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

Wraithlady

Well, there is actually room in both of our freezers now - just today I discovered a side of sea trout I had forgotten was there (but no salmon fillets, which is what I was looking for….).

Over the last few days:

In: Breaded fish (a meal we have regularly) and the remains of last night's pasta sauce.

Out: Cooked sausages (for the above last night's pasta sauce), 2 baked potatoes, gammon joint to be cooked in the slow cooker tomorrow, bacon, pheasant (tomorrow's dinner), ham from Christmas, stewed apples and some crumble topping (promised OH crumble as it's one of his favourite things).

I do really need to do an inventory, I keep putting it off.

Cherryfudge

Pasta, cooked garlic bread and cous cous are finished and a couple of slices of pizza, too. Most of the rest is still cluttering up the fridge, though the cake is down to a fraction of its original stature. Can a cake have stature? This one was twice the size of anything I've made since I made my wedding cake in the 1980s!

Some sausages from the freezer have been eaten but little other progress.

greent

Not a huge amount of progress this week - have been too tired to cook/ eat anything 'proper'. Today will make a difference, though - have removed a huge f/r chicken from the freezer, along with a pack of pigs in blankets. I've peeled the last of the Xmas 5p potatoes, the last of the 5p carrots, prepped the last 5p sprouts and finished the last bag of 5p shallots!! 🥳🥳 The sprouts will be roasted off with the remaining crumbs from the Xmas gammon. I'll also take out of the freezer for today some red cabbage (made with 15p? Cabbage at Xmas), some YS root veg mash and some YS posh cranberry sauce and some pre-made Yorkshires. From the fridge I'll also use some YS mange tout, YS parsnips and some tenderstem broccoli. I'm also in the middle of making bread sauce to use up some of a loaf we bought last week and was awfully dry - but perfect for bread sauce - and stuffing, which will also use some sausages from the freezer. As we never have full fat milk I've used semi skimmed and the last of a tub of double cream I used in baking last week.

Yesterday I took a bag of veg scraps (broccoli stems and leaves, mushroom stems, ends of cucumber) from the freezer and made a very green soup with that, seasonings, a lump of Xmas boursin and the end of a tub of plant based 'cream' and some chicken scraps from a roast the other week. I also did roasted tomato soup with all of the tomatoes from the freezer - that meant a pack of seeded rolls also came out for eating with said soups 😀 Soups will be finished off for work lunches and I'll also make a risotto this week with stock from the roast, chicken scraps and broccoli stems (and spinach from the freezer) - rather than grano padano I'll finish up some Comte cheese from Xmas. That should just leave us some boursin, some smoked cheddar, some very strong posh cheddar (which will be eaten anyway) and some wensleydale with cranberries. If the wensleydale and smoked are still around in a couple of weeks when schools break for Easter I will use them up in sausage rolls. We have cream crackers and water biscuits (we always have those 2) and a few of several different sorts of crackers we are clearly not fussed on - as they are very much hanging around! I shall see if I can persuade DS1 to tackle some of them this week and I might have some with the soups.

Actually, that's better progress than I realised! 🙌

LotsOfTea

Today I made pea soup for lunch which used up half a bag of frozen peas which went out of date in 2022 😂 Until the freezer audit I had no idea they were there and just kept buying new peas. Anyway, they were fine and the soup was good and also used a broccoli stalk, a leek and a very sad and wrinkly lemon from the fridge.

DH made some really nice bread rolls yesterday so we're going to use the last of those to have burgers for tea tonight and try and use a few more of the veggie burger mountain the in the freezer.

I did add to the freezer yesterday as we'd ended up with a bit of a milk glut so I made a pan full of cheese sauce and portioned it up for freezing as it's always nice to have an easy meal ready to go. I do still have some older cheese sauce in there already but there's a system now and that'll get used first!

LotsOfTea

I opened the last tin of OOD fruit from the zombie apocalypse stores today to have with yoghurt and oats for my breakfast. It was a smallish tin of mixed berries and it's quite nice. It'll last another couple of days and then all the tinned fruit I have left will be in date.* Pats self on back*. After trying pretty much every variety of tinned fruit I've concluded that, contrary to my childhood memories, fruit cocktail is dreadful and tastes of nothing, mandarins still taste yummy and tinned prunes are food of the gods.

