My desperate attempts to minimise food wastage are often confounded by my inability to pass up a bargain.
$12 for a 2½ kg box of glacé pears? Normally $20 a kilo? Yep, I’ll take them…
Huge fish heads for $5 a kilo? Don’t throw them out, give me all of them…
Free range chicken carcasses for $1 each? I’m sure I can find room for those…
Sigh.
As a result, I usually have two bulging freezers and a fridge full of supplies that need to be used up. Here are some of our recent emptying-the-fridge/freezer/pantry meals.
. . . . .
Last week, our friend Johnny passed me a bag of Italian prosciutto offcuts, and the lovely Dot gave me a wedge of very ripe Brie and a ball of mozzarella…
Before heading off to the wedding last weekend, I’d baked a double batch of sourdough for the boys. As they only ate one loaf, there was quite a lot of stale bread leftover when we got home…
I turned it all – bread, prosciutto, cheeses and some semi-dried tomatoes – into savoury slices. One for Johnny, one for Dot, one for Luca around the corner who’s in the middle of exams, and one for Big Boy’s lunch.
They’re a doddle to assemble (basic instructions are here) and infinitely adaptable – I skipped the cream this time and used just milk and eggs. Any cured meats, cheeses and antipasti you have in the fridge can go in. My friend Patrick describes this as mac’n’cheese with bread instead of mac; Johnny calls it “bread’n’boc(concini) pudding”.
. . . . .
The fish heads were all scaled, de-gilled, vacuum sealed and frozen. As I’m the only person in the house who will eat them, I defrost one every couple of weeks and microwave it, topped with a little jarred black bean sauce, scallions and ginger. It’s ludicrously easy to cook (thanks Auntie Sim!) and I love having one all to myself for dinner…
. . . . .
A recent freezer excavation turned up 300g of chicken mince and two half packets of dumpling wrappers (they defrost well, so it’s always worth freezing leftover skins).
These became an easy dinner one night…
…and dumpling noodle soup the next, with the addition of noodles and some defrosted homemade stock. I’m always happiest when I have a large stash of stock in the freezer, and the pressure cooker makes that easy…
. . . . .
During International Scone Week, I baked buttermilk scones for Small Man (they’re his favourite). He was out during the day and only managed to eat a couple, so that night, I broke them up and used them to top a mixed berry crumble. I routinely freeze leftover cake or brioche or cookies to throw onto defrosted fruit for an instant dessert…
Here’s an earlier one we made with leftover tea cake and frozen blueberries…
. . . . .
Finally, I made fruit and nut cakes with the glacé pears…
We usually make this simple recipe at Christmas, but it’s good eating at any time of the year, with the added bonus of being both gluten and dairy free. It was also a great way to use up all those nearly empty packets of nuts in the back fridge!
Here’s the basic formula…
- 250g seedless dates
- 350g mixed glacé fruit, cut into pieces (cherries, mixed peel, apricots, pears etc)
- 80g raisins
- 450g mixed unsalted nuts (works best if you can include brazil nuts in the mix)
- 100g ground almonds
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 3 large (59g) eggs
- 2 tablespoons (40ml) honey
- 1 teaspoon homemade vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons rum
Instructions, with photos, are here. I baked the cakes in lined loaf tins for an hour at 150C with fan, then allowed them to cool slowly, doused in rum and wrapped in foil and a tea towel. They keep for ages and slice well if stored in the fridge…
. . . . .
Are you good at resisting a bargain? And what clever recipes do you have to use up your leftover bits and pieces?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Our freezer had a recent very unscheduled clear-out when we lost the power in a protracted storm. Over the course of 36 hours we only had power for 7 of them. Normally I’m quite casual about the freezer and figure as long as the door stays closed it’s all good for at least a day or two.
However, my son had left the door open last month for over 9 hours and that, combined with the long outage was too much for even me.
It broke my heart to have to throw out a lot of lamb and beef, 2 huge lobsters and a kilo of prawn meat. :-(
I try to keep a record of what I add into the freezer, otherwise I am never sure of what lump of meat I am pulling out! Your freezer must be a god-send for times when you haven’t anything fresh to hand.
Show me a bargain and my purse is out in spite of a relatively small freezer. These days, after a few losses, am better at marking date and cut on my meat purchases: others I can guess. Those fish heads look so yumptious: thanks for your Auntie’s 3:3:3 recipe which will be tried soonest . . . I learned to appreciate them in Singapore’s ‘Fish Head Apollo’ many moons ago and even managed to get the curry recipe from the chef! Recipes: these days no problem: just spend a few minutes on my favourite Taste.com.au . . .
I have ‘bargain strawberries’ in my fridge at the moment and I don’t even like strawberries that much :( Hubby likes them though and I have just found a recipe to try them so hopefully it will be good. That fruit and nut cake looks delicious.
My freezer is full of suspicious looking containers. I can’t stand to throw out tomatoes so I usually roast them with onions and herbs and then process them and chuck them in the freezer for pizzas or soups. I have strawberries, pureed mangoes and stock in there too. And herbs. It’s a bit of a mess to be honest!!
