Better Than Joe Wicks

On my mum's birthday, three days after Christmas, my gallbladder finally had enough of DEALING with my SHIT. Dealing with CHEESE, and MILK, and CHOCOLATE. In fact, it had probably had enough several days before since I'd been feeling sick and off food since Christmas Eve. I remember saying to Tom that I hoped I wasn't coming down with a sick bug because I would hate to not be able to eat at Christmas. OH. OH THE NAIVETE.

I spent that night in screaming, doubled up agony, with absolutely no idea what was wrong. At first, I thought I had trapped wind. Ha. No. I developed rigors, which is a Bad Sign, but didn't even recognise them. I couldn't wake Tom up. I had to keep putting Alex back to bed when he followed me to the toilet when I was being sick, and at one point felt something rip in my back. At no point did it occur to me to ring an ambulance, because it turns out I am only good at diagnosing other people. I googled. I worked out it was my gallbladder. I figured it probably wouldn't kill me (turns out I was wrong, it can kill you quite easily). At about 6am, I woke Tom up enough to get me some ibuprofen and then managed to sleep for a bit. I managed to sort myself out enough to ring the doctors and then rang 111 to see if I wouldn't be better off just going to hospital. They sent a paramedic out. The paramedic decided I didn't need admitting because I was in far less pain than before. The doctor put me on antibiotics. Another doctor put me on more antibiotics a week later. A week after that, I went to A+E and finally had a blood test to check there were no stones in my liver since I was still jaundiced. This showed the infection had cleared. I went for a scan a few days later, more than three weeks since I first got ill, which showed my gallbladder was absolutely fucking RAMMED with stones. So much so that the sono was surprised my gallbladder was still intact. So, at least I knew what was wrong. It also showed I have a fatty liver, which is not great in someone my age. I managed to get a surgical referral four weeks and three days after my initial diagnosis. 

Just a note here. The NICE guideline for acute cholecystitis, which is the proper name for a gallbladder infection, is bloods, scan, admission, IV antibiotics and a cholecystectomy within a week. This is because of the risk of chronic infection, sepsis and death (woo). I am still kinda fucking salty that this did not happen for me, because my temperature was 0.4 degrees under admission criteria when the paramedic came out. 

My first hospital appointment got cancelled because a water main burst under the hospital and they had to close the hospital down, so I didn't see a surgeon until eleven weeks after diagnosis. His happy news was that my surgery will be in the next twelve weeks. He gave me a diet sheet to force my liver to burn up its fat store before surgery. It reads like a diet of kings... two eggs for dinner? In what universe?

Now, some people get gallstones and they get the odd twinge if they eat the wrong thing. My dad is one of these lucky bastards - he's had a couple of biliary colic episodes ever (biliary colic is all the pain, no infection). Other people get gallstones and suddenly find they have zero tolerance for fat. Your gallbladder is a little organ that hangs out by your liver, injecting bile and helping digest fat. It spasms to release bile when you eat fatty food. Stones aren't always a problem, but if they get caught in the opening of the gallbladder, these spasms are CHRONIC FUCKING AWFUL AGONY. I mean it. I have had three huge-headed sons without painkillers, and gallbladder pain is worse than that. You can't get away from it, it's like a massive belt around the bottom of your ribs, squeezing and making you feel sick and wrong and breathless. I most commonly get pain on the opposite side of my rib cage and diaphragm, and in my back, because it rebounds all round your ribcage. My diaphragm always hurts and is distended. Breathing is a real issue when it's bad, as is the accompanying nausea.

via http://theawkwardyeti.com/

Unusually, I had no pain from my gallbladder until it got infected. Since then, constant fucking pain. I can't tolerate saturated fat at all. At. All. The first week or so was terrible, I thought I would die of hunger. It was the first time since childhood where I can honestly say I was properly hungry. I went ketotic for ages, and I know that's some sort of bizarre holy grail for dieting, but fuck me it's horrible. Your pee reeks of sugar, your mouth tastes constantly sweet, you feel achey and wrong and tired and sort of gluey in the limbs. But it passed, and now I'm used to it, and it's OK. Boring as fuck, but OK. 

I cry when I have to do the shopping because I can't eat what the kids have. Cooking for the kids is an endless nightmare - a few days back, they had jacket potatoes so I picked at the grated cheese. It hurt for hours. And I can't watch food programmes because I start to imagine the joys of food and then my gallbladder hurts because FOOD IS A THOUGHT CRIME. In terms of funsies, I've missed Christmas food, New Year booze, pancake day, Mother's Day, Jim's birthday cake (which I've just sobbingly made, without licking the bowl), and I will miss Easter and my birthday as well. 

