A stuffing

Crumb the interior of one small white tin loaf from Waitrose.

Chop 25 organic hazel nuts and add.

Pound five peppercorns, preferably with a wooden pestle and mortar from a Hook Road car booter, and add.

Chop two onions and add.

Thinly slice (cross-wise) two stalks of celery and add.

Chop the leafy part of one bunch of fresh sage from Waitrose and add.

Stir in two eggs, mixing the mixture thoroughly.

Push down into a white enamel pie dish, which the mixture should fill, gently rounded. One desert spoon of rape seed oil on top. Cover with four rashers of what passes for streaky bacon in the ready wrapped departments of supermarkets. Bake for 40 minutes at 170C and rest for a further 10 minutes with the power off.

Very good served next to a Waitrose essential chicken - having decided after Christmas that stuffing was better not stuffed. Stuffing-free stuffing as it were. Not forgetting the crinkly winter cabbage, boiled.

This despite BH having unearthed something very like packing thread in the interval. On a reel rather than in a hank, brown rather than green and probably once used by FIL for mending satchels, shoes and such like.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/fowlsew.html.