However … my husband said the bread was all very nice, but he wished it could make sourdough. So I started a starter, which I have named Brenda. She’s just equal parts of flour and water, refreshed every day, and alternating between rye and white flours. And I deemed her ready for work on Friday. Now, I’ve never made sourdough bread before, although I have had several goes at a starter – turns out the simpler, the better, apparently.

I have a friend, Piers, who is a professional baker (usually, he’s not baking during the lockdown), and I found this recipe in his mailing list Not Loafing Around.  It was very complicated – far too complicated for me – so I simplified it a bit, and this is what I did.

And here’s how I made my loaf, with all due respect to Piers.

You will need:

100g starter
200g organic white flour (or any bread flour)
160g warm water
And a big mixing bowl.

Just for the record, also used a plastic dough scraper, and a proving basket which Piers kindly gave me a year or two ago. Here it is, containing Brenda on one of her final rises. I don’t yet have a dough whisk, but one is on order!

The night before you want to make the bread, take 100g of your starter, and mix with the flour and water to make a smooth batter. You don’t need to worry too much about lumps, but smoother is better. Cover this starter (I used a tupperware type box)  and leave it to its own devices overnight.

Not to confuse you, but I had about 600 grams of starter, so I completely skipped that stage, but it’s there for reference.

 Mixing and ‘kneading’
360g starter (keep the remainder for your next loaf)
385g organic white flour
250g warm water
12g salt

Firstly take one chicken. Set it on a bed of (thawed) frozen casserole veg, put a lemon inside, sprinkle with garlic powder, and roast. Serve with roast spuds, cabbage and stuffing. Second night was cold, with bubble and squeak.

Secondly, put the veg and leftover gravy into the soup maker with some lentils, and make soup. I didn’t want soup, so remainder went in the fridge.

Thirdly, get Pete to strip the carcass. Not feeling in the mood to do anything with it, put the resulting meat in the freezer.

Fourthly, put carcass in slow cooker with water to make stock. Get Pete to strip the remaining meat from the bones, and strain the stock. Place both in boxes in the fridge.

Fifthly (nearly there), remove very elderly leeks and carrots from the fridge, and chop finely. Fry off slowly in a little olive oil, in a huge cast iron pot. Remember bag of frozen diced swede, retrieve, and bung it in. Add chicken stock, chicken/lentil soup, shredded chicken, pearl barley, water and salt/pepper. Cook very slowly for a couple of hours.

Absolutely fab, and even better today. And there’s loads more.

The filling was

• 400g frozen lamb (from Iceland)
• 1 mug of red lentils
• 1 chopped onion
• a few rather wizened mushrooms
• a tin of baked beans
• some Henderson’s relish (use Lea and Perrins if you have it)
• a good pinch of mixed herbs
• garlic granules (or fresh garlic, but I love granules)

Fried off the onion and mushrooms in olive oil. Dry fried the mince – it was frozen, so easy to do. Add mince, Hendo’s, lentils, baked beans, herbs, garlic granules. I hurled in the last of Monday night’s onion gravy too.

I cooked this on a low heat for about 90 minutes, just to let the flavours embed. Topped with mashed potato with grated Red Leicester cheese through it.

It made enough filling for eight portions. We made a big enough pie to do two nights, and the other half of the mix will go into the freezer for another day.

• carrots (I tend to buy a big bag, and dice them up myself)
• peas
• spinach
• cauliflower
• broccoli
• green beans
• sweetcorn
• sweet potato (again, I chop and freeze these myself)
• chips
• hash brown fries – these are gorgeous, and add a bit of texture to, say, a macaroni or cauli cheese
• mash – very useful for a quick cottage pie, to thicken soup, to rustle up potato scones
• sliced peppers

I also freeze anything that’s getting a bit old; there’s some diced swede in there right now, and a butternut squash that needs dealing with, but the freezer is SO FULL, because I made a huge vat of bolognese sauce at the weekend and it took up all the space.

So don’t sneer at frozen veg; they’re generally frozen as they’re picked, and so are usually fresher than the ones in your greengrocer or supermarket.

Please note that the photo is not my freezer – I can’t stand back far enough to get a photo of mine that would show you the chaos within. But trust me that it is more chaotic than this picture.

Anyway, as I sit here in front of the wood burner, on what should be the first working day of the year (but Pete and I are struck with the lurgy), I fell to wondering just what is in the freezer. And off the top of my head, this is some of it (but almost certainly not all)

• a box of cooked goose, waiting to be a pie
• one cooked chicken breast (I tend to cook up a few at a time, for quick pasta/stirfry/sandwiches)
• also, a small box of cooked chicken, from the last roast chickie!
• two packs of puff pastry (see goose above)
• two lbs of sausage meat, in separate bags
• one smallish piece of leg of pork
• one larger piece of leg of pork, bought because I decided the smaller piece was too small
• at least one pack each of small sausages and pigs in blankets – actually, there’s two each; I just went and looked
• two packs of bacon
• three small boxes of cooked red cabbage
• one box of vegetarian chilli
• some fish fingers (number unknown)
• four cod fillets
• four tuna fillets
• a couple of salmon fillets
• some random Indian stuff, some home made, some from Iceland – at least two meals worth
• frozen blueberries
• various frozen veg
• 3/4 of a bag of ice
• four small sirloin steaks (bought on special offer from Lidl just before Christmas)
• a bag of ready made sausage rolls, and two Greggs cranberry and turkey sausage rolls (I know, I know, but they’re lovely)
• a loaf and a half of sliced bread, two fruit teacakes, a pack of brioche buns, and a couple of other rolls

So, I need to get my creative hat on, and make some meals with a lot of this stuff. Keep reading!

