The Leftovers Handbook

 

 

Last month this wonderful book was published, I was itching for it to be available after reading Suzy's lovely Blog, Sudden Lunch for quite a while and absolutely loving her descriptions of the wonderful food she made out of snippets of tasty morsels.  Her style of writing is just so easy to read it's as though you're chatting to a friend and one that's on the same wavelength as you too.  After leaving a comment on her Blog Suzy contacted me and asked if I would like a copy to review and I jumped at