The all new using what you have from your Freezer, Cupboard or Shed (Barn)

Frugalistamama

I got a nice roasting beef from my MIL it was a few days past it's sell by date but I gave it a good sniff, so did my hubs and it was fine. So cooked it up and it's done us for two nights dinner plus leftover for hubs and my lunch tomorrow. So that saved me a few quid!

I also used up a cauliflower which was going rather spotty, I made a nice cauliflower soup and put in some leftover potatoes and some leftover veg and noodles for a filling lunch. 

I've got some beef stock from the roast, any ideas? Was thinking of putting it in another soup, maybe a sort of Asian noodle type soup.. not sure what else to do with it. 

LotsOfTea

Well I take it back about DH wanting takeaway last night, I misjudged him. He found cheese sauce in the freezer and made macaroni cheese with added mushrooms and sweetcorn. It was delicious and there's enough leftover for my lunch today. He's having a small portion of leftover chicken curry for his lunch and my job for this afternoon is to work out what fresh stuff needs using up and make a plan for it. I've been given some big cooking apples so I'm going to look out some apple cake recipes for popping in DS's lunchbox. 

LotsOfTea

I've made a bit more progress at running down the stores. Yesterday DH & I had some veggie chilli from the freezer bulked up with 3 chopped up veggie hotdogs (also from the freezer and quite vintage) and some leftover hm naan bread. 

Today I decided to tackle a massive squash that we got in our veg box a few weeks ago and used half in a big pot of curry with lots of lentils. I used up 2 ancient tins from the ZA stores - one of tomato soup which I used instead of chopped tomatoes and one of ratatouille. It worked well and the resulting curry is very tasty. Less successful was the big pot of soup I made with the rest of the squash which is a fairly bland type and needs something to give it some heft. I added Pak choi as it had gone a bit wilty and obviously that didn't add much in the way of flavour! I decided chilli was the way forward and added a good dollop of Carribbean chilli sauce and the remains of a pot of kimchi in but the soup ended up only tasting of the rather vinegary chilli sauce and being a bit acidic as a result. We had some with hm bread for lunch but there's loads left! DH had suggested adding some milk to it when we have it next so I'll see how that goes. Hey ho, sometimes making it up as you go along works and sometimes it doesn't. We'll finish it off one way or another. At least we've got the curry to look forward to for tea, that's delicious!

Pollie

@LotsofTea Try adding garam masala or curry powder to the soup.

ruby_eskimo

We also have curry for dinner tonight, a recreation of a Gousto recipe where the only thing I had to buy was a can of green lentils as had everything else in the freezer / cupboards.

Cherryfudge

@LotsOfTea, if I make a tomato-based sauce and it's a bit acidic, I add 1 tsp sugar per tin of tomatoes to take the edge off. Might that work here?

LotsOfTea

Thanks everyone! I'd forgotten about the trick to add sugar to tomatoes so I'll give that a go and add some garam masala as well.  I was trying to make something different to the curry that I'd also made today but it's better to have everything curry flavoured and tasting nice than to be grumpy about my slightly rubbish soup.

Cherryfudge

It's been a good using-up day: chicken and chorizo pasta for tea so now I need new of all the main ingredients of that, but it used up the chicken that had been in the freezer too long and the end of a chorizo sausage. Afters were spiced bread pudding, using up the lactose-free milk, some eggs and the odd crusts I bung in the freezer because otherwise they would dry up. There's enough of that to feed us a few times.

I realised I had space in the oven alongside the pudding, so I baked potatoes (now in the freezer) and a whole large dish of tiny gleaned apples which have sort of puffed and collapsed and look very nice in the dish. I didn't add any sweetener or anything, I will leave DH to do that when he eats them.

ruby_eskimo

Pretty much every day I'm saving a new recipe that I found online that sounds interesting to me but rarely actually use them.  Today is going to be one of those days that I actually recreate something I found online!  I have 3 eggs to use up and I'm on my own for dinner this evening.  Obvious choice would be an omelette but I'm a bit funny with egg texture and just can't eat an omelette (I've only recently managed to stomach scrambled egg).  But then I remembered I saw a recipe a while ago for an egg curry, which I saved off the back of having eggs in a curry on holiday and actually enjoying it.  Checked the cupboard and have all the things I need, and despite having curry for dinner last night (all be it a dhal with naan), I'm going to have a Japanese style egg curry for dinner with rice.

LotsOfTea

Ooh, share the recipe if it turns out nice @ruby_eskimo! Egg is surprisingly nice in curry isn't it? 

I had some more of my disappointing spicy soup today for lunch and a good splosh of milk really helped improve it and took the edge off the acidity. I've still got loads left though so I'll probably try a pinch of sugar and some curry powder to switch it up next time.

I used up a few cooking apples that I'd been gifted to make an apple cake this morning. DH wanted some at lunchtime as it was smelling so good but I cruelly made him wait as it was still cooling. We will have some after tea though and I'll probably freeze a bit to use in packed lunches for DS at a later date. I left out the walnuts the recipe called for so it would be ok for school.

Tea tonight will be some of the curry I made on Wednesday with rice.