I need to use up some of the other miscellaneous tinned items next including a surprising amount of mushy peas.

Cherryfudge

I feel we should have a party to celebrate you conquering the zombie apocalypse stores! I like your summary too: why do they always put the woody bits of pears in fruit cocktail? And why don't the cherries in it taste at all like glace cherries?

I am very close to the end of the oldest lot of coffee in the cupboard: other than that I've not done very well recently. There are two portions of dhal in the fridge and some bits of pizza that I took out of the freezer. I had to throw out some salad as it looked untrustworthy, and there's more that should probably follow it. I've finished the birthday cake but am now eating Mothering Sunday cake. ☺️ 🍰I accidentally got rather a lot of root ginger, so most of that can go in the freezer, which is packed again. I meant to give away the garlic bread but forgot and neither DH nor I can really eat it in any appreciable quantity.

Cherryfudge

I finished the oldest coffee and have started on the second oldest! Oddly, it's not quite as nice. Never mind: it counts as free coffee and I have others if I want a 'treat' coffee. I'm also slowly using up coffee syrups: I don't really go for them in coffee but they are nice in hot chocolate.

Oh dear, the fridge is full again and the freezer nearly so. I batch cooked some tikka to cover meals when DH and I are eating separately due to my work, and there's also left over pasta, various veg and some watermelon. I need a plan.

I'm out this morning but am hoping to bake in the afternoon, and make some spicy parsnip soup for lunches. The plan for dinner is to make toad in the hole to use up various ingredients. There's a fresh making of yogurt as I needed to use up milk, but I think that will get used this week. I probably need to buy bananas to go with it.

How is everyone else doing? Is anyone 'eating down' their freezer(s) to make way for cheap Easter veg (I'm assuming that's happening)? I still have cabbages and shallots from Christmas!

LotsOfTea

Well done for making good progress with the coffee @Cherryfudge . I've used up a tub of spicy hummus from the freezer this week and not a huge amount else as there's been plenty of fresh stuff that needed using first.

I made my own tortilla wraps at the weekend using a recipe from the BBC site but although they were tasty I did find the dough very difficult to handle while rolling them out so I might look for another recipe to try. I'd like to be able to whip up some flatbreads easily rather than using shop bought ones as it's more flexible and probably better for you (who knows what they put in then to make them last so long?)

I made some spicy parsnip soup for lunch today to use up a couple of rather wrinkly specimens and it was delicious. There's a little bit left in the fridge for another day too.

greent

Made my usual soup today with broccoli and mushroom stems, the end inch of the cucumber and the outer leaves of an Iceberg lettuce plus 2 shallots. Used some hm chicken stock and threw in some roast chicken scraps and the last of the boursin. 2 good portions (maybe 3 if I'm not feeling hungry) Dinner was fajitas, all ingredients from stores.

Really need to eat some supplies down - we have a crazy amount of food in and I'm constantly too tired to cook so grab something easy (had the day off today hence i actually managed some cooking!)

@Cherryfudge - I'm planning on getting a good amount of cheap Easter veggies! The Xmas ones lasted me well 😊

Cherryfudge

Another week behind us and I really haven't done well with fridge and freezer contents. There's still some of the spicy parsnip soup and the chickpea tikka that I made a week ago. I've had to throw out part of a watermelon (but made sure I ate the okay bits as I love it and it's not something I buy often!) and a bag and a half of salad that had decided to compost itself.

Some chicken from the fridge was thrown out as DH thought it smelled wrong, and chicken from the freezer was used instead, so space is gained even if the food may have been wasted.

On Saturday, I bought a tray of six lemon curds, short dated, from the car boot sale. DH gets through a jar of curd, jam or marmalade a week, so some of this will be gone while still in date and I reckon unopened jars will keep beyond a best before date. We have just finished the carrot cake DD made for us and nearly finished the cinnamon cake I made later, so next in line will be a lemon curd cake to keep turnover, variety and slightly reduced shopping bills.

I've still not seen any reduced veg in the run-up to Easter, but I've not really been in the shops to look. There are carrots in the fridge to use first, and still cabbages from Christmas in the shed! I must check them… not sure I want to as I've not done so for a while and am feeling I must somehow avoid buying so much in future.