I'm listed for surgery now. I can't wait. I cannot wait. I literally cannot wait. If I could spare six grand, I would have had it out privately weeks ago, but...lol, no. This is the most miserable illness I've ever had, and doubly cruel to take my cheese away. I know the recovery can be a bit rough, but I really don't care. 

But I have lost 20kg in less than three months. So there is a tiny silver lining. If you would like to experience this weightloss for yourself, but inconveniently lack gallstones, here's how*:

- Eat twice a day - muesli and Skyr for lunch with some jam for calories, and then something fatless and dense in lentils and other veg for tea. Shellfish are good. So is rice. Plain chicken is your only real meaty option. Jelly and fruit pastilles are allowed, Haribo isn't. If you haven't been in pain all day, you  might risk a stick of kikat as a snack in the evening. Otherwise, fast for eighteen hours out of twenty four.

- Should you eat eggs, chocolate, cake, pastry, pie, red meat, cheese, oily fish, butter, yoghurt or full fat milk by accident, don't panic. Fetch a metal kebab skewer and stick it in, nice and deep, under your ribs. Oh sure, it'll bleed and hurt, and you might end up with an infection or rupture, but it will remind you why you don't eat these things anymore.

- Drink plenty because you will be dehydrated as hell, and it's a useful way of getting calories in. Enjoy your single cup of tea a day (unless you can drink black tea), and remember, no alcohol. If you forget and have a glass of wine, ask someone to punch you in the upper abdomen or mid-back. You won't do it again.

- Take supplements. No, really, you will die otherwise.

- Now and then, regardless of how obedient you've been with your diet, stab yourself again with that skewer. Just in case you get complacent.

- Carry this diet on for a minimum of three months, and then wonder at your weight loss, strawlike hair, fragile skin, reduced concentration, poor mood, exhaustion and decimated social life!


*NB: Don't do any of this. I mean it. 

Another Really Good Sandwich

Currently, I do not feel the urge to blog. My life is a nonstop whirl of work, because uni hate me and set the deadline for my dissertation proposal/sample chapter for the 9th January AND I HAVE TO POST THE FUCKING THING IN THE ACTUAL POST, so realistically, I need to finish it and post it by the 5th at the latest. I am, however, well proud of what I've got planned. Soph: Crime and Sexuality Historian at your service. I have a four month research break from January-May and then seven months of write up...and then, fuck knows. A job? Hold tight, NHS, I'm coming back to administrate you!

As well as work, I am trapped by the twin rock of grief and anxiety. Grief for my mum, whose loss lingers in every lit up window, in every Christmas card, in every present wrapped. Grief in every present I would have bought her. Grief in everything I want to phone and ask her ("Mum, are you sure this bloody pudding needs three hours steaming??"). Grief in everything I want to share with her, every nativity and every funny thing Alex (experiencing his third Christmas, but his first as a properly aware person) comes out with. 

And anxiety, because having a stupid fucking anxiety disorder which has MOSTLY gone away since The Worst Thing That Could Happen Happened And I Survived, rears its hideous and unwanted head at Christmas. "What if you all DIE ON CHRISTMAS EVE?" it whispers into my ear. "DID YOU LEAVE THE OVEN ON? WILL THE HOUSE BURN DOWN? I BET IT WILL". "YOU'LL VOMIT ALL OVER YOURSELF AND THE CHRISTMAS DINNER AND THE CHILDREN WILL HOWL AND YOU WILL REMEMBER THIS AS THE CHRISTMAS OF PUKE". I know it's irrational. It doesn't make it any easier to bear. My festive anxiety is not a new thing. As a seven(ish) year old, my parents had to take me to the emergency doctors on Christmas Eve because I was in such excruciating pain. It was just excitement. I used to puke every single Christmas Eve. The last time was when I was about 22. It's quite irrational. Thankfully, my endometriosis painkiller is also an anxiolytic, so at a push, I can eat them until I fall into a passive coma (*don't try this at home, kids*).

But this is all by the by. I came to give you a brilliant recipe for your leftover turkey, because I have always been revolted by the very fucking idea of cold turkey with a plate of bubble and squeak (sorry Dad). On Boxing Day, we don't have the older two boys, so I tend to breakfast on prosecco and REALLY EXPENSIVE bacon sandwiches like a luxuriant slattern. But you can't actually live on prosecco and bacon (and cheese) for the entire festive period (I KNOW, SO UNFAIR). 

