Store cupboard challenge

Maisie_M

Have had a good weekend using up left overs and stuff in the cupboards. The freezer has some more portions of HM food in but that's good as it makes easy 'ready meals' for the days when I work.

I got 8 portions of bolognaise from 500g of mince by using up a jar of ragu sauce, adding one of the 8 tins of tomatoes I have, 4 grated carrots which were starting to go a bit rubbery in the fridge, a punnet of mushrooms and some lentils.

have menu planned for the rest of the month but it is a bit flexible depending on what we are doing at the weekends as we are currently trying to get OH's house decorated to go on the market in the next few weeks.

Righty ho back to work tomorrow having had three weeks off so need to get the meat out the freezer for my and DS packed lunches and the meals out for tomorrow night.

Shortie

Evening everyone!

Today I made a pumpkin and carrot soup with some carrots that were about to 'turn' and one of the smaller (ha ha) pumpkins from the garden

Delish

So for tomorrow I pulled our a reduced rolled pork shoulder from Freezerland (getting there, I'm about half way through the beast :eek:)

I was thinking of roasting it as it is, and serving with mash and veg, but does anyone have any suggestions to perk it up? Maybe a marinade / coating? I have honey in and mustard seeds, oh and brown sugar if they're any good?

Thank you!

valk_scot

Okay, now the kids are finally back at school I've decided to have one of my fairly regular eating out the freezer weeks, just to clear out some of the leftovers. I'm not talking about using up the joint of pork or the two chickens in there which are stores, not leftovers but all the little packs of odds and ends, like one portion of curry or that pack of cooked chicken scraps or whatever.

Anyhow, had a rummage through to see what was there and the immediate culprits I want to use up are...

3 chicken carcases.
2 bags of stock, probably ham. (Labelling things is not one of my strong points!)
Bag of cauliflower florets.
Pack of okra
Box of frozen broad beans.
Bag of chopped up runner beans.
Bag of fresh borlotti beans.
Bag of cubed up HM ham scraps.
Bag of shredded chicken meat.
Half a choritzo.
Pack of chicken thighs.
Two portions of two different chicken curries. (I think they are different anyway!)
Bag of cooked rice.
Pack of frozen nan.
Bag of mixed chopped up veg for soup....I just freeze up any odd bits of celery, carrot, parsnip, leek tops etc and drop them into one bag till I have enough for a pot of soup.
Pack of mixed mushrooms in garlic butter.
Pack of sausages.

I've got a fairly well stocked larder of basics so I was thinking...

Dinner 1: Veg curry with cauliflower, okra, veg from fridge and have that with chicken curries, rice and nan from freezer.

Dinner 2: Risotto with diced chicken and garlic mushrooms from freezer.

Dinner 3/4: Bean hotpot with mixed beans, chopped ham and choritzo from freezer plus any veg in the fridge that needs using.

Dinner 5: Something with these chicken thighs..exactly what depends on what emerges from the Whoopsies shelf tonight, lol. Or there's a tin of very dodgy looking cider in the cupboard...might make chicken in a cider sauce...?

Dinner 6: Sausage stovies. (The kids would eat these every night, belive me.)

Lunches: Soup every day by the looks of things. I'll make one batch of lentil soup with the ham stock and a few bits of that ham. I'll make a big pot of stock from the chicken carcasses and well have one batch of chicken noodle and swetcorn soup, plus one batch of chicken and mixed soup veg with barley soup. That should cover seven days of lunches and after school fast snacks.

Yes I'm missing one dinner here if I'm trying to cover a week but I'm really just trying to write a menu for the week that will clear out the freezer a bit, at minimal cost to me. There's other stuff still in in the larder/second freezer I can use for that last dinner and I always have eggs, cheese, a sack of allotment spuds and the same of onions.

Anyone else doing a freezer clear-out week?

Confuzzled

BenW wrote: »

My 'cure' for putting loads back in the freezer is not to! Instead I eat the same stuff for a couple of days on the trot. Means less cooking and less variety, but I can live with that.

Not sure if this would work with chidlren at home though.

