Stretching Food Glorious Food !

With the news that food prices (alongside fuel prices) will be rising with the worldwide food shortage it was an interesting statistic this last week that we waste so much of it. When it comes to nutrition I've long been an oponent of the ready-meal culture although I have to admit that years ago we were also drawn in to that growing culture. It didn't take us long though to work out that the convenience of such products was a myth and it was much cheaper to buy fresh and local produce. I love fresh vegetables and when I read this week how much we're supposedly throwing away in our wheelies we took a look at ours. No-one wants to sound 'holier than thou' but we must be at a minimum! To prove a point that we raised on the Show, Sheri bought a fresh local chicken at the weekend. At the time of writing (Monday afternoon) she's put it in the oven. So it's HOT chicken with fresh veg tonight. Over the next few days though we're going to see just how far a 5lb chicken can go between the two of us. Keep in touch to see what happens !

DAY ONE - cook the chicken. So here's the first meal. Roast chicken dinner. We had a leg each with fresh steamed veg and mash. The chicken was then wrapped in foil and put in the fridge.

DAY TWO. Cold chicken breast and salad (lettuce, beans and pulses, grated carrot and nuts, tomato & pepper)
Notice that we had half of one half of the breast each which was more than enough so we enter day three with the other half still intact! See what comes next!

DAY THREE (Wednesday) Keeping the chicken chilled in the fridge, today Sheri removed the other breast half, diced it and made one of her special Thai Green Curry's. Here's our meal with a plate of popadums. The chicken is now back in the fridge ready for tomorrows meal!

DAY FOUR and the last of the chicken! As you can see, the last of the chicken carcass was put into a large saucepan and simmered until all the last of the meat could be stripped of it.

Sheri then added onion, potato, parsnips and brocolli (including the stalks which in this instance can also be used) and cooked them until tender finally adding herby dumplings. She has to have gluten free flour which makes eceedingly good dumplings!

All that was left was the bones! The dish itself- very tasty! The one pan did the job. Reducing the leftovers.