This is an adapted form of the Vietnamese sandwich, Banh Mi, which I have bastardised from a recipe by Niki Segnit in the fabulous The Flavour Thesaurus. If you're carnivorous, you can probably assemble this sandwich from what you have on hand. And it is WORTH getting rice wine vinegar in just to make it, believe me. It needs a little work in advance, but not like Christmas dinner levels, and it's bright and refreshing in a sea of fat and carbs and fat. 

Sorry, no veggie/vegan alternative, but the pickled veg is bloody lovely in most things or indeed, on its own. 

You Will Need For About Four Sandwiches:

For The Pickle

A peeled carrot

An unpeeled cucumber

Rice wine vinegar

Salt

Sugar

For Assembly

Pâté - chicken liver for preference, but it's Christmas so whatever you've got. Nothing too spicy or herby though. 

Mayonnaise - Helmans is fine

Fish sauce (aka nam pla)

Soy sauce

Leftover turkey shredded into strips

Four short baguettes cut not-quite-in-half lengthways

Fresh coriander, but it's not essential

This is a recipe of two halves, so you need to plan it a tiny bit. 

First, pickle your veg, Cut your cucumber and carrot into matchstick pieces. I am crap at cutting them this fine, but you want them fairly thin because nobody wants to bite down on a fucking enormous piece of carrot in their sandwich. Take the seeds out of the cucumber as you chop it up, or the resulting pickle will be a wet seedy mess. Once they are cut, cover them in salt and leave them for ten to twenty minutes. I do this with them on a piece of kitchen roll in a colander in the sink, because the salt draws the moisture out and then it drains straight out into the plughole rather than sitting about, sludgily. When you think they've had long enough, rinse them, dry them and then put them in a bowl. Mix about four tablespoons of rice wine vinegar with a tablespoon of sugar and then pour if over the veg. Leave it in the fridge to marinate until you want it. I tend to do this in the morning if I'm eating in the evening but you can really do it any time in the 24 hours before you want to eat. This sounds a faff. It is not. 

And so to assembly. Drain the veg. Mix some mayonnaise with a dash of fish sauce and a dash of soy sauce - you don't want to make the mayo too runny. Then spread one cut side of the baguette with mayo. Spread the other side with pâté. Warm it through in the oven. Then stuff the baguette with drained veg and shredded turkey. Add fresh coriander.

EAT, GORGE, CONSUME! MAKE MERRY! 

At this rate, my first book will be Soph's Big Book Of Fucking Amazing Sandwiches.

Merry Christmas xxx

Another Epic Sandwich

When you have small children, you go one of two ways. The way of virtue - batch cooking everything organically and lovingly from scratch, pulling it from the freezer at the drop of a hat, remembering the use of a slow cooker, always being prepared. Alternatively, there is the the way of fuck this shit - cooking the same six meals on rotation all month because fuck this shit. This is slightly complicated when you have an autistic child who will literally vomit if you try and make them eat something new that they distrust. So we eat pie, and we eat pasta with sauce, and we eat a roast and then a curry made of leftovers, and we eat pulled pork, and we eat egg and chips, and we eat pizza and mini-kievs. And there's nothing WRONG with any of this, but my god it gets DULL.

So here is my treat tea, which I make only for me, and only rarely coz it's FAT, but it breaks up the monotony and the kids have had their egg and chips, and Tom is cooking pasta and I am replete.It's a sandwich type meal, because there's nothing better for a one-person feast. It's just a sandwich! Who can begrudge a sandwich?

Soph's Delicious Fucking Sandwich

You will need:
Two fresh eggs. You can tell how fresh an egg is by reading the use by date and subtracting 21 days. This will give you the day it was packaged. Much easier than fucking about with glasses of water.
Two bread rolls. Not ciabatta, something a bit more sturdy. A standard burger bun will do.
Some smoked salmon. Cheap offcuts are fine.
Salad.
Hollandaise sauce. Don't make it yourself, but do buy Maille brand because it tastes nice.
Ketchup, if you're a pleb. I am a pleb.

Slice your buns in half. Layer some salad and salmon on the lower half of each.

