@GranMarnie
The other thing is don't throw any food away. Something I learned late in life after an extended visit from my Mum. If you plan and learn how to cook you will never discard anything edible.
Yes, exactly. Ties in well with the ‘learn to cook’ post above. You don’t need to do gourmet dinners by any means but being able to cook simple things, to understand what goes well together and how to combine things to make a different dish to the one you just had means you can always use every bit of food but you don’t to batch cook and literally eat the same thing for 5 days in a row.
Our lunch today is leftover beef stew from yesterday. It wasn’t enough for another full meal on its own so no point in freezing it. I had leftover borscht in the freezer so took one portion out, combined the two, warmed up gently on the hob whilst we had a cup of tea and hey presto lunch was ready with no effort and no food has been wasted. DH had a slice of bread & butter to pad out his portion. We have Russian red cabbage sauerkraut in the fridge (forget what they call it) that I made a couple of months ago and an open carton of creme fraiche which is well past it’s date but still perfectly fine to eat - another thing we never throw away as I plan meals specially to use things like that up. So that rounded off the soup very well...yes it’s supposed to be had with sour cream but I never have both at the same time and creme fraiche is more versatile so I usually get that. It’s close enough! Yoghurt too, is kept for weeks past the date and used up. Anything sour or already fermented will keep for a good long while before it goes off. Keep it carefully covered and cold enough.
Tonight we’re having baked Camembert. It’s about 2 weeks past the date as we just haven’t got round to eating it but it’s still fine to eat, it’ll just be extra ripe and not at its absolute best in terms of flavour/consistency. I’ll drizzle it with honey and olive oil, stud it with garlic and some thyme from the freezer (thyme and rosemary both freeze very well. So does sage). I’ll add a few walnut pieces from an open packet as well. We’ll have it with homemade ciabatta, the last of the olives to use up a jar, a handful of cherry tomatoes that need using, and some celery sticks. I’ve not bought any of that specifically for this meal. It’ll have cost at a generous estimation maybe £5 altogether. Much cheaper than a takeaway but still feels like a treat.
I could go out and get some wine to have with it but I’m not going to - we have a couple of bottles of ale, which goes beautifully with cheese. Since we had a bigger lunch (enough protein, plus lots of veg), we’ve had a well balanced intake today.
Tomorrow I’m going to make apple crumble to use up two Bramley apples that have seen better days. They were supposed to be for apple sauce for a pork roast we never had as plans changed. I know that I have double cream in the fridge. Again, past the date by a few days because plans changed and I didn’t use it for its original purpose, so I’ve picked a pudding that will go nicely with cream. We’re having a roast so the oven will be on anyway and I might as well make a pudding too.
I know that there’s a jar of Thai red curry sauce in the fridge that needs to be used soon so I’ve got a vague plan to make something next week, probably with prawns from the freezer. I also know that there’s half a tin’s worth of coconut milk in the freezer from the last time I made a curry, so I’ll use that too. We don’t need a whole tin for one dish for the two of us so I get twice as much for my money by using half and freezing the rest. There’s a two-week-old bunch of spring onions and a piece of ginger in the fridge so that’s perfect timing - we will use it up before we get more! We’ve got broccoli coming in the veg delivery so I’ve earmarked some of that to have as a side.
We went away for a few days unexpectedly this week so I’ve got a head of lettuce that needs using. I’ll make braised peas and lettuce with it - that will also use up the last of the leeks and some of the celery, plus the rest of the spring onions. I usually add chicken to it (just half a breast or one thigh each) for the protein content, and we have it with potatoes, over rice or with garlic bread (made from leftover ciabatta, sliced and frozen).
One thing we do need to get better on is making at least one vegetarian meal per week - I don’t have a pressure cooker yet and I almost always forget to soak the legumes/pulses and end up having to make something else.
Sorry. Went off on a tangent there and forgot this wasn’t actually a food thread!