I've been home for Christmas...

And it has really been lovely not having to cook for myself, as selfish as that sounds! Tonight was the first night since the 22nd that I've had to think about what I'm going to cook, and it was quite a struggle!

As can be expected with it only being three days since Christmas, our family is totally swamped by turkey, and there is a limit to how many years you can smile through turkey curry, turkey and ham pie, turkey turkey... But, with it only being three days since Christmas (and having had venison at my grandmother's for Boxing Day), I haven't quite reached the stage where the sight of turkey makes me want to weep. My parents have gone to a pub quiz with a couple of their friends, so it was up to me to cook. Brilliant, I thought at first. A massive kitchen with properly clean dishes, loads of food in the fridge, more kitchen gadgets and saucepans than a student could dream of, what could be better? Well, having some clue of what I was going to cook would be a start...

I don't know why I think that if I open the fridge and see nothing that inspires me, if I open it thirty seconds later I'll suddenly have an epiphany and will be able to whip something amazing up, because in all the times I've done that, it has never happened that way. Instead, I end up staring at the food, all of which is delicious, but none of which I can imagine going together, closing the fridge, wandering around the kitchen, opening a couple of cupboard - then repeating the entire process. If nothing else, it kills the time.

In the end, I decided that I had to cook something because, even with it just being me in the house, I couldn't actually justify skipping straight to pudding! I grabbed some double cream, an onion, some diced chorizo, pasta and the obligatory basin of turkey!

I gently fried the onions in a frying pan while the pasta was bubbling away, and just at the point when the onions were starting to soften, threw in some chorizo to colour the onions and get some of the lovely, intense oil into the pan. By the time the onions were totally softened, the pasta was pretty much al dente, so I turned the heat on the frying pan way down and added some of the turkey, shredding it into the pan, and stirred well so the oil from the chorizo coloured and infused it. Once the pasta was done, I drained it, added it to the pan with the turkey, chorizo and onion, and poured some double cream into it, then turned the heat up a bit so the cream had a chance to coat everything in the pan.

Simple, quick, delicious. Looking forward to tomorrow's turkey offering before I head back to Reading for work!