Love your leftovers!

Hi Friends,
I've been absent for a while enjoying wonderful Wiltshire & wandering among lots of these.....

A truly lovely break, visiting the Rollright Stones & Stonehenge as well as Avebury, which is where we stayed. I always think the light is really interesting & special for walking during Autumn......but despite our great week in a truly mystical landscape, standing stones are not the theme of this week's blog.........for while the Big Hairy One was at large with his camera on this particular walk, I was back at the old cottage with my sleeves rolled up, enthusiastically dismantling a chicken to make a hearty post-walk dinner. Yes, LEFTOVERS. YAY!!  One of my specialist subjects!

Shortly before our Avebury trip, I heard that I had won a competition run by Lincolnshire Co-op in conjunction with WRAP. The competition involved devising a recipe using ingredients which are frequently thrown away. There were 4 compulsory ingredients : Carrots, cream, bread & cheese. The rules allowed seasoning, plus 2 ingredients of the competitor's choice, but nothing else. Well, people who know me well will know that the stupid, immoral levels of food waste in this country really winds me up. It seems ridiculous that when so many people are reliant on food banks (got to give Cameron & the Gideot credit for the growth of that sorry sector.....), other households are chucking food out because they can't be bothered to use it, they've over-bought & because we've become too reliant on fairly meaningless 'best before' dates rather than using common sense. Hard to imagine our Nanas chucking out a perfectly serviceable loaf of bread or bag of spuds because of a date on a sticker, isn't it? I think people have become seriously de-skilled in this area.......it's easy to tell if bread is past its best because it's either hard & stale (which makes it perfect for breadcrumbs or bruschetta) or it's got mould on it....(which would make nasty grey furry breadcrumbs & perfectly horrid bruschetta, so don't bother!) I recently bought a big bag of apples which had been marked down to 30p. I asked why & was told that they were 'on the best before date'. Eh? For apples? Apples are good till they get withered, & even then they can be made into apple sauce, muffins, stuffings, etc. I handed over my 30p & those apples were still perfectly good & completely unwrinkled over two weeks later. 

According to the Love food, Hate waste campaign, the most commonly wasted foods in the UK are bread, milk, potatoes, fizzy drinks, apples, cheese, rice & pasta, ham, tomatoes & yoghurt.  Fizzy drinks could perhaps be made in smaller cans, but the other foods on this list are easy to use in a variety of dishes & baking for the freezer, if not required immediately. What a big fat silly waste of resources & money! 

Anyway, back to my recipe. I spent a couple of days pondering cheesy carrotty combinations which were also creamy & crumby, decided to add potatoes & onion as my additional allowable ingredients, plus salt, pepper & sage, and concocted a Creamy Carrot & Potato Bake. To everyone who has asked me for the recipe, sorry it took me so long - I had stone circles to visit - Here's a link to the Lincolnshire Co-op article where it is featured. I won £50 of vouchers, which were promptly used to top up our sad looking wine rack.

Albert Whiskers had his first stay in the village cattery while we were away & didn't seem too nonplussed.....& there were 'Dreamies'. One thing he DID like about coming home was that his tight-wad owners had decided it was time to put a bit of heating on! 

This was his first night in front of the fire. Clearly better than roaming those tough streets of Eastwood, eh?
Till next time,
C x