Now, poach your eggs. I have never had the slightest bit of difficulty poaching eggs, but some people treat it like it's neurosurgery. Make sure your eggs are reasonably fresh. Break them into water that's fucking hot but not quite boiling. Don't touch or stir them. Don't let the water boil. They will set into a little cloud. Skim off the white crap that comes sprouting up - I have a skimmer that I use solely for this, although I'm sure it has some mysterious purpose in stock making. You can use a spoon if you lack a skimmer. Poached eggs don't take long, but will sit for ages in warmish water. I can't tell you when your eggs will be sufficiently poached - for that you must use your eyes. If this is really too difficult, separate your eggs and poach the yolk only. It's much easier to see when the yolk is set. If EVEN THIS is too much, fry the fucking things.

Drain your poached eggs on kitchen paper. This stops everything getting soggy because poached eggs are a bugger for hiding water in their fat, white folds.

Heat your hollandaise. You want a fat spoonful per bun. Maybe two. Don't let it boil, it just wants warming up.

Put a drained egg on each salad-and-salmon bun. Put the warmed hollandaise on top of the egg. Put the top of the bun on top of all this.

Serve with some salad on the side, because the yolk bursts and goes everywhere and you don't want to waste it. And some ketchup, if you're plebby. Eat it. Revel in it. You will need to wash your face and hands afterwards, so you probably don't want an audience.
***

I would show you a picture, but I ate it too quick.

The Best Sandwich

It's been a bit heavy round here of late, so let us lighten the tone. I think sandwiches are the greatest food on Earth. Whether it's a simple snack, or a meal in itself, a good sandwich is a beautiful thing. A bad sandwich, conversely, is an oral horror.

So, here is how to make my best sandwich. It may not be your best sandwich, but it's good. It's so damn good. I had to share it. 

YOU WILL NEED

Steak. Some form of salad leaf - I use baby leaf salad bags. Mayonnaise. Dijon mustard. Ketchup. Garlic. Ciabatta (or other bread roll).

So, steak. That covers a variety of meat. I usually get rump, because it's cheap and comes in relatively small piece, but you might be rich and therefore can buy sirloin or rib eye or...fillet. Pure greed ordains the amount of steak you will use. Don't get a really fatty piece - get a piece where you're left with enough steak once you've trimmed the fat off. Fat on steak is simply NOT NICE when cooked quickly. 

Take your steak out of the packaging, trim it of big fat lumps, put it on a chopping board and SMACK IT with a rolling pin until it's of reasonable thinness. You are going to eat this between bread slices; you need to be able to get it in your mouth. 

Once your steak is thin. put your pan on the heat and let it get good and hot with a bit of oil in it. Some people oil the steak rather than the pan, but I am not one of those people. Crush a clove of garlic.

While the pan gets hot, plop a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise into a bowl, add a big teaspoon or two of mustard and mix it well. Adjust the ratio of mayo to mustard according to taste. If you don't like mustard, use French's American mustard, which doesn't really taste like mustard but does add the requisite tang without burning your mouth out. 

Put the steak in the nicely hot pan, with the crushed garlic. I like my steak bloody as hell, so I don't cook it for long, but because the steak has been pounded thin, it doesn't take long anyway. Turn your steak regularly by the way: shun these people who reckon you should leave it on one side for a month to 'seal in' the flavour. They are lying, that is not how science works. I flip my steak every minute or so and it's perfect. PERFECT. Watch the garlic doesn't burn - flick it about a bit with the steak. 

Slice your bread in half while the steak cooks. 

When you think your steak is done, take it out, cut into it and have a look. If it's underdone, put it back in. If it's overdone, you must lump it. 

Take your slices of bread and wipe the cut sides around the pan. Garlicky steaky oil is a much better lubricant than butter. Now you are ready for assembly.

Spread mustard-mayo on the bottom piece of bread. Add salad. Add steak. Add ketchup. Add more mustard-mayo. Add top piece of bread. Squish it down a bit. The best sandwiches are always squished.

And then you can feast. AND HOW!

IF YOU ARE A VEGETARIAN

Swap the steak for sliced flat mushrooms. Fry them in loads of butter and garlic until they're thoroughly cooked, then use as THOUGH THEY WERE STEAK PIECES in the sandwich. This may actually be better than the steak version. It's probably mildly healthier.

Roast Chicken For Your Soul

When I am sad, and stressed, and wrung out like a filthy bit of kitchen rag, I make roast chicken. I made it yesterday when Jimmy came out of hospital. I made it on the first day Tom went back to work after the baby was born. I make it on Mondays, when everything sucks. I make it on Sundays, when everything will suck. I make it on Tuesdays because nobody likes Tuesdays. Tuesday feels like the entire week has risen up in front of you, defiant.. I make it because my children will clear their plates and I feel like I've done something right for once. I make it for no reason other than it tastes good and I feel better for creating something so quintessentially domestic.

My mother taught me to make a roast dinner, but she would spurn this as incomplete. Many people would.  Where is the bread sauce, the stuffing, the cauliflower cheese, the carrots, the mash, the proper roasties? BISTO GRAVY? Heathen. You can add all those things and more, and I do when the mood takes me, but this is not for then. This is for comfort; not the stress of a thousand things in the oven at once, of mashing, and mixing, and burning hot fat sploshing all over the place. This is the easy base from which all else can rise. This is for days when chopping things up is about all you can manage. And the washing up isn't too evil either. 

You will need a chicken, a lemon, some butter, some waxy potatoes, some garlic, some dried rosemary, some salt, some green vegetable and Bisto.

First, get your chicken. I would rather eat good chicken once a month than shit chicken every week, so I buy a free range one from a supermarket. It costs about twice what a battery chicken does, and it's not guaranteed to be twice as ethical, or even twice as tasty, but there is nothing more depressing than some poor pale creature that has lived out its six weeks of life up to its eyeballs in shit, crammed into a tiny space. If you are minted, buy an organic chicken. But try free range as a minimum. 

If you get your chicken from the supermarket, it will have the cooking time in minutes on the front of the packaging, if you cook it at 180 degrees. Note this. If you don't, there are sundry guides to cooking times on the internet. Preheat your oven. 

Get a roasting pan. I have two medium sized ones that are differently shaped, to accommodate chickens which are fatter or longer. Put a massive sheet of baking parchment in the bottom of the pan. This serves two purposes - it collects the juice, and it stops the chicken sticking to the bottom of the pan, which is a shitter to wash up.

Put the chicken in the baking parchmented-pan. Cut the string tying its little legs together, and untuck them from the cavity. The legs will spring open, like a birthing woman. Leave them there.

Get some salted butter. Cut a chunk off - how much depends on how sad you are - and blast it for five seconds in the microwave. Take it  into your paw and smear it about your chicken. All over the breast, the legs, the wings, the weird bits between the legs and breast. Wash your hands before you absent-mindedly wipe them on your jeans.

Take the lemon. Cut the lemon in half. Don't spray yourself in the eye as you do this. Take one half of the lemon and squeeze it all over your buttery beast. When that half is well emptied, shove it up the chicken's arse. Yes, you read that correctly. Keep the other juicy half; you'll need it later.

Sprinkle a little salt over the breast. I use a small amount of sea salt for this, because it makes the skin taste even more delicious. Saxa table salt is fine though.Don't overdo it.

Remember the cooking time for the bird? Stick your bird, uncovered, in the oven, and note (mentally or on your phone or on paper or whatever) what time it will be finished, and when it will be an hour from finished. 

Go do something else for a bit. A bath. A read. The telly. After half an hour, the house will begin to smell of chickeny goodness, and you will get hungry. 

About an hour before your chicken will be ready, get an ovenproof dish out, the sort you do pasta bake or cottage pie in. Get your waxy potatoes. I use Charlotte ones. They're a quid a bag from Tesco, but use whatever you like. Guess how many you might like to eat - we will generally eat a whole kilo between two of us. Adjust for numbers and greed. Chop them up. Doesn't matter how. I take the ends off, then slice them into rounds. Sometimes I do them as chunks, which tend to crisp up a bit better in the oven. However you do them, they need to be not-too-thin. Too thin makes the equivalent of crisps, and that is not what you want right now. Too thick and they don't quite cook through. Between a penny and a pound in thickness. When they are chopped, put them in the ovenproof dish. Slosh some olive oil over them. Squeeze the other half of the lemon over them. Sprinkle a little rosemary over; not too much or you'll just taste rosemary. Crush some garlic. How much garlic? How much do you like? One to two cloves gives a pleasant waft to the thing. Five gives a punch. Add that to the dish - I use a garlic crusher because then it melts into the potatoes and you don't get the nasty crunch of an unexpected slice. Add a good sprinkle of salt. Then mix it all up with your hands. Make sure each potato piece gets a bit oiled. If you think it's too wet, drain a little liquid into the sink. If you think it's too dry, add a little more oil. Cut the juiced lemon half into half again. It will be all sad and squidgy and dead, but it gives such life to the dish. Chuck it in. 

