What do you call this type of meal?

[tectonicplates]

I had never heard the term "picky tea" before joining MN.

I'm talking about the kind of meal where you have some slices of bread, a selection of vegetables and dips, cheese, and often some leftovers and things so it turns out a bit random. You put all the food in the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves.

What do you call this meal in your family?

American here, live in Florida and we say “We’re having mustgo tonight”” because everything in the fridge must go.

Mine call it ‘picky bits’ my friend calls it ifits (if it’s in the fridge we’ll have it)

@SkiingIsHeaven but what if it’s not leftovers? We buy things specifically for picky bits

We call it 'Abendbrot' (German-style dinner).

We used to call it "a little plate". I think it came from my Nanna. We always used to eat our main meal at lunchtime on Sundays and then have a little plate for tea.

It always featured hard boiled eggs and tinned salmon sandwiches and the salmon was liberally doused in vinegar.

A snack plate

How do people not have leftovers , surely you can’t plan exactly the amount your family will eat at every single meal? Or am I just greedy and cook too much, there’s only three of us but we always end up with random bits and pieces that can be put together for at least one meal a week

What like?
Please give examples!
The leftovers element of this is confusing to me. We have leftovers of a meal, lasagne or shepherds pie for example that would be reheated and eaten as it is, I wouldn't put it out with salad, bread and cheese.
Other left overs are things like rice, mashed potato or a bowl of vegetables which get made into a different meal, again I can't get my head around serving them with cold meat and sausage rolls.
So what leftovers do people have that we don't? I need to know

Leftovers in our house might be things like ... new potatoes made into a potato salad, a few cold sausages that need eating up, a random half an avocado, rice made into a rice salad, odd bits of salad, a small bit of lasagne that isn’t really enough for a ‘full meal’, poked chicken from a BBQ, meat left from a joint - again not enough for a full meal ... so I might put all those ‘random’ bits and pieces out just to get rid of them in one meal .. doesn’t sound very appetising when you write it down but we have probably have that sort of meal at least once a week.

‘Cooked’ not poked chicken 🍗 !

All our leftovers get fed to the baby as she is happy with things cold and doesn’t care if it’s random!

We don't have leftovers either, except for a portion of cottage pie, lasagne, casserole, etc, which DS will have for lunch the following day.

If we have what I call a spread, it's instead of cooking or if we've had a run of big dinners as at Christmas, and I buy for it.

Thanks Ragwort

I suspect my family would think I'd lost the plot if I put such randomness out for dinner. I guess it's probably the kind of thing you have to grow up with to appreciate.
DH or the teens would have already eaten the cold sausages straight out the fridge as they were getting the cold meat out for sandwiches, the new potatoes would have been fried for breakfast as only I appreciate potato salad, rice gets frozen for fried rice.
So as you can see we'd be left with a scant
amount of lasagne that the kids would argue over, half an avocado and bits of salad!

@Bluesheep8

It always featured hard boiled eggs and tinned salmon sandwiches and the salmon was liberally doused in vinegar.

I'd forgotten about tinned salmon having to have (malt) vinegar over it, but you're quite right.
Ours also had to have pepper (not nice, freshly-ground black P, but that dusty stuff in a small plastic container).

The leftovers element of this is confusing to me.

To me too, @Notso.

It's why the only time we have it is after Christmas lunch (cold turkey, stuffing, ridiculous amounts of cranberry sauce, - I make my own, and you just can't make a small jar's-worth - bread sauce...

With other bits (like leftover vegetables, gravy, bread sauce, for example) heated up to go with.
And also stuff like the patés, cheese, M&S glamorous cocktail nibbles etc (because the shops are shut for two days, so you have to prepare for a year-long siege) on the side.

(DDs called it smorgasbord and loved it because it was the one time they had control over what they ate.
I was never a "Fishfingers for elder DD, pizza for DH and foie gras avec un poncey side-dish for younger DD, then?" person. Coupled with a nervy B for me: the cook and purveyor of three different meals.)

But we never have leftovers habitually... er... left, as it were.

