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

Cherryfudge

I can just eat dried apricots as a snack but I know not everyone can! Add to overnight oats? Tagine? In your cereal?

leftatthetrafficlights

I also would suggest tagine for the apricots!

Another option is aubergine stuffed with red lentils and apricots - cut the aubergine in half lengthways and scoop out the flesh, brush the aubergine shell with oil and bake on its own for around 15 minutes. Chop the aubergine flesh and sautè with a chopped onion and garlic until translucent, add red lentils, stock, chopped apricots and any herbs you want then cook for around 20 mins until lentils are cooked through. Add the cooked lentil mixture to the aubergine shells and bake for around 15 minutes. 

They're also really nice chopped finely in a salad 😁

winterbear95

yesterday we had yellow sticker pork loins mash potatoes and veg in onion gravy 

tonight is slow cooker chilli and jacket potatoes 

LotsOfTea

I used up all the small ends of cheese yesterday to make a cheese sauce which I had half of with roasted cauliflower for my tea. Lunch had been some more of my pumpkin & orange soup and bread followed by ice cream. I know it's not really ice cream season but there's some in the freezer and it's all gotta go!

Today I took a cheese sarnie to work and a banana flapjack from the freezer which had defrosted just fine when I came to eat it. Tea will be the remains of the "keema" curry with a "steamfresh" sachet of frozen veg. 

Oh I nearly forgot, I took out a tub of spiced apples and pears from the freezer which I've been having with yoghurt, oats and seeds for breakfast. Although it's only going down slowly I am making progress!

LotsOfTea

I'm still ploughing my way through the spiced apples & pears which have been delicious on my breakfast yoghurt but I have finished off all the other leftovers from earlier in the week now.

New things that have come out of the freezer are a packet of bacon for breakfast butties tomorrow and 2 chicken breasts. I haven't exactly got a plan for them yet but I may well delegate that to DH as he and DS are the meat eaters in our household. 
DH has gone out tonight and didn't need feeding so DS and I had freezer-use-up meals. DS had the last of a packet of chicken nuggets, chips and 3 kinds of veg to make up for all the beige! I had a portion of veggie chilli which I'd handily frozen with rice so it was a very easy, quick blast in the microwave. 

Still lots to get through in the freezer but we did spend a few minutes hacking the excess ice off the freezer drawers to keep it ticking over until we can empty it and do a proper defrost. Or possibly just bite the bullet and buy a new one. 😬

thriftwizard

Well - quite a long time since I last checked in here, over a thousand posts ago! But can't resist mentioning today's use-it-up list: first off, made the Christmas Pudding & popped it into the slow-cooker, having soaked the dried fruit overnight in some Cointreau that DS2's ex-girlfriend left behind. He's been married to my lovely DDiL for 4 years now and they have a 3 y.o., so I guess the ex isn't going to come back & claim it now! Or any of the other sticky alcoholic confections she left cluttering up my shelves...

Then I took a sharp knife to a grown-without-chemicals pumpkin I acquired at a smallholding gate a couple of weeks ago, on a route I wouldn't normally have been travelling but for the incessant roadworks going on around here. Not the sort of pumpkin you buy for carving; this one was twice as heavy for the size & almost solid inside. It's made a vat of chilli pumpkin soup, three loaves of pumpkin bread (a bit like a farmhouse fruit cake, but better!) and there were 3 2-cup bags for the freezer too. They'll go into soups or more pumpkin bread as we go through the winter.

This all used up some of our home-grown chillis which have been drying on top of the boiler, some fresh coriander left over from last week's curry & kept in a jar of sugared water on the windowsill, and quite a lot of spices. The seeds were roasted at the same time & went out to the chickens, who eat them shell & all. I've chopped up my home-grown tomatillos, some garlic, more chilli and coriander and started a lacto-fermented Salsa Verde, with the last couple of spring onions bought a couple of weeks ago & still languishing in the salad drawer, and also set a big jar of broken carrots off to ferment; I was offered a huge bag of them for £1 at the market yesterday and jumped at the chance. The bigger bits will go into tomorrow's roast dinner, including a halloumi nut roast, which will form the basis of lunches throughout next week. 

Slightly shattered now! But delighted to have found some chicken breasts in the freezer whilst stowing the bags of pumpkin and one of the loaves; that'll "do" a dinner later in the week.

LotsOfTea

Can I come round to yours @thriftwizard? That all sounds delicious! 

I would be very interested in recipes for pumpkin bread and halloumi nut roast if you have them. 

Cherryfudge

Good work @thriftwizard! It all sounds lovely!

thriftwizard

@LotsOfTea, the halloumi nut roast is based on Rose Elliot's "Easy Carrot & Hazelnut" nut roast recipe (from Cheap & Easy) with added halloumi, cut into matchsticks/Julienne strips. Using up whatever nuts & root veg you have handy, rather than sticking exactly to the plot, and half a pack of halloumi. And the pumpkin bread recipe was given to me by my Oklahoman friend; it makes 3 loaf-tins full, which is one to eat, one to freeze and one to give away, which is their tradition. The same applies; use whatever flour/grain/nuts/seeds/spices you have in. 

Pumpkin Bread

Dry Ingredients: 4 cups of grain (I used plain flour, spelt, fine oatmeal & gram flour)
                           2-3 cups of sugar (we don't like things too sweet, 2 is enough!)
                           A good pinch of salt
                           2 tsps bicarbonate of soda or a tbsp baking powder
                           A tbsp mixed spice or spices to taste e.g. cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves
                           A cup of raisins or dried mixed fruit
                           A cup of chopped nuts or seeds - walnuts or pumpkin & sunflower seeds work really well

Wet ingredients: 2 cups cooked pumpkin
                           1 cup oil (I have used 250g melted butter before now; it works)
                           4 eggs
                           Up to ½ cup water/pumpkin fluid/whey, if needed.

Line 3 loaf tins & heat oven to 180C. Mix your dry ingredients thoroughly, then whisk up the wet ingredients; combine & stir well. It should be sloppy. Pour into the loaf tins & bake for at least 1hr, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool before eating! Makes a really nice breakfast with a dash of yogurt or cream.

Watty1

That pumpkin bread sounds delicious. I'm saving that and might hang over the fence and ask the neighbours who grow them a variety in huge amounts for a pumpkin picking fest at Halloween if any are left!

Today used up 2 red peppers that were so past their best in lentil and pepper soup, made banana bread with the spelt flour and am having tandoori chicken and salad with home made naan this evening.  Still using up the flour. All out of stores.  Stores slowly dwindling.

Thanks for the aubergine idea. I love that one!  Going to make that.   

I've rediscovered a love of food using stuff up. Sounds a bit odd but I am delighted with the stuff I cook.  In my 20s every weekend I would make a different soup and some bread to eat during the week on busy nights and as I made my lentil and pepper soup and banana bread I remembered those days with fondness and felt I had rediscovered another part of me (those who have seen me on other threads know I have had a tough time but am out the other side and discovering myself again with joy).