January's No-Shopping Challenge

EitherWalnut

Was busy busy busy today so forgot to eat until 3pm when I was out at the post office and without thinking, I bought sweeties. D'Oh! Upside is, I don't actually have any sweeties in the house so maybe I'll make them last.

Made a big turkey curry to use the last of the christmas turkey and to use up all the sad looking veg, plus some dried fruit languishing in the back of the baking cupboard. Froze it all and dug out some chicken nuggets from the freezer for dinner, along with some cheese and onion bread.

EitherWalnut

So yesterday I made some sausage and bean pasties with the pastry I already had in the freezer. I'm a firm beliver that anything can be improved by the addition of pastry which is why it's one of my chosen items! To make the filling, I just chopped up the remainder of the pigs in blankets from Christmas, and and mixed with a tin of beans. Added a half a can of water (to wash the inside of the can out mainly!) and cooked down until the beans had just started to go a bit mushy. The resulting pasties were baked and will be frozen. Mixed the leftover filling with some pasta for dinner and then took the leftovers from that for lunch today.

Dinner this evening was prawn spaghetti, using prawns from the freezer, some of the christmas cream that I'm still working through, and some garlic and chili from the bag of veg I was gifted the other day. Divided it in two and put half in a tupperware for lunch tomorrow.

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with all of the leftover Christmas chutney...

EitherWalnut

Yesterday's dinner was some chicken en croute from the freezer with a few of my remaining baby potatoes and some of the donated cabbage. Leftovers for lunch today. Didn't have a lot of time this evening so pulled a container of stew out of the freezer for dinner.

Then had a bit of a slip up - ended up going on a yellow label run in M&S with my mum and sister. However considering I came home with a sack of food having only spent £12.72 I feel less guilty than if it had gone in the bin! We filled a trolley between is and the total bill was only £40. Outrageous. It's makes me so sad to think as well about the amount left that will just be dumped. Anyway, the upside is, I have to take a packed lunch and dinner tomorrow and I was worried about what I was going to take as on a Thursday I have no access to a microwave or anything, so at least the reduced sandwiches and pork pies will sort that out for this week!

CJRyder

Evening all! Sorry for the delay in updating everybody. The following purchases have been made:

6pt Milk (£1.48)
15 Eggs (£1.75)
Veg box (£15.50)
1kg Rice (£0.45)

Total spend: £19.18/45.00

There will be another veg box arriving in 10 days time, but apart from that spending on food has been pretty good. However I have realised just how hard it can be to limit yourself to five items and not cheat (e.g. Pearl Barley is a vegetable, as are Marrowfat Peas, therefore they can go into the veg category... NO!). It;s also been fun playing "Do I want to use this if I can't replace it?".

P.S. Discovered an unopened box of yeast packets in the cupboard that are well in date. Score! I can safely commit to Flour.

pandora205

Doing quite well here with not spending and eating pretty well too, though I did extend my five items to seven.

My list now reads:
milk
bananas
potatoes
carrots
something green (bought rocket though maybe spinach could have been more versatile)
onions
tomatoes

I made a large amount of soup at the beginning of the challenge (broccoli, cheese and chestnut - I had some left from Xmas) which is useful for lunches. I've now run out of bread so on muesli for breakfast and have several options for evening meals, having batch cooked chilli beef and bolognese, with plenty of stuff in the freezer, plus the usual tins of beans, tomatoes, rice, etc. I don't have so much on the sweet side but make my own yoghurt which is useful, have some frozen fruit and low sugar jellies in the cupboard, oh and still some ice cream too.

I'm trying not to snack or nibble though have carrots and celery if I'm desperate, and thank goodness the chocolates have just about gone!

EitherWalnut

Hi folks,

Hope you've all had a good weekend!

