101 uses for a dead chicken - #1 Chicken, leek and parsley pie

One of the books I remember from my childhood was "101 uses for a Dead Cat". Not very good taste, but quite funny, especially when you are 9 or 10. My favourite cartoon was the one where you used the cat's bum as a pencil sharpener. 

I know. 

Sorry about that.

But it sort of popped into my head the other day when I was looking at the chicken before me, trying to decide how best to cook it. Before you start to worry, I wasn't contemplating turning it into any kind of desk top toy, or anything else other than a meal, but I reckon there are at least 101 ways to cook a chicken, and maximise the meal potential from a bird.

And if you maximise your bird, you reduce waste.

Food waste is a terrible thing.

We all know it. 

And I'm not just talking about the terrible irritation that rises up when the kids turn their nose up at whatever you've put in front of them.

Food is expensive. People put lots of time and effort into growing, cultivating, preparing it and we spend our hard-earned money on it. We are extremely fortunate to live in a country where we have a huge variety of food available to us.

On the other hand, we live in a society where children still go hungry; where there is an increasing need for the food banks. It seems to me that we owe it to everyone, not least ourselves, to do better at wasting less food.

According to Love Food Hate Waste, "...We throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have been eaten. It's costing us £12bn a year and is bad for the environment too"

This costs an average (if there is such a thing) family £50 a month. And apparently "If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the benefit to the planet would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road."

Staggering.

So, back to my chicken. It's true that buying a whole chicken usually represents better value for money than buying jointed pieces. You can get so much more out of it. If you get the opportunity, it's worth reading Rose Prince's book "The New English Kitchen" which is a great book, crammed with ideas for making meat (especially) go further. If not, you can work on the basic principle that for a family of 4, a whole chicken will give you at least 2 main meals, plus stock for soup and bits for sandwiches. 

If you don't like 'boiling bones' as one of my friends delightfully calls it, the other way to get delicious chicken stock is to poach your chicken whole first. You can then eat it as you would roast chicken for your first meal, or turn some of the meat into a pie.

I got the idea for this pie from The Claire Macdonald Cookbook. I'm in awe of Claire Macdonald. She's a favourite of my mum's, and her recipes are really great. As a hotelier on Skye, cooking everyday, she produced 'homely dinner party' food which she hoped would be a treat for her guests to eat. I can't imagine anything nicer than spending a day out in the majestic Skye mountains or on the beaches, then coming back for the sort of food she was serving up. When I was flicking through the book, this pie seemed like just the sort of thing to serve up to the kids and the Husband after our first day back at school and work since the Italian escape. There's a good load of meat left for another meal and for some sarnies, and as a result of poaching the chicken I've got about 3 litres waiting to be used for other things. Marvellous. And don't balk at the addition of curry powder. It really works!

Chicken Leek & Parsley Pie
 for 4

1 chicken - mine was 1.7 kg
1 carrot, cut into chunks
2 small red onions (or equivalent - I used what came in the veg box) peeled and halved for the poaching, plus 2 more peeled and finely diced for the filling
2 sticks of celery
2 bay leaves
A good sprig each of thyme and rosemary
A good handful of parsley, leaves & stalks, plus another good handful, thick stalks removed, finely chopped
40g butter
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced reasonably thinly
25g plain flour
1/2 tsp mild curry powder
250 ml milk
100-150 ml stock reserved from cooking the chicken
salt & freshly ground black pepper
300g puff pastry
milk for glazing

First, cook the chicken. Put it into a large pan with the carrot chunks, the halved red onions, the bay, thyme, rosemary and the first handful of parsley, a few grinds of salt and pepper, then cover with water. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for an hour or so till the chicken is cooked. Allow to cool in the water.

Remove the chicken from the stock, and then strain it through a seive. Reserve what you need for the pie (100-150 ml) and put the rest aside for soup, risotto, or whatever you have planned for it.

Strip the meat off the carcass, and put a layer of chicken pieces in the bottom of your pie dish. I used the meat from the 2 legs (thighs and drumsticks) and some more of the 'brown' meat. The rest of the meat can be used in another meal. Watch this space.

