To buy is human, to use up divine....anyone want to join me in a 'use up ALL my leftovers, sad fridge leavings' campaign?

[dandycandyjellybean]

Was horrified by a statistic about how much food we throw away, and thought perhaps we could swap ideas on how not to?

So far:
My neighbour gave me masses of new potatoes from her allotment, and some eggs from her neighbours chickens ~

*cooked all the potatoes had them as straight new pots that night

*instead of just making a sandwich when a friend turned up unexpectedly for lunch next day, sauteed cooked new pots and fried the lovely eggs - not terribly 'weight watchers' but blummin lovely!!!!

*mashed the rest of the pots and used as a topping for cottage pie and used up the last of the cabbage she had given me the week before (lovely neighbour - really helping in the credit crunch!!!)

*used up 4 sad bendy carrots, 2 similar celery hearts, similar 1/3 white cabbage, new pots I'd bought on offer at aldi and not used, some sweet potato, a few Quorn fillets and some frozen green beans and peas with lots of Pataks vindaloo curry paste and some pineapple chutney I'd made a couple of weeks ago and needed using, chucked it all in a massive pot ~ tada loads of curry for the freezer (dh favourite standby meal). It tasted surprisingly nice actually, didn't tell him about all the slightly 'sad' ingredients!

*last 1/2 of a french stick I bought on a whim for lunch on Tuesday and haven't finished - breadcrumbs for freezer.

Thanks all for the carrot recipes - we're off to madeira on an in-laws holiday...

cor potatoes you can do anything with though I suppose if you're looking at freezing then a shedload of leek and potato soup?

At the moment am obsessed by rosti - so I might have that for lunch had I loads of potatoes going...

Courgette and potato cakes? Peel and grate spuds, grate courgettes, mix with an egg and some herbs, maybe some garlic/onion/cheddar if you fancy it, then fry small flat blobs of the stuff till crisp and cooked.

There's probably a more technical version of this somewhere

thanks both, wow, madeira, and here's me getting totaly ott excited about mallorca!!!! like the idea of the courgette and pot cakes, as will soon have massive glut of courgettes from our (yard) garden. mmmm, fancy now actually, is it lunch time yet?

I don't throw away food and can't remember the last time I found something mouldy in my cupboard or fridge.

Actually...there is hardly ever any food in my house , I buy almost daily and meal plan and hoover up any leftovers.

oh yes i am very into this. afraid soup always gets my vote. shove any old veg in, boil up, liquidize, and serve with left over cheese, ham etc...

fruit goes into fruit puree into freezer to to eat later with plain yoghurt.

sexbomb [whispers] dont tell the inlaws but would much rather be going to mallorca to a hotel of my own choosing - I havent had the heart to tell my ds that there arent actually any beaches.

Oops have slipped a bit, ds' watermelon, which looked fine, had, upon getting it out of the bag, had started to ferment and had to chuck it away. Also, a small portion of pasta and tom sauce that was a bit past its best.

Did redeem myself a bit though. Had 2/3 pot of creme fraiche, so when making pasta for tea last night I cooked extra, and stirred the creme fraiche and some grated cheese into it and made several standby 'cheesy pasta' dinners for ds to go in the freezer. I gave the very last vestige of sad fridge leavings that i couldn't use, a small unopened but seriously past its best bag of salad leaves, to my neighbours neighbour for his chickens. Just as I'm typing this he has just turned up with 1/2 doz eggs, fresh this morning!!! Bonus.

But, I did grocery shopping yesterday, after making a weeks menu, and stuck to the list rigidly, so from now on I shouldn't have any waste from now on.

giantkatestacks, aaahhh, poor ds. Madiera sounds so exotic...do your inlaws live there or is it just there idea of holiday destination for you all?

Oh, and did the courgette and potato cakes for lunch yesterday instead of going to the chippy as per dh, they were really nice; I added some Soul Shack cajun seasoning and they about bloew my head off! Yum. I felt very virtuous although I don't think they were any less fattening that dh's chips!!!

a few too many 'from now on's....