Quietly, quietly, like poaching fish in sea-salty water... just a shimmer on the surface, so that I doubt myself, and wonder if it is cooking at all. But it is, the flesh firming to that sweet milky opacity. That would be a good way to write a blog.

Tonight? I'm not eating that fish, with its juicy flakes only just sliding apart, slippery with melted butter. No. Turkey. And at this time in December, it's not a luvvie, middle class turkey. Nope. They are still vary much alive, gobbling in their fields, gobbling up their organic oats, rustling their feathers and shaking that pendulous throat. My turkey is a metaphorical Turkey, a mass produced, frozen animal, the only one available. In a turkey version of Huxley's Brave New World, it would be one of the creepy sub-normal Es.

It is, you see, two weeks early for a good turkey, and the uncomfortable lot of the food writer is to be cooking ingredients at the wrong time. We preach local and seasonal, but when a magazine wants cherry recipes for the July issue, it wants them in February, so we are the ones haunting the aisles in search of Argentinian, Brazilian, Australian fruit.

And that's how it is. I have to test recipes for turkey leftovers. I could wait until after the lovely, happy, Public School turkeys arrive around 21st December. But that would mean publishing the recipes mid January. Which is precious little use to anyone.

So if you see me with an unsavoury label in my basket, be kind. Don't call me a hypocrite. Or at least, call me a pragmatic hypocrite.