Put the dish in the oven. It will take between 45 and 60 minutes to cook, which should align with your chicken being cooked. Give them a stir if you think they're burning, but I always forget to check them, and they never do. Your hands will smell so good, you will want to eat them. Don't eat them. Wash them before you wipe them on your jeans. 

You have an hour-ish to kill. Go and do something relaxing. My god, your house smells amazing now, doesn't it?

I don't know what green vegetable you like. I tend to cook broccoli, green beans, peas, asparagus in season, or a mix of all of them. If you want them to be ready at the same time as the chicken, you'll need to be ready to cook them around 15 minutes before the chicken is done, but the nice thing about this is that unless you get stuck on the phone to someone or fall asleep or have an asthma attack, an extra ten or so minutes in the oven won't hurt. 

Is your chicken ready? You can skewer it to check - in the deepest part of the thigh, shove something sharp and then observe the juices that bubble forth. If they're clear, you're good. If they're pinkish, give it another five to ten minutes. I tend to trust the supermarket, and don't check. I deserve food poisoning. If your chicken is ready, remove it with a flourish, close the oven door and turn it off - you can leave the potatoes in there for a bit, they won't spoil. 

This chicken had twenty minutes longer than it should have, thanks to screaming children. Still tasted amazing. 

Leave your chicken on the side for a moment while you put a load of Bisto into a bowl. How much Bisto? I don't know. I like my gravy ludicrously thick, so I put in a fair bit. I don't think Bisto is really an exact science. 

To get your chicken from pan to plate is not necessary if you feel like just ripping the chicken off the carcass and shoving it into your face, and this chicken is so good, I wouldn't blame you at all. But I move mine out of the pan and onto a plate using a big spoon and a fish slice. I take the lemon out of the cavity, put the spoon in the cavity, and then use the fish slice to lift it from the pan onto the plate. Truly, I am an elegant genius. Should you drop your chicken on the floor...pick it up with a tea towel. You won't though. If I, clumsiest of women, can do this, so can you. You can put a foil tent over it if you don't think everything else will be ready for ages, but a cooler chicken is much easier to attack with hands and knife. 

You should now have a pan of delicious chicken juice and buttery lemonyness. Put some into your dry bowl of Bisto. No water yet, just juices and Bisto. It will look deeply unappetising and nothing like gravy. Fear not.

Mmm, slurry au Bisto avec jus de poulet!

Boil the kettle. While it boils, drain your veg and take the potatoes out of the oven.Give the potatoes a bit of a prod, to check they're cooked. They should YIELD. I love that word - yield. Give way. Fall to the sword that is the point of your little knife.

Your chicken should be covered in a golden skin, with speckles of crusty salt and generally look and smell beautiful. So beautiful it may be difficult to come to terms with the necessary carving. Do yourself a favour: rip some chicken skin off and eat it. Eat some more. Stab any wandering hands trying to steal your chicken skin with a fork. This is the definitive cook's perk. By the time you've eaten the skin, you should have a beautiful white breast looking up at you with a bone running down the centre. Put a sharp knife down either side of this bone. This parts the breast off the skeleton of the bird, making it far easier to carve. Men like carving on the bone, all knives and dead beast. I do not. Should this technique fail you, rip it off any which way you can. It all goes down the same way. 

Plate up. Chicken, potatoes, veg. Now pour just enough boiling water into your chickeny Bisto slurry to turn it into the consistency you want. In our house, that's basically meaty custard. Stir it vigorously with a fork. Pour it over your chicken, potatoes and veg. Eat it. Eat it all. Wonder why you ever feared roasting a chicken. It tastes good. It tastes safe, and comforting, warm and homely. It is balm. And you made it all by yourself. 

I have a confession. This chicken dinner didn't have gravy, I just lobbed some pan juices over it at the end because I was tired. And I made Ellabell Risbridger's amazing garlic kale instead of plain greens, but god it was good. It is always good. 

Leftover chicken mixed with mayonnaise and mango chutney make the best sandwiches I have ever had the pleasure of eating. You can also use them to make some sort of stir-in-sauce meal the next day. The leftover carcass, boiled in plain water for a few hours, makes the most delicious jelly of a stock. A chicken is a useful thing. But firstly, you get this meal, and that is always worth the effort. 

With thanks to Nigella Lawson's roast chicken in How To Eat, which is a must-read for food lovers, even if you have no idea how the oven goes on.