Were you fed-up this Christmas?
Is cooking at least one meal a week with most of the dish consisting of leftovers from a previous meal an essential sign of good stewardship of the earth's resources?
The traditional Christmas turkey reappeared in at least four guises in most households during the 1960s and 70s....
The options were:
- on Christmas Day - hot, roast meat with all the trimmings
- on Boxing Day - cold meat with salads
- the next day turkey stew with veggies
- the next turkey curry with rice
and finally the carcase was boiled to make a soup, with sometimes enough stock leftover for a risotto.
The Sunday beef joint would similarly re-appear through the week. Although the turkey cost a lot more than today, it lasted for lots of meals.
In the current climate of microwave instant meals and where leftovers from turkeys are often just binned, are we failing in our Christian stewardship of Creation when we don't use up all our leftovers?
Reducing Leftovers
Using leftovers is a good model of stewardship - but you have to know what you are doing or food poisoning can become an issue. There's nothing quite like 'bubble & squeak' to take my taste buds back to childhood.
Many people, myself included, tend to travel over Christmas - so I might have Christmas day at home and then we decamp to another relative on Boxing Day. This means we can't use leftovers up, because it may be some days before we return home. So we shop really carefully to ensure we don't end up with a fridge full of food that has to be thrown away. It's really easy to get into a shopping frenzy before Christmas and over-shop, so equally important about stewardship is planning. Having said that, I do still have a rather stinky Stilton in the fridge (and I'm the only one in the house who likes it!).