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

LotsOfTea

Yesterday I used up some Quorn nuggets and veggie sausages from the freezer with hm potato, sweet potato and parsnip oven chips. I sneakily didn't tell DS the nuggets weren't chicken as he's convinced he doesn't like veggie versions of meaty things and he happily wolfed them down. I didn't have any but DH reported that they were a bit dry like everything else we've been ploughing through that had been in the freezer for several years. 

I'm going to give the carrot and cashew curry a go for lunch today with some hm naan and also going to bake a  boiled fruit cake. I tried on Friday but managed to burn the fruit when I was boiling it in the pan at the start as someone came to the door and distracted me. I'm blaming them not me, obviously! I was annoyed at the waste of ingredients and time but I do have enough of everything to try again today and we need some more cake for lunch boxes. 

LotsOfTea

DH used up an old jar of pasta sauce from the 
ZA stores for last night's tea and commented "not sure the sauce staying in the same shape as the jar when you empty it out is a good sign". It was fine! 😂 It soon turned liquid when heated up. I'm much less squeamish about OOD things than him, especially things that are designed to be long-life.

I've also been gradually using up the stash of red lentils by chucking a handful into every soup I make. This week's favourite has been curried courgette.

I found a pack of broad beans in the freezer that are vintage and need using and I'm not sure why I ever bought them because I'm not a massive fan of them on the whole. I shall have to see if I can find any nice-looking recipes to make them seem more appealing.

Pollie

You can use broad beans instead of chickpeas in pesto or hummus.

JIL

I love broad beans, a childhood meal was bacon, egg, new potatoes and broad beans. The bacon fat was then poured over the beans and potatoes. 

Cherryfudge

Cherryfudge said:

The pears, cottage cheese and lettuce sounds just unusual enough to tempt me. And I do like pears.

Now you have me thinking of pear and ginger porridge made using some of the syrup from stem ginger jars...

I used up some eggs and lemons making lemon curd this morning. A lot of ingredients for two jars' worth but so nice. There are red cabbage, sweet potatoes and celery to use at some point in the not-too-distant future, as well as a couple of portions of the chickpea tikka and a pack of liver. I think I will divide the liver in two and freeze both, then we regain fridge space and I get to buy some really nice bacon to have with it.

I see I've not been around on here for a week, between trying to do 'all the things' and recovering from a virus. Hence my latest post above for my reference.

The liver is still in the freezer, but I've used up the tikka and some chicken and chorizo. In fact I think there's now a chorizo-shaped hole in stores, but one portion of lentil and chorizo soup to finish this lunchtime. No hurry to replace it: at £2.40 a pack, I only buy it when on promotion.

Red cabbage, sweet potatoes, celery and various other veg are still sitting around.

In headline-grabbing news, I have space in the freezer! For the first time since I bought it in August, the bowl of the ice cream maker has been chilling overnight. I have the ingredients for ginger ice cream so that's the plan for this morning.

LotsOfTea

Well done for getting freezer space @Cherryfudge! Homemade ice cream sounds like an excellent reward. 

I've made some more soda bread this morning and decided to try flavouring it with cheese and marmite. I completely guessed the quantities so hopefully it'll taste good. It certainly smells good as it's cooling on the rack. 

LotsOfTea

The cheese and marmite soda bread was an absolute triumph so I'll definitely be doing that again. 

I also made some flapjacks and ginger slices on Friday and froze about half of each so I've got a selection of cakey products to feed the ever-growing pre-teen. The ginger slices recipe came from a great book I got called One Tin Bakes Easy by Edd Kimber and all the recipes fit the same sized baking tin which is an absolute game changer for me. Previously any recipe I found seemed to need a different sized and shaped tin that I didn't have and I'm not a good enough baker to know how to adjust for that.

I've not been eating as much yoghurt as normal recently so I've got some marginally OOD greek yoghurt to use up so I think I'll use the half flour/half yoghurt method of making flatbreads that someone very helpfully posted on here to use it all up and freeze them. I feel like I'm putting a lot back into the freezer at the moment but I'm still working on using up the stuff in that's too old as well. 

Cherryfudge

Cheese and marmite soda bread sounds like 'I'll just have one more slice... maybe another one' territory!

We did a large shop last night ready for the family descending today, though due to one advanced pregnancy and two toddlers possibly incubating chickenpox, we catered for six not ten. We still had a lovely time and four pizzas are now reduced to three slices. There's quite a lot of pesto pasta and one frozen garlic bread still to eat. All the sweet potato chips are eaten apart from a very few that I will doubtless have as nibbles (they are really nice with mayo). There's most of a bottle of lime flavoured cola, some beetroot, two part-tubs of hummus, a couple of slices each of two puddings, a bit of lettuce, two red peppers, a punnet of mushrooms and most of a bag of cherry tomatoes. That's in addition to things we had in before shopping.

There were also the remains of a bowl of salad and various crudites, but I decided to add an onion and turn those into soup, which we can have tomorrow. Much better than trying to eat an ill-balanced salad, especially as we have some thick-cut bread to use up.

So all in all I think it worked. The odd slices of pizza will go in no time, I might be able to donate garlic bread and excess hummus to DS1 and family, the cola and puddings won't last long and that leaves a few salady things and the pasta.

The ginger ice cream went extremely well with chocolate cheesecake, but there's a lot left and only me to eat it due to the dairy content.

Watty1

This is not sounding like a use up thread but a scrummy list of foods I want to make   Loving it.  

I have finally realised how the random stuff gets in the cupboards.  I find a recipe I really want to make, get busy, use up the things in my usual way leaving behind "random" item and then have no idea what the recipe was and so "random" just sits in cupboard.   I realised this finding a little pack of "beluga lentils" that I bought recently and have no idea what that was for now and there are only a few potatoes, eggs and peppers in the fridge so the plan must be long gone.

Lesson is be more mindful of what I buy!

kiss_me_now9

I've pulled some shortcrust pastry out the freezer to make a pie with tonight, I'm just not sure what to put in it! We're vegetarian and I'm not a big fan of fake mince so wouldn't do that. I've got mushrooms, onion, carrots, tender stem broccoli and I need to pop to the shops anyway but not sure what I should add to it. I was thinking leek and mushroom like this... https://www.cauldronfoods.co.uk/recipes/tofu-leek-pie