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!

It looks lovely Angelcake and its interesting for me to see the dessert is chocolate cake! I expected to see jalabi and rassmali (spelling?) etc. which I'm nor really a fan of, I find them way too sweet!

What a feast! My autocorrect tried change that to “feat”, which is also appropriate. Happy Eid angel.

weeds that focaccia is gorgeous. Please open up a local bakery!!! Or could you try and supply my local shop? Me and my neighbours would make it worth your while.
I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself with bad period pain so it’s currently a day of hot water bottle, carbs and comfort box sets. Luckily there are still mountains of leftovers from the weekend’s cooking. I might try making a coronation chick pea filling for the last pitta bread (sad times!) for lunch. Chilli and jacket potatoes for dinner.

graphista I once watched a video about making food look pretty for photo shoots and it was shocking! I love a good ugly dinner that tastes great...thinking sag aloo (king of the ugly dinners) or creamed spinach after the chat on the thread might make it on to the meal plan this week.

@Weedsnseeds1 I’ve only had jalabi once, when I was with my ex and sorry but not for me! Love south Asian savoury food, not a fan of the desserts.

@Wildernesstips thanks for recipe

@angelcakebananabrain that looks quite the feast! Eid Mubarak!

@PurpleDaisies I find it fascinating what they do to food to make it look great on ads etc but it is deceptive/disingenuous

I went and pulled what's turning into my sunday "trick" and fell asleep! So shifting yesterday's to today and having to adjust weeks meal planning. Frustrating,

I woke around 10pm and just had some sandwiches, yogurt and fruit

Hello exciting cooks of Mumsnet! I come with a request, while shopping I panic brought some teeny tiny gnocchi because I couldn't get the normal size gnocchi and now I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. It's about a quarter of the size of normal gnocchi and has cheese on it. Any ideas to help a poor home cook out?

I would just treat them they way you would with the bigger gnocchi. Dressed with extra virgin olive oil and sage, maybe a bit of lemon juice, would make a lovely light lunch.

I’d just treat it exactly like you would normal sized gnocchi... dressed with extra virgin olive oil or butter and sage, for example. Or maybe a spoonful or two of pesto. Or a creamy mushroom sauce/creamy spinach sauce.

Oh I’m hungry now.

Oh such beautiful creations! 😍

Last night’s dinner was linguine and mussels in a white wine sauce with garlic, chilli (flakes and fresh), lemon and parsley. My last pasta dinner for a good long while as I’m back on the low carbing wagon as of today.

OMG that foccacia looks incredible!!! WOW
Also the seadood pasta - drool......

I made Thai red chicken curry last night with rice and poppadoms

Today I made a nice veg soup using up lots of slightly sorry looking veg from the fridge I had carrots, red onion, celery, courgette, one chilli sized yellow pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, salt pepper, rosemary and oregano and I drizzled it with olive oil - I roasted it all first till it was nicely browned and then put it in the pot with a chicken stock pot and blended. Then I added a splash of cream. It was very nice and we have enough for tomorrow too!

Tonight I'm making meatballs in fresh cherry tomato and white wine sauce with spaghetti, garlic bread and green salad - plenty of parmesan grated over the pasta. Again there will be enough for tomorrow's dinner too.

So tomorrow is a no cook day which means I might bake.

I have 4 cooking apples and don't want to make a tart (my usual)

I was vaguely thinking of a galette but recipes I've looked at say use eating apples - would stewed cooking apples work?

Has anyone got any nice recipes for cooking apples?

I've never had gnocchi so interested to see how you get on @KilljoysDutch

I'm being brave/adventurous/experimental I have in the oven - chips, asparagus wrapped in veggie bacon and eggs. Idea is asparagus will roast and eggs will be baked/shirred I've no ramekins but have used a small foil tray, seasoned and topped with a little grated cheese.

