Eking out the food

I’m adding lentils, pearl barley, dried beans of different varieties to various meat dishes and am quite enjoying the challenge of not having the same meal twice in a month!

Oooh pearl barley. Might add some to my order.

I usually do a big shop every 4/5 weeks and just top up in between. As luck would have it that big shop was scheduled for this week just gone.

After Boris's announcement on Monday evening I was in Waitrose the minute it opened on Tuesday and managed to get everything I wanted, bar a few items. I did buy larger quantities of some goods, 4 tins of tomatoes rather than 2, the same with fruit juice, more a Christmas shop than a panic hoarding shop. My main concern was to get a full 3 month supply of items like meat and fish, which I buy from specialist shops not the supermarket. I am limiting my social contact to one trip a week to the supermarket, so I am not going to be visiting them for some months.

I also have a good supply of home-made ready meals, which is the norm for me,virus or no virus.

We are fortunate that as neither of us has any underlying health problems we are not in social exclusion, but are keeping contacts to a bare minimum.

What tins etc are you finding in the cupboard that you are looking at differently with a view to a new recipe,!
I found some spaghetti that looked useful only to find the corner already snipped off so it was very stale, cooked it up for the dog and it has replaced the kibble that usually goes on top of his tinned food for four days now, stretched the proper stuff out and he loves it!

I made a slow cooker casserole with a breast of lamb on Friday, with pearl barley added to the usual veg.
We had some of it last night, and it was so tasty.
I made herby dumplings to go with it, and it reminded me of the casseroles mum used to make.
The bonus is, I have two more portions in the freezer for later.

I have my Mum's recipe book from WW2 and its amazing how they made do and mended. Eggs seemed to be a big problem for them as well as fats, and the substitutes sound very unappetising.
How those women must have struggled.
I usually replace things as I'm coming to the end of the current packet/jar/can so have enough for another week when my delivery should arrive from Morrisons. I quite expect several things will be out of stock, but I'm hopeful that the people who have stripped the shelves will have run out of space to store stuff by now, which should give the rest of us a chance to pick up a few basics.

Having brought up a large and always hungry family, I'm quite confident about making good use of everything.

I used to shop every eight days then. The 'weekly' shopping money would be regularly spent on a treat or adventure every six weeks or so.

Risotto (vaguely) can be onion, rice and anything really. Soup of anything too. I love chick pea and spinach curry, healthy and cheap. Then there's no-toad-in-the-hole (mushrooms, onions, carrots, courgettes etc.) with gravy!

I make chocolate sponge pudding with chocolate sauce (custard with cocoa) for a treat.

There's veg in the garden (rainbow chard is very reliable), farm spuds in the garage and frozen home-made meals - so no fear of starvation - yet.

Jack Monroe has a recipe book called "Tin Can Cook" Everything is made from store cupboard ingredients. Another of hers is "Cooking on a Bootstrap", from when she was stuck at home with her young son and no income. They both have tasty and inventive ideas.

We have vast amounts of tinned foods, dating from the time we were living far from shops. So hopefully won't starve.
Mostly veg, and fish.
Up to now there seems to be plenty of fresh veg which I use to bulk out mince and stew remains etc.
And also loads of dried beans for the same purpose.

My Italian mother in law used to cook pasta and peas. Basically as simple as it sounds, just add peas at the end of the cooking time for the pasta. Now I cook an onion in olive oil with a clove of garlic, add one or two tablespoons of peas per person and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Stir into cooked pasta. Sorry if you have not got any pasta though! (But would work with rice as a risotto)

I've also been thinking about simple meals and stretching our supplies. We live quite frugaly during normal times. I meal plan and work to a strict budget. I haven't cooked corned beef hash for yonks so that will be appearing soon. A 500 gram pack of mince will now be turned into three meals rather than two. (It's just me and my husband). Cauliflower cheese, sardines on toast, jacket potatoes, soups made from whatever veg I can get my hands on. I'm working on the basis of not being able to get pasta, rice, bread very easily.

Is it just me or have any others found that their OH's are eating far more than usual ? My OH is eating loads more than usual - stuffing himself with anything and everything every few hours - I'm going to definitely ask for a rise in the housekeeping money - I wouldn't mind so much except that he will within a short space of time start complaining that he's putting on weight !!!

I’ve quite enjoyed going through cupboards and freezer, and working out what I can contrive with what we have. I often make what my mother called ‘dustbin’ soups anyway (with whatever you’ve got). But I’m trying to use up stuff that otherwise would sit there more or less for ever.

