Clearing out the freezer & cupboards challenge

[jenduck]

So, I am having a very expensive month (car failed MOT, cat got in another fight, birthdays etc) & it has struck me that I have 2 freezers & an understairs cupboard full to bursting with food that needs to be eaten! So, I am challenging myself to see how long I can go without buying anything (other than basics)

Who would like to join me? We could perhaps give each other inspiration for recipes for the random ingredients that we find?

Tonight's dinner is Fray Bentos pie ( but yummy!) with mash, veg from freezer & gravy - warming, delicious & easy on a day like today!

Joining in too. Great Thread idea jenduck

Have just meal planned for the entire of February using freezer and/or cupboard contents for every meal. Will have to buy milk, bread, fruit, some veg, juice, eggs, but should be ok for meat, pastry, chips etc, crumble fillings.

Tonight we had pork chops and green beans (freezer) with cider sauce (cupboard) and mash.

I've made a strawberry jelly, with chopped tinned peaches for DS's pudding tomorrow, which they can have with ice-cream.

Have found a tin of custard powder in the cupboard dated 2006!! 3 years older than my eldest son Lots of trifle in our house then!

Ohhelpohnoitsa

Do you have a milkman in your area. I have a milkman and although it is more expensive pint for pint but I don't go to the shop for 2 pints of milk and spend £20.

Fishandlilacs DH makes something similar to that but with lean mice and onions tin of oxtail soup, beans and sweet corn he adds chilli powder. His mum used to make it and calls it cowboy hash which is pretty cool! ... Wonder if that was from blue Peter too!

Lean mice... Mine are quite fat, feeding off the crumbs of my slovenly housekeeping. Will they taste as nice?

Duchese just saw your response was thinking of that... Though would be a shepherdess pie as I am veggie. Have lots of veg mince and bag of peas and some onions in fridge...so looking good!
Such a fab post topic jenduck save money & tidy freezer and cupboards!

Lean mice, think will pass on that one!!

I've pretty much run the freezer down since Xmas but still plenty in the cupboards:
lots of 10p packet mash which aside from mash, I use for tuna fishcakes, as a thickener, or mix with a load of herbs/spices and use the flakes to coat things, then bake.
even got the xmas pudding still unused, although I bought an 8 serving one and there's just the two of us (there were 7 for xmas dinner though hence the fat pud!) so any tips on how to use up left over xmas pud would be appreciated please :)

Ugh - that's a struggle - its such a seasonal taste...

Oh I'm up for a challenge. I have just looked at my cupboard and I have 5 Tina of assorted beans to use (black eye, haricot, kidney, and adzuki) 2 cartons of chickpeas, red and green? lentils, lots of rice and pasta. Not to mention all the spices and chutneys.

Would like to join in but we've just done this exercise before moving and now no longer have a freezer to store anything in (hope THAT doesn't last too long). I think with store cupboard stuff and what we've got in the fridge/ice box we could last maybe 5 days to a week, but DH would be most unhappy to go through it again. And we'd need to keep getting milk or there would be a riot.

we could last about 3 months. as long as I was allowed to buy bread and milk.we may be eating rather a lot of rice and beans. I have a 10kg bag of rice under the cupboards. not sure why I bought that home..

We are very extraordinarily lucky that our neighbours went into production in October with organic unhomogenised milk a mere short walk away. They have saved us 100s of pounds already by giving us the option not to step into the supermarket for milk.

I had a whole leftover xmas pudding too, I just opened it up and sliced it then wrapped the slices well before freezing them. Defrosted one in the microwave and had it with ice cream the other night, still good!

I reckon I could do three decent dinners and then another three days on:

tin toms, onion, and pasta - salad scraps from fridge
spuds, sliced onion, cheese sauce, frozen peas and tin of carrots
Rice cooked in stock with a bit of onion, tin of red kidney beans, and a chicken breast chopped up with frozen peas.

After that - might scrape together some out of date polenta, tin of tomatoes, tin of tuna, served with some homemade bread from the last of the flour and some yeast from the back of the cupboard.

That's it - then we would run out and the whining that had been going on for hree days would reach a creschendo after the cereal and last frozen milk from the freezer runs out.

.....there might still be half a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic left for the grown ups though

I have had a Christmas pud in the fridge for about three years. Its moment just never arrived.. Do you think it could still be classified as food?

Yep. No prob.

Well that is St Patrick's Day sorted then. Thank you.

If you regularly find yourself chucking out fossilized food that has been in the freezer too long and got freezer burn then by a foodsaver vacuum packer from Lakeland. Put your meat in it before you freeze it and it will last for years rather than months with no ill effects whatsoever. Well worth the investment if you are like me, and insist on having a cavernous pit of a freezer and always stockpile meat in case a zombie apocolypse or some other catastrophe.

I have all sorts of random shit in my cupboards that have no obvious use for. You have spurred me on to dig it all out and get creative. The thing is, DH always moans when I do this, and then moans when I spend too much on the shopping! I can't win. I can't do fillet steak en croute every night on a Fray Bentos budget!

