Day 4 - Sunday 4 October 2009

Today, being Sunday, we had a roast. Actually we don't always have a roast on Sundays but today we did and it was chicken. I find that the effort in preparing a large meal is rewarded later on in the week by the benefits obtained from the leftovers.

It was my husband who cooked the chicken and he did so according to a recipe we picked up from the family we visited in France this summer. Cut a couple of slices of bread (stale bread would do nicely) and rub them with the cut edge of a clove of garlic. Then stuff the bread into the cavity of the bird and roast as normal. The dry bread soaks up the juices released on cooking and the garlic flavours the meat from within. I can't remember whether this was in the original recipe but, in addition to the garlic, my husband seasoned the bread with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. The result was exceedingly tasty.

There was minimal waste from the chicken today; just a few wing bones. The remains of the bird have been returned to the fridge. Tomorrow I'll salvage every last edible morsel of meat from the bones before boiling the carcass with an onion, a carrot and a couple of bay leaves to make a fragrant stock. I haven't yet decided what to do with the meat, but it will provide one more meal. If the chicken had been a larger one we might have got another two meals, but it was a smaller bird and we were very hungry/greedy this evening!

So today's waste comprised:

2 egg shells (from biscuit making this afternoon)
170g vegetable peelings
bones from two chicken wings
3 apple cores
1 pear core

The bones will be added to our brown council household waste recycling bin. This is collected weekly and sent to a special heat treatment plant where it is converted into compost. It can take meat and fish waste which we can't compost at home and which would otherwise have to be put in the landfill bin. The introduction of this bin collection has made a considerable reduction to our waste.

Two of the three apple cores will go to the wormery. The third has been fed to our hamster!

PS The chard we ate with our chicken came from our garden. It was planted in amongst the alpines in our rockery in the spring. It made a slow start but then it suddenly took off and has produced a bountiful harvest. Besides which the rhubarb pink stalks are rather decorative.