Pre heat the oven to 220C

Melt the butter in a pan, and add the leeks and finely chopped onion. Cook gently till soft and transparent then stir in the flour and curry powder, cook for a minute or so, then stir in the milk and stock, and bring to the boil and cook till thickened. Add salt and pepper and the chopped parsley. Cook the sauce out for a few minutes, then pour over the meat and stir it all together to combine.

Cover the pie with the pastry, decorate as you see fit (pastry leaves are always a winner in my book, I don't care if anyone says they are naff), brush the pastry with milk, then bake for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 180 for another 20 minutes.

Serve the pie to your family. They will love you even more.

Broccoli, leek and bacon potato 'pie'

There is a lot going on in my head at the moment.

 All the usual 'am I a good enough parent' nonsense, which inevitably gets louder as half term approaches and the kids show signs of fatigue. In the bath on Sunday night, Pink declared that she was 'overworked' and needed longer than 2 days for the weekend, and then on Tuesday morning, I found Blue sobbing on his bed, half dressed, just wiped out. Part of me wanted to give him the day off, and part of me wanted to say, welcome to how I feel almost every single day. I settled for a cuddle and a suggestion that if he still felt knackered after school, he didn't need to go to orchestra. He rallied, of course.

Then I went along to a breakfast talk this morning run by our Church. It's part of a mission week that's going on, designed to offer people the opportunity to find out more about being a Christian in a non-threatening environment. This basically involves inviting people to eat with you and this morning, coffee, croissants and marmalade was about as unthreatening as it could possibly get. 

I hadn't been planning to go to the thing this morning (I'm involved with a coffee morning on Friday as part of the week already) but I went along as a spur of the moment thing. I didn't have anyone who might have wanted to go to take along with me this morning, and in fact I was setting off for my dog walk having dropped the kids at school. The dog was most put out that he got short walk rations - and having gone in thinking I was just bolstering numbers, I ended up being faced with a big issue that I have sort of known that I need to deal with for a long time but keep pushing away. That's how it seems to be with God - when you least expect it, something comes bam out of no where and hits you between the eyes, and you know you have to deal with it. Mysterious ways and all that.

So I'm wrestling with tired children and how best to keep them going for the next couple of weeks, my own inner turmoil (it's not that interesting, I won't go into it, just don't think I'm keeping something juicy and interesting from you), and other bits and pieces like how I shape the next few years of my working life, whether I will ever actually sit down and write the books I start in my head when I'm walking the dog, what to get the Husband for his 40th birthday (we might have had the party, but his actual birthday is looming in December), the looming issue of secondary school for Blue, and more besides. Probably the standard stuff everyone else is dealing with - I know it's nothing earth shattering - it just seems very loud at the moment. Plus, I seem to have gone into hibernation mode. This happens every year about this time - the desire to eat peanut butter on toast moves from being something I succumb to for the occasional breakfast the morning after a night where too much wine was consumed, to something I crave almost constantly.

Faced with all that, comfort food was definitely on the cards tonight. Pie. Unfortunately, the pack of ready rolled puff pastry that was handily in the freezer defrosted into a sticky unusable mess (cue inner screaming and foot stamping), so I had to do a quick re-think and slice up some potatoes as the topping instead. Not ideal as I was up against it timewise to get Pink fed and to a ballet class, but it all worked out rather well in the end. And do note how I've helpfully specified cooking the potatoes first rather than in a mad panic at the end...



Broccoli leek & bacon potato pie 

3-4 large waxy potatoes 
2 tbsp cornflour
1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
4 slices smoked streaky bacon, derinded and chopped up quite small
4 small-ish leeks, thinly sliced & washed
300ml warm vegetable stock
80g low fat garlic & herbs cream cheese type stuff (I used Philadelphia*)
large handful of parsely, finely chopped
butter, salt & pepper

Slice your potatoes into fairly thin slices and cook in boiling, salted water till they are cooked but not falling apart. If you have a steamer pan, steam the broccoli over the potatoes for 5-6 mins or until just tender.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and pop them on a tea towel or piece of kitchen roll to dry off.

Mix the cornflour in a small pot/bowl etc with 2 tbsp water and set aside.

If you haven't done so already, cook or steam the broccoli till tender.

Heat a frying pan and start cooking the bacon. I used a non-stick pan so didn't add any oil, and then once the bacon fat had started to run, through in the leeks and cook till softened. If you need a bit of liquid, you can always chuck in a ladleful of hot water - I used the broccoli water...

