This Christmas saw me hosting dinner for nine of my family. It’s always nice to have everyone gathered around, and even nicer when it’s in the comfort of your own home. As my house used to be my grandparents house, it must have been lovely for them to “come home” for Christmas, and despite some slight disasters in the kitchen (only I could remember at 3pm on Christmas Eve that I hadn’t got the turkey out of the freezer! Terrence the turkey, much to the amusement of my friends spent the night in my bath to aid his defrosting!), a Christmas feast was delivered, devoured and enjoyed by all. The one thing that struck me however, was the sheer amount of food that I had in my fridge. It was packed full of vegetables, cheeses, meats and puddings, condiments, creams, custards and beverages. In fact with hindsight it’s a good job I forgot about Terrence because there would have been no room for him in the fridge!!
My fridge always looks kind of similar to Bridget Jones’s. You’ll usually find a carton of milk in there that’s on the turn, a wedge of stilton that would definitely need the edges scraping off before consumption, a jar of Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise (none of that low fat rubbish when it comes to mayo for me – ask anyone who knows me, it’s kind of my “thing”!) and a jar of Branston Pickle. Occasionally if I’m feeling indulgent there’ll be a tub of Greek style olives with feta cheese, and there’ll always be a bag of carrots. The carrots aren’t for me – the pooch adores them, and they’re good for his teeth and breath – a sort of natural doggie toothbrush.
The fact is, that I never have a full fridge because I never see the point in cooking anything when it’s just me.
Gaga is even worse than me. The most I have ever seen in her fridge was two bottles of Rosé, some cat milk and an emergency bar of Galaxy chocolate. Like me, she rarely cooks for herself. She’s a little worse than me however and does predominantly live on take away’s and dinners at her mums. I just tend not to eat in the evenings. If I’m really peckish then I can usually find a packet of prawn cocktail crisps lurking at the back of the larder. Gareth finds it all rather strange. He prepares himself breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, every day. If you look in his fridge, there’s always something green in there (and I don’t mean the kind of green that’s growing on my stilton), there’s fresh milk, some kind of meat, and various other tasty bits and bobs. He’s even got a fruit bowl...and it has fruit in it...rather than unopened post and stray pens that he hasn’t given a home to yet! We have argued that as we’re all singletons, and two out of three of us don’t cook for ourselves, perhaps Gareth is the odd one out. I suppose it’s down to his years in the Army, where the routine of eating three square meals would have been drummed into him from the minute he arrived for his basic training as a spotty gangly teenager.
Gareth can be quite...hmm how can I put it...honest at times, and I think both Gaga and I felt suitably ashamed when he accused us of not looking after ourselves. There’s nothing worse than someone like Gareth audibly tutting and shaking his head at you whilst telling you, “if you won’t look after yourselves why would you expect anyone else to?” to make you feel a little guilty that you’ve essentially been a bit lazy and have neglected yourself. We all know that a healthy attitude to food is important, and that regular healthy and satisfying meals are key to good physical and mental well being. It’s just that it can seem so pointless when it’s only you. The effort it takes to cook and wash up after a meal, when it’s only you who’ll be eating it, always seems a bit OTT for my liking. I don’t mind doing it for nine people at Christmas, but just for me??
Nevertheless, I have started the year as I mean to go on, and have (for the last four days) cooked myself a sensible dinner every evening. Unfortunately my portion estimates are a little generous given that I’ve always been used to cooking for two, however the pooch doesn’t seem to mind, as he’s getting the left overs. Now the only problem I have is that given I started out with nothing in my fridge, after rustling together four meals, you can imagine how little food I have left in my house! Today’s meal of hearty vegetable soup with bread was improvised (it was supposed to be something far grander) as unfortunately it seems that even when frozen, some food, if left for over a year in the freezer, still goes bad! (This disappoints me greatly as it means that the majority of the food I have in the freezer is now inedible – bad times) It looks like a trip to the supermarket is in order to re-stock!
It’s all part of the master plan of course. Healthy eating, regular exercise, less alcohol consumption...my body is a temple (no jokes about the size of the Taj Mahal please). Aren’t new years resolutions great? Well...ask me in February and we’ll see if I’m still sticking to it!!
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