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!

Found a carrier bag of frozen chicken carcasses whilst rummaging today, so will add them to the one from dinner tonight and make some stock for the planned risotto later in the week :)

Also defrosted some apple puree and blackberries to make a yummy crumble. Unfortunately made enough for 2, so one has back INTO the freezer
Oh well, atleast that is an easy pud another time!

I have made:

Tomato and chickpea soup, with the last handful of orzo pasta chucked in for good measure.

Rice and red beans (had some kidney beans left over from soup I made earlier in the week), onions and paprika from store cupboard.

Cous cous with dried cranberries and sunflower seeds (see what I mean about DH and DCs not liking the same food as I do?). Added bonus - the recipe I found on the internet had maple syrup in the dressing, so I got to use some of that up too instead of having to make pancakes for breakfast.

I will alternate the soup and cous cous for lunch every day this week. I have enough left overs in the freezer for dinner (although it could get a bit monotonous - there are 4 portions of risotto ).

While exploring the fridge I came across a tub of crumbled blue cheese that had a sell by of June 2012 . I must have bought it to put into salads, and not got round to using it. It looked and smelt fine, so i'm going to turn it into soup .

My freezer is filling up with little plastic tubs of soup. I should keep a list, I've defrosted a few mysteries over the last couple of weeks .

Oooh, I love this thread! I bought some supplies in Aldi 2 weeks ago and added them to store and freezer stuff I had and we lived off it for 2 weeks - so cheap!

Today I spent £80 between tescos and Aldi (this included washing powder, luxuries like icecream etc) and now I reckon with what's left in the cupboards I have enough food to make the following:

Meatballs with fresh cherry tomoto sauce, parmesan and herb foccaccia X 2 lots of dinners so some for the freezer
Stirfry jumbo prawns with veg and chilli noodles
Terryaki chicken with rice and veg
broccoli & brie quiche
frozen beef stew with cauliflower cheese and baked potatoes
Frozen creamy chicken pasta with herbed foccacia
Fish pie x 2 dinners
baked salmon with sugar snaps and fresh pesto and baked potatoes x 2
chicken kievs with frozen peas and mash / baked potatoes
crispy bacon, pancakes and maple syrup
sausage, egg and homemade wedges
smoked haddock fish cakes, peas and salad (need to buy salad)
Chinese crispy duck with pancakes and hoi sin sauce X 2 lots
mushroom and porcini pasta (nigella's new book)
chinese pork with veg and jasmine rice
orange and thyme pork chops with cauliflower cheese and baked potatoes
frozen pizzas with homemade wedges and salad
couscous with roast veg and prawns
lentil soup with homemade bread

So that is 24 dinners taken care of - not bad going really and I know I have jars of curry sauce / pasta sauce etc that could be rustled up at a stretch if I needed to, so prob another 5 or 6 dinners there. Love it!

I'm coming round now redmayne, your list sounds lovely!

So far I haven't been to the shops this week for anything bar sandwich making materials for the DSs' lunchboxes.

We have had:
pork roast (with some damn good crackling if I may say so myself!!)
battered fish with chips
chicken risotto
slow cooked lamb shanks in a casserole (first attempt at slow cooker cooking!)
chicken stir fry
chicken & veg pasta bake
sweetcorn fritters (with polenta)

Really happy with that, actually. Have also made some lamb stock this evening, and will make some chicken stock tomorrow with some frozen carcasses. Will make a chunky lamb soup one evening this week, and have some tacos as well.

The fridge is now running very low, and the freezer is getting reduced. Will now scramble through the cupboard and see what I can use up for some meals. Might have to buy some meat though but will try to stretch it further than I usually do.

What is super nice to make with left over roast pork?

I say myself this challenge a bit back
Was doing well, not much in freezer and cupboards starting to look bare

Now dh has been made redundant and we have no resources to fall back on

I'm never going to do it again

Tom. Sorry to hear that.

Tom - So sorry to hear that. But most people are doing this because January is a tough month financially, and they are doing it to get ahead. (I know I am!)

Oh no Tom, sorry to hear that. A lot of the stuff we've been using up has been things that have just been sat at the back of the cupboard so it's as much about turning things over as emptying them
Up. If you need to restock with limited budget then can you use a combination of BOGOF offers (freezing the duplicates), doing the two-things-for-store rule (each shop, however small, you buy two cheap things "for the cuPboard). Or consider bulk buys like those on Approved Food (it does vary a lot how things are priced, but sometimes bulk stuff is very cheap on there. Still working through some of the rather tasty Polish packet soup we got on there at 30 packets for £1!)

Tonight was homemeade spag bolognaise with lettuce and feta-a-like salad. My middle freezer drawer now only contains ice trays and a lot of fishfingers!

Sorry to hear that Tom I'm doing this as we have a few extra bills to pay in January, so I'm trying to save where we can. Would also like to defrost the freezer as it hasn't been done for a year!
Approved Foods is great. We're slowly munching through the packets of Thai red curry paste that we got (20 for £1) and the Fabulous Baking Boy muffins (great for lunchboxes 90 for £1!)
DIY left over pork is super yummy in fajitas ;)

Lasagne for tea today (mince, sweetcorn, peppers from freezer, sauce, pasta sheets and bechamel sauce from cupboard) with garlic bread (freezer)

So another frugal w/end under my belt lunch today with DS will be soup/sandwich...TexMex dinner tonight using up a few bits n pieces-chicken wings, potato wedges and onion rings. Chicken casserole tomorrow...