Mix the broccoli and leeks and bacon into an oven proof dish.

Pre heat your grill.


In a small pan, mix the slaked cornflour into the stock and bring gently to simmering, stirring pretty much constantly till the mixture thickens, then stir in the cream cheese and then the chopped parsley. Season if necessary, then stir the sauce through the veg & bacon.

Layer the potato slices on top of the veg mixture, season with salt & pepper and drop a few small pieces of butter over it all.

Pop under the grill till the top layer of potatoes is golden and possibly a little crunchy too.

Know that for a brief moment, or two, life will be uncomplicated while you eat dinner. And enjoy.
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*but this isn't a sponsored post or anything, its just what we had in the fridge...

Chicken Pie - because real men (and boys) don't eat couscous

Normally, when the Husband is away, I descend pretty quickly to the "can't be bothered" level of cooking. Why his presence or otherwise should matter, and what that says about me is probably something I should spend some time considering, but not here. The kids are happy to eat pasta till it's coming out of their ears, and I'm happy to oblige, supplementing it with various cheap and cheerful vegetable combinations with the occasional bit of left-over meat or, prize of prizes, some bacon. If he's away for a long time, I might offer some mood boosting fajitas mid-week to lift the gloom, but like my housekeeping generally (which is scratchy at the best of times) it can pretty much all go to hell in a handcart, there's so much else to get done when it's just me at the helm. I salute people who do this on a more permanent basis for what ever reason.

Normally he's only away during the week which means there are the easy distractions of school and other activities. However, he snuck off at 6 on Sunday morning this time leaving me with a whole day of them potentially dwelling on his absence. With the help of some friends, we got through most of it, and I headed off the late afternoon melancholy that I was fearing with a DVD session and roast chicken. Desired effect (happy children) achieved, it has also meant I have had superior pickings in the fridge to see us through the beginning of the week.

The kids were out on Monday anyway, and so last night, armed not only with some left over chicken, but also some chorizo, I put together a particularly tasty version of my cold chicken standby. This is basically a one pot meal - dry couscous, cold meat, chopped tomatoes, frozen peas, whatever you have to hand, to which you add stock flavoured with ground coriander, ginger and smoked paprika (because I didn't have any harissa), cover the whole lot with foil and bung in the oven for 30 minutes. I didn't have quite enough couscous, so supplemented the carbs with a can of chick peas. Pink loved it - she can be fickle and picky but I have never seen a plate clear so quickly. Blue, he of the bottomless stomach and hollow legs, picked out the meaty bits then started pushing it around his plate, trying to engage me in ever more spurious conversations. Then we got the 'If I don't finish this, do I get any pudding?' - this when he still had half a plateful left. He ate on, reluctantly, and we eventually compromised at '9 more mouthfuls' (it would have been 8, but he was 9 on Saturday so the number of mouthfuls goes up!).

"Please tell me you will never cook that again" he said.

I was tempted to tell him we were going to have it again this evening, but without the chorizo, but I refrained. Instead, I stripped the chicken carcass, made stock with the bones, and got the little darlings into bed as soon as I could manage...

Anyway, the Husband came back this afternoon, a day early. Instead of rushing round tidying up the house and doing other wifely things, I focussed on the most important issue - how to use up the last of the chicken in a manner that would please everyone. In view of the available ingredients - cold chicken, the stock, a couple of leeks and some lovely thyme in the garden, I  made a chicken pie inspired by a recipe in Jamie's Dinners, a book that I picked up by chance this morning. I get a little annoyed when famous chefs start name-dropping about the tips they've had from other famous chefs/foodies, but in this case, I'm feeling fairly sanguine about it. I mean, if Fay Maschler, the food writer, suggested adding little balls of sausage meat to a chicken pie, who am I to argue?

Jamie uses raw chicken to start with, so I've added my cooked chicken at a later stage in the process and using the lovely stock instead of wine and milk. I've got less chicken than him, so I've added in extra veg, and probably a little more sausage...

