Living richly; simply and debt-freely

Good Evening :hello:

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Maybe leftover-type cook books are aimed at people who aren't already as adept at creatively using and storing any leftovers as you are, dear Greying! :kisses3:

Aw hun - I know that not everyone is obsessed with cooking as I am :rotfl:, but I don't think that a book about what to do with leftovers is necessarily the answer

*climbs up onto orange crate*

I think that the issue is about having the confidence to cook in the first place, having the building blocks of home economics to help you to buy, make, store and get the best value out of your food - whatever your budget - with minimal waste. And yes, whilst I don't think home ec should have been ditched from the school curriculum, there are other ways to learn things now.

The only things that I can thing of as 'leftovers' to convert into something else is, say for example, something that can be made into a 'rissole' - so pieces of meat or leftover shepherds pie or bits of fish say. What the 'celeb' chefs term as 'leftovers' is food to me - the building blocks of countless meals, not things that are regarded as a 'problem'.

Say I buy a chicken for £5. I want roast chicken on Sunday and I give DP a leg and some of the white meat and I have some of the white meat. I only bought the chicken with the intention of roasting it. I therefore, have 3/4 of a chicken remaining, that I do not know what to do with. Is the issue leftovers?

The alternative? I decide that this week I will buy a chicken. I think about what recipes I would want to make that involve chicken - I seek out the recipes, and make sure that the other ingredients that I will need are in stock/buy them that week. I buy my £5 chicken. I roast it on Sunday and we eat our fill. I take off the chunky meat and set it aside for the pot pie I'm going to make. I remove all the other meat and set it aside for the chicken tikka curry that we are going to have on Thursday. The carcass, picked clean, is popped on the stove in a saucepan (or in the SC) for a load of HM chicken stock. This is put in the freezer for when we need it for soup/risotto etc. My £5 chicken has contributed to at least 4 meals for us, and I have minimal waste - and no left overs.

Now, I know that the second version involves having knowledge, you've got to know recipes or techniques or know how to get hold of them. You've got to know approximately how large the chicken needs to be - can you afford it, etc etc. But those are skills that can be learnt. But you're starting with a different mindset. You are respecting the chicken as a source of food for your family and using it wisely. Buying 'too much' for what you need - a breast filet and a chicken leg would have sufficed if I only intended to use the chicken for 1 meal - is the issue, not the fact that there are leftovers.

joeyjimbles wrote: »

Two that infuriate me when suggested by cookery pundits are bread and cheese - surely that's tomorrow's lunch! I do appreciate ideas that might come in for using the remainder of something that was particularly bought for a recipe and perhaps not completely used up, but bread and cheese....goes off to mumble discontentedly.

^This. I cannot remember the last time we had 'leftover' bread. I always substitute oats for breadcrumbs in recipes, because I rarely have stale bread to make into breadcrumbs. Our HM bread is made in certain tins - which yield specific sized loaves - depending on what we are doing with it (picnic sangers being top of the list :j) and if I've bought sliced bread from the shop, I use what I want and freeze the rest. We always use the crusts - they are just another butty

I also fully realise that I've routinely only had to cook for 1 or 2 people in my life. I've done dinner parties in the past, but haven't for ages. This house isn't conducive I have no fussy eaters to cater for. I don't have to find a 'leftover' recipe for scrambled egg that was untouched - it's never occurred, so I don't know what I would do...... I do try to practice portion mindfulness. I bulk make my shepherd's pie - I always get 6 portions out of my tin. If I make stew/curry and there is a small portion leftover, it becomes a lunch the next day. If there is a large portion leftover, if gets frozen as stew or curry for another day. I don't have leftover risotto. I would rather keep 'spare' rice in it's dry state, so that I can make another risotto another day. i'm mindful of ingredient quantities per person as I make the dish - even if i'm winging the recipe - which I do a lot

So you see, I just can't get to grips with 'leftovers'. I appreciate I may be being really dense about the subject, but I can't see it as the 'problem'.

I didn't do Home Ec to O level. We had horrible HE teachers, with the only nice one always only teaching first years, but she was the sewing mistress too, so had a full curriculum. My mother never encouraged me to cook. She was always worried about it taking too long if she showed me how to do something, or that I would mess up ingredients - with the attendant cost implication, given that we hadn't much money and we lived in the country - no popping out for a replacement x at the drop of a hat.

I am most certainly the only veggie in my family. I really only started to cook when I was at Uni. but with the exception of learning how to layer a lasagne (oh, and make it, t'was such an 'exotic' food for me at the time!), you couldn't say that I did any 'proper' 3 course meals at uni. I've learnt as I've gone along in life, by reading, watching progs, asking other people and from the internet. My cooking is different from what it was 5 yrs ago - and as for 20 years ago :rotfl: Mind, you could afford buckwheat and Quinoa in those days, as no one had heard of them, and they were cheap as chips

The book that satchmo and upsidedown bear told us about has a very interesting *most recent* review. The reviewer terms the book 'good for the creative cook'. I think that hits the nail on the head. In order to use all your food wisely and avoid waste, you've got to have some idea of cooking basics and you've got to be creative. Where are the cooking basics TV progs/books?

*climbs down off orange crate, tucks everyone under a blanket and switches off the light, as I've probably bored y'all senseless*

Greying x