Christmas leftovers. It's just the beginning.

Beef Wellington made by Mr A for some special guests.

Welcome back to The Rubbish Diet, following the recent festive celebrations. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.

Despite spraining my neck building a snowman, being hit by a "knock-me-off-my-feet" kind of cold, being inconvenienced by a broken washing machine, non-functioning Christmas lights and a permanent error appearing on my digital camera, we've actually had a lovely time. I can only put it down to a sense of humour from all parties involved as well as my conviction to ditch all attempts at a perfect Christmas weeks ago.

Mr A was happy. The kids were happy. And despite becoming a one-woman orchestra of sniffles and snuffles, even I enjoyed a peaceful time snuggled under a blanket on the sofa.

At one point I was waited upon by my own little junior chef, sporting his new apron. What else could a mother ask for? Ironically, it really was the perfect Christmas.

However I am still baffled how I managed to pull together the Christmas Dinner. I can only thank our decision this year to buy a quick-roasting lamb crown, which took just forty minutes to cook in the oven.

I tried to keep on top of portions, but despite my efforts the festive table soon began to resemble the tale of the magic porridge pot, with a pile of leftovers that remained uneaten. And I can't blame my appetite either. The term "feed a cold" really does ring true. But there there was no messing - straight into the containers went the leftover food ...

so it could be turned into this: Lamb cutlets coated in a red cabbage sauce spiced up with chilli and ginger and served with the remaining vegetables and cous-cous.
....which was far more interesting than the cold meats and cheese, to which Mr A has been helping himself over the last couple of days.

I now find it hard to believe that apart from the meat and our traditional Delia Smith braised red cabbage dish, I was once in the regular routine of throwing away the rest of the food that hadn't been eaten. However, these days, even vegetables are kept for reuse as well as whatever's left of the gravy.

Before The Rubbish Diet, I'd never really appreciated the value of food or the environmental impact of throwing uneaten food in the bin.

Now everything is kept, which actually suits the side of my character that is a real experimental cook. I haven't got the patience for recipes and prefer to make things up as I go along. Whether it's meat or vegetables that need using up, I can often be found making up some stock from a couple of cubes and adding herbs and spices to suit the dish. It's very easy to create a sauce this way, with flexibility to add chopped onions, flour, yoghurt or cream to change consistency and taste.

My particular larder favourites include Garam Masala, a ready-mixed set of spices which is used to create Balti dishes as well as the Thai 7 Spice mix, which is fabulous for adding to stir-fries.

However, everybody's tastes are different. So if you need any inspiration for using up your own leftovers this Christmas, I can highly recommend the LoveFoodHateWaste website, which is full of fabulous ideas. Managed by WRAP, the site allows you to search for recipes based on whatever food you have left over and also offers advice on portion control. It even has hints and tips on how to manage food in the freezer, an area where I often fear to tread, but am seeking regular help thanks to the advice available.

Of course cooking up leftovers is just one way to reduce the amount of rubbish that gets sent to landfill. For the rest of the week, I will be covering many other options for minimising waste over the festive period. I will also be discussing each topic live on air with BBC Radio Suffolk's Rob Dunger starting Monday at 11:10am and continuing each day until New Year's Day.

To give you an insight into what you can expect throughout the week, here's a brief rundown of the schedule:

Monday 28th: Food waste & leftovers
Tuesday 29th: Unwanted presents
Wednesday 30th: How to avoid rubbish in the sales
Thursday 31st: Party time
Friday 1st January: Packing away Christmas

So this really is going to be a busy but fun-packed week, with lots more family adventures to enjoy too. It's a good job there was some Beef Wellington left over from a big family dinner when my sister's family and my mother visited last week. That's most definitely going to be a treat for New Year's Eve, when I won't have even a moment to think about cooking.

If you're conciously making extra effort to reduce waste of any kind this week, then do let me know how you're getting on. It would be great to share your efforts with other readers. Also, if you blog, you may be interested to know that in the new year I will be publishing a carnival of everyone's favourite blogposts. Watch out for more news later this week.

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"So who's nicked me wife?"...

...said the man with grey hair and trendy glasses, who commonly goes by the name of Almost Mr Average.

"I said...who the heck has nicked me wife?" he repeated, thinking I hadn't heard the first time.

But I had heard. I was just on my way back into the kitchen to get a serving spoon for the apple crumble, when the first comment came.

And I smiled...especially when I considered the evidence.

