Festive

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

After unwrapping the gifts, we spend most of the day building the trampoline (more about that one later). We spend this gorgeous sunny day, being outside, working together and enjoying some nice meals.
A Dutch Christmas Stollen for breakfast, some Romertopf sourdough with a Picnic Ham from a local organic farm and a fancy mango salad. The kids got to choose the dinner: Pizza. Maybe a bit unconventional, but I can’t blame them I do make a very nice pizza... Sourdough base, homegrown veggies (capsicum, eggplant, zucchini), oregano, some picnic ham and local cheese.

For dessert, I made my first pavlova ever, it was a real treat and perfect for a hot day. For those not familiar with this very Australian dessert, It’s a mountain of whipped up egg whites with a little sugar. Then baked in the oven on low, giving a crunchy outside, a marshmallowy inside, decorated with fresh summer fruits. It got devoured before I managed to take a photo, maybe next year...

I used half of the whipped egg whites for the pavlova, making it the perfect size for the six of us. The other half got baked in the oven in two thin rectangles. For a stacked Hazelnut & Mocca butter Merengue on Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is also national leftovers day. With all the storms brewing around us, we gave the beach with picnic basket filled with leftovers a miss. Just spend the day at home, lazing around. But that whole leftover thing has gotten me thinking. What leftovers, I only see ingredients!

Let me explain.
We had a roasted (small, free range) chicken for dinner somewhere this week, made in a croc-pot filled with the chicken, potatoes, garlic, thyme and a little butter. A fabulous and fancy meal, served with a large salad.

That same night the carcass had been boiled down in the pressure cooker, resulting in two litres of stock. Two containers for the freezer, a large jar in the fridge, just like the leftover potato.
The stock with leftover slivers of chicken meat made a very tasty risotto the next day.
The leftover risotto got turned into those fancy risotto balls, held together with a little parmesan cheese.
Or how about a heavenly custard (going easy on the cream and sugar) for dessert. A real treat with fresh fruit. Pavlova or Merengue needs egg whites, custard only yolks. Those yolks stay perfectly fine covered in the fridge for a day or two.

The leftover potato disappeared into the crusty flatbread, one for the freezer

The other bread to be served alongside the pea&ham soup. The Christmas ham was not only used for Christmas day, the pizza, toasted sandwiched (to use up the old bread) and containers in the freezer for fried rice.
When I couldn’t cut any more of, it got boiled down into soup. Once boiled down the last pieces of meat could be scraped of right back into the soup, together with lots of veggies. A perfect meal for the cold rainy days this weekend. Dinner, lunch and freezer taken care off.

After making the Christmas Stollen, I had some leftover marzipan filling, resulting in Gevulde Speculaas for two afternoon teas.
This is only for the last week, but can you start to see my point? All those leftovers are making our meals only better, while saving heaps of time and money...

You might not be able to reuse everything, with four kids, besides the peels & bones, there is food that gets thrown out: crusts, half-eaten plates, meals heated for a second time. That’s where our chooks come in, they’ll eat or compost it, fertilising the veggie garden and providing eggs as a bonus.

But wouldn’t be something, if at the bottom of a recipe, there would be a link with recipe ideas for the leftovers?