Tom sorry to hear about your DH For me (and I was the one who started this thread!) I think this challenge is very much about not having 3-year old pieces of meat/fish in the freezer that I could not use because they had gone off. And also not paying out so much in January, as this has been a very tough month for us in terms of unexpected expenses. If you need to stock up again cheaply, have you thought of visiting supermarkets when they do their reductions? Staff will tell you when this is & you can get things for 25% of their original price (this is mainly what my freezers are full of!).

Dinner today is the remainder of last night's leg of lamb, currently in the slow cooker with some swede & carrots from the freezer & the leftover gravy from yesterday. There is also some yorkshire batter left, so may have pancakes as a snack later

I finally used up the 3 old leeks in the fridge last night with salmon and mash, with leftovers to have with some pasta and grated cheddar tonight.

I also put a list of the relatively easy meals I have to hand on the fridge door, so that I can use up some of them. And au pair will have ideas too from it. There's about 20 on there without even looking at "hmm, what can I make with these" type meals.

This week I only bought salmon for yesterday, and otherwise no meat or cupboard items. Milk, bread, fresh fruit and veg, and loo roll.

Tom, sorry to hear about your DH, I hope you'll find inspiration from here for cheap meals. If you have one near you, Asian supermarkets often have things a lot cheaper than main SM's - big bags of rice, spices, tins of coconut milk, bags of pulses etc, might be worth a look if you have any near you.

Ssssh! I nearly have ....

an empty shelf in my freezer!!!!!

MrsPink - DH would love me to have an empty shelf in the freezer.

It is actually impossible to fit anything else in!

Problem was I went to Waitrose for milk just as the lady was reducing everything down. It would have been stupid to ignore lamb at 99p, venison at 67p, cod at 55p etc etc so my freezer is stocked again!

Tonight I am having chicken wrapped in parma ham and asparagus with celeriac chips and spinach.
Boys are having fishfingers and beans.

Perhaps we should have a new rule that when we put anything into our freezer we put a date on it to be eaten by.

I'm going to go through my freezer tomorrow and make a list of what I have in there and then plan Feb dinners/lunches from what in there.

where I've just planned our feb meals after another freezer stock take. Today I retrieved an old bread roll and some chocolate pud from the freezer. dh had a nice lunch with the roll and the dc will have yummy puds tonight

Ooh, my freezer is really getting cleared out: lots of pasta portions for easy re-heating, the only meat left is two packets of chicken breast strips, a small packet of prawns, and some scampi/fishfingers. This really is the point where I need to resist stocking it all up again! DH does like his animal protein though, so meat shopping will occur at some point. I think I'll do prawn and lentil curry tonight to work on the frozen lentil mountain!

Well the chocolate pudding has gone down well with the dc and the haggis we had for tea tonight from * years ago was scrummy. I think I am almost into food that is less than a year old in the freezer now

Was supposed to be lasagne for tea tonight (took mince out of freezer ready) but DS1 went to a teatime Bday party which ran on, so got home too late to be arsed to cook it. We have chicken stirfry instead, which was on the menu for tomorrow. Left over chicken from yesterday, bag of frozen stirfry veg, noodles and sauce from cupboard.
Guess it will be lasagne tomorrow instead :)

Tomorrow we are having chicken soupy stew or stewy soup depending on your choice of words .

Made from leftover chicken and chicken bone stock from dd1 birthday on sunday.

Leilandri is frozen stir fry veg ok? Didn't even know of its existence but sounds useful!

Today I'm going to
a) go through freezer & make list of what's in there/ chuck out undesirably ancient stuff then
b) make list of what to buy to make use of what's left

Thanks for tips biddy and putit !

Notquite I always buy it, as I forget to use fresh stir fry veg and it goes off so quick. The one I buy is from Morrisons, and is good. Has water chestnuts, peppers, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, onion in. £1 a bag. Great added to some noodles/rice and only takes a few minutes to cook through :)

Lasagne tonight. With garlic bread made from some frozen foccacia rolls

We had the meatballs with cherry tomato sauce last night and will finish it off tonight - may steak a couple of small portions for the freezer for dd as she really liked it and it is so handy to have a proper instant dinner for her for nights when we are having something she is not mad about.

I had some very nice croissants I picked up on sunday, but it was after breakfast / brunch time and they were just wasting away in the cupboard to today I made cheese and ham croissants for lunch - they were delicious!

I nipped into M&S (fatal mistake for me!) after work to grab some fruit and came out with waaaay too much gorgeous food as always - so hard to resist in there! Got a meal deal thingy too, so might have that tomorrow night, had been planning Nigel Slaters Sausage & Mash Supper as it is so delicious and is a winner with all of us. MIght still have that and have the honey roast gammon Thursday night instead.

I need to get more inspired for lunches though, or start to make more soup. I have to make it the night before and I am tired from work these evenings so rarely feel like making the effort to cook lunch as well as dinner.

They were selling lots of stuff off in M&S so got things like mini pork pies for buttons and a few things for the freezer. I also bought their frozen rice and veg for making egg fried rice and another one - veg and potatoes for roasting, it has a basil dressing according to the pack and looks like a handy thing to have i the freezer!

I am trying not to let my freezer get too over stocked, ever since the time we went away for 2 nights, came back to find something had tripped the socket and the entire contents of my freezer had to be dumped, I cried as I had stockpiled some fillet steak (on offer), a whole wild salmon (bil is a fisherman), 2 whole free-range chickens, tons of homemade cakes etc and all of it went in the bin. Now I try to buy what I will use within a week or two.

Have listed what's in out 'big' freezer - and added 2 lots of chicken stew.

Will do the small freezer in the kitchen and cupboards tomorrow then I will do a menu plan using as much as I can from what we have.