Chicken & Sausage Pie

olive oil
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
leaves from a handful of thyme
2-3 tbsps flour
1tsp dijon mustard
approx 1 pint of stock
200g cold cooked chicken
1 small can of sweetcorn
200g frozen peas
4 sausages (300g)
500g pack puff pastry (you may have leftovers)
1 egg

Pre-heat the oven to 220/200 fan

Heat a lug of olive oil in a parge pan or casserole, and add in the leeks, carrots and thyme leaves. Cook, stirring for 10-15 minutes, then increase the heat, stir in the flour and keep stirring for a minute or so. Add about a wine glass or so of the stock, stirring as you slowly pour it in to the pan to incorporate it with the flour and prevent lumps, then stir in the rest of the liquid, the mustard and grind in some salt & pepper. Bring to a simmer then cover and cook for 30 minutes or so, stirring every so often to stop the mixture catching on the bottom of the pan.

If the sauce is too loose for pie, you can mix up a little more flour with some of the sauce in a separate bowl then tip it back into the pan and stir - don't just sprinkle in more flour as it will just lump up.

Mix in your cold chicken, sweetcorn and peas to the sauce, and tip into your pie dish.

Squeeze the sausagemeat out of the skins, and divide up into 12-16 balls. heat some olive oil in a small frying pan, brown off the sausagemeat balls, and scatter over the top of the chicken mixture, then top your pie with the puff pastry. I don't have what I'd call a 'proper' pie dish, so I rub some water round the rim the pyrex dish I use, and put some strips of the rolled pastry on first before laying on the proper sheet of pastry.

Once you've laid the top sheet of pastry on, trim and crimp the edges down so they look pretty, and beat the egg and brush it all over the pastry. Bake the pie for 30-40 minutes when the pastry will be golden brown and flaky and the filling piping hot. There was so much veg in the pie, I only needed to boil some potatoes.

Clean plates all round.

This month's Herbs on a Saturday is hosted on Blue Kitchen Bakes for Karen at Lavender and Lovage and I'm linking up because of all the lovely thyme that went into this pie. 

I'm also linking to the Season of Soups and Stews hosted by Lancashire Food. The requirement is to use stock in your recipe - I made my own chicken stock for this pie.

And last, but not least - This post is part of the #FaveFamilyRecipes Competition with BritMums and Tilda Rice. Every pack sold will provide a meal to an expectant mum in need in support of the World Food Programme’s Mothers Helping Mothers initiative in Bangladesh.

Easy (!) Cherry & Raspberry Cheesecake Tart

Yes, another EASY recipe.

Later today we are heading off to France. I am sooo excited. It's a long time since I have spent any appreciable amount of time there, and it is a place that I love, so I am looking forward to everything about the next 9 days, including time with the Husband and Blue & Pink. I am also looking forward to croissants and cheese, baguettes and ripe produce - tomatoes and peaches will be particularly on my hit list. We are taking the van over to Cherbourg and have one night booked in a camping municipal quite close by, then who knows where we will end up...

A few weeks ago, I made the no fuss fruit tart out of Kitchen for the Forever Nigella challenge. On Thursday, we had our last meal with Juliette, the French girl who has been staying with us for the last 3 weeks. Despite my fears she proved remarkably easy to feed. Over the time she was with us, as well as gaining an interesting insight into the sleeping habits of teenagers, it became clear that although skinny as a rake, in the annoying way of French teenage girls, Juliette likes her puddings. I wanted to make something special for her last night with us, but that wouldn't take up any time. Working on the same theme as the no fuss fruit tart, but using cherry jam and raspberries instead of lemon curd and mixed summer berries, I came up with 

Easy Cherry & Raspberry Cheesecake Tart

NB the only thing to note about this is that it needs about 4 hrs in the fridge (or longer) before eating.

375g digestive biscuits

75g soft unsalted butter

300g cream cheese, if you remember, get it out of the fridge beforehand

approx 300g cherry jam (I didn't measure exactly, just scooped it out till it looked right with the ceam cheese)

350-400g raspberries

dark chocolate for grating

Whizz up the biscuits and butter in a food processor till all crumbled and then press into a tart tin, (ideally approx 25cm diameter, and one with a loose bottom) to make a case. Put this in the freezer for 15 minutes or so to firm up.

Clean out the processor bowl and then whizz up (or just mix by hand) the cream cheese and jam, then spread into the bottom of the tart case.

