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!

Picnic of salad, potato salad, roast chicken, watermelon and cream doughnuts, washed down with Pimms

My dinner was lovely and very filling!

Loved the giant cous cous was like a risotto is closest thing to compare to.

Made a pile of flatbreads - I even got brave and "experimented" using plain flour and banking powder as opposed to self raising as wanted to save the self raising for cakes

Slight mishap as would have been 5 flatbreads but I dropped one down the side of the cooker! So only 4 in the end

2 had with dinner, 2 in the fridge - I'm hoping that's ok?

Ideally just wrap bread and store at room temperature. Refrigeration makes it go stale. Strange, but true!

I have eaten yoghurt that was months old, absolutely no problem at all. My grandmother used to keep a bowl of yoghurt on the go in the fridge, she would take out a ladle and make more, top up the bowl, eat with honey and olives and bread for breakfast etc. That yoghurt was probably decades old! In Mongolia they dry out their yoghurt and cut it into cubes and then rehydrate with boiling water, apparently the invading Mongolian armies used to march with it in their kitbags for years.

More baguettes baking today - one is being swapped for some hand-me-down jodhpurs for DS2, one being swapped for some gram flour, and the rest we will inhale for lunch with a tomato salad, some cheese and pate

Hey everyone 🌻

Haven’t read back through thread yet but hope you’re all well!

Yoghurt will be fine for ages yet, @Graphista. I keep yoghurt for weeks after date if we don’t get around to eating it, and it’s fine for at least two weeks after opening, usually much longer.

Oh and your giant couscous and flatbreads look amazing!

I’m going back to lowcarbing from next week as I need to get myself in check for health reasons, so will need to switch away from so much carby comfort eating. But summer’s perfect for that, since I start to crave salads and light meals, so it’ll be fine! 🤞

We’ve got our monthly grocery delivery today, only the second actual shop we’ve done since 19/3. I expect it’ll feel like Christmas again like it did last time! 😄 It’s my birthday tomorrow so I’ve got a few treats coming which I’m looking forward to.

Hope you all have sunshine today; it’s beautiful here.

Gosh nink monthly deliveries!? I barely have enough fridge space for a week's worth of food for a family of 4! Do you get separate deliveries for your salads and fresh stuff? (Or grow your own...?)

I'm also making switches in a low-carb direction as I am really trying hard to get back into the healthy BMI range. We had spag bol last night - everyone else had pasta but I had it over courgetti, which was delicious. I'm baking loads of bread, but most of it is going into the kids' mouths or to neighbours.

What I really need to do is stop drinking, but until DS2 goes back to school (ON JUNE 1ST THANK THE GOOD LORD ABOVE) I have found it hard not to have that drink at the end of the day. I have switched to something called "temperance gin" that is only 4.2% though and is lovely. Feels like gin but isn't, and isn't too sweet.

Flatbreads look amazing. Sure they will be fine in the fridge and then reheated in a pan or even wrapped in foil and warmed in the oven. I've made big batches before and frozen them individually wrapped or with a square of baking paper between them.

Me and DD are making soda bread this afternoon in the ongoing absence of yeast.

Dinner is Jamie Oliver's sweet leek carbonara made with some fancy wholewheat spelt spaghetti.

@Xiaoxiong it’s only the two of us so that does help. Our fairly modest fridge/freezer is absolutely packed when the shopping first comes until we’ve worked our way through the first couple of weeks’ stores.

It’s only the second time we’ve done it this way as usually we would go shopping weekly. The first month of lockdown we survived on Morrison’s boxes supplemented with a couple of farm shop runs, as it was impossible to get deliveries. I think I’ve worked out a fairly good system from last month’s full shop trial and error though:

We get fruit, salads and very perishable veg for the first week, a mix of longer shelf life veg for the second week, long life veg (cabbage & root veg, mostly) plus frozen veg for the last two weeks. Obviously not quite as convenient for summer eating as it is in winter/spring so we’ll see how it goes...there will be less pies and hearty casseroles made now for sure so not as many natural pairings for root veg.

We’re not planning to get any more food for the next four weeks. But saying that I won’t be able to bulk out with breads, pasta, rice, noodles etc for myself so I may need to do a veg and protein run in two or three weeks. We’ll see.

@Weedsnseeds1 ok noted probably eat them today anyway

@Ninkanink thanks, I generally lose weight in summer as eating more salads, less carbs just naturally but then pile it back on in winter!

Fresh pasta is dated today and I've milk to use so cheesy pasta I think tonight.

Normally fri would be something with chips but I'm thinking something mixing the posh with the junk - soft boiled eggs (any tips I'd be very grateful for I tend to end up with either uncooked whites or hard boiled! And I want the yolks soft) or I MAY try poached (I seem genetically predisposed to bring unable to poach so again tips please) with asparagus and hollandaise sauce

What do we think?

