Frugal Friday

 Welcome to another Frugal Friday post...

Leftovers... you either love them or hate them!!

Thankfully for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from River Cottage we love our leftovers in this house!

Hugh is my all time favourite chef/food writer. I have plenty of his cookbooks which are chock full of fabulous recipes using plenty of vegetables. This book on leftovers hasn't been used enough but I endeavour to delve into it again more often.

So, if you haven't guessed, this post is about leftovers and using up the food we have in our pantries and fridges. At the beginning of this week I was thinking about what I could learn this week as a new frugal tip. At the same time I was thinking about groceries and needing to write out a menu and grocery list. As I looked in the fridge I could see lots of different small amounts of bits and pieces to use up and so the idea struck that I would challenge myself this week to a use-it-up week as much as possible. I know I will have to go to the supermarket by the time I hit publish on this post in a few days but I want to try and keep it as minimal as possible, just for this week.

This is not a new concept for me. It's something I have done many times before and every now and again my sister and I have a challenge together where we have an eat from the pantry and fridge week and we text each other to share what we have come up with for meals or ways we have used up stuff. You know the container in the back of the fridge with leftover baked beans in it or cooked food that could make a leftover lunch meal for someone. Sometimes it is just going through and using up the last of several flavours of jams or other spreads opened, baking bread instead of buying it or going through the pantry and making a soup with whatever you have.

So far this week I have been using more vegetables from the garden and eggs, using leftovers in new meals and I made bread for lunch from a bread mix that needed to be finished. While writing this post I have taken some leftover bread that was no longer fresh and dried it out in the oven on a low heat until dried and crispy and once it is cool I will whizz it up in my food processor to make bread crumbs. Easy! I learnt that from Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall.

 I made apple crumble for dessert last night with some apples in the fridge that I had preserved and there was also the half eaten apricot that was too hard to eat so that got chopped up and added into a meal! Apricots are too expensive here so I am not going to waste any of it!

Last year I brought some mixed grain bread mixes to use in my bread maker and one packet needed to be finished. I don't normally buy these but last year there was such a shortage of flour for a long time during and after lockdown. I don't know why it took me so long to finish the packet! 

This is the apple crumble I made last night for dessert.

I also made my husband a lunch for work today with a piece of leftover egg and bacon pie, 2 corn fritters with plum sauce and 2 small servings of leftover salad, ( one was lettuce salad and the other a bean salad ).

This is the baked loaf of bread. It makes a small loaf but it is really soft and yummy.

So this is our leftover lunch today or to be fancy we could call it a Ploughman's Lunch. As you can see we had the bread plus there was a small amount of cold meat, lettuce and a few slices of tomato. I cut up some cheese and carrots to go with a hummus. I put out raspberry jam which one son enjoyed on the bread. There was also some canned beetroot to use.

We finished off with some yummy nectarines and some biscuits that we were given for Christmas from our neighbours. Even though it didn't look a lot we were all quite contented with what we had and guess what? There were leftovers!! Naturally we didn't eat too many biscuits. 😉

Here I was able to put together a healthy meal for dinner, even though I didn't think I had a lot to cook with. It was a yummy recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Boston Bean and Squash Stew. I didn't have squash so I swapped it out for potatoes from our garden and carrots. I served it with silverbeet from our garden too. It was also a great way to use up some ingredients from the pantry and cooking liquid that I saved to use as a stock.

I am always very mindful of not wasting because not only does my husband work hard to earn the money that I spend on groceries and all the time taken to prepare and cook but I am aware that the majority of the world does not live like how we do. We can take it for granted that we can go to the supermarket and buy food and healthy food at that. I know I am fortunate to be able to grow my own vegetables. I can't remember the exact quote but I have read something like that if we have enough food for one meal we are rich or maybe it's having food in your pantry full stop, or something like that. So many people in the world and not just third world countries, can only plan one meal at a time and maybe they only have one meal a day. It's a very sobering thought.

I have a full pantry, fridge and freezer most weeks plus I have extra emergency food in a separate cupboard incase of any kind of emergency including the all too familiar earthquakes and now food shortages that can occur due to Covid and lockdowns.

I know there are many many families here in New Zealand that struggle to feed their children. So many kids go to school without breakfast or a lunch to take because there is no food.

So it is my hope in the coming weeks or months, whenever you read this post, that you will take up the challenge to use what you have, if you are blessed to have more than what you need daily. To be more mindful of how you could bless someone else who doesn't have a lot. Whether that is someone you know personally or a family in your neighbourhood or maybe through a foodbank donation.

Now as I think about my lunch today I feel blessed. It didn't look a lot to me, it wasn't a fancy well prepared meal that I cooked but now as I ponder on what I have written, it is probably more than what many thousands or millions in the world have eaten today. 

Enjoy what you have because it is a blessing and a provision for your family and we are to enjoy these things. Out of our abundance we can be generous to others. May you have a great week and have fun thinking up ways to be more frugal in your kitchen and use what you have. Who knows, maybe with the money saved on groceries we could all bless another family this week.

Thank you for visiting and reading this today.

Blessings,

Fiona

"A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor." Proverbs 22:9

"She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family..." Proverbs 31:15

Sitting down to relax at the end of a busy day, with a cup of peppermint tea, a piece of my sister's panforte cake that she makes for me every Christmas, and one of my dogs who is warming my seat for me.