Weds 17th October

As I write this, dinner is gently cooking in the oven. I've just hot-footed it back from work - via Sainsburys, whizzed through before the post work rush arrived, so wow it was quick. And - bless them, they've yet to fill their shelves with Xmas tat, so I can still find things. 

Now, as I'm sure you'll have realised by now, this week is the one before payday, so I'm broke. So what I buy is important, and on the way home I put a good bit of thought into it - I bought chicken. We all know chicken goes further, but in order to bring the most out of it, I gave a good deal of thought as to how I'm going to cook it, and bought the accompaniments as carefully as I did the main bird. Alas much as I'd like to, I've never been in a position to afford a free range bird - yes, I appreciate that one ought to, that it's the epitome of Chicken eating etc etc, but before all these food nazis start screaming about it, frankly I can no more afford a free range chicken than I could go to the moon least of all at this time of the month.  Bring the price of a free range chicken down, and we might be getting somewhere. So I have a medium priced bird.

I bought onions, carrots, and a cabbage. Oh I can hear the screams of the teenagers from here, but frankly, I don't have one, and if I did, that teenager would have been eating these types of basic foods all of their lives, so lets not go there. To get the maximum out of this bird, I've chopped up one of the onions roughly, the same with a couple of the carrots, and I took the outer leaves of the cabbage, and the core, and gave them a good wash, and shredded them finely. I mixed them all up together and put them in the base of a large roasting tin. On top of the veg, and underneath the bird, I've put a couple of bay leaves, and a chicken stock cube. I do spend money on buying good quality stock cubes, well worth it if you ask me, and better value. I put another couple of bay leaves inside the bird, along with a bouquet garni. I rubbed the outside of the bird with olive oil, and plenty of pepper - freshly ground. No salt though, there's enough of that in the stock cube.  Then I topped it up to the level of the veg with boiling water - and sat the bird on the top. Basically it will pot roast - I should get a nice skin, with plenty of moist meat and a fantastic stock. All of the veg in the stock will go into the stock pan but ultimately be sieved out before I make the soup. I'll have roast dinner tonight, cold chicken for tomorrow, and soup for Friday.  You can't argue with chicken if you're broke - its a good few days meals.

And by the way I didn't go mad and have a cheese sandwich before bed last night!  I restrained myself and gave myself a pat on the back for doing so. But the sandwiches were lovely at lunchtime - really tasty. And of all the food at work, I only had a single chocolate chip biccie today!  Good going is what I say now - but it's only just gone five thirty and the evening is young,...