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!

@Xiaoxiong that looks amazing! Full of bubbliness

@Weedsnseeds1 ashamed to admit that my starter has never (and I've had it a year 😬) passed the water test. I'd heard it's a bit unreliable but maybe should try and get starter to pass test, and then will be more likely to have a good rise.

Hakata ramen is one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten, that milky pork broth and the ultra soft boiled egg....

Good looking starter there! Wholemeal has more natural yeasts, so it's handy to get the starter going.
MagnaRocks do you feed it before you use it? Usually takes about 4 hours from feeding to get to the floating stage (possibly a couple of hours if you don't live in an old house that is permanently on the "temperate" side).

Veggie box delivery today and a lemon drizzle cake made by DD(11)

@Weedsnseeds1 I do but I store it in the fridge a lot of the time as otherwise I'd make too much, and we'd eat bread and butter everyday, and get fat(ter). 🤫

@xiaoxiong that starter looks impressive indeed!

@cricketmum84 That lemon drizzle looks delicious well done your dd

Ok, trying my hand at meal planning which isn’t really my forte

I’ve created a table in notes app - column for planned and column for what I actually end up eating 😂

For own amusement but also to spot any patterns that might prove useful.

DISH PLANNED
Brie, bacon & tomato oven frittata - thinking roughly following this recipe but different “filling” www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/easy-cheesy-frittata
Creamy pesto “chicken” fillets with mash - to use up creme fraiche and pesto opened and in fridge
Pasta with cheese sauce - to use up milk
Mushroom stroganoff from freezer - to start making way through frozen leftovers

Pizza & chips from freezer - to clear some space in freezer
Stir fry
Chicken casserole from freezer, as a “Sunday dinner” with mash, stuffing balls & mini Yorkshire puddings - again using up leftovers/clearing freezer

Thoughts? Ideas?

Mini Yorkshire puddings - I used to make yorkies most weeks when married and when dd was little and do a “proper roast” but I haven’t bothered for ages since dd hit teens and wasn’t reliably home on a Sunday, seemed a lot of effort just for me. But I quite fancy doing it now. Only thing is I only have bun tray to do yorkies in and I’m hoping just a little batter will still work? If anyone’s made mini yorkies any tips?

When I used to do them before I’d put oil in the tray they’d be going in, put that in the oven, oven on hot as it would go, make the batter up, rest at least 30 mins (I’d usually do the batter first out of everything, this was back in the days when I’d then be peeling and chopping potatoes and carrots to par boil and roast, prepping ex’s/dds meat, making up stuffing, so by the time I’d done all that it would have been resting nearly an hour), whisk again to aerate, tray out oven and ladle batter into the hot fat as quickly as possible and straight back in oven.

I always got a good rise, crispy edges and doughy centre. Perfect.

If I made minis this time unlikely to eat all at once —who am I kidding— so could I freeze them?

Lots of beautiful dishes and a very bountiful veg box to catch up on later, yippee!

Finished the last of my ailing sweet potatoes for our dinner tonight which is a sweet potato curry with coconut and red Thai curry paste. Here the recipe, I added last of a bag of green lentils, frozen soy beans and frozen spinach just to finish some odds in the freezer!

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/satay-sweet-potato-curry

Yes, you can make Yorkshire pudding in a Bun tin and, yes you can freeze them

You know, I never really "got" all those unboxing videos on YouTube etc. but I am finding people's fish boxes and veg boxes fascinating!

Today’s easy dinner was leftover veggie sausages, leftover broccoli, half a bag of lidl semi dried veg, passata, sad courgette and pepper that dh tried to bin plus some mega reduced garlic bread. It was very nice indeed (even if it doesn’t look pretty.!).

Excellent re yorkies thanks.

So...after a lazy day otherwise I've gone a little nuts at dinner time and as a result am eating late again! Really must start cooking earlier!

So the frittata went out the window as I opened the Brie I was planning to use in it and was the reason I planned it and it was HONKING and not in a good way! Have had to wrap it a lot to stop it stinking the place out.

So then decided to make the creamy "chicken" dish using quorn fillets. Messed up at beginning and forgot to halve ingredients - rushed in own fault. So I've set half of the sauce aside BEFORE adding creme fraiche and milk and I think I can freeze that? (Stock, herbs, garlic, wine)

This is the recipe I've very loosely followed

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chickenwithhcreamy07970

Differences due to lack of ingredients/own tweaks -

As I'm using quorn rather than real chicken I sautéed that in the pan too and did it as a one pan job.

