What random stuff are you doing to avoid wasting food?

[MangosteenSoda]

Today I am braising a lettuce. An out of date romaine lettuce.

Make me feel better about this!

I never waste food anyway. Stale bread made into breadcrumbs, bread and butter pudding or bread pudding. Cauliflower leaves and stalks and brocolli stalks put in stir fries or made into soup. I even put my veg peelings including potato into soup.

I have been drinking my tea black to make our oat milk go further

I'm having chutney with everything.
Our house seems to accumulate gifts of home made chutney and pickle quicker than we can eat it. I actually have a separate box in my larder just for random pickled stuff.
It makes dull food much more interesting

The school kitchen was going to have to throw out a bunch of bananas as they closed it down, I nabbed them and froze for flapjack or banana cake.

OMG - I wish I had known about the broccoli stalk yesterday when I used the last of my broccoli and profligately binned the stalk. I bet it's a bit like kohlrabi.

Confession: I just had a look in my food waste to see if it's salvageable

It's not

yes to grating broccoli stalks - Freeze them for soups.

We have crepe evening, with savoury things leftovers in the middle

I made a big Coq au Vin at New year and we and guests ate all the chicken but there was loads of sauce and veg left over so I froze it.
Had it last week, just as it was with pasta and a handful of fresh coriander (I bought a growing pot with my last big shop 2 weeks ago)
Really tasty.

I've always blittzed up stale bread for the freezer, a cheesy crust is nice on a lot of things

I've always been a shop every other day kind of person. This is making me much better at meal planning even if we have to adapt as we don't always get the right ingredients.

I never realised how delicious a mashed banana was to hit that sweet spot when you're trying to ration your chocolate.

Look up Jack Monroe hot banana pot recipe 🙌

Noooo @MangosteenSoda don’t freeze that many grapes at once! You might hate them and then I’ll feel guilty for wasting your food 😳

Soups.

A big bowl of egg mayonnaise today, which we will have on sandwiches over the next couple of days.

A massive chocolate cake that we can eat over 4-5 days as dessert. My kids love it and my autistic dd will only eat home made stuff anyway as she says factory made cakes and biscuits have a bitter taste underneath.

Mince pack divided into two and freezing half rather than using the lot for a lasagne.

Re-using herbal tea bags. I think I got four cups out of one at one point as I was down to a few and not able to get to the shops. Just have to leave them in a bit longer each time

Slightly off -point, but I'm saving the real food for the DC. I need to lose weight anyway so have ordered a big tub of low carb meal replacement from Amazon and am working my way through that for all my meals. It is surprisingly tasty.

For breakfast this morning I had a toasted bagel that had been sitting at the back of the freezer for who knows how long. It tasted of freezer burn and the last few mouthfuls had a slight taste of mold. There are several other such items at the back of the freezer which I will have to eat over the next few mornings as we have ran out of bread and milk and DP won't do the food shop on the weekend 🤮 (I can't drive and it's a 45 minute walk each way to the supermarket).

Public service announcement:

Don't try to dry-braise in a flat bottomed frying pan on an induction hob.

The braised lettuce was surprisingly good, but it will take me a while to sort out the cooker top

A bit of butter and sugar melted in a pan and throw ripe bananas in. A yummy hot toffee pudding in minutes.

There’s so many meals to cook now. It’s doing my head in.

I made a lettuce risotto to use up half a floppy lettuce but I do that quite often.

Never ever throw out a chicken carcass, it's the best bit!

We waste money far to often but not food in this house.

The braised lettuce was surprisingly good, but it will take me a while to sort out the cooker top
What happened?

made fruit leather out of some rhubarb I found in the freezer. sweetcorn pancakes made with out of date tinned sweetcorn.

Broccoli stalk soup.
Freezing garlic cloves
Milk into rice pudding & freezing some in ice cube trays for tea (Mumsnet tip)
Making breadcrumbs and freezing

Redwoodmaz
I like this idea. Our cats turned up their noses at more expensive catfood (that we only bought because the own brand wasn't available!)

I brushed some dry/stale wraps with oil and sprinkled with salt, and baked to make sort of tortilla crisps. Even DD who is the fussiest child known to man, said they were "ok"!

Made a big veg curry

Bruce - unsightly circle on the hob and a worrying burning smell. I think the pan just got too hot because it didn't have enough inside it to absorb the heat and that made the hob top too hot.

Kanin - what is fruit leather????

I've done this for a while but if you freeze bread, bagged in the quantities you require it (e.g. 2 slices for a sandwich) you can defrost it on the counter with the bag sealed and it will be as good as when you put it in there because the moisture levels are conserved. It really helps to wrap it tightly and not remove it from the bag until it's fully at room temperature (to prevent condensation on the inside of the bag from not re-entering the bread as it defrosts).

This is an excellent thread. I ate a bagel that was two weeks out of date in the bread bin to save the fresh ones for the kids. Only for DH to come home and eat the last 2.