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

Re freezing food. You can freeze pretty much anything except raw vegetables (just cook them), salads and strawberries. It 's high water content stuff that can't be frozen.

You can freeze egg whites, whipped cream, milk, cheese, all sorts, cooked noodles and pasta. If you would throw it out, freeze it instead - you wont have lost anything after all if it defrosts crap

Damn, does fizzy hummus mean it's off? I just ate a (mini) tub of roast pepper hummus, and quite enjoyed the fizzing. Am I going to get bottomly explosions?

Are most of you doing weekly/monthly shops ? I wonder if that's how you can't keep track if what food you have, because you have too much at one time. Instead of buying packs of fruit buy loose instead. Just buy the fresh food you need for a couple of days, not a week.

I work between 40-60 hours a week but still shop 3 times a week for fresh food, i go on my way home or in lunchbreak, littke and often means quick shops with little waste

You don't need to cook leeks before freezing. If they're on offer, I just wash, slice them, freeze and use for stews and soups.

Nigella has a good recipe for pear and ginger muffins which uses sour cream. If I haven't got enough, or any at all, I top up with or substitute entirely Greek yoghurt. I love Greek yoghurt, the original Total brand. If there's any left, I eat it with muscavado sugar and bananas.

I usually buy for a week (or more) but I plan to have the more perishable stuff at the beginning of the week and keep more robust veg (eg cauliflower, neeps, cabbage etc) to have at the end of the week.

Make a frittata! This is good for EVERYTHING...if you like eggs.

Put your leftovers (so, your cooked potatoes, olives & sweetcorn) in a deep non-stick frying pan, and fry with onions and something to make them delicious - garlic, or garam masala, say. Whisk up some eggs + bit of milk (+ your creme fraiche or, say, half a jar of ageing pesto!) then pour it over so it fills all the gaps. Cook the bottom side, then top with cheese and brown under the grill.

It can end up completely different each time, depending on what's languishing in your fridge...

Or, or... get a soup maker, and you can make soup out of what you might have thrown down a garbage disposal. The soup maker cooks it and blends it. For example, the other week I threw in:

half a red pepper
the last slice of cooked ham
the last meat from of a leg of lamb
a carrot
pot of passasa
the end of a Chinese takeaway - seriously - spicy prawns, sweet chili sauce and a few chips
something else I can't remember

...and it was absolutely LUSH. Other brave tasters agreed, not just me and my crazy husband.

There is such a thing as a soup maker??

I only bought the soupmaker because a friend told me it helped her use up end-of-lif veg - and it was on ebay for 9. I would have thought, I already have a blender and a saucepan, so why duplicate?
But no!
It is surprisingly good. Actually it has broken and I think I may even go so far as to replace it.

has anyone tried cooking old salads?

I haven't tried it, but shouldn't any old lettuce work OK cooked instead of spinach?

Lettuce soup and celery soup are both lovely especially if you add cream.

Cooked lettuce has the added benefit that it doesn't make me roll around with heartburn pain for several hours after eating it.

No one ever believes me, but if I ate a massive plate of cheeseburger, chips and mayo, I'd be fine indigestion-wise, but one tiny lettuce leaf and I'd be regretting it. But if you say "Euurghh, I shouldn't have had that salad with my burger, I knew I'd be regretting it" you get some funny looks.

Why don't you just use a saucepan and blender for a while? Isn't the only advantage of a soup maker just the novelty factor kick-starting you into making soup for a while?

I wouldn't use lettuce where I would use spinach necessarily, but it works well cooked with noodles IMO.

careerist I freeze loads of strawberries every year from my garden glut. Defrost them in a saucepan with a bit of icing sugar and they are exactly like old style tinned strawberries. Just right on a cheesecake.

I didn't know you could freeze mozzarella, does it defrost with the same texture?

I got given a massive box of over ripe strawberries ( about 10kg ) last summer . When we'd eaten so many we couldn't look another strawberry in the eye , I froze the rest in 500g portions , then defrosted it every so often and made the worlds easiest icecream , and much nicer than any mass produced number I can tell you.

Does anyone have ideas for leftover roast beef/brisket? I always intend sandwiches, but it never seems to happen and I end up throwing it away.

Here's what I do when I cannot contemplate turning yet MORE bread into breadcrumbs:
Savoury Bread and Butter Pudding

Or one from our friend Nigella which I make with ordinary bread. It'll sit uncooked in the fridge quite happily until you come home from work
Nigellas 3 Cheese Strata

Brilliant news about hummous being freezable, and I like the idea of mixing it with flour and frying it.

Left over beef = chilli or Cornish pasties in this house depending on what else is knocking about.

I put onions, celery, carrots and any other veg that needs eating up (peppers, courgette, leeks etc) in the food processor to chop it finely and then freeze in portions as a base for pasta sauce, soups etc. It also has the advantage of saving time when preparing meals as you can just grab a bag of veg from the freezer and stick it straight in a hot pan.

left over beef of any kind makes fabulous cottage pie. whizz up with carrots and leeks and celery. fry off some onion add beefy/vegetable mixture. fry gently. add beefs stock cubes or leftover gravy. Water or wine to make it less sticky. Top with mash and grated cheese. bake.

you ll never go back to mince! tis lovely.

mozzarella defrosts fine IME. certainly good enough time chop onto a pizza or top a gratin type of dish. i chuck the whole packet in the freezer and defrost over night in the fridge to tart up cheapo pizza for Saturday lunch.

Ooh you can make gnocchi from leftover mash -just add 2 eggs ,some flour and parmesan.I am going to try this as dcs will love it

I only use brisket for a pot-roast with root vegs and peppercorns. You can whiz all the juices and remains up to make a fantastic soup. It does not matter if the roots are a bit overdone and soft (which in my case they usually are)

though in my case I usually whiz some of them into a fantastic gravy with the juices, red wine etc. It does make quite a lot.

Titus I do snack plate dinner too...It always goes down well with the dc. and elderly veg is always welcome here. my mil gave me some spinach to chuck onto the compost. ..we had it in a lasagne for tea a week later! I had to trim it a bit but it was fine.