some mushrooms (sliced just one thinly and decorate the top to prettify it). Replace one carrot with a small apple. There's plenty to go round too, probably enough to have leftovers that make great sarnies.

Serve these two elements with just a few sprouts each, one parsnip for the entire table cooked however you like it, more carrots, and lots of mashed spuds, make gravy with the veg rich juice in which the turkey cooked and it's a feast. Do your own bread sauce too if you like it, another delicious bargain filler.

The times shape our perceptions of food. The above in WWII would I guess have been a feast. And for workers until the 1960s likewise. For some in Britain this year it would represent luxury. Maybe the way things are going it won't seem too stingy for the rest of us before the decade is out.

A final peasant touch: Don't throw the sinews and bone out, nor the bacon rind if any. Simmered gently with chopped onions and carrots for an hour, a bayleaf or sage if you have them, with spuds in big dice added for the last 10 minutes or so (check they are cooked), seasoned well, and you have a broth that will smell great - remove the bone and what's left of the sinews before serving with bread to dip. Or go the whole peasant hog and make a stock with the washed peelings from Christmas lunch plus the bone etc. Cook a risotto with it and all you'd need to complete the dish would be a handful of mushrooms and a bit of grated cheese for another cheap feast.

(Chinese) Chicken Tonight

Is it wrong to want to disembowel people who use the spelling 'tonite'?

A chicken leg leftover from yesterday's meal will be the basis of tonight's chicken noodle dish. Lunch was a cold sausage butty, the bangers cooked at breakfast and superfluous to appetite then. I wonder how many households bother to foil-wrap such stuff and pop it in the fridge when cold? We have become a civilisation of waste in the West.

Talking of chickens, ours are currently erratic in their laying. Ruth thumbing lists of hit-men and making elaborate plans for killing the birds, I am trying to coach them to get their game together, about as effectively as Kevin Keegan with England. They look very healthy, all nice and red on their combs. Having fresh eggs daily has been a boon to the cook for the last year and a half, I hope they will pick up before arguments against their continued survival lose all power.

A New Toy

On Tuesday we had a new toy delivered, a food dryer. There is probably a fancier name for it but it dries food so it's a food dryer for me. As with various other purchases in the same line it will take a long time to get the monetary value (£56 delivered) back in terms of food shopping saved - the apple press a case in point - but it's fun, we get to have a store of free food, and when civilization comes to an end we are the ones looking smug just before the Morlocks come and grab our stuff.

I dried some apple rings yesterday and enough bay leaves from our tree to see us through a winter of casseroles, likewise sage leaves. My wife loves the apple rings in her packed lunch, Joe as a snack including for his upcoming DoE hike - all the goodness only 1/10th the weight.

If any damsons have survived the hurricane-lite a few days back I may try a few of those to see if they work when re-hydrated (in vodka left over from reviews?) as the basis of crumbles or dry in cakes.

The sell-by-date changes currently mooted have brought up the issue of food waste again, an annual figure of 5 million tonnes mentioned for Britain. I doubt this includes the vast quantities of fruit never picked from garden trees and little lost orchards. Maybe the third way politicians keep trying to claim they are following should be not throwing so much away: our personal budgets would benefit, and so too would the world's poor.