Can we have a chat about what food/s you most frequently throw out from your fridge and how they could actually be used up?

[Mintyy]

I'll start:

Creme fraiche - I buy this to go in a chicken paprika casserole thing I do, but then can't think of another way to use the other half pot within a week.

Sweetcorn - the dc like tuna sweetcorn (ick!!) in wraps and sandwiches but again I only need half a tin. So the other half festers in the back of the fridge until it grows blue mould someone realises and chucks it.

Coleslaw - never eat the whole tub

Olives - ditto

Grapes - similar

Apples - quite often the apples end up going wrinkly

Potatoes - omg, I have thrown away so many potatoes and now we have full blown potato plants growing out of our compost bin

Turnips or swede? Either would go in soup. Swede (neeps) with haggis. Yum

Olives go off??

Cabbage lovers, you need Jamie

CorusKate- "steamed bacon"

IK8- turnips- cube them, bung em in a saucepan with a bit of salt, a knob of butter, a teeny bit of water, put the lid and shake saucepan every few minutes until golden brown (or equivalent for pink fleshed roots). Yum.

No time at the mo to read whole thread, but will do.

You can cook lettuce.

I now buy bags of bargain lettuce in the short shelf life bit and cook them as greens to have for dinner. Nice wilted in butter. Any bag of leaves will do!

Has probably already been touched upon, but 'tis one of my favourites.

I second whoever up thread mentioned about ripening your green peppers. I love them green in a chicken jalfrezi ( hairy dieters recipe ) but if you put them whole in a warmish dark cupboard instead of the fridge they turn yellow then red.

Coleslaw here too, plus tomatoes that have gone mouldy (if they're bland, no one ever fancies them) and the arse end of a bag of salad that's gone limp. Less waste there than 3/4 of a lettuce, mind.

Sometimes I'll get a couple of meals out of a cabbage and then get bored of it or not eat anything else it goes with before it gets nasty.

I tend to buy carrots loose, but it frustrates me when I can't because I find it almost impossible to get through a bag of them before they walk out of the fridge of their own accord.

No one eats celery raw apart from DS1 having the very occasional half a stick, so the middle of a head of it inevitable ends up brown and limp.

This is a perfect storm - you can't get through coleslaw quickly enough, but you are also throwing out coleslaw ingredients! Use the cabbage and carrots to make coleslaw, then you can make as much as you want and even stick some celery in too...

I also make fridge bottom pasta sauce - anything that's not going to make it gets blitzed up in the food processor, added to fried onions and mixed with enough passata to make a sauce. I usually add some lentils or soya beans for protein and whatever herbs seem appropriate and it's more likely to get eaten than soup in this house!

left-over carrots easily whiz into carrot soup. You will need some sweated onion, at least, to lift the flavour.

Everything else: I make a 'lasagne' that is everything in the fridge fried up plus tomatoes and pesto. Add a tin of cannellini beans and chopped spinach. Layer with pasta sheets. Top with creme fraiche and grated cheese and bake. This is known as 'dinner of doom' by my teens. Bloody delicious though and everything gets used up.
My Mom used to do this too. She called hers "Mother's Nightmare"

callmekitten

I freeze leftover tinned sweetcorn.

I freeze beans / spaghetti hoops in pots for ds too as he only eats a tiny amount

Our biggest waste is bread

It used to be salad but now I make 3 days worth of work salads at once so it doesn't fester trying to crack my deli addiction for work dinners

I make an easy Jamie a Oliver recipe with Crete fraiche. The sauce is bacon, peas, creme fraiche, lemon juice and grated cheese, with a splash of the pasta water if necessary. Takes 20 minutes and we all love it :)

I make a lot of soup! This weeks was turkey and tarragon - including some very limp celery and tired old swede. But I can never recreate the same thing twice - sadly, this time, it was bloody gorgeous!!

I have 5 packs of white asparagus tips that need using if anyone could help please?

I'll send you my address ;D

To help re-use celery and spring onions just use the tops, put the roots in water and they will re-grow. You can do this with other things as well link .

BobPatandIgglePiggle you can process the bread and freeze it as breadcrumbs. I use breadcrumbs in aubergine parmigiana but also roll risotto balls in breadcrumbs and fry them - yum!

Same here, precious. We never have anything short-shelf life in the house unless at least 2 people will eat it (4 adults, 1 child)

And yes to the fried Q ! I love it !

Stop buying bags of salad. Rocket and watercress last ok for 2/3 days but i onky buy this as a planned accompaniment for something like lasagne. Buy little gem and cos instead - if they start looking limp, cut off the bottom and put them in water like a plant, they refresh quickly.

If you like fancy leaves, get a bag of compost from poundland, a £1 trough and a packet of mixed salad seeds. For £3 you can have lovely salad for months. Some of the seed suppliers do salad mixes for all year round

when I have leftover rocket, watercress and spinach salad I chop it up and add it in the last minute to whatever I'm cooking - any soup, risotto, pasta.

It wilts a bit and it's lovely.
Sometimes I buy those salad bags just for that.

Rocket grows like weed.
Actually, it is weed.

IT is weed? Or it is A weed?

Only A weed.

Sorry....