Success in 100 minutes of cooking
Monday all went without a hitch. The bird went in to the second of the right time and came out duly. As my beloved husband was doing the potatoes, he did not feel the need to tell me when, so I did forget to take the foil off at the wrong time and he didn’t put the top (non-fan) oven on the right temperature, but all in all, it went without a hitch.
I know many do not see the point of a turkey, and if it were just my husband and I, I wouldn’t. A small goose or large duck would make a magnificient feast for two. But we had four omnivors and one vegetarian, so it was lovely to have something different.
I even like the left overs, though I work hard to ensure nothing is kept for more than 5 days. Next week, we won’t be eating much, having feasted all week.
And that was the whole point. The midwinter’s feast was the last of the vegetables from summer and the first meat kill from the farm stock. The people alive today are geared towards having periods of fasting – we even geared many of our religious festivals around it. Like Christmas and Easter in Christianity and Ramadan in Isalm.
Modern farming gives us a delemma, as do many cookery programmes and ready meals. We’re not meant to feast once a day, every day.
During a normal week, I eat lean. 20g of carbohydrate for breakfast (either juice or yogurt), 40g for lunch (typically one sandwich and water) and 50g for tea (main meal of the day, a feature starch – pasta, rice, or potatoes and vegetables and protein).
The weekend is typically two meals a day, a snack and a big meal with 60-80g of a starchy carbohydrate, 60-80g of protein source, and sauce and vegetables. Bread for the snack or soup without anything else: my soups are vegetable based, so extra starch is not a necessity.
I don’t know if this is usual, but it works for us. We eat more in the summer, when we’re physically more active and then cut down as mid-winter comes. I like to exercise outside, so the cold and wet is not conducive to building up a sweat! I do belong to a gym, but while I do enjoy the endophin high, getting me and my gear over there is not always going to happen when a 15 minute stroll into town is much more enjoyable, especially with company.
Normally, I don’t take that much time off work at Christmas, preferring to save my leave allowence for a skiing trip in January or early February. This year, we are giving it a miss in favour of taking that money off our remaining mortgage. We’re paying half our take home in order to clear the mortgage early. We were very lucky that mortgage rates only went up when our mortgage was nearly finished, but there is no point frittering money when the end is in sight.
Looking at it a different way, we’re living lean on the food scale and the life scale while it is comfortable to do so without huge scarifice – a winter holiday is not an essential on anyone’s list who doesn’t professionally ski for a living.
The house is warm and well cared for. I have clothes to last for the next couple of years. Once mortgage is paid off, our expenses are only 15% of our earnings – that’s food, land tax (we call that council tax in the UK), transport, heating, water, and electricity for cooking and washing clothes.
We replaced many of our appliances over the past three years and the last two rooms in the house to need major work are the family bathroom and the kitchen. The windows do need replacing. The current plan is windows first, then bathroom, and finally the kitchen.
The hope is we don’t ever have to borrow again.
Which means building up a six month salary savings pot (which should cover 3 years of being unemployed with careful budgeting), then doing the major work for the house off savings. Good grief, that sounds grown up and sensible!
As that’s the plan, I’d better start doing rather than talking. Happy 2024.
Posted: December 27th, 2023 under 42.