Ruth

i do the same as i find that most of the time, unless the food was really tasty it never seems to get eaten once it goes in the freezer, trouble is though, if it's really good, it doesn't make it to the freezer

i made a huge 'cheesy mac bake' yesterday to use up the last 4 boxes of what i had nostalgically thought would be a tasty, though not really healthy, meal from macaroni and cheese you get in a box. i remember loving it as a child...guess my tastebuds have grown up!

anyway these 4 boxes have been staring at me for months now so i decided i could use those up and some other things to boot. first i scoured through the freezer for dregs of things and came up with a tiny bit of bacon, minced garlic and some sweetcorn. i then used up the last two of my rather ancient onions (MY EYES, THEY BURNNNNN!!!)

i sauteed these things together in a pan whilst the noodles 'cooked' in a pan full of hot kettle water. once everything was cooked to my liking i added in some chopped pickled red pepper (last one) and the last few sundried tomatoes, both snipped into smallish pieces. next came the dried sauce mix, the milk and a bit of butter which i whisked together in the frying pan with the sauteed items

then i got out the very old, very strong blue cheese and crumbled some of that in and stirred well til it melted and added a few tablespoons of wholegrain mustard from my 2.5litre-omg-i'll-never-use-it-all-up container, stirred well and the sauce was done

i drained the macaroni, put it into a big bowl then stirred in the sauce. i also mixed in some ancient grated cheddar from a block that kept getting pushed to the back of the fridge by accident. i poured it into two baking dishes, topped with more of the ancient cheese and baked at 225 for about 20 minutes til the cheese had browned nicely.

the wee one (8) declared this a success for lunch yesterday... and didn't complain at dinner... i'm about to serve it again for lunch today though i'm going to mix in a bit of worcester sauce in hers and some worcester and more wholegrain mustard in mine as this really gave a bit of added oomph when i did it to my dinner last night

my daughter is used to this though, so it can be done with kids but it's probably easier if you get them used to it young

Confuzzled

today i'm quite chuffed with myself. i decided it's really way past time to start using up the massive quantity of pulses, soy granules and rice (i have an entire cupboard for them all!) so i thought i'd make a curry.

into the slowcooker i put about 250g of red lentils, 200g of split yellow peas, 2 (of about 100 from AF!) mushroom stock cubes and about 100g of soy mince and then i added some hot water from the kettle to get that started.

i then decided to use up some of the dried food i have, so i chopped up some apricots into small pieces as we like sweet, korma style curry and also threw in some celeriac i had dried so it wouldn't go off. next in went a tin of curry sauce from homepride, a tin of spinach and chickpea soup i didn't like much as it was too spicy.

i tasted that but it was a tad too spicey so i tossed in a jar of morrisons curry sauce. tasted again, perfect! later i will toss in some frozen carrots onions and parsnips as these will make it even sweeter and creamier (once blended) i also have some cream that needs using up so i may put that in just before serving, i'd prefer to use coconut cream but we don't have any and whilst the wee one isn't huge on curry if it's creamy i can normally get her to eat it.

i'll cook up a bunch of rice and serve the curry over the rice then portion up the extra into meals to put in the freezer. i love curry and this one tastes so lovely already i know that i will actually eat this once it comes back out of the freezer!

i know it sounds a bit of a hodgepodge but it really tastes good now and should be even better after everything has blended slowly in the slowcooker, can't wait! :T

hotcookie101

I agree about eating the same thing every day(and used to have a veggie pasta sauce for dinner 4 days in a row when lived alone) but we would get bored with lasagne 3 days in a row, and also, as made with cooked pork, I wouldn't want to reheat it,so the ones in freezer are raw. I wouldn't really want to leave pork much longer than 3 days in fridge either, it was a very big joint for 2 people lol! I suppose I can think of it as 4 easy quick meals in freezer for nights when we are working late