These pakoras were made with leftover cooked sprouts and an aging quarter cabbage lurking in the fridge veg drawer, but anything similar would do! Cauliflower, peas, potatoes – great way to use up any cooked veg.

Chop, and boil cabbage for 10 minutes in a little water (don’t discard the water after), and quarter the cooked sprouts. Dice an onion or two. Finely chop a knob of ginger.

Combine chopped ingredients and drained cabbage with a little grain mustard and lots of ground spices; I used turmeric, coriander seed, cumin seed, garam masala, dried chile, asafœtida, cinnamon, ginger, kalonji, black peppercorns, oh and some salt.

Add enough gram flour to bind, and the cabbage water you kept, blended with some white wine vinegar and a little maple syrup, sufficient to leave the mixture moist but not overly wet. Stir thoroughly with your implement of choice – I used a fork.

Cover and leave, overnight ideally, in a cool place for the mixture to bind; this isn’t necessary, but helps keep things from breaking up whilst frying

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan, and place pakora sized blobs in, flattening them with a spatula, and fry until cooked on each side, and possessing of essential food group brown crunchy bits. Turn out onto kitchen roll on a large plate to drain.

(These could be deep-fried. of course, but that’s a lot more hassle and really isn’t needed…). Apologies – the one in the photograph is quite, erm, well cooked

So last night, we took most of the remaining sprouts off the stalk, and I tossed them in olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder and lemon juice, and put them on a baking tray lined with foil. 20 minutes at 200C (gas 6, I think), and they were just starting to caramelise.

I’d cooked up some fusilli while they were in the oven, so added the sprouty mix to the drained pasta, bit more oil and lemon, and a grate of parmesan, and a cheap, nutritious, delicious supper.

And if you don’t like sprouts, then we’ll eat yours, OK?

The basic recipe is thus:

• 650g flour – today I did about 300g wholemeal and 350g of Allisons seed and grain bread flour
• 7g of dried fast acting yeast
• 1 generous teaspoon of salt
• 1 flat dessertspoon of sugar
• 400ml of luke warm water

Mix the dry ingredients well together, then add the water. If you’re using a stand food mixer, you can walk away for five minutes or so at this point, otherwise you’re going to have to knead it. I added some dill weed to this morning’s loaf.  When kneaded, form it into a ball and put it in a bowl covered with clingfilm. Even in my cold kitchen, it was well risen before I went to bed.

Before baking, knock it back (just a bit more kneading), and then shape it into whatever you want – I did a round loaf this morning. Leave it for about 15 minutes. Heat the oven to about 190C (I think that’s gas mark 5), and bake for about 40 minutes.

I’m using the Allisons bread because the Shonky Shop* (as we call it) at the top of the road is selling this off at 3x1kg bags for a quid. We have about 10kgs of it in the store cupboard, and I’ll be going to buy a load more this week, if they’ve still got it – it’ll be good for a few months yet, and Brexit is coming.

*They sell food coming up to “sell by” date, and we’ve had some cracking bargains from there.

Put some pasta on to cook – we had spaghetti, but honestly, this works with any pasta.

Slice an onion and a red pepper, and sauté them down in a little olive oil until they’re soft. Slice up a pack of smoked salmon; if you have cats, they will be under your feet while you do this, trust me. Add the cooked pasta to the pan, with a little lemon juice, black pepper, and some double cream.

Scoff. Really quick and easy. fifteen minutes start to finish.

You need three parts cooked potato, two parts flour, and one part butter/marg/vegan spread of choice – I usually work on 150g of spud, but if it goes over a bit, no matter, just scale up the other ingredients. You will need a dribble of milk. Add half a teaspoon of salt. Add some grated cheese if you want. Add some herbs. Whatever.

Mix up the ingredients. You could do it by hand or with a potato masher. You can do it in a food processor. You can, as I did this morning, use a stand food mixer. Then add a little, and I mean a little, milk. We’re talking a couple of teaspoons here to start – can’t be precise because every variety of potato is different, but be very gentle with the milk adding, cos you can’t take it out. Knead the mix a bit.

Next up – you can roll it with a rolling pin, should you feel inclined. Or you can just flatten it with your hand. We’re not talking haute cuisine here, You want it to be about a centimetre deep. I generally shape mine into a round and cut it into six wedges, but feel free to cut it into rounds if that’s the way you rock.

Now, cooking. The best way is a cast iron griddle pan, hot. If you get it right, you can wash up the starchy mess left by the making of them. Just let them brown on one side, then flip ’em over and do the other side. Or you can do them in the oven – about 15 minutes at 190c should do it, but they’re nicer griddled.

Eat hot with lashings of butter. We had some for breakfast with leftover stuffing, pigs in blankets and little sausages.