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!

Plans went awry yesterday as I discovered I only had one onion left! More arrive on Wednesday. So lunch became random bits from the fridge, cheese, olives, salad and some homemade hummus all with homemade sourdough.
Dinner was a riff on sausages and greens as mentioned upthread: seared sausages, added last sliced onion, half a sliced apple and half a bulb of fennel and some fennek seeds. Cooked down. Added cooked potatoes and the dregs of a jar of chutney with a little water. Then added shredded greens and fresh chili. Was delicious!

Today is a fast day so soup and then mushroom and homegrown spinach omlettes on the menu.

Tomorrows plan is fritters with greens and cheddar for lunch, dinner will be pork tenderloin, braised fennel and roasted new potatoes.

Going to try and courgette and banana sourdough cake today to use up the glut of bananas, as I am the only one who eats them!

Hope everyone has a good day.

Oops forgot to add that we have spent the weekend planting so we have courgettes, tomatoes, beans, peas on the go as well as rapberries, spinach and rocket that was already on the go.
I have been drinking lots of fresh herb tea (lemon balm, rosemary and mint) and am trying to dry mint and lemon balm for tea in the winter. I get through lots of herbal tea so though this might reduce costs/waste.

Does anyone have any suggestions for radishes? I've just pulled a lot from the veg patch. I eat them raw with sour cream but would like to make them more palatable to the rest of the family

I put radishes in stir fries.

Could someone help with bread cooking times?

I've been cooking loaves (just standard white loaves, nothing fancy like the rest of you have been doing!) at 160 fan for 35 minutes. Would like to make some bread rolls later this week, but no idea how long they'll need to cook for?

I cook a 500g loaf in a Le Creuset pot at 230 fan for 45 mins so quite a lot hotter. I would probably cook rolls on a tray at 200c for 25 mins? Weeds probably knows more!

I roast radishes in butter - I tried it once ages ago in an attempt at a low-carb roast potato alternative, and liked it a lot. Some nice ideas here too: dianahenry.co.uk/journal-entries/humble-radish/

I have leftover pork loin from yesterday's roast so ramen for dinner I think...also I need to plan my next week's meals to do our ocado order, it's such a faff but essential. I've signed up to Eat Your Books to try and use my cookbooks more and help with meal planning.

Rolls 220 normal or 200 in fan oven. About 20 mins, but ovens vary so may be a few minutes more or less.

What’s everyone cooking today? I’m hoping dh can get more flour after my bread flour was full of mites. Sad times!

Last week was an assault on the freezer because it was full to bursting after all the batch cooking. I’m quite liking the pattern of having a couple of weeks cooking a lot followed by a lazier one eating the frozen stuff.

Lunch is going to be houmous and carrot salad stuffed pitta bread.
Dinner is using up some veg before shopping tomorrow so a bit of a free for all vegetable and (veggie) chorizo sausage pasta. I’ve got spring greens, red peppers, baby corn, mangetout, courgette and spring onions so should be nice.

My meal plan next few days (lunch/dinner):

Mon: quesadillas/ramen with pork from last night's roast, bamboo shoots (tinned), pea shoots, soft egg

Tues: kids: ham sandwiches/fish fingers. Us: sourdough topped with avo and burrata and chili crisp/ sausage and cavolo nero skillet

Weds: PB&J sandwiches or leftovers/spag bol

Thurs: courgette fritters / lebanese takeaway!

Then our Ocado delivery, butcher delivery and veg box all arrive on Thursday (it's taken a while to coordinate all of these!) so the cycle begins again...I need to plan that week now to make sure the right stuff is ordered tomorrow. It's exhausting, I have to say.

Having a hard day today made worse by the fact that like an idiot, I logged onto ebay at 3am and accidentally ordered 2 big bags of plain flour rather than one and the seller refused to cancel. So I will be handing out some plain flour to neighbours I guess!! Completely the opposite problem to you Purple!!

I am trying my hand at making baguettes today though. Weeds, so that should make me feel better. (Or worse if I fuck it up...)

Possibly related to my bad mood today, and also to my baking/cooking exploits, I bought a set of scales which connects to my iphone and I have resolved to weigh myself EVERY DAY. (Have been reading about the relationship between BMI and covid19 severity - I am only just in the overweight zone at 168cm and 74kg but the chart says I should aim for between 52kg and 70kg - so here we go...)

Well...I never cooked yesterday because...I flipping fell asleep! Every so often it all catches up to me plus I'm not sleeping great cos having to use different products is making my eczema flare up.

So I just had a late supper of crackers, cheese, quorn pepperoni, sweet pickle, olives and sun dried tomatoes.

Eggs and milk need using here trying to find energy/motivation to make strata and scones

I also need to bag and freeze the chilli I made Saturday, I'm going to take out a "chicken" casserole for tomorrow's dinner so that will create a little more room in freezer too

Energy and motivation levels low at the moment, struggling.

One thing that is why I've been procrastinating over the strata - what does it taste like? I like quiche/omelettes is it similar ?

Today was eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast, overnight oats for lunch ( carbs in the middle of the day), and I’m about to look up a salmon and pesto recipe. I have loads of veg and salad to go with.

Delicious omlette and salad for dinner tonight, topped with mushroom, spinach and chilli.

Anyone else find they are tweaking their plans all the time depending on left overs and what arrives in veg boxes etc?

Tomorrow we will have flatbreads, hummus and carrot and courgette salad for lunch. Dinner pork tenderloin, braised fennel and new potatoes

Ok strata should be cooked but it feels not? Odd texture sort of soufflé like feel like it's hard to tell when it's done

Graphista yes it will be soft and fluffy. Remember you havd more liquid than an omelette, so it's a softer texture

Pita breads, halloumi and salad this evening

I've never done baguettes Xiaoxiong, don't know why, so will watch with interest.

Thanks for reassurance weeds here goes

Are those homemade weeds, they look lovely.

I’ve never made strata, it sounds very nice. I might give it a go.

Of course, Purple
Pita bread is a quick and easy bake as all the puff happens in the oven.

I’ve never made them! I’ve had proper fresh ones before and they were so good compared to shop ones. I’ll add them to my baking plan. Is there a particular recipe you’d recommend?

I could never go low carb!!!!

I did my usual trick of not really measuring, but it's similar to this recipe.
Except I didn't do overnight in fridge, just about 1 hour at room temperature.
sourdough.com/recipes/really-simple-sourdough-pitta

And I only used bread flour, no plain and probably only about 250-300g flour in total

Fantastic, thanks!

Hmm strata a lot of effort for not a lot of flavour to be honest. I followed this recipe

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cherry-tomato-ham-bread-butter-bake

Needs more flavour components, more garlic, more "filling" and lots of seasoning (and I tend to be over generous with this)

Basically turned out like an oven baked bacon and scrambled eggs.