Sometimes you just don’t feel like cook­ing, espe­cially after a high endurance hol­i­day like Christmas. The turkey is in the oven now, roast­ing to a golden brown and we are fast approach­ing left­over madness!

There are only a few times of year when the fridge is as over­flow­ing as it will be over the next few days. Magazines are filled with tips for using up all that turkey. Recipes for turkey hash, turkey soup, turkey a la king.….I pre­fer a sim­pler approach and just use what­ever is already on hand to throw together a snack plate.

I always keep dif­fer­ent breads, crack­ers, olives, pick­led veg­gies, cheeses, nuts and char­cu­terie on hand for throw­ing together quick antipasto plates. It’s more fun than a PB&J at lunch, eas­ier than a cooked din­ner and more impres­sive than pop­corn as a movie snack.

Here, I’ve used some typ­i­cal antipasto bar items includ­ing lupini beans and stuffed cherry bomb pep­pers.  There’s some ten­der Rowe Farms herb-roasted chicken and a sweetly spicy Sable & Rosenfeld 3 Pepper Smash sauce. The cheeses are two favourites; Morbier and 5th Town’s Cape Vessey.

snack time

Not every­one is cook­ing a turkey this week­end, there may be lamb, ham or SPAM to use up. You could do this plate a thou­sand dif­fer­ent ways, using proscuitto, hard-cooked egg and pecorino with Ryvita crack­ers or taleg­gio, cold roast pork and fig jam with Ace baguette.….

Just throw every­thing in your fridge up in the air and see what lands on the plate, then eat it!