After the busy Christmas and New Year festivities, where indulgence in rich foods and loads of comfort eating is a given, January is always a time for what I call my food resolutions; they vary year to year, from detoxing, to only organic, to light and lean, or healthy. Regardless of what my food resolutions are for each year, I feel that the kitchen must be prepared, pruned and ready for the year to come; I like to think of my kitchen as a garden, alive and seasonal. You need to put the bulbs down now if you want beautiful daffodils blooming in the spring time, don't you? so the kitchen is the same, every year, I take a day of those early January weeks and carry out a proper kitchen tidy that will make my food resolutions for the year a lot easier. You'll need:

Get rid of all leftover from the fridge:

Two ways to do thi: freezing stuff or eating it (I hate wasting food). The day after Christmas I freeze mostly all the leftovers from the stuffed leg of pork we had for Christmas dinner including enough gravy to re-heat the meat when I decide to do so. We ate asparagus pasta bake for 2 consecutive days to get rid of it (it doesn't freeze well). the first week of the year we had loads of nibbles leftover fromthe new year's eve cooking: parma ham budles (stuffed with dried figs and goats cheese), cocktail sausages, prawns in chipotle cream, fruit and cheese, cold meats, etc. The objective is to waste as little as possible and to use most of the food bought or cooked during the indulgent days between Christmas and New Years Eve.

Do a "Winter Clean" of the fridge: