Spice cupboard challenge

Emily_Joy

Welcome to this thread.

Due to health reasons, I cook without butter, oil, salt, or sugar. I mean literally. 500ml of olive oil would last more than a year, we still have butter in the freezer that dates back to 2021, and we simply never buy neither sugar nor salt.  But I love to cook and I used to use a lot of spices and herbs, but not recently - mainly due to the fact that my creativity in the kitchen (and spare time) were somewhat affected by life events. I am hoping life have settled a little now, and I am aiming to get back to cooking as I used to, aiming to use spices and the like accumulated in the cupboards - at least once a week.

I am creating this thread as a diary, hopefully this is allowed.

Emily_Joy

To kick off, today I made a loaf of bread using some old dry yeast and left over marmite. Also made a partially home-made sauce for cannelloni - used ground nutmeg, gloves, coriander, fennel seeds, fresh basil from a pot on the kitchen windowsill and half a jar of pesto rosso from Aldi. Additionally, cooked a stock base for a vegetable stew - laurel leaves, rosemary, gloves, cardamom seeds. Hope to find time during the week to make the stew!

Alderbank

I'm looking forward to reading your diary, not least because I limit my intake of sugar, oil and salt.

I see you cook without butter, oil, salt, or sugar, literally.

You do realise that Aldi pesto rosso is 27% oil and has 6g of salt per portion? Also marmite is very high in salt.

You can't, and shouldn't, avoid using oil and salt entirely but you should keep a close eye on the factory-made ingredients you use. The amounts of fat, sugar and salt can be eye-popping!

Emmia

I've switched to the lower salt version of marmite recently, honestly I really can't tell the difference so I won't be switching back.

The M&S high Oleic peanut butters are also salt and added oil free (no palm oil, in particular) they're just 100% peanut which is oily enough, and pretty good value as peanut butters go..

A friend of mine adds some lemon juice when cooking pasta to the water, which she thinks has a similar effect to salting it.

Katiehound

When my jar of Marmite runs out I am going to buy natural yeast extract  which  ( is dearer of course!)  has no added salt

Aldi peanut butter, if you pick the 'right' one is 100% peanuts- no added sugar or palm oil.

Emily_Joy

Alderbank said:

I'm looking forward to reading your diary, not least because I limit my intake of sugar, oil and salt.
You do realise that Aldi pesto rosso is 27% oil and has 6g of salt per portion? Also marmite is very high in salt.

Oh yes of course, I was writing it late at night, so perhaps I should rephrase it without "added oil, butter, salt, or sugar". It comes as about 10g of fat per portion which I can live with. Thank you for Marmite warning! We mainly use it for baking. We used to buy barley extract in a pharmacy section in Waitrose but it seems to have disappeared, so OH suggested to replace it with marmite. Perhaps I will look for barley extract. I seem to recall that Holland and Barrett had some...

Edit: It was not a good excuse. I should have not used pesto, I should have cooked tomatoes with onions, garlic and some fenugreek seeds and black pepper instead. However, the weather was not really tomato-shopping friendly and we have had this pesto jar since God knows when! 

Aldi Pesto does not have 6g salt per portion, it has 6% salt per portion, which comes as 0.37g. 

Alderbank

Apologies, my typo. As you say it was late at night 

Still looking forward to your recipes!

Emily_Joy

Got up at about 5am on Tuesday and decided to make a vegetable stew. Whatever we had in the fridge went in: onions, garlic, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, pumpkin, red kidney beans soaked for 48 hours and the stock... Was good for a couple of dinners. 

This weekend I spent a lot of time gardening, so cooking was minimal: made a loaf of sourdough rye bread  (we have been keeping our sourdough for about 8 years now) adding a tablespoon of marmite and black currants for sweetness, but no spices this time. 

I will be working away from home this week, so made a box of cookies for the OH to enjoy   Used remains of chestnut flour I brought from France just before covid, mixed spice from M&S, remains of coconut oil (BB was October 2023), Greek yogurt, white flour, and maple syrup. OH loves the cookies, but to me they are a little too strong. 

Also "discovered" some Willie's Cacao 100% cooking chocolate in cupboards. I would like to try making black forest next weekend.