Store cupboard challenge

lynzpower

Loads of things to do with mushrooms:

Cover in breadcruimbs, fry and serve with garlic mayo!
Mushroom risotto, add rubber chicken?
Chicken and mushroom lasagne
Spinach & mushroom lasagne
I have a tupperware that I throw mushrooms in- use these in pasta sauces/ beef & mushroom pie/stew. Frozen whole they seem to take on a more meaty flavour.
Mushrooms are my total favourite veg, and eat them every day.

Tonights offering as we never left the house is 2x burgers using a remant of mince, onions, lettuce, rolls from the freezer and HM oven chips.

Oh is now rustling up a chorizo spicy french bread pizza as the first meal wasnt big enough apparently.

Thriftily we used up the berries last night in the left over shortcrust pastry. I mixed the berried with 2 tablespoons of jam, some of the splenda sugar and some cinamon and made tartlets which we hav with the evaporated milk - another success!!

yummyhoney

Did you blanch your carrots before freezing? Ive just chucked a bag of black carrots so the next bag I buy will get sorted and popped in the freezer

i never blanch them,, i do this as soon as i buy them,,was fed up of throwing bags of them out too..i peel, wash and cut them up,,dry them and straight into a bag and into the freezer,,i also wash and dry the peelings and freeze them also and use them when i'm making soup:rolleyes:

purpleivy

There's a recipe I use from a Pat Chapman book,

Fry an onion in a spot of butter/oil. When it's softened slightly add a clove of garlic chopped (optional). Add a big tablespoon of curry paste, stir round to mix in and then add the mushrooms. Kind of makes its own sauce. Finish with some chopped coriander if you like it and have some. I usually have some ready chopped in the freezer.

Made someone's date and banana loaf recipe today (got it off here) and it was good. Very good as I used bananas that were in the freezer. Some may not know you can do this....

If you have bananas that are past their best just lob them in the freezer. It doesn't matter if they're brownish and/softish, they'll be soft by the time they have been frozen.

When you come to make your cake or muffins or whatever, then take them out of the freezer. DOn't take long to defrost because of all the sugar in them. Peel and mash. You can't tell how disgusting they were when they went in the freezer cos they look even more disgusting now! Keep reading , I know it sounds gross! By the time the mashed bananas are in your mixture I swear you can't tell what they were like to start with. Because they were so ripe, they're very sweet, so you might even be able to save on a bit of sugar.

The recipe uses melted butter, but I don't think with all the banana flavour it would matter if you substituted some of the butter for a bland vegetable oil, such as sunflower or rapeseed.

So saving in lots of ways. Dates were on offer at Graves, noone cares for nuts in cake here, so just put more dates in instead.

Have worked my entire menu till next Sunday out of the freezer. Need to get some fresh miilk and fruit but that is about it. Still hoping I can come in under budget for this year. It's not too late!

nicki_2

Today we had bacon sandwiches and pasta with pesto for tea (very late start - didn't have the bacon sandwiches until gone 1pm!). I've made 2 brown loaves in the breadmaker to be sliced up tomorrow and then frozen. I think one more tomorrow should use up the end of the bag of flour :rolleyes:

Tomorrow we're having cereal for breakfast, I'll be having leftover pasta for lunch (DD is out with her dad on a Sunday) and then homemade pizza & garlic bread for tea

Since DD is out I'll planning on making up lasagne to go in the freezer, sandwiches to go in the freezer for my lunches (then maybe I'll not end up in the Co-op every day like this week ), another loaf, if I can't put it on tonight on the timer (never done that before!) and get downstairs cleaned. If I had eggs I'd make cakes/muffins for my lunches too...but that would mean going to the cash machine (I have NO cash) & Co-op/Asda/Aldi so I'm trying to put that off for as long as possible! :eek:

Off to take the latest loaf out the machine...

CCP

newlywed wrote: »

Sainsbugs delivered me part of someone else's shopping and when I rang told me to keep it, so now I need some ideas..... for 3 tubs of value mushrooms

I went down to the farmers' market this morning to get some mushrooms, but they'd sold out. Now I know where they all went!

I love curried mushrooms, made in the same way purpleivy suggests, either as a main meal with rice or as an accompaniment to a meat curry. I also like mushrooms cooked with bacon and pesto, served with pasta, or mushroom and ham pizza. Another good one is Roman mushroom pasta - cook sliced mushrooms with garlic, then add cream, grated parmesan and black pepper, heat through and serve over pasta. (I call it Roman mushroom pasta because the recipe came from a lady my mum knew, who was from Rome. I don't know if it's traditional or not, but it's very tasty!)

Anyway, my dinner tonight will be a piece of steak, from the freezer, braised - sadly without any mushrooms - and served with the last of the brocolli and some bread. Lunch was a cheese and wild garlic twist, bought at the farmers' market - well, I felt I had to buy something after walking down there!

Confuzzled

i've been desperately in need of doing some baking as i stocked up on baking supplies in sept and then became quite ill for all of october with the flu which turned into a nasty lung infection

i just got the cookworks breadmachine that was on the grabbit now for 23 quid so i've been happily making dough to bake myself into all kinds of lovely treats and our first success with that inspired me

right now i've got a batch in made using a white bread recipe but to this i added a lot of garlic granules, some dried (in my dehydrator before they went off) red and orange peppers and a lot of mixed seeds (linseed, pine nut, pumpkin and sunflower) that have been in my cupboards for ages.

when the dough is ready i will roll it out into a large rectangle and fill it with some sauteed onions (getting old and milky), some bacon i found hiding in the bottom of the freezer, some sweet corn, again lurking in the freezer and some of the pickled red peppers from lidl that need using up. this will get folded up into a neat 'parcel' and will be topped with all the crumbly bits of cheddar i've saved up from our last block of cheese.

i'm also going to make a coffee cake using some of the freddoccino iced coffee mix i got from approved foods some time ago for flavouring, to that i'll add in the two shrinkly (as my 8 year old calls them) apples she keeps avoiding eating and the last dregs of sultanas in the bottom of the bag.

tomorrow i shall see what i can do with this celeriac i bought... i keep buying odd veg thinking we should learn to eat it, then i put off cooking it because i don't know how to use it properly so any suggestions are greatly appreciated

CCP

Your bread and veg parcelly-thing sounds lovely, Confuzzled. I'd never thought of doing anything like that - I'll give that a go with some of the odds and ends in my fridge, I think. Thanks very much for the idea. :beer:

I tend to get celeriac in my veg box quite a lot over the winter, so I've tried various ways of using it up! I'm not particularly fond of it on its own, but it's OK mixed half-and-half with potato as mash or as a bake / gratin-type dish. It's also good in mixed root veg soup, or added to meat stews / casseroles. Hopefully someone else will have some more interesting ideas - I'm sure I'll need them myself when celeriac start arriving on a weekly basis again! :rolleyes:

dawnylou

Only had celeriac once - we sliced it very thin and tossed it with very thin sliced carrots and served on the side of a pork chop.

dawnylou

samanthaneww2d wrote: »

make a mexican type sauce with the jalapenos peppers and enchilado sauce and serve with the brown rice

We are trying this out for tea tonight on some pork thanks

patchwork_cat

Chicken, ham and leek Lasagne today, not from the freezer unfortunately as I forgot to get the chicken thighs out! Leftover ham from last night though and will use the rest for lunches.

I was going to bake a Banana Loaf today as Sunday is day off the diet and we all fancied some, but I didn't have time so the bananas are going into the freezer, sigh. DH likes them quite ripe so he will have 1 and the dog loves them so 1 for her, but 4 left for Mr Zanussi! ( oh grow up patch!)