With a home-made sponge pudding for Friday's dessert and Bolognese for yesterday's lunch, followed by some home-made biscuits, he has been rather spoiled. And as for today, there was the home-made tomato soup for lunch, while the kids had the spaghetti version, which they call 'worms-in-mud'.

But I suppose it was the roast chicken dinner, followed by the apple crumble that I whipped up earlier, proved without doubt that the bodysnatchers had paid a visit.

No surprise he's been wondering what's occurring.

I was most definitely having what I call my Stepford Wives moment, where the seemingly perfect wife rises up like a pheonix from the ashes of can't be bovveredus.

You, see. This is how life is. I flit like Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to the kitchen.

I can cook and I can cook really well, but sometimes I just don't have the time to put my mind to it, the inclination to get off my butt, the imagination to whizz up something creative, the patience to follow a recipe or even the strength of mind to cope with my very teeny weeny kitchen, which has about as much workspace as a postage stamp. It feels so cramped it is most definitely the least desirable room in the house, yet it should be the heart of our home.

When I get like this, my inner chef goes AWOL! Yep, packs up the bags and leaves home without notice, leaving me with the capacity to do little more than conjure up anything that simply goes with slices of bread, pasta, cheese and raw vegetables. Desserts go AWOL, along with the chef and Mr A is left wanting...for weeks....and sometimes months on end! Even jacket spuds seem like an effort. And that's how bad it gets!

I convince myself I don't have the time and I make myself even busier. I then persuade myself I'm a crap cook, because I'm not even finding time to tackle the basics and eventually it needs the force of an army to get me back into the kitchen for any longer than 10 minutes.

But here I sit tonight, feeling like I have fed an army, fed them well and at very little cost (even the free-range-chicken was an end-of-day buy off yesterday's market for just £2) and the best thing is I've also got leftovers in the fridge ready to use-up this week. I'll add the remains of the tomato soup to the bolognese and throw in some chillis for tomorrow's lunch.. I'll mix up some custard and chop in the sponge pudding for dessert, perhaps with some pureed apple. I've also portioned out the leftover crumble into individual ramekin dishes for dessert on Tuesday. Now that feels posh!

And I shouldn't forget the chicken stock that's currently simmering on the hob, which can be whizzed up into a delicious soup with the chicken leftovers. Geez, I might even fall over myself with excitement and freeze it for later in the week!

So hooray, at last the Stepford Wife is back and I'm back to my ready-steady-cook self, enjoying myself in my very own experimental kitchen, just bunging in whatever I have to come up with some love jubbly delights. What's great is that this perfect wifey will be hanging about for a while, because that's what generally happens before she disappears in a puff again!

I wish I could bottle up the secret to guarantee her future return. It might mean that I could just snap my fingers in the future and get that wifey back in the kitchen cooking up a fantastic frenzy, when all else goes glum.

I don't know why this domestic demon returns. It might have something to do with the seasons. I love autumn and I love the puddings that accompany the transition into winter...It could even be that we're at home more,now that Mr A has finished his latest Open University stretch (yes it does seem like he's imprisoned in the world of study, when it's all going on)...It could also be that I've been given two huge bags full of cooking apples...

Or it might have been that I've talked myself back into my frivolous culinary ways while writing the latest chapter, provisionally called Can't Cook, Won't Cook. When I headlined all the excuses for not cooking from scratch, I realised that I was actually looking at a portrait of myself. And for each excuse, I produced many a reason to overcome estranged relations with the mixing bowl and oven.

So perhaps I shocked myself back into the kitchen.

Wahay! Well I'm so glad I did! So maybe that's the secret to getting the Stepford Wife back, to keep reading what I wrote. Ha ha! If it works for me, it'll hopefully work for others, because surely I can't be the only one who's trapped in this schizophrenic madness when it comes to cuisine!

I guess time will tell. In the meantime, I'll mention another reason for Mr A's relief.

His anniversary surprise on Friday was a home-made Cornish Pastie, with the aim of conjuring up memories from many a holiday spent in far flung Cornwall.

It wasn't quite what we both expected.

The pastry was as dry as stale bread and the filling was like chewing old socks. So it was just a bloody good job we had a whole bottle of champers to wash the experience down.

So that'll teach me for trying out new things on important occasions. The funny thing is on this occasion, I even stuck to a recipe. Now that's what I call sod's law!

[BTW - to see what surprise he got from the recycling bin, I've put an update on Friday's anniversary post. LOL]
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