Eking out the food

Re ekeing out mince/bolognese sauce (assuming you can find any mince!) I’ve been adding a good handful of red lentils for ages. They disintegrate completely, so anyone who’s going to care will never even notice.

I usually add some finely chopped carrots, celery and mushrooms, too, but those are something of a luxury at the moment! Though having said that, I did find some very limited fruit and veg in 2 local Coops today. At my first stop however, a small Sainsbury’s, the F and V shelves were stripped completely bare.
1st Coop was restricting all items to one per person, very sensible.

It seems to be pretty much back to normal up here as my husband went to get various things for three different households plus ours. He managed to get gluten free bread for the coeliac plus tinned tomatoes, butternut squash and bananas for a neighbour.

I always use all the vegetables up in soups etc once they’re past their best and freeze leftovers; not that there’s ever much left!

I hope everything settles back down across the rest of the country and you all manage to get what you need.

The only thing we’ve struggled with is getting dumbbell weights for working out at home now that the gyms are closed

BbarbB's post was so uplifting. Maybe you could post some of the wartime cooking hints in the event we need them. Thank you.

Addendum: you dear ladies gave me motivation to look more closely at wartime deprivation experience by a nation. Just ordered a book called Wartime Cooking by Patten. I don't know how many facts I will actually use, but the research will help break the tedium.

I found a bag of gram flour in the cupboard, still in date. I've used some before to make dumplings - part of a Madhur Jaffrey curry recipe. I'll Google to find more recipes. I looked out all my dried fruit, and made a couple of light fruit cakes.

That sounds yummy leeves den

I'm enjoying myself in the kitchen......a spicy bean thingy, soaked overnight then cooked up a load of different beans and green lentils in a tomato puree chilli, served with a revived soda bread and rice. A Bolognese made with dried soya mince, and lentils (hubby asked if it was lamb mince), tired veg soup, then made in to a main meal by adding a little chorizo and smoked sausage. Mixed fruit crumbles used up the tired fruit.

Fran can you substitute cans for dumbbell weights?

I swear by handfuls of red lentils to stretch mince, they're unnoticeable when cooked through. I really love Jack Monroe's first book, A Girl Called Jack, and have made many of its recipes again and again, but I'm not impressed by any of her later books. All her recipes are on her website too.

The water (or aquafaba) from tins of beans and chickpeas can be used instead of beaten eggs in cake and brownie mixes, eggy bread and even mayonnaise. Whip it up just like egg white. If you're short of eggs, and opening a tin of beans anyway (in water, of course, not tomato sauce!!), this website has some really good ideas and you don't need a vegan in the family to enjoy them

www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/blog/20-amazing-things-you-can-do-aquafaba

A while back, I bought a jar of Thai Green Curry Sauce, something we had never tried before. Last night, I decided we would try it, using up lots of veg and a tiny bit of chicken.

It was nice, though very fiery.
This morning I discovered that it burns you twice - once when you eat it, obviously, but then again when you .... (I will let you use your own imagination for the latter)

Alishka We already had weights ranging from 1kg up to 5kg, which I use for weighted cardio, so we were looking for 10 through to 20kg. Everywhere is completely sold out so we mustn’t have been the only ones!

I lift quite heavy weights at the gym as part of the fat loss regime I’ve been following so, instead, I’m using the weights we have but far more reps until I can’t do any more.

Thank you for replying; it’s really appreciated x

Oh yes, MamaCaz!!

I found a tin of not quite out of date Marvel in the cupboard bought for bread making but never opened.

It should make 15 pints of skimmed milk, insipid but better than nothing!

I've got too much milk at the moment so thought I'd make a rice pudding. Can I make one with arboreo [sp] rice or long grain rice [I don't have any pudding rice]? The recipes I've seen say to use vanilla but I don't have any. I do have cinnamon and dried fruit.

You can freeze milk.

Yes, you can definitely use arborio rice, and I see no reason why cinnamon wouldn't make a good favouring, though I've never tried it. I always add a bit of mace if I have it then double up with grated nutmeg when serving.

I regularly freeze milk

Me too.
It's only because I froze a lot of milk in the lead-up to all of this that we will (just about) make it through the approx. 4 weeks without shopping that will have passed by the time we get some food delivered. (That's assuming that there is actually any milk for them to bring that day!)

I think most of us watched the way our mothers made food stretch out through the week. I can remember having mince on toast before pay day !
We had a duck ( a live one ) who used to wander up the garden so we had quite a treasure hunt looking to see where she'd laid her eggs. Mum used them in her baking as she used to say they were a bit" strong "to eat if boiled. I never did find that out.
Desdemona duck , she was a Khaki Campbell.

If you have or can get ANY flour, a recipe from Good Housekeeping sounds easy. I added the alternatives in brackets

Soda Bread

Ingredients
500g wholemeal flour (white plain? Maybe SR but omit the bicab? Fancy grains?)
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp (optional) finely chopped rosemary (or any herb or spice?)
400ml whole milk (skimmed milk?, reconstituted dried milk, diluted evaporated? yoghurt?)
1 lemon, juiced (bottled lemon juice? vinegar?)
2 tsp honey (sugar?)

Method
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Mix together the flour, salt and bicarb in a bowl. And if you’d like rosemary bread, add the chopped rosemary too.
2. Mix together the milk and lemon juice in a jug, and wait for a minute as it magically turns into buttermilk. Then stir in the honey, and simply pour it into the flour mixture. Stir it with a knife for a minute until the whole thing comes together into a sticky dough.
3. Tip onto a floured work surface and shape it into a ball.
4. Put the ball on a floured baking tray and, using a sharp knife, make a deep cross on top.
5. Put in the oven and bake for 40 mins.
6. Cool on a wire rack until warm, then slice and serve.

Recipe from Good Food magazine, January 2018

I mean to try that this afternoon. I'll report back.

Do you think that would work with gf flour, Elegran?

I don't know, Callistemon I think that is different to bake with than ordinary flour? Are there any good recipes for gf bread on the net? There must be some, but I daresay they all have yeast to get it to rise. anyone got any recipes?

Mine is in the oven and smelling good. I used 150g granary flour (from a leftover small bag in the flour bin from when I made some granary bread) and the rest white plain flour. The liquid was yoghurt watered down to make up 400 mls. It was easy to do, just mix together the dry ingredients, mix together the wet ones, then combine then, mix well and knead it into a loaf shape. There were some dry bits that were refusing to combine, so I added a splash more water to make them stickier and kneaded them in.

Ok, this is it out of the oven. It looks quite craggy and rustic. I can't tell you what it is like inside until it cools down.

I only gave it 35 minutes, as my oven runs hotter than it should.