We are still eating our way through the great pile of Christmas food. It just goes to show what a gargantuan amount we must normally manage to tuck away between Christmas Eve and the first couple of days of the New Year, since we were both starting to ail by the time we shopped this Christmas, and only got what felt like the bare minimum so that if we rallied enough to celebrate we wouldn't find we were lacking the basics. Imagine the conversation: Do you remember where in the fridge you put the chipolatas? I can't see them. Oh, I didn't bother to get any, didn't think we'd want them.
At lunchtime the Systems Administrator ate the last of the large expensive piece of dead pink pig. I was all hammed out by then. We had sliced ham with fresh French stick for lunch on Monday, toasted French stick with ham and cheese for lunch on Tuesday, and more cold ham for supper yesterday evening. I like ham in moderation, but by that stage I didn't see it as food so much as an invitation to bowel cancer by nitrate. I'd been all set to slice the last bit thinly and freeze it for future use in pancakes or flans, but the SA likes preserved pig. A lot.
The ham was best before 4 January, so we dealt with it in the nick of time. Yesterday we had mozzarella for lunch, originally bought some time in the third week of December with the intention of making lasagne. That's making everything, including the pasta. In the event I didn't have the energy and we ate some frozen pasta sauce instead with dried penne. The mozzarella was best before 3 January, and I had uneasily remembered its presence some time on Monday. Served with tomatoes roasted in olive oil it made a respectable lunch, only we had to pretend that the toasted white sliced bread was sourdough or ciabatta.
There is still a pot of ricotta also originally intended for the lasagne, best before 7 January so I have three days to work out what to do with it. So far my mind is a blank. I read a recipe in the Rachel Roddy book of Roman cooking I was given for Christmas for turning it into pasta sauce, which I thought sounded nice, but the Systems Administrator looked very dubious when I mentioned it. That was bad psychology. If you are cooking never give the rest of the family the chance to object to a new idea in advance. Just dish it up, preferably when they are hungry, and anyway if they are nice and polite people they won't feel able to grumble unduly.
Instead of more dead pig for lunch I began on the Christmas brie, best before 7 January and actually just about right now, whereas it felt very hard the last time I found it in the fridge. We should manage to finish it tomorrow, but I think the left over quarter of chocolate sponge is a goner, and I'm not optimistic about the last of the sprouts, while there's a bag of parsnips looking distinctly sweaty, and a green pepper somewhere I haven't had the heart to exhume. Food waste is another casualty of illness. You aren't as hungry as you normally would be, you don't feel like cooking, and your careful plans about how you are going to use up the ends of everything (especially when there are only two of you) unravel.
No comments:
Post a Comment