I either eg cook a roast (Mumsnet) chicken, and plan for another dish or two from it, or calculate roughly what people will eat.
Otherwise, I'll use up eg leftover bolognese in chilli.

If I had eg a spoonful of lasagna left, I'd:

1. eat it myself and convince myself that cook's treats don't count and don't contain calories*;

2. chop it up into very, very tiny pieces and stick it in something else. (My sashimi with microscopic bits of pasta bake is legendary round here. People tell me that they will never forget it...**);

3. throw it out.
   As a very last resort.

And wishing I could channel my late mama, who would flush any leftovers smaller than a turkey carcass down the toilet, saying "Well, if it's going there anyway..."

*They do though.
Bastards.

** Ah.
That's not a Good Thing, is it?

lamarschallin yep, saturated in malt vinegar. And I forgot about the dusty pepper, thanks for the memory!
Also, whilst on the subject, my Nanna used to leave a gap in the middle when making salmon sandwiches " because you're going to cut it there anyway and salmon is expensive!" Oh happy times.
My DP still eats vinegar doused salmon sandwiches. The vinegar is even brought out and added to shop bought ones

We call it a party food picnic. It is the kids most loved and favourite weekend dinner.

Reality was that XDH had left us, paid no maintenance and I had HUGE legal bills. Dinner was the scraps of food I had left in the freezer and whatever other bits were lying around/leftover as I didn't have money for a food shop.

They didn't know this for a second and thought it was the best treat ever. It's absolutely about how you sell it!

atomicnotsoblonde

They didn't know this for a second and thought it was the best treat ever. It's absolutely about how you sell it!

You're so right, and it's brilliant that you framed it so positively for your children.

My effort of trying to avoid leftovers stems from a similarly lean time when we could only afford enough for one meal each.

On the plus side, it did make me good at guestimating portions.

For us leftovers might mostly be lunch type leftovers from the week - some pizza, quiche cut in to small bits as it's not enough for large slices each, sausage rolls, pitta bread toasted and sliced, the end of a tub of olives, use up the last of the cucumber, pepper, carrots etc. Whatever dips are in the fridge - tzatziki, humous some cheesy nachos or crackers and last of a slice of Brie rather than left over spaghetti bolognese, shepherds pie and curry all being put out.

We called it a monkeys tea growing up
It involved fruit, cheese, sandwiches, crisps, biscuits or cake. Just a plate of various things that were easy for my parents to chuck together if they couldn't be arsed to cook. We loved it!

Thank you so much to everyone on this thread so far. It's turning out to be really interesting reading! I never expected it to go on for 17 pages .

You know what's really heart-warming is the number of people saying it's their favourite meal, or their children's favourite meal. It's certainly one of my favourites and always has been.

What else are you supposed to put with tinned salmon?

My baked potato topping last night was tinned salmon, chopped cucumber, sarson vinegar and black pepper (not the dusty stuff).

"Let's just have bits"

Tinned salmon: juice of 1/2 a lemon, three snipped spring onions, black pepper, tablespoon of Helmans.

OhTheRoses

Tinned salmon: juice of 1/2 a lemon, three snipped spring onions, black pepper, tablespoon of Helmans.

That's so posh. Bet it's really nice.

Trouble is, back in the day when we used to eat the tinned salmon, there wasn't bottled mayonnaise.

There was salad cream. Preferably Heinz.

One of the biggest taste sensations in my whole life was eating prawn and mayonnaise sandwiches from Marks & Spencer.

One of the worst was trying my mother replicating said sandwiches using plastic white-sliced bread, salad cream and tinned (in vinegar) prawns.

I’ll try that, thanks. Like the idea of using spring onions.

I’m not a huge fan of mayo though, find it a bit gloopy, so perhaps I’ll just use a smaller amount.

I use vinegar for tinned tuna too as I don’t like it mixed with mayo. Bottled mayo has been around since I was a child but my parents still used vinegar.

One of our treats, as children, was a trip to our nearest town and an M&S sandwich for the car journey home. I used to love the egg mayo and prawn sub. Don’t think they do them anymore.