Spread the raspberries gently over the filling (don't drop from a great height or they will sink in) and pop into the fridge for at least 4 hours, although over night would be good (it helps with getting it out of the tin for presentation purposes, if you are fussy about things like that).

When ready to eat, remove from the fridge and if you can, pop it out of the tin. Grate over some dark chocolate.

this is the last slice...

I thought I would link this up to the 'Zero Baking required' blog event because it's just that. This another great blog event organised and hosted by Sarah at Maison Cupcake. Check out lots of easy no bake recipes now that summer finally seems to be here :-)

Right, that's it from me. I'm off to pack me a van and head to the Continent. See you in 10 days time!

Not Quite Veg Everyday - but trying: nettle soup, courgette and rice file pie and oven dried tomatoes

I’ve been bemoaning the fact that my mission to eat less meat has gone somewhat awry during the last couple of weeks, but today I made it back on track big time.

Don't they look lovely?

I’ve been wondering about nettle soup on and off for a few years now but never had the confidence to just do it, but there it was, in the Saturday Guardian – St Hugh and a recipe for nettle soup. We have a garden full of nettles, so I donned some gloves and the scissors and set off to harvest the finest nature has to offer. I did as I was told and just picked the tips. The dog was very interested – he once stung himself in the eye in the self same nettle patches and has been fairly wary since, so he probably couldn’t work out why the human who does all the sensible things in his life like walking him, feeding him and removing ticks, was engaged in something so hazardous.  

Nettles? Nasty things

Anyways, I had everything the recipe required apart from leeks, but because I needed a battery for my scales to work out if I had enough nettles, I trotted off to the co-op. No batteries, so I pilfered my neighbour’s scales – she was reading the same nettle soup article. Spooky...

green soup

The picking over, washing and stalk removing was a bit of a faff but it’s a dead easy recipe once that’s done. The soup was a gorgeous bright green colour. Both Blue and Pink were keen to try (result in itself), although Pink decided against the addition of the yoghurt (as did the Husband). And it was TOTALLY DELICIOUS. The only drawback - my washing up gloves clearly weren’t thick enough as I got stung through them while I was doing the washing etc and my fingers are tingling as I type, but definitely one to repeat.

Blue was worried though. “Don’t we normally have a roast on Sunday?” he pondered. Obviously drawing his personal line in the sand there. “Well, we’re not having roast, we’re having pie” I explained, neatly sidestepping the issue of what exactly was going to be in the pie. However, mention of pie was clearly enough to satisfy him. I’m not sure he was expecting it to be courgette and rice filo pie which is what in fact it was. Another Veg Everyday recipe, really easy to put together – grated courgette, grated cheese, long grain rice, dill, parsley and a couple of eggs, in a filo case. The courgette liquid cooks the rice inside the pie case. I was a little sceptical that this would actually happen – it’s the sort of thing that normally goes wrong for me, but it worked.

By the time we’d finished at the allotment got home and I’d actually got it on the table, though, Blue and Pink were both knackered. “What’s in the pie?” asked Pink. “Well, I don’t like courgette”. Grrr – annoys me so much when they say that. “But I will try it” she added, graciously. I resisted the urge to thank her in my most sarcastic voice, gritted my teeth and got on with serving it up.

You know, I think it actually looks like what it's supposed to...

It was really lovely. We had potato salad, watercress, the oven dried tomatoes from Veg Everyday, and some hideously over food-mile’d mangetout peas. A feast indeed.

Sad to say, Pink tried and didn’t like, and Blue manfully ate it but said it was OK if he had it with the potato salad. A shame really because the Husband and I both enjoyed it (at least I think he did). So not one for family meals again at the moment, but perhaps by the time the garden is full to burst of courgettes the kids will have changed their minds. Here’s hoping.

T.F.I. - against the odds

It may not have gone unnoticed that I have been childfree since Monday lunchtime. I cannot believe it is Friday already. Where was my free time? My time to relax? My time to bake and blog to my heart's content?

Well, it seems that I am incapable of taking advantage of the situation sufficiently. True, on Monday evening, we had a lovely dinner to celebrate our anniversary, but I didn’t get as far as pudding because by 8, although my crab cocktail starter and the James Martin duck breasts in plum sauce were well under way, the pistachios for the hot chocolate pistachio pudding were still firmly in their shells in their packet in the cupboard. And I was too tired to even start.