I'd love to join in, but, since I have a minute freezer and only four kitchen cupboards which have to house implements as well as food, I can't.
I do have 30kg of rice though if anyone is short.

Ohhelpohnoitsa

I use milkandmore. I use him for milk,yoghurts and bread. And I normally check if they can deliver if I run out of something mid week they seem to stock most things.

I really want one of those vacuum things. My freezer is tiny so I want it to squeeze more stuff in. I'll take a look at the lakeland one :o

Wow, this thread has gone crazy! I am quite overcome Thank you all for joining me, I will definitely try even harder now I feel I have to report back!

Some good suggestions re the grapes, thanks, but I'm a fussy devil. I don't really want a cold dish as it is too cold for that & I'm not good with bits in yoghurt. I have seen some recipes for grape sauce for fish/chicken, so I will maybe freeze them until I find some suitable meat to use them with.

Re Christmas puddings - they keep forever! I'm sure I've had some that were 5+ years old, the older the better! I have one to eat & a couple of cartons of rum sauce (not my fave, gift from MIL, but will use it up).

Tonight's dinner will be a fairly plain one - pan-fried trout with rice with some stock stirred in & steamed veg. DSes will eat earlier - one will have the remaining few chicken fingers from the freezer, the other some leftover frozen spag bol (homemade).

If When I get my car back tomorrow, I will have to buy some basics -tinned toms, potatoes, bananas - but other than that I think I have a month or so of both meals & snacks!

I am currently doing this now as u had to replace my car directly after Christmas. Porridge milk eggs bread fruit veg spuds rice pasta flour sugar teabags orange juice (I don't buy pop because of the nasties) soup beans flora rapeseed oil whole chickens, cheap stewing cuts of lamb or beef. Bag of quorn mince, butchers sausages Chilli sauce, herbs spices gravy. Make your own cakes , pasties, puddings. Good luck

Au Pair is making veggie lasagne tonight - that will be interesting.

I have a load of things I WANT to make at the mo (and have all ingredients), but time/fussy child/manic timetable isn't allowing it. And that's not even getting into the exoctic type stuff.
Gorgonzola pasta with bacon lardons
Lamb meatballs with tomato sauce and pasta
Prawn tikka masala
Chicken and mushrooms in white wine sauce (with mash or pasta)
Chicken fajitas
Hoi Sin Pork
Mushroom risotto
Tomato and mozarella bake
Sweet'n'sour pork
Nasi Goreng
Bacon butties
Welsh rarebit bake with crusty bread
Lamb chops, roast potatoes and cauliflower cheese
Mini chicken kievs and oven chips
Crab cakes and sweet chilli sauce
Spag bol
Veggie Chop suey
Prawn and vegetable sushi
Prawns with roasted veg, a tomato sauce and pasta
Hoki (fish) and mash
Paella (that is getting into exotic as it's an experiment)
Cod in batter and oven chips and peas
1 meal each of hot dogs and fish fingers and probably 2 of chicken nuggets(for DD after school)

Flapjacks with lots of dried fruit
Chocolate cake
Coffee cake with walnuts on top
Pot au chocolat with orange
Apple crumble or apple pie and custard

And I am sure there is more without me even reaching the bottom of the freezer.

I was going to go shopping but this thread has inspired me so I checked out our stocks of stuff instead.

From freezer, fridge and cupboard stocks I could rustle up the following:

• Cheese and broccoli quiches (loads of eggs, pastry ingredients)
• Pizza (have flour and yeast, homemade sauce already in freezer, mozarella in fridge)
• Lentil soups or curry (have red lentils, curry powder, tinned tomatoes, onions, rice)
• Scotch broth (pearl barley, turnips, carrots, onions, tinned tomatoes, frozen chicken stock)
• Cheese and mushroom toasties
• Various omelets including spanish type (eggs, potatoes)
• Egg fried rice with chicken stir fry (chicken thighs in freezer, carrots, onions, broccoli, soy sauce, spices)
• Anything made from oats / oatmeal including oatcakes, porridge, parkin, homemade hob nobs
• Homemade scones (freezer drawer full of cheese or currant varieties)
• Could make a fruit or marmalade cake (eggs, flour, sugar, marmalade, dried fruit)
• Any type of bread from flatbreads to loaves (have bread flour and yeast in abundance)
• Curry (chicken thighs, sauce in freezer, rice)
• "Fish-and-something" - loads of breaded and plain frozen stuff in freezer, beans or veg to go with
• Apple crumble (homemade, frozen) and custard
• Roasted chicken thighs with a spicy tomato sauce and rice (freezer)
• Pasta with tomato sauce (tinned toms, onions, dried pasta) or tortellini with same (bought tortellini reduced; in freezer)
• Roast chicken dinner (make homemade Yorkshires, chicken in freezer, veg, gravy)
• Scotch or normal pancakes (golden syrup, eggs, flour, milk)
• Baked beans....inevitably
• Sausages: could be casserole, go in sarnies, or as a fry up (freezer)
• Hash browns / rosti (potatoes, onions, oil)

So I don't need to go shopping then...good.