CJRyder - I've updated your spend. It's amazing how much more care I take over cooking/eating/shopping when I'm being deliberately restrictive! Agree that it's also very easy to bend the rules and convince yourself that something is allowed - that's why I choose to be quite specific in my choices (i.e. cheddar cheese instead of just cheese). Glad I didn't specify semi-skimmed milk though since there was some whole milk reduced to 11p the other day. Bought extra for the freezer!

pandora205 - broccoli, cheese and chestnut soup sounds lovely! Have you got a recipe? Might try that one out next month if i can find some chestnuts. I also don't have much left on the snack-food side of things - might have to get creative with the baking cupboard this week!

My fresh fruit is all finished now except for one mango and one papaya which need to be used sooner rather than later, so that's definitely what I'll likely miss in the coming weeks. I still have some cabbage left, plus a butternut squash and a pumpkin (from Hallow'een!) so not quite in dire straights with the veg yet. Have managed to keep up with the packed lunches in work, so I'm pleased with that but as I have no access to microwave or anything on a Thursday, heating up leftovers isn't going to be an option, so I'm going to have to start coming up with new ideas!

CJRyder

Cheers for the spend update! My rule bend was Vegetables, to allow for the variety that appears in my fortnightly veg box, and the flour/yeast combo which I'm very glad to be able to commit wholly to flour. I didn't specify a particular milk as I vary between green and blue top, and buy whichever has a longer date on it. However after being told that when weaning DD can only have blue top, I will happily switch completely over.

Made souffle for the first time today. I found a chocolate souffle recipe which seemed quite manageable and SWMBO was feeling a little down. So, along with some ramekins I'd bought earlier today for DD meal planning, I tried out the recipe with successful results!

nicmalauren, have you considered individual quiches? If you have some ramekins or similar small ovensafe vessels, you could make small cheesey-eggy pies of deliciousness! Go crustless too if so inclined.

pandora205

nicmalauren - my broccoli, cheese and chestnut soup was very simple to make. I wouldn't buy chestnuts especially - I had these left and was trying to think up a way to use them.

I sweated half an onion in some oil (I have my own garlic oil which gives a nice flavour but any will do), then added chopped veg (large pieces nothing fine). In my case this was broccoli stalks and cauliflower leaves. I added chicken stock, some extra pepper and simmered for a while. Finally I added quite a lot of grated cheese (this included some strange vegan cheese that noone liked as well as cheddar) then blitzed the mixture. If I'd any I'd have added a spoonful of flour to help emulsify the soup but I'd thrown all mine away just before Xmas as it had been open a while. So basically my recipe is fry some onions gently, add the veg and stock, add cheese and blitz. I use a food processor but a stick blender is fine if done in batches.

I store mine in mugs in the fridge or freezer and have it for lunch most days. The first couple of days I also made some croutons with the last of the bread but that's all gone now.

Soup is my go to food to use up just about any veg I have, including lettuce and most salad veg. I find that as long as I start with onions it works. Pea soup is the easiest (and onions not really needed), as it is made from peas and stock. Mint and or cooked bacon can be added at the end of cooking if available.

EitherWalnut

CJRyder - mini quiches are a great idea! I'd never have thought of that! I have a bunch of those little glass ramekins that you get desserts in so I'm sure I could use those. I'm thinking I could take some soup in a thermos as well.

Thanks for the recipe pandora205 - I am also a soup fan, but find that I end up sticking to the same few recipes. What would you do with lettuce? The only thing I've ever done with it (besides eat it as salad) is make pesto with it.

Roasted the butternut squash this evening and used some sushi rice from the cupboard to make a risotto this evening. Worked out very well, and there's enough leftover for lunch tomorrow. Will be raiding the freezer for tomorrow night's dinner - I know I have some squid rings/calamari (non-battered) in there if anyone has any suggestions for what I could do with it?

CJRyder

Today I have made store-cupboard risotto. I use regular rice rather than arborio (simply due to price) and it comes out quite well. Gently simmered with a little vermouth followed by stock. Today was vegetable stock, although chicken works well too.

How are things going with everybody?