I used green pepper and cherry tomatoes for the veg instead of mushrooms as that's the veg I needed to use

Shallots instead of onion

Coriander leaf as I'd no ground coriander

Red wine as I don't drink white

Veg stock

Milk instead of cream

Eating it now and I gotta say tastes pretty good might be the wine

But... even better I've done my first bit of baking!

Thought I'll be waiting for the dinner to simmer/cook so might as well use the time wisely. Just fairy buns using basic bbc recipes but I'm pleased with them. They took longer to cook than recipe said but smell good and cooling now will ice them later

Ahahaha...was wondering why you all had been so silent today...have been checking ‘threads I’m on’ and kept thinking surely someone is going to post something at some point...

I’d managed to accidentally hide the thread! 🙄🙄

Ahh well you've found us now op what you like!

Brie will smell of ammonia, its not off as such, but it's an acquired taste at that point!
Gnocchi and leftover pasts sauce, padded out with a green pepper and a red onion here.

Dinner yesterday was sirloin steak with black garlic butter, filled jacket potato (mashed with soured cream, spring onion and chives), and a coleslaw made with celeriac, cabbage, Granny Smith and gala apples, red onion, mayo, soured cream, whole grain mustard and Dijon, parsley and dill, and a little bit of the sweet pickling liquid from the pickled cucumbers I made the other day.

Dinner today was easy and quick - tortilla wraps filled with lots of cheese, some Mexican rice from a packet, chilli from a tin, and plenty of coriander. Plus the other half of the coleslaw from yesterday.

This was not ammonia! Fuck knows what it was but it was rank! It was close to date but generally that type of cheese is fine like that but it was in clear clingfilm (Tesco Cornish Brie) and admittedly I'd stored in the fridge door which may not have helped matters.

I ordered gnocchi to try but didn't get as out of stock, will keep trying to get.

Loving the juxtaposition of your cordon bleu v easy dinners op.

On "I can't cook" threads there seems to be extremes - people who ONLY cook from scratch or people who NEVER cook

Ime most of us are a mixture, sometimes from scratch, sometimes convenience foods, sometimes eating out, sometimes takeaways.

Ah, OK, Cornish Country Larder make that. They're a decent company.
Maybe some temperature abuse at the shop or during delivery.
I'd be sad if my cheese wasn't fit to eat, I love cheese!

Everyone on here seems to be in the competent to good cook range.
The one's asking for advice know what they're doing, they just want a bit of inspiration or to double check something.
I can't imagine how people who genuinely only cook freezer food or eat takeaways are managing.

Dh made harissa last week

This week has been pesto and jam

Today he made these

I've not tried a British Brie before but love cheese and thought I'd give it a go this has put me right off to be honest, and yes I HATE wasting cheese.

Just iced the fairy cakes with a simple lemon water icing, made way too much icing (it's just icing sugar water and squeeze of lemon juice) will if keep in fridge if I don't just scoff it

Currently scoffing uniced bums and have to say yummy and definitely not noticing difference having used granulated sugar rather than caster sugar.

I think I'm a competent but not amazing cook/baker but out of practice/lacking confidence

Have to say what DID strike me making the fairy cakes how much easier and quicker it is making them alone as an adult than as child and definitely quicker and easier than WITH a child seemed to take hours when I was doing them as a teaching thing with dd

Collision they look like pain au chocolate sans chocolate so some kind of very complicated "bake off" pastry?

Uniced BUNS not bums

I made shahshouka last night, but there's loads of the pepper and tomato sauce left over. Might try to turn it inot a veggie lasagne.

Segregate that would be lush as a veggie lasagne but if you can't be bothered, you can freeze the sauce, defrost it later and then crack eggs on top to make shakshuka in a pinch!

I had a very frugal breakfast - we had some tomatoes that were getting a little elderly and soft, so I grated them on a box grater. Then I made thick slices of sourdough toast, rubbed with some garlic, spooned over the tomato slush and drizzled with good extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with flaky sea salt. Coupled with good strong coffee, and I pretended I was in Spain for breakfast!

Those pain au chocolat look great, lovely lamination.

Chocolate orange bread pudding, to use up some ends of stale bread.

Having a quiet day so far, kitchens a bomb site after last night

I can attest the iced buns are also lovely - I'm going to get SO fat.

Thinking cheesy pasta tonight, sausage casserole tomorrow night as my plans have been knocked slightly.

Got some brown bananas so probably a banana loaf at some point too.