Half between Christmas and New Year and more than half the contents of the fridge are used up, with some waiting to be used as leftovers. It is a bit of a juggling act, balancing the nutritional needs of the family and occasional special dietary requirements, against other commitments and time factors dictated by ‘use by’ dates!
Today I checked all the dates, and promptly made trifle to use up the special custard I had bought for the purpose. We haven’t yet needed the gammon (but it will be used on Friday).
I haven’t been food shopping for a week, unless you count the dash for milk yesterday. My current guest left this morning and new ones arrive tomorrow. Today I have a long list of things to do. Bed linen changeover will be tight. A new menu plan needs to be devised and shopped for.
Why am I blogging?
Until yesterday we hadn’t seen sunshine for days: then about 3pm a slant of sunshine slipped in, to light up my front door – via a reflection in my neighbour’s window. How strange. The sun goes down behind the house and the front door only usually sees the sun early in the morning. I was lucky to see it. I just popped out to collect something from the car.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Nice pic.
Sell-by-dates are a massive con, designed by supermarkets to make the consumer throw away perfectly edible food and forcing them to spend more. I never pay them the slightest attention other than when I am buying and that is to ensure I get the freshest. Once in the fridge, items only get thrown out if they look or smell really bad. I cannot recall ever having been ill from food poisoning. I am stunned by how much some people throw out. Worst case scenario, chuck it into a stew.
Nice shot Pseu.
And what Sipu said.
I too share your view to a certain extent, tough I am less blase when it comes to feeding others!
Thank you Bravo, I was rather pleased with it.
Beautiful wreath.
Do you have a large chest freezer?
I have a ‘six body size’ in the garage, it saves all this business of chucking anything away. Plus it has the added advantage of being able to buy quantity when cheap.
In early Nov I bought 3 turkeys, 2 geese and 4 hams all ridiculously cheap for the whole Christmas entertaining season, mostly gone now.
A lot of made up dishes freeze well too. mince pies which take an age to make freeze exceptionally well and can be put in the oven straight from the freezer, no need to serve crap bought ones or cold limp pastry. I make several dozen in Nov, stack them in layers with wax paper in a box and put them back in the bun tins to cook them to hold their shape.
Another good wheeze is to make all festive puddings like trifle etc well tanked up with booze, (who wants to eat nursery puds anyway?) It extends their fridge shelf life considerably.
I’m always fascinated by how stupid people are. On Christmas day at our friends I found their daughter in law cleaning the plates of great slabs of beautiful prime rib straight into the bin, Americans are disgustingly wasteful. Soon put a stop to that, rummaged in the bin, reclaimed all the meat and the rest of the edible waste. It fed our 3 dogs in after dinner treats for THREE days!!! I can quite see how the statistics say that families throw away hundreds of £/$ a year not eating up. I make a habit of collecting anything from anyone for the dogs, don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. I expect they feel sorry for a specimen of impoverished European life!
Thanks Christina. The wreath was a ‘throw together’ of a length of shop bought syuff witha little bit of garden and a gold ribbon… quite pleasing.
The freezer situation in this house was rather alarming this year… the bottom half of my kitchen fridge is a freezer, which gave up taking anything below -6 a few days before Christmas! And in the utility I have an old freezer of the under the counter old fridge size and nothing else. A bargain salmon just squeezed in after an impulse buy…
Isn’t that irritating when they start going on the blink? Happened in the flat in Brum, I was scared to death that the boy was going to give himself food poisoning in his state, so Bank of Mum stepped in for a new fridge freezer.
Then, damned if the same in Wales didn’t stop dead within just a few weeks. Ended up putting out nigh on £800 and then leaving them both in situ and coming back here just a few months later…aaarrrggghhh!
May I suggest besides the obvious replacements you go for a chest freezer in the garage?
They are much more economical to run and tend to last a lot longer, but you have to become an expert at ‘mining’. Mine is so large that I keep everything in cardboard outers, old clean boxes, that are much easier to lift in and out as everything I freeze is packed in meal sized parcels in Ziplocks before I put it in. Fatal having half cows in one bit!!!! etc.
A lot of people round here slaughter animals but won’t eat offal, I get given endless tongues, liver and kidneys, so much that we can’t keep up with them, they all go in the freezer and every now and again |I make up a magnificent stew, thickened and flavoured for the dogs in a missionary boiling pot. Last time I did it before Christmas to accommodate the festive birds etc I found spousal unit helping himself to the dogs food!!!
Beyond, quite beyond, quite fit for human consumption, but really!
Huge freezer capacity is unnecessary these days here, Tina. Most of the shops are open all hours. I used to have a huge chest freezer in the garage but now I can happily manage with a small one.
I much prefer fresh to frozen, and I just take advantage of my neighbours fresh veg etc when in season. It’s not a problem.
I can understand why you would feel differently though, living where you do.