Fortunately, I only have a tiny freezer, so I have to forego or use up bargains quickly. The latest is pre-cooked pasta which I got from a pay-as-you-feel store. It didn’t actually taste very nice straight out of the packet but now that it’s been frozen it’s much more palatable!
Great cooking on your part.
Great post Celia! I have become quite proficient at packing a freezer since my large “freezer only” died. It’s a bit like packing a holiday suitcase only vertically. Practice makes perfect…
Great post Celia. Inspiring as usual. Will need to face up to my freezer to in a few weeks…..
I never ever pass up a bargain Celia! We were always taught to buy up bulk as long as we had the money. Box of tomatoes, oranges, pears, bananas, strawberries, bread, milk, you name it- would always find a home or two to be shared with & lots of frozen bananas for banana cake/bread, frozen strawberries always go well with smoothies or jams, etc. I love your way of productivity & salvaging. I guess one has to have that passion within them to buy surplus, bake excess & share with the multitudes! It’s such a satisfying feeling! ( I can never get over your bread though- mine never turns out- ever! Must be my oven :(. )
You see, you are not alone, a lot of us are compulsive freezer hoarders. I HATE (and I don’t use that word lightly) to waste any food. Sometimes I feel bad adding things to my compost pile but I figure it helps to grow more. Great ideas on re-using the leftovers especially the ‘bread pudding’ We can be pretty creative when we think outside the box. Have a wonderful day :)
Had to laugh. Have been meaning to straighten out the freezer for weeks now. And it’s summer bounty time here now. Me too I can’t resist a bargain. Last year it was 10lbs of blueberries! This year it looks like yellow and green beans (and I’m not mad about beans. LOL.
Wonderful post! I find it takes quite a bit of mindfulness to use up food that might otherwise be thrown out. But it is so worthwhile. One of the best words in our house—just my husband and me now—is “finished!”
2 1/2 kg of glace pears seems an awful lot to use. Your savoury slice reminds me of a savoury version of bread & butter pudding that I used to make years ago. Must dig out the recipe.
I find it easy to ignore supermarket ‘bargains’ but harder to resist a tray of ripe peaches.
Your desserts look great. Fish heads don’t think they are for me.
I only just recently discovered that my butcher sells chicken carcasses, so I bought a bunch. I think I still have one left in my freezer. I only have one chest freezer and the freezers in my Fisher Paykel refrigerator so I have to be really careful how much I buy. We are in the process of eating through the freezer before our big trip in the fall. Your sourdoughs always amaze me.
I’m the leftover queen. I have many little plastic bags of random stuff in my freezer and fridge that I’ll throw into random stuff that I’d never think to add on purpose. I discovered roasted baby yams (on the bbq) are great added to almost anything, like chili, spaghetti sauce, add to broth slurry into any soup especially cream of any soup….really good in cream of leek or cauliflower. In fact if I don’t have a random frozen hunk of baby yam to add into something I usually am dissapointed in overall flavor loss.
I reduced to a small freezer in the last kitchen shake up (there’s only me and him so he said it was time.*sigh*). I can’t resist a bargain either so it is packed with jigsaw efficiency. I love being able to turn what looks like ‘rubbish’ in his opinion into a good meal. No fish heads here though.
Your pears, and the cake they went into, look fabulous.
This was me last week in Spain just before heading back to England (got back last night!). We ate some interesting meals, probably not blog worthy but tasty nonetheless! Would love to share one of your fish head meals….in our house I get to enjoy the chicken livers all to myself 😀
I’m a bit of a freezer hoarder too! Not on a big scale though. :-D
Have a wonderful weekend Celia.
:-) Mandy xo
Celia, I love a bargain but I can resist, Maus on the other hand can’t resist and comes home with a multitude of things that were on special.
Not so much bargains, although I love to snaffle them as often as I can, but leftovers go into our freezer, for the 2 of us I can’t seem to cook for less than a dozen, and the in-laws’ & neighbours’ tastes & appetities differ widely to ours. Pre-travel departure we eat some wild meals made from the freezer stash.
Like Amanda, I had a forced freezer clean out in March after the new freezer tripped the circuit while we were away. It was devastating. Still, I’ve managed to fill the freezer back up, nearly to capacity. I also love a marked down item or gifted foods so necessity is indeed the mother of invention.
I’ve een trying to empty my freezers lately, too, Celia. It’s a hard thing to do when the farmers markets have so many things that freeze well. Worse still — or is it better? — my eggplants think they’re zucchini and are giving me a steady supply of veg. For every item I pull out of the freezer to use, I replace it with 2 containers of some eggplant concoction. I’m fighting a losing battle! :)
I had to laugh at your fish head, I love them as well but am the only one in my household who will eat them. Good idea to freeze them for nights I am alone.
Just found your website love it! I live in Alberta Canada. You have soo many great ideas. With your bread recipe you don’t have any sugar or honey for the yeast thought that yeast needed a sweetener to help it rise also could you double it one loaf isn’t enough. Will be making your short ribs today !! Thanks again. Sharron