Making up a hollandaise sauce to go with all that

Ninkanink, that made my mouth water, I love mussels
Graphista and caperplips your mebues sound delicious. Asparagus, meatballs, so many lovely things.
Scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and focaccia for breakfast/brunch and doing a Persian-ish braised duck legs with pomegranate molasses, cinnamon. walnuts and apricots, to serve with new potatoes and salad.

For a galette, I would use the cooking aplles but add some extra sugar. Cooking apes tend to go fluffy and break down, do you won't get the same visual definition that an eating apple would give you

Apples, not apes, obviously

Oh my lord I can’t believe I said the same thing twice in the same comment! 😄 I must have started out writing, went away and got distracted, came back and forgot I’d already written a paragraph in the comment box. 🙄

Anyway, my dinner was a chicken Caesar salad (of sorts). No croutons, with the addition of some celery and cucumber.

Tonight’s dinner was oven chips, (fake) chicken nuggets and onion rings.

I did enjoy the last homemade pitta with coronation chick pea filling using up the last of some too sweet plain yoghurt though. That feels more in keeping with the this thread!

I love gnocchi, and one day will try making it. I agree with keeping it simple like big gnocchi. I like pesto or olive tapenade on mine.

Turned out quite well if I do say so myself the only part not quite right is eggs were fully cooked and I'd have preferred yolks runny.

But yes very tasty and will do again

Looks good to me Graphista although I agree on runny yolks
Persian-ish duck, was very tasty

Those look lovely weeds and graphista.

Here’s my coronation chick pea pitta (plus some odds and ends). A good cheap and filling lunch.

I made focaccia this weekend, although it didn't quite look like weeds' 😂

Also made some rolls for our lunch (forgot to take a picture). They were lovely and crusty, thanks for the cooking tips!

Focaccia picture!

Noooo I love runny yolks! I wanted to be able to dip the asparagus in them and the chips

We used to have a fabulous greasy spoon in town that did perfect fried eggs with cooked whites and runny yolks with proper chunky chips, sadly owners retired and sold to some hipster idiots who changed everything and ballsed it up and it's gone under.

I can do good fried eggs myself but struggle to get it right with boiled or poached. I've made baked eggs before years ago and I knew I'd cooked these too long really but I was wrangling the hollandaise at the time

Ooh coronation chick pea - tell us more

Focaccia looks spot on

I sort of followed the recipe below for the coronation chick pea filling but used yoghurt (had some to use up), spring onions and a lot more curry powder. My local spar sells really nice sandwiches with this filling and thought would be much cheaper to do at home.

wanderingwafflehands.com/2019/09/04/vegan-coronation-chickpea-sandwich/

Just catching up after the bank holiday weekend. Some lovely food on here!

Still can't manage to get any strong flour otherwise I'd have a go at bread making with the DC. Although the other night we made 'pizzas' with wraps, just putting cheese/ pepperoni/ veg on as they requested. They thought it was amazing! I obviously don't need to waste my time trying to impress them with actual recipes

Hope everyone had a lovely food-filled weekend! We had some cracking brunches (scrambled eggs & smoked salmon one day, Turkish eggs with yoghurt and chili another day). Lots of lunches along the line of bread/cheese/salad/fruit in the garden. And some cracking dinners - best were a) a tomato, feta and olive savoury clafoutis (to use up eggs and some sad cherry toms) and b) a spatchcocked chicken roasted on a bed of stale sourdough, onions, raisins, sherry and pine nuts.

And by coincidence I ALSO made focaccia this morning! 100% sourdough, proved overnight in the fridge. It's not as pretty as the gorgeous vegetable gardens up thread, and a little browner than I wanted because I got caught on a work call and DH didn't get my frantic texts until 5 mins after it should have come out - but my god it's tasty...

Forgot the obligatory pictures - focaccia before the oven, straight out of the oven, and crumb shot.

Chicken, Turkish eggs, lunch with my fresh baked sourdough