Food thread! Favourite leftover dishes, avoiding waste, menu ideas.

[Ninkanink]

Thought I’d start a thread for everyone to post their tips and ideas on how best to use foodstuffs. Hoping it could be an easy guide as well for those who maybe aren’t so used to home cooking or using leftover foods, or understanding how best to utilise everything you have, expiry dates etc.

We have always been very conscious of food waste so we plan very carefully to use every scrap of food, it’s not hard, it’s just a skill one develops.

I’ll post some of my favourite leftover/using up bits meals and menus here and if anyone else wants to as well, please do!

managedmiss you can make Fifteens with your ingredients - it's a Northern Irish traybake type thing
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/fifteens

Thanks chewbecca- I shoulda known this, see basic knowledge gone!

I have some glasses that would work as both cutters and rolling pin.,

@Chewbecca

If you have leftover cooked rice, takeaway or home.
Wrap tightly in clingfilm as soon as you have finished eating, or sooner if you have cooked extra at home.
You want to exclude as much as air as possible and wrapping it up warm helps with that.
Stick in freezer

@Graphista agree with what has been said just above.

I’m sorry, I can’t always respond to long posts because I have processing issues and my brain doesn’t take it all in properly but I will try to read through carefully and answer some things when I can, and in the meantime hopefully others have answered or will answer too.

If you’re not cooking with meat then I would think 25-35 min at 180 should be fine to cook pretty much anything.

Dishes such as stroganoff or the others you’ve mentioned can be frozen without any problems. I usually use old takeaway containers but foil trays or plastic bags are absolutely fine. I usually do it this way: cook enough for three - one to eat on the day, one for the fridge to eat within 4 or 5 days, and one for the freezer.

I like Pioneer Woman for general easy cooking inspiration (very much a meat eater but she does do vegetarian here and there, she was a vegetarian for years):

thepioneerwoman.com/

Thanks op sorry for long posts

"I usually do it this way: cook enough for three - one to eat on the day, one for the fridge to eat within 4 or 5 days, and one for the freezer." Great idea definitely stealing that one.

No room to sit in my kitchen but I do tend to work around energy/motivation levels

No no please don’t apologise! It’s my issue nothing to do with the length of your post! I was just explaining in case it looked like I have been ignoring you.

Ah, thanks zillardy, that makes sense and will try next time. Too late for this lot.

Do you (anyone) reckon I can use bisto cheese sauce instead of bechamel in Bolognese pasta bake? I don't want to use the milk for this.

I can do butter, flour, water and cheese, but found the bisto in the cupboard and may as well use that and keep the cheese for eating.

Yes, I’d do that.

I’d forgotten about the existence of bistro cheese sauce. I will have to try and find some.

Great thanks 😁

@PurpleDaisies They do loads, our Iceland Overseas had curry and parsley sauce too. I'd only ever bought gravy at home but glad we picked this up now.

This thread is my harbour in the storm. Reading it makes me feel calm and homely. Thank you @Ninkanink for creating it and all of your contributions and thank you lovely like minded people for sharing the contents of your fridges and your recipes as a much needed distraction.

We ventured out for the first time in the fortnight for a click and collect and I’m very excited to report that we have pasta, chopped tomatoes and most importantly loo paper, items I’ve missed a lot over the last weeks! I feel so appreciative for these things which is nice.

Today’s lunch was to use up a third of a carton of Passata. Toddler lunch was pizza crumpet (sliced it horizontally to get two “pizzas” from one crumpet. DH lunch was pizza bagel with odds of veg from the fridge. My lunch was an egg “wrap” topped with Passata, crispy bacon, sweated onion, mushroom and tomato and rolled up!

Kids tea was pasta, last of soft goats cheese (10 days over but fine) with the remaining crispy bacon, onion, mushroom and tomato from lunch plus peas, Parmesan and some cooking water. Lovely!

Just browsing recipes for DH & my dinner now. Something broccoli, mushroom or cauliflower based probably.

Elderly fruit can be blitzed with a tin of coconut milk and frozen for ice-cream. We've used a very old banana, half a tin of peaches and half an orange that was going off

When I next get my hands on a whole chicken I really want to make Korean fried chicken. That might only do two meals, though, because I am greedy I got 2 chickens in Aldi today; they had loads.

@suelleker I’m sure we’ll get one sometime...just trying not to go to supermarkets at all for the time being - have got a delivery booked for three weeks’ time but in the meantime we will make do as much as we can. Will need to make strategic visit to local Tesco express when our milk runs out so I might get lucky and snag one there!

@Furble 🌷

There’s a great baking/cooking thread starting up too:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3864036-To-ask-you-to-show-me-your-baking-food

I'm enjoying this thread. We're lucky as one of my lovely neighbours is a caterer and has set up a series of box deliveries for us with her various suppliers. It means that I won't need to brave the supermarket but I will no doubt be begging on here for ideas to use veg and meat that I don't normally buy. So far I've cooked fairly normally for us but lunch today I ripped off a suggestion further up for a tomato olive and courgette tabbouhleh as the veg box had a mahoosive courgette in it. I used pesto and lemon zest as a flavouring as I don't have any parsley and the tops of spring onions as my fussy DC wouldn't like raw red onion. I was really chuffed to find a third of a packet of bulgar wheat in the cupboard - goodness knows when it was bought but it tasted ok.

Tonight will be chicken fillets with breadcrumbs from the freezer and I had a load of softening apples so I've made an apple cake with the dregs of a pot of yoghurt.

Tonight we had a Thai curry with new potatoes and broccoli (lots in the veg box). There was lots of sauce so I used a slotted spoon serve the veg, saved a portion for soup tomorrow and then split the rest. It was really nice.

To make it feel more like a Saturday, we had a starter of Thai crackers and sweet chilli sauce. Small pleasures!

Another good thread with hints and tips:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3863906-What-random-stuff-are-you-doing-to-avoid-wasting-food

I’ve been criticised for overly long posts before - that’s my daft brain (ocd) working overtime.

Not done the batch cooking I intended to today because... I fell asleep! It’s all caught up to me (stress has meant I’ve not been sleeping as well plus noisy neighbours upstairs on isolation are being arses, loud banging from 7am every fucking morning!)

So I’m just gonna do a simple veg stir fry for dinner which is normal for me but will use up some of the many peppers I need to use and finish off a punnet of mushrooms.

Aiming to do the batch cooking tomorrow now, I really need to as the creme fraiche has to be used.

Love these threads ... I’ve always got soup or curry on the go to use up all odds and sods !
No waste here

Graphista make your posts as long az you like, we have all the time in the world right now

Thank you for the other thread tips!

DP went shopping today and did get plenty - including more bread than we can possibly all eat, unfortunately - however there was no beetroot (on my shopping list!), bizarrely. Our freezer is now jam packed so no cooking for me for a couple of days whilst we eat what's already made and try to work our way through the bread...

Did you make the Thai curry from scratch @PurpleDaisies or did you have a jar/ sauce? I've never managed to make a good one by myself