Confuzzled

as far as eating the same thing over several days, if it's not eaten by the end of day 3 it's either put on the compost heap or frozen, i can be good at eating the same thing over and over but i will eat them for any meal not just a main or lunch and even i can't tolerate THAT many repeats rice only gets 24 hours before being frozen, just in case

thought i'd report on the curry, it turned out gorgeous and the wee one even asked for seconds and had it for breakfast this morning at her own request :T she didn't even flinch when i told her what went in it, just commented 'wow, that's a lot of stuff mum'

also used up 2 boxes of chocolate muffin mix and 2 boxes of strawberry cake mix (had very cheaply from approved foods, i don't buy stuff like this unless it's dirt cheap) baked them all up at the same time to save on electricity and we're now nibbling off them here and there to hold out our resolve to not go food shopping til friday as i have to go into town then anway... it's def helping, though the weather is now awful drizzle and everywhere looks lethal with wet ice so that helps too!

made so much curry/rice i won't have to cook today and i'll still be freezing it, yay!

CCP

The one good thing about this nasty icy weather is that it's a great incentive to use up what's in stock: since the weekend I have used up a pack of stewing steak, one portion of HM chilli, one portion of haddock (the cat had that as I'd run out of cat food), a pack of mozzarella, and, rather more worringly, the last of my bread flour and all but one of my tins of tomatoes. :eek:

I'll have to try to arrange a delivery of groceries over the weekend as I'm now running worryingly low on lots of things (including tins of tomatoes! ). I really though that, living on the edge of a city, I wouldn't have any problems with getting supplies in bad weather, but I hadn't reckoned on the council running out of grit and leaving most of the city to its own (very slippery) devices. I've learnt my lesson now, though, and it's a fine excuse to restock my cupboards, freezer, and anywhere else I can think of.

RuthG

Just finished the soup I made yesterday using the leftovers from the day before. Having to eat out tonight (meeting) so cant use store cupboard stuff today, and away till Thursday after that, so store cupboard safe till Thursday teatime.

Ruth

Isklar

I've just had my debt LBM. That's for another thread, but in brief, I was just about to do my shopping list before I go shopping tomorrow.
For some reason while I was mking my list, I started thinking about my credit cards and decided it was time to actually add up the outstanding balance on each of them. Well, I'm in a lot of debt, have completely been burying my head in the sand about it, and right now I feel sick thinking about it.

So, first thing is to not go shopping tomorrow, to make the food I have in the house last until next Wednesday. I have stuff in the fridge that is close to its use by date and odds and ends that I can't think what to do with them.
I am terrilbe at not using things up and end up chucking a lot of food away.
I'd like some help tom get some meal ideas from what I have in stock, please.

I'm not cooking for family, I live on my own. I need a packed lunch for Monday.

Store cupboard, I've got most basics, but have no flour.
I've got :
tinned kidney beans,
butter beans,
tomatoes,
dried chickpeas,
lentils - red and lentilles vertes,
pasta,
rice,
tea
coffee
baked beans
oatcakes
tuna
evaporated milk
and then the usuals like herbs, spices, worcester sauce, olive oil, etc etc

Freezer :

A few frozen sprouts,
Cauli
Brocolli
Peas
Five bread rolls,
Pitta bread x 3
Packet of bacon
Cooked turkey-about one portion
Grated mature cheddar
Chicken fillets x 2
Salmon fillets x 2
450g lean minced beef
2 portions HM chilli con carne

Fridge

Big tub cott cheese - sell by date yesterday. It's still ok
Single cream - unopened. Sell by is today
Sour cream. Opened a few days ago, Sell by date 15th
Large tub Greek yogurt - sell by 22 Jan
12 eggs- 24January
Bag of limes (no idea why I bought them!)
Bag of lemons - ditto
2 x packs of celery both on their last legs..
Green pepper x 2
Yellow pepper x 1
Red pepper x 1
Tomatoes x 6
Onions

Plus the usual suspects : mayo, salad cream, olives, laughng cow, butter, two packs of feta cheese.



Can you please help me to come up with some meal ideas, especially to use up the stuff in my fridge, that's close to it's use by date, or can I freeze any of it etc? I dont want to throw anything away.

I'm going to have a read on the DFW board to help with other things but I definitely need to reduce my food bill. I throw a lot of food away regularly and this has to stop.
Any help appreciated, my stomach is churning and I feel sick now I've realised my financial situation..thank you