E.g for some reason I have loads of icing sugar (rarely used) so when making a rice pudding yesterday I used half that, and half soft brown sugar left over from Christmas.

There were some very hard lumps in it so I put it through the coffee bean grinder! Milk for rice pudding was a tin of Carnation, diluted to 2 pints. Pud tasted fine, a bit too more-ish if anything!

I also have most of a bag of GF flour, used for a guest but well out of date, smells fine though. I have a recipe for Barm Brack, a trad. Irish fruit bread - fruit is soaked in cold tea, so will try that since should counter the typical GF dryness. Have dried fruit left over from Christmas to use. Recipe uses no butter and only one egg so fingers Xed, though we’ll eat it anyway.

We’ve had a few chickens lately, so I have several small packs of what was left after stripping the carcass - there will be several meals out of that - chicken and egg fried rice etc. - we eat a lot less meat than we used to anyway.

A rummage in the freezer also found a lump of leftover pastry, and there’s an unopened jar of lemon curd - no idea where that came from! - so if it smells all right we might have some lemon curd tarts later.

Witzend Your mention of using up gf flour has set me thinking., as I have a nearly-full bag of rice flour that needs using up.
Anyone got any ideas how I could use that?

I have the a tiny freezer that comes over a fridge. Just two shelves. I have always used fresh ingredients. This Virus has taught me a lesson. When things subside I will buy a freezer, I will struggle through this , food wise as I can't go out, never a big fan of tinned food either, but I do have some, my meals will be interesting. The two things I do have is pasta and brown rice so there will be some interesting combinations. I have a feeling though that I will not go down a dress size whatever.

I made scones yesterday with a sad looking banana. I used the bigger size muffin cases. My usual mix. Didn't add sugar, but the mashed banana, a few sultanas and some walnut pieces. Served with red fig jam, (no butter). If I say so myself, they are delicious.

We should manage for a while. I have plenty of eggs at the moment, and cheese and, like others, have been ‘recycling’ our slightly depressed fresh veg into things that can be frozen - some spring onions and spring greens ended up as bubble and squeak cakes and frozen for later use; a bag of chicken wings and drums I had chucked in there at some stage will become soup. Son in law managed to get me a kilo of minced beef yesterday and that will be made into dishes for the freezer. On a recent trawl through there I seemed to have rather a lot of frozen bananas, so if I can get hold of some walnuts there could be a whole lot of baking going on, but that depends on how long the margarine lasts! DD sent me over one of her spectacularly sticky ginger cakes yesterday and we will certainly be eking that out!

Oh, and I was worried about running out of spaghetti but I seem to have a whole loaf of dried noodles, so I suppose we will have to substitute those. Can you have noodle bolognese?

Pasta lovers if you cannot get dried pasta at the supermarket then apparently Anne Summers have a good stock of “penis” pasta....really!

No idea what to do with rice flour, MamaCaz - have you tried good old google?

My lemon curd smells very ?so that’s the end of the lemon curd tarts.
There’s some plum jam that nobody ever eats - though dh is supposed to like it - I might go mad and make some jam tarts with my lumps of leftover frozen pastry.

I’d never normally fancy any such thing, but when I’m prowling around the kitchen in the late evening, wanting ‘something nice’, and there’s sod all else in this time of crisis....

I will also have just about enough to make a quiche - luckily still have eggs and cheese. And there’s some frozen streaky bacon left over from Christmas (pigs in blankets) to add, so that’s another meal lined up.

Happy ekeing, everybody!

One possible silver lining from all this (maybe) will be a lot less food waste, though nothing much will change here, since we’ve hardly ever wasted very much anyway.

This looks like a good pasta recipe to use up bits & bobs

Orzotto

My master-plan (at this stage) is to try and keep what I have in the freezer, just a three drawer fridge/freezer, which along with cupboard goods of pasta, pulses, spices, etc, I'm hoping will see me OK if things go to the wire and there are real shortages/breakdown.

In the meantime, I'm eating fresh food as it's still available, in the main.

PS @MamaCaz, I just looked and there’s plenty of info about rice flour on google - rice pancakes sound nice!

Some great ideas here as I'm the world's worst " chucker-outer " of all things on the sad/stale side. I really have to be ravenous before I'll resort to a mixed menu.

Yes, Witzend I did Google it after posting and thought the same whan I saw that recipe. I also found a really basic recipe for rice flour biscuits, and right now I could really eat something sweet, so think I will make some later when the oven is on for our main meal.