When in January does it become too late to be wishing people a Happy New Year? A fortnight in? Three weeks? Burns Night? We've already gone past all those points, and February is nearly upon us, so I suppose it must now be time to go back to just a plain old hello. Seeing as this is my first post since December though, I'm going to do it anyway - happy new year to you all, and I hope 2016 is a good one for you.
It definitely feels too late to be talking about what you got up to over Christmas, as that feels like an eternity ago now, but sod it, I'm going to do that too, as otherwise my festive tinned shenanigans will go unwritten and unread for another eleven or so months, going against my aim to be more productive this year. Which I'm not doing too well on so far.
Avid readers of this blog (yes, both of you) may remember that last year I attempted a Christmas dinner made entirely from tinned goods, the elements of which ranged from the surprisingly delicious to the frankly revolting. Lingering somewhere in the bottom half of that scale were the somewhat disappointing roast potatoes, which some would say are the backbone of any half decent roast dinner, but my tinned new potatoes cooked in olive oil were far from that - pale, lacking any crispness, crunch or much flavour, they were nothing to write home about.
At home for Christmas this year, I had no inclination therefore to subject my family to anything similar for our big festive meal - but I did happen to have in my possession a tin of goose fat, which as everyone knows is the perfect cooking medium for creating a truly great roastie. I had only ever seen it sold in jars before - would the tinned version be as good?
On opening it up, it looked, well, much like the goose fat I'd bought in jars previously, in that it was whitish, slightly translucent, and rather gloopy. I had neglected the instructions on the tin to refrigerate for two hours before use, which presumably would have made it solid and hence eradicated the risk of dripping the stuff everywhere when spooning it out.