I suggested to the Husband that I would save the pudding for Valentines’ day and had another glass of wine instead. Needless to say, the decorating didn’t get started.

Valentine’s Day – we both remembered – the mutual association of wedding anniversary and Valentine’s Day is very helpful, I find – but aside from cards, we don’t really do much. Never more so than this year: first thing, we cleared out the furniture that was left in Pink’s bedroom and then once work was finished and the dog was walked, I got on the painting clothes and set to with the sanding and cutting in. One of her walls has exposed beams in it, so the whole lot had to be painted with a brush. We had re-heated roast for dinner – hardly a great romantic feast (although Sunday’s gravy was particularly good this week) – and the pudding stayed resolutely unmade in the cupboards. We finished most of the cutting in and I pinned the curtains.

On Wednesday, I did manage to make a pie – a delicious pie: steak and ale, following a recipe from Barney Desmazery in a  Good Food mag – Feb 2010: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/252607/proper-beef-ale-and-mushroom-pie . I had to make a pie to feed 10 people to take with me to a supper on Wednesday evening and doubled up, this fitted the job nicely. Typically, I hadn’t properly read the recipe, so instead it was beef, ale and swede pie, but none the worse for that. I did have the dried porcini mushrooms but not the fresh ones. I also didn’t have enough plain flour to make the double quantity of pastry that would have been required to make a fully encased pie, so I made one batch, topped up the plain flour with some spelt, and made what the author of the recipe refers to “something that’s essentially a stew with a sheet of pastry” . Sorry Barney, but that’s just life. To make up for the unromantic Valentine’s meal, I made the Husband a little pie to eat on his own while I was out and covered it in hearts. Don’t tell me romance is dead in our house!

I managed to get a coat of paint on the woodwork and walls in Pink’s room, walk the dog and complete my working day. Allotment Junkie sent me a text. “I hoped you might get a bit of a rest.”

why do my cupcakes never look this good?

Thursday dawned. Another coat on the woodwork and touched up the walls first thing (the Husband had finished a second coat on Wednesday evening, fuelled by his post-Valentine’s pie) with a view to it all being dried by the evening so we could move everything back in to her room. Walked the dog, did my work. The hearts and cupcakes stickers arrived for the walls. I couldn’t wait till the evening-such fun covering her newly-painted white walls. The Husband came home. We put her bed back into the room and did some running repairs to 2 of the slats – too much bouncing on the bed, me thinks. The Husband put the rest of her room back together and turned her pink fluffy square IKEA rug into a heart shaped one, and went out to get fish & chips. Finished the curtains – my patented quick fix curtains – pin everything together and sew it all in one go. Not orthodox perhaps, but it works. I know this is supposed to be a food blog of sorts, but can I just say that the material I got is sooo cute. Cupcakes. So sort of related.

We missed a night at the pub to get it finished. One day she might appreciate what that means.

So here I am, Friday afternoon. The children are to be returned to us tomorrow at Kings Cross at 12.30. In honour of our anniversary, we have planned a night out this evening. It was originally to have been in London, but for complicated reasons it is to be in Salisbury. Part of the reason for the mad painting and decorating has been with a view to getting it all done so that we can have this night away. As all parents, we spend much time plotting for moments when we can recapture, even for a short time, what it was like before the children came along. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to go back to that state permanently, but even time on our own in the house ends up swallowed up in doing jobs – as evidenced by this week, and we were both really looking forward to a night away with no unfinished jobs staring at us.  We’d even managed to find someone to look after Fred, so all bases were covered.

However, disaster! During the course of Thursday it became apparent that Blue was coming down with something. Would he be well enough to travel? The Husband and I have been putting on our respective brave faces, and fashioned a plan should he not be well enough. A plan which would have meant foregoing our night out. I tried not to feel too disheartened- after all it’s certainly not the first time such a plan has been thwarted - but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a little bit like having an ‘it’s not fair’ tantrum. You’ll be pleased to know that on this occasion I resisted.

And now hope has been rewarded. It seems he is well enough to travel tomorrow, so in an hour or so I can log out and head for the bright lights of Salisbury. And after I don’t know how many years, I have won a whole £25 on the premium bonds. Let’s go crazy!