@Ninkanink have you thought about a weekly fruit and veg box delivery. There are so many local greengrocers doing this in my part of the country.

There's 4 of us (including a teen who thinks she is the hungry caterpillar) and we are doing one fortnightly shop for tins/frozen/meat etc then a weekly fruit and veg box for the short life veg such as salad bits and berries. They have added on fresh bread, milk and local honey too so it's working even better!

Lunch in the garden today, I forgot to take a picture (sorry all).

Sliced tomatoes topped with sliced avocado and a ball of burrata torn on top, olive oil and balsamic and salt and a few basil leaves from the windowbox.

Sauteed asparagus (straight out of the veg box) topped with parmesan and softly scrambled eggs.

Freshly baked sourdough baguette, sunshine and blue skies

Yes we have considered it but haven’t quite needed to so far (except in the first few weeks where we did get one veg box from a farm shop, but it wasn’t great for the money so we wouldn’t use that one again); it’s definitely an option for us as there are farms and pubs nearby doing boxes.

It's not a dangerous thing *Graphista" it's just that lower temperatures make the starch crystallise more quickly, so it goes stale faster.
As a PP mentioned, warming them a bit can help to soften them if they go a bit hard

I'll probably warm in the oven before eating anyway as will taste nicer, I just wasn't sure what to do with them last night

I'm having a bash at baguettes Xiaoxiong, I halved the recipe as I don't think I could deal with 6!
Planning another picnic tonight.
Just hgoing to have a riflle through the fridge and see what I can put together

Got a delivery booked for Saturday and I've given in to temptation/craving and ordered ice cream! Just hope I can fit in freezer! Reeses peanut butter ice cream cups and magnum style lollies so not a tub so hoping I can fit them into gaps.

I've also ordered (I'm awaiting audible gasps of shock from you lot) a block of real butter - yes shocker I normally buy the spreadable stuff (but as high quality as I can get) but I want to make scones and I think maybe the spreadable stuff is one factor that hampered previous efforts as it's never really cold/hard.

Got a load of tips off the scones thread I'm hoping to put into practice:

Cold ingredients
Acid included (I'm using yogurt again I think though I've lemon juice and vinegar available too)

Cold hands
Handle as little as possible
As I haven't got cutters cut with a knife into squares or triangles rather than do a twisty botch job with a tumbler as a cutter
Oven and tray they'll be baked on as hot as possible

Hoping I've not forgotten anything - it's become almost a nemesis/vendetta or some other word that makes more sense - to finally master scone baking.

When I'm in the swing I'm fine making other cakes, pastry, pies... but scones have always eluded me!

Along with poached eggs and rice (if I try to make fluffy it goes sticky, if I try to make sticky it goes half fluffy no idea where I go wrong) though the giant cous cous was lovely as a risotto substitute.

Graphista I think all cooks have their nemesis - mine is quiche. I have never managed to make one. Either the crust is uncooked, the filling pours out, it is too thin and not enough custard so the filling burns on top, all sorts of problems. I've used china dishes, removable base tins, cake tins, even a springform tin once - all duds. Maybe I need to start a "help me make quiche" thread. It's so annoying because my mother is always like "oh it's so easy to use up all the veg, just make a quiche" and refuses to believe I can't make one!

Proper butter should work better Graphista as it's a hard fat. You want the fat to stay unmelted in the oven as long as possible as the gluten in the flour will set and hold the structure.
Proper, industrial cake margarine doesn't melt in your mouth, its sort of plasticine-like if you try to eat it. It's malting point is higher than body temperature so you can get a nice, fluffy crumb using commercial equipment.

Melting, not malting!

Baguettes

Leek carbonara tasted amazing, and really comforting food. I took a photo but it looked awful so I won't be posting 😂

A picnic at one of the Roman lead mines on the Mendips.
Baguette, feta and red pepper dip, crudités and Pimms

I wonder if we’re vaguely neighbours weeds. I’m near the mendips too. Beautiful part of the country.

I woke up in a doing things mood so and I’ve got a maple walnut tea loaf with sourdough discard. It’s currently in the oven so I’ll review when it comes out. It was one of those things that I thought I had all the ingredients for and as I started measuring I only had half of everything so it’s a bit of a mish mash of substitutes.

There’s going to be pitta baking later to go with a Greek themed spread tonight. Tabbouleh, gigantes beans, dolmades, olives, feta, roasted aubergine slices, houmous, tzatziki plus anything else I can be bothered to make. Not all that is home made by the way!

cricket I’m nicking the leek carbonara idea. I love a good ugly dinner that that tastes amazing.

Lovely to see you back @Ninkanink. So many delicious things here!!! I hope your delivery comes with only sensible substitutes allowed.

We did Greek the other night purple ☺️ my Gigantes plaki didn't really work, but it was still edible so 🤷‍♀️