Kitchen Wizardry/Frugality

[KantankrusMare]

Wondered if anyone would like to contribute?

I have had this horrible cold all week and feeling 100% better today so thought it was time to get motivated.

I was bought "The Green Budget Guide" for Christmas by Nancy Birtwhistle and it makes for interesting reading with many tips on short cuts for the kitchen and around the house.

I hate food waste with a passion. We tend to cook mostly from scratch but I am always looking for ways to make my money go further.

One of the ideas in the book is to batch cook loads of Jacket Potatoes in one go and then freeze them. More economical than putting oven on just for a couple so I now have 10 huge Jackets cooking in the oven. Husband was given the bag of potatoes at Christmas so free food!

I have an allotment which saves me a fortune but I always freeze stuff to use through the winter and today is that day.

Have loads of blackberries (brambles) where I come from) so have defrosted some and made one lot of compote and a crumble.

One of the nicest soups I have made is Courgette and stilton so have rummaged and found a kilo of courgettes so will making that this afternoon.

Yesterday I bought frozen blueberries instead of fresh which saves a bit.

Next I want to look at buying pasta in bulk as the bigger the pack the better the saving and we get through lots of pasta.

Im sure there are lots of little ways of saving so any contributions will be greatly received!!

Dry stale bread put in a low oven and then make into breadcrumbs. Cut stale bread into cubes and dry out in a low oven and put in clean dry jars for croutons.

Yogurt maker! 7 pots of upf yog made from just milk

Lentils in everything meaty.

Soup from sad veg and stock from boiled chicken carcass

Grow squash and store in shed: im still eating mine from this summer in risotto and curries

Bottle or can fruits rather than freezing. Saves space and they don’t degrade. Looking for cheap cream in the supermarket and making your own butter

We just put potatoes at the bottom whenever the oven is on for something else.
Theres always one in the fridge if you want one.

freeze chicken bones, then when you’ve a bag full pressure cook for stock.

Scrap veg can be frozen, then blitzed with salt to make stock paste. Look up feisty tapas for the proper instructions.

I love Nancy Birtwhistle and have all her books.
I have a huge chest freezer in the adjoining garage so freeze a lot. I also grow fruit and veg.

Leftover cooked veg, including potatoes of any kind go in a bag in the freezer. Today I had some sweet potatoes needed using so I made soup with sweet potatoes and frozen roast potatoes. It was like a Sunday roast soup😂.

One of my favourite Nancy tips is on crumble. Make a large quantity of crumble mix and freeze in a polythene bag. It doesn't freeze solid, stays as crumbs. When you have fruit to use up put in a dish and sprinkle crumble mix over and bake for 30 minutes.

I make a freezer veg ends soup - big bag in the freezer where I add all the pasta it’s best veg, cauli leaves, broccoli stalks, leftover bits, parsley stalks etc then make a soup when bag is full.

Yellow sticker cream to make flavoured butter and freeze.

I try to throw away nothing

I cook all my own food in the main

Ive become obsessed with making soup out of leftovers as others have said sad veg and chicken bone stock that I boil up

If Im cooking chicken for any reason I drain off the fat and use that for soup

The other day I soaked some barley to cook, I drained the barley off and kept the liquid as a sort of barley water, I used that as a stock for my soup, it was outrageously good. It made the soup barleyish and velvety smooth. Gorgeous.