“Ready Meal”

Cold again this morning.  We bought some rock salt and this morning R spread it around the house.  It costs £1 per kilo and ten kilos just about did the steps and the paths right next to the house – so doing the whole driveway would be about £50.  Luckily it looked to be melting when I went out late this afternoon.

I did a roast chicken and trimmings for lunch today.  I don’t normally make this sort of meal on a weekday, but with all the disturbance of dates around Christmas I had to get a Monday delivery with the result that the chicken I had bought was going out of its sell by date today.  So we had chicken casserole, sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings (I know not traditional with chicken but I like them), carrots and peas.

I use a cat litter tray (not one that has ever been used for cat litter!) to put peelings in before they go out for recycling, and this makes a lot of peelings.

On the right you see the chicken bones and scraps.  These went in the slow cooker and have made a nice stock which I will freeze.

After feeding 3 humans and 1 cat (Saphy is not a fan), there was still quite a lot left over so I made something for J for while I am away in Italy later this month.  You’ll have seen those awful ultra processed “chicken dinner” ready meals with the two slices of plastic chicken, dried up vegetables and soggy attempts at roast potatoes – this is my take on one.

I put the casserole in a plastic box so the gravy does not make the potatoes soggy and then froze the whole thing.

So even having paid for a free-range chicken, the whole thing was quite a bargain.  And Amber enjoyed it.