Recycling

“Papa, I think we should take more things to the Orphanage soon, before Rosa breaks them. Because I don’t feel she appreciates her toys. And it would be wasteful to just throw them away.” Daisy our eight year-old announced recently. Clearly a dig at her five year-old sister, who just looked at her and then me and although her mouth opened, not a sound came out. Instead, she collected as many toys as she could carry and disappeared into her bedroom.

As it happened, my partner had to go away for two weeks recently and during this time, I worked from home. Apart from everything else, I put myself in charge of the cooking – much to the delight of our helper who is good at many things, but cooking is not one of them. And so, early Friday morning, while most people were still asleep, I set off for the market, near where we live in Thailand. Barely dawn and buyers and sellers were frantically to-ing and fro-ing like armies of ants. Later, armed with a fresh chicken and heaps of fruit and vegetables, I then set off to the supermarket. And having spent less than half what we normally spend a week on groceries, I arrived home in time for breakfast.

This single chicken (around 2kg) fed our family of four for 4 days. We had roast chicken and stuffing and roast potatoes and vegetables, washed down with delicious gravy on Sunday. I then used the chicken carcass to make some brine for a delicious chicken stew which comprised left over chicken, vegetables and with a bit of flour and parsley, I made dumplings. On Tuesday we had chicken, bacon and vegetable pie with mashed potatoes, peas and more of the delicious gravy left over from Sunday. And finally, on Wednesday, we had Chicken Bo Peep Pot pie (as Rosa, our five year old, calls it), which was all the left overs since Sunday, cut in chunks, and baked with a cheesy breadcrumb topping and the final lashings of the leftover gravy. 

Now you may think that keeping leftovers in the refrigerator is unhygienic. Well, actually, they get put in a storage bag in the freezer. In the past, our Bo Peep Pot Pie has included leftover Pizza, Beef Pie, Lasagne, Chicken Tikka and sausages and I have to say that these make some of the most unusual and yet popular dishes with the whole family. And all healthy, because we try and make nearly everything ourselves.…including the sausages.

So, I’m wondering how much of this I can apply at work. Recycling that is. For I don’t intend to start preparing recycled lunches for my colleagues. Although, retirement is looming and I probably will need something to do…… But, as it happens, just yesterday, a colleague asked me for all the information I had on a part of my job that I had recently handed over to him. So, after a flurry of emails, I found that I had recycled stuff which I thought I would just delete when I left. And so now I intend to go through the rest of information I have and instead of just deleting it or throwing it out, I will try and find another use for it. 

So there we have it, recycling is not just for food, clothes, toys and furniture, but for information and data too.