Frugal Foodies, thread 3! Favourite leftover dishes, avoiding waste, menu ideas. Plus pets, and other chat.

[Ninkanink]

Hey everyone! 🌺🌼🌸

1st thread is here

2nd thread is here

Looking forward to another lovely thread! ☺️ Eat, drink and be merry!

The crust looks really good on the bread too.

I don't follow anyone else's recipe now for chilli. Though I may have started that way. I use quorn mince.

Now I do it my way

Onions/shallots & garlic
Spices (chilli, smoked paprika, cumin and coriander - leaf as that's all I have at the moment. Sometimes black pepper too)
Sliced peppers
Quorn mince
Baked beans
Tinned tomatoes
Stock cubes
Marmite
Red wine

I sauté off the onion and garlic then reduce the heat slightly and add the spices and let them heat up

Then I add the peppers and sauté them off

Then I add the quorn mince, if it's frozen I'm using I find a tiny bit of water helps to break it apart quicker so it cooks evenly.
Then add the baked beans, tomatoes stock cubes and marmite.

Reduce to a simmer for about 15 mins

Then add the red wine and simmer a little longer

Serve with some kind of carb - I'm not really a fan of rice and find it hard to cook the small amount for one so I tend to go with cous cous or sometimes if I have them in taco shells

I think tonight a combo of cous cous and flatbreads if I can make the flatbreads ok!

Sometimes depending what I have in may also garnish with sour cream, yoghurt, creme fraiche, guacamole, grated cheese, lettuce etc

Sorry meant to say I've made cottage pie with quorn mince and I have used baked beans in too and I agree it's lovely.

The trouble I have when making such a pie is I tend to make my mash too soft and it sinks! Or maybe I'm making the filling too Liquid? Not sure

I also sometimes use a little grated cheese on top towards end of cooking and switch oven to grill

I've been working on a Facebook page about yellow sticker shopping. I have included recipes and links to budget recipes. It's www.facebook.com/Yellowstickerfamilycooking/

Wow! Well how ridiculously easy are flatbreads?!

I'm not a baker so I was wary having never made them before and not made bread for decades

But I am so doing that again! Plus I'm guessing cost pennies even with electric for cooking? I've spent a fortune on ready made/takeaway ones over the years.

And while I say so myself these taste much better not the dry kind I'm used to at all.

Only thing is I forgot to add flavouring but I will do next time

Chilli leftovers cooling in kitchen will definitely get at least 3 more meals out of that. Will store in fridge for now until I've a little more room in freezer over next couple days based on meal plan

Forgot pics! I always do that

Weeds 800g strong white, 300g spelt, 800g water, 20g salt. Baked in a le creuset at 240 fan and I got an ear this time!

Graphista nice work on the flatbreads!! yes it's probably falling through because it's too liquid. Try letting it cool down a while before you top it, it should thicken as it cools. Or cook off more of the liquid first.

Softshell crab sushi tonight

American style, rather than true Japanese, but you cook according to your supplies these days!

@Xiaoxiong thank you

Thanks for tips on cottage pie I'll try those

Ooh I miss sushi! There's a fantastic wee Japanese dd and I go to and I've not been for years, I miss the miso soup, Gyoza, salted edamame and sushi!

Mmmm gyoza...

Used roast chicken leftovers to make pasties! Two chicken and caramelised onion and two with chicken, passata and cheese. Really lovely, if massive, was too lazy to do smaller ones. Had a crazy on puff pastry (pre made, I feel no shame) last year and forgot how easy it is to make something good so going to do some more, we’ve just for them as snacks to nibble on for a couple of days but they’d be a nice tea with some salad.

@angelcakebananabrain thank you for the idea, I'll make something similar for DP's lunches this week - he's getting a bit fed up of taking sandwiches but they have no microwave at his work which limits us a bit!!

More banana and raisin cake made here today - plus a vege chilli and jacket potatoes prepped for tomorrow. DP has taken a liking to courgette cake so the grated courgettes are now draining for that. Should be getting a new veg box tomorrow too

@RubySlippers77 does he have a kettle at work? If so cous cous and noodles lunches would work, even mini pasta shapes depending how long he has to make and eat.

Cold stuff it doesn't need to be just sandwiches, Buddha bowls, salads (doesn't have to be limp lettuce and watery tomatoes, pasta, rice, potatoes can make them heartier and most veg can be eaten raw), pasties, sausage rolls, pies that can be eaten cold, crackers with pate/cheese/chutneys etc to top

In winter get a soup flask and he can take hearty home made soups in

Rubyslippers, I make lunches for my OH.
None sandwich, able to be eaten cold options I do, I addition to pasties and sausage rolls are:
Cheese and crackers
Fritters ( an egg, some flour and leftover veg / cheese, herbs, spices etc. fried in spoons full, like a drop scone).
Pasta of rice salad
So a noodles
Salad with something like chicken drumsticks, prawns, hard boiled egg
Spring rolls
Gyoza

Soba not so a

Are gyoza easy to make? I mean for me not for the experts on here

Fell off this thread as been a bit down the last few days. Missing the world! But pulling myself together today!
All your food looks lovely as always.
Plan to today is:
Sourdough pancakes with chocolate chips for breakfast.
Lunch: beef stew left overs simmered down to make a spicy soup.
Dinner sausages and greens as recommended up thread.

Might make fritters this week as we have lots of eggs - would finely sliced greens work do you think?

Bestbees everything works in gritters!
Gyoza are a bit fiddly to make, Graphista, not really hard, but the shaping is awkward until you get the hang of it.

Fritters, not gritters!

Six seed bloomers, with Hellraisin yeast this morning.
One for us and one for the neighbours.

Weeds you clearly bake on a tray, not in a pot! Does your oven get hot enough? I haven't been brave enough to step away from the le creuset yet!

Bees Ottolenghi has a recipe that uses only green herbs so greens would certainly work! The man clearly loves a fritter... cauliflower fritters, courgette and cheese, green peas, mint and feta which are lush (in the Simple cookbook he shapes them more like croquettes than fritters so you get more inside). Nigel slater has some nice carrot and coriander ones.

We have a tonne of eggs too, I might do fritters as well this week now!

Xiaoxiong I also bake in le Creuset, depending what I'm doing.
The banettons I used for these are too long for the pot, so they went on trays.
My oven is like a commercial one ( when the old one packed up I treated myself to an all singing all dancing, massive oven, rotisserie, wok burner, the works..) so gets plenty hot, you can also put a tray of water if you want to crisp the crust.I would say 220-230 is good enough for baking this way through.
I'd suggest a slightly lower hydration dough though as it can have a tenancy to spread if very wet.

I’m pretty impressed with my own bread these days but yours @Weedsnseeds1

Just starting to harvest from my garden, so today had home grown Swiss chard and chives with poached egg on toast; home grown salad with my tuna melt.

Did potato peel crisps for the first time (desperate for a snack and shopping comes tomorrow). They were really lovely. DH asked if we were poor Victorians... until he tried one 🙄😄!

I dug out some ancient seeds from the back of a drawer. Some have germinated, some haven't.
The ones that seem to have the best germination rates are either obscure, random things I bought on holiday, like Erba StellaandAmish Paste tomatoes, or Lidl ones!
But my Kiwi vine is absolutely smothered in flower buds for the first time ever, so fingers crossed