I absolutely love Sort Your Life Out on the BBC. Dilly, the organiser, is my hero and I go around labelling things like a fiend - my chest freezer is sawe-inspiring, I promise you. However, I'm not exactly living up to the decluttering queen's standards day to day. Quite frankly, I'm very messy and fairly lazy.
With my knee pain worsening over the past two month, the kitchen has descended into chaos lately (along with the rest of the house, god help me!) I though I best have a bit of a sort out. In doing so, I found an awfully nice lunch.
Zach says that to have an ADHD diagnosis, your quality of life has to be suffering because of your struggle to concentrate or remember things. We decided that means I have Mark's ADHD. He's vague and drifts off to something else partway through, but I'm the one whose life is affected. The number of unlocked doors, cupboard doors left ajar, half-done tasks is substantial and I have permanently bruised shins from walking into whatever drawer he's left open.
So while it's great that he thinks "I'll put that leftover lemon juice from the cocktails in a little tub in the fridge to be used up later," the system falls down because he doesn't label it and he forgets about it entirely the second he closes the door. (See also tins of baked beans, sliced tomatoes, mashed potato, gravy, ready sliced cheese for burgers).
Mark had put a third lemon juice in the fridge while the previous two were going manky, so I figured a proper sort out of the fridge was overdue.
I chucked a bunch of mystery items (seriously, LABELS, dude!) and checked the many (so, so many) pickles and condiments for Best Before dates and emptied out the meat and vegetable drawers to check the state of things.
I noticed the spring onions were looking a bit pathetic and the lettuce had seen perkier days so needed using up. There were three tubs of mashed potato, and in the meat and fish drawer was a tupperware with some salmon I poached a couple of days ago and didn't need all of.
Hurray, free lunch! I mixed the salmon flakes with some of the mash, finely chopped spring onions and a tablespoon of capers - I like putting capers in, it's like including tartar sauce. I separated an egg, adding the yolk to the bowl and whisking the white.
Giving the contents of the bowl good mix, I formed four patties. These were dipped in the beaten egg white then into a bowl of the sourdough breadcrumbs I keep in the freezer. (Every time I get to the nub end of the loaf it's usually going a bit stale, so I put it in the blender to make breadcrumbs and add it to the bag. It's very handy)
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| Spring onions at 1 o'clock, capers at 7 |
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I shredded the lettuce, and using the most recent lemon juice, did a quick vinaigrette. It was really tasty - a 10 minute lunch for two using up odds and ends. It was very satisfying.
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| OK, not elegant but very tasty |
I needed a nice and filling lunch because I was going to have some rather unpleasant dentistry that afternoon and who knows how long until I'm on solid food again! It was the nicest part of my Monday, other than Mark very kindly buying me flowers to cheer me up after the wisdom tooth came out.
It was nice to feel I'd made at least one small area of my chaotic house tolerable - especially as Miss B is coming home for the Easter weekend bringing two friends to stay, and we are going to need to fit a LOT of food in that fridge.
