Well interesting comments about poultry.. it's interesting to see that you don't see big chickens in the shops here like you do in the UK - it's actually virtually impossible to get big chickens. Is this because the Spanish don't pump them full of growth hormones and water?

We have also noticed that a home roast chicken not only has much more flavour than the equivalent UK chicken, but we don't get the 1 1/2 inches of water/fat in the roasting tray..

At Christmas - partly due to a translation 'thingy-up' and partly due to Tracey still working in lb and oz (didn't we go metric in 1971?) we ended up with a 15Kg or 33lb (we wanted a 15lb) turkey. Oops. Did you see Mr Bean's christmas - it was about that size!

Anyway, I was expecting this HUGE beast to be dry and tough and to get about a gallon of goo in the tray. It ended up that after 8 hours in the oven (minus legs as there just wasn't room in the oven) we had no more than 1/4" of fat in the tray and it was one of the most tender and moist turkeys I've ever had.

Nigel