new year, new stuff

well, it's been a crazy Christmas and New Year, we planned less as we had so many leftovers.
I knew we'd have chicken as we do every year on Christmas Day, (I hate turkey, so we get organic, free range and spend money on the accompaniments) and Littl'Un did her Stone Age act with the chicken on the bone, and Big'Un went to town with her fave, the brussels.
Left over chicken got folded into a pasta dish with left over veg and similarly, the gammon we had on New Year's Eve is still going.
Ah, the gammon, now that was fun! I desperately wanted to try the cooking gammon in cola trick that was brought to my attention by Nigella, but is apparently common in parts of the US. But with my caffeine sensitive kiddies, I couldn't risk it without taking advice.
Well the consensus was that cooking doesn't "kill" caffeine, as it does alcohol, and I couldn't go for caffeine free coca-cola (tm) because that doesn't use sugar and the sugar is an important part of the process. Not to mention I won't even allow sweeteners in the house, let alone into my beloveds precious little bodies! Then a helpful Facebook friend reminded me that Whole Earth cola is sans caffeine, so then I scoured the shops for the magic stuff! Asda used to sell it, and I thought I might find it in Waitrose, but no, I finally tracked it down in the little health shop in Southgate where I used to go regularly when I lived 10 minutes away. I'm so pleased it's still hanging in there.
Well, I have to say the effort was worth it! I'd picked up a gorgeous free range smoked gammon in Sainsbury's after Christmas, half price, and Godpapa found the right recipe to follow, and we found it luscious and juicy and really really tasty.
Big'Un had 2 or 3 big slices, and Littl'Un has been chomping some most days since.
We had our usual picky party food for the New Years "party" - including the much advertised - and extremely overpriced - sweet sandwiches from M&S, but the true star was Godpapa's cola gammon.

We've barely had to cook since then, we've had gammon and spaghetti with garlic and sweetcorn today, and sandwiches, and ham & cheese salad plates. Definitely worth the money, even if we'd paid full price.
I will be doing that again!