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

Cherryfudge

RHemmings said:

The cubes I have are already mixed ginger and garlic, so I'm not sure that will make an appetising drink   

Maybe not.

I really like the sound of your ginger drink, I think I might try that. My Dad used to make something similar, as a small child I remember he had to open the bottles out of doors because they fizzed so much. That was probably my first experience of ginger, leading to a life-long love.

Good luck with finishing up the food, I think you are doing an inspiring job, and when you come back it will be nice to have a clean and empty fridge to greet you, ready to start afresh.

Mine could take lessons from you. I think I need a 'sort the fridge' day today. We have quite a lot of peppers, carrots and mushrooms and I've just noticed a mango that needs to be eaten, so there's plenty to work through. DH is having Christmas dinner with work so it's entirely up to me what I choose to make.

RHemmings

The only reason I use the bread yeast for the drink instead of a ginger beer plant is because that's what I always have on hand If it's left too long, it will go noticeably alcoholic. Which may be a bad thing or a good thing depending on your point of view.

Frugalistamama

@RHemmings where are you off to and how long. I missed the beginning of your story. Are you moving abroad? Whatever it is or sounds exciting and you are doing an amazing job clearing out. It's very inspiring 

Cherryfudge

All the mushrooms are currently turning into mushroom soup. Carrot and coriander is also going to happen but first I'm going to google recipes as I'm not too keen on the basic one - but both carrots and coriander need to be used up.

RHemmings

I'm off to Indonesia, for three weeks. I'm in the process of buying a house and am sort of hoping to complete in January. I'll see what happens about that as things are slow now. If I complete in January, then I'll be moving house. And, it would be much easier if I've decluttered in general, not just food.

I would like to manage the amount of food in the house much better in the future, and to do that I really need to clear out all the 'hanging around' food ingredients, and then make sure that I'm not over-buying in the future. But, I feel that I need the 'clean slate' to help me do this.  It would help a lot as while I like the house I'm buying, the there-will-always-be-at-least-one-compromise for it is a small kitchen. I don't want to take up part of one of the living rooms as a pantry

My lunch today turns out to be a cooked meal (Chickpea and Potato curry, plus rice) from some time ago before I worked out that filling up the plastic boxes resulted in a too large lunch. So, I'm eating half of it today and will then eat the rest (in the fridge at work) of it either Thursday or Friday. 

The main thing I have now is too much dry pasta. But, that will have to wait until January. 

EDIT: Lunch. It is not well presented. And, this is only half of the lunch I bought in today. 

Cherryfudge

Wow - Indonesia! I've never been there but it sounds like an adventure. Enjoy!

Most of the carrots are now souping - I found a recipe to which someone had suggested adding ginger and garlic. Was that you, inspired by the cubes, @RHemmings? Anyway, I then started to look further back in the fridge and have some confessions to make:

I'd put a large margarine tub at the front of one of the salad drawers and a tub of yogurt at the front of the other. Behind them I discovered a bag of kale, just starting to yellow, some vacuum-packed beetroot which is okay, a mushy avocado, half a dozen lemons and a small amount of dead salad. The salad has joined two carrots and the avocado in the compost bin. What do I do with the kale? More soup I think, because I can freeze it. I found this recipe. 

Incidentally, I thought the kale might be a bit bitter so I researched whether you can eat yellow kale. Interesting. If it smells all right and is otherwise fresh, it's okay to eat but can affect thyroid function so presumably don't have a lot of it. This is only just starting to yellow and is crisp and bouncy otherwise so I've put it out of doors for a while to bump up the chlorophyll (whether this will work, I don't know). I will pick over it with care before attempting anything!

The carrot and coriander soup is cooling now and I need to go and do some non-cooking activities.

Cherryfudge

I've used the rest of the carrots and some liver and bacon in a casserole for tonight, and lunch was roasted pumpkin with cauliflower cheese that included broccoli and the remains of an ancient jar of mustard (BB 2010...!) (tasted okay).

Eating as much of the freezer contents as possible is a weird menu planner. It's nice being able to open a freezer drawer and just throw something in, though. I believe, in some parallel universe, it's called 'space'.

Cherryfudge

I may just have gone a bit mad over the end of day mark-downs, so the there are now salmon pieces and an assortment of pastries in the freezer, Stilton in the fridge (not discounted) and three more jars of pesto, two boxes of cappuccinos and some Christmas chocolates in the cupboard.

However, the casserole is all gone and so is the cauliflower cheese.

carinjo

I managed to get the last 2 whole salmons for the day at M0rris0ns at ...9:15am. With the (free) More Card, it £6.99 instead of £13.50 a kg (xmas offer) As an example, 1 salmon was £31.27 (usual price) vs £16.19 after extra discount. The fishmonger done halfsides and packaged it with the head etc. I managed 16 fillets and 2 small tail ends i like to use with scrambled eggs. That is like £1 a fillet!!
I froze both heads etc together, will do a fish broth next time got some veggie bits left over.

Took out the venison mince to do a ragu tomorrow. Yesterday was the last of the sausages, made easy meatballs with veggie mix and celeriac mash for lunch. 

So, now a bit of knowledge sharing, such as it is. I too ran out of bread and didn't want to go back to shop and queue for 1 item or the corner shop to go buy floppy thin bread. So finally got around to doing a slow cooker loaf. Bbc goodfood recipe. And it was so easy and cheap. Not perfect since i only had wholemeal bread flour. It is a bit dense, but the big dessertspoon of dried herbs i sneaked in was a good idea. I use a bread maker to knead the dough since i have dodgy hands as previously mentioned. 10min to prep, 2hrs in slow cooker and less than 5min under grill (for colour, not essential)
 @RHemmings, hope you have a fabulous time in Indonesia. 

Cool thing i learned this week: if you scrunch up parchment paper and run it quickly under the tap, it softens the paper and makes it easier to line...a slow cooker!

RHemmings

I'm on the home straight. I bought a box of two burgers, and some burger buns. I'm eating the burger buns with the salad that is in the fridge, and some hummous as well. One burger left which will go tonight. There's a tiny amount of (fake) chicken pieces in the freezer, but only a few and they will go tonight. I should be cleared out today. I have no lunches to take to work, and will eat at a local small store that I wish to support. I believe that if we don't support small independent shops, we won't have any small independent shops.

I'm going to review what is in the fridge and freezer. There is a small unused fridge freezer here that I might use, and I'll work out whether to leave it on when I'm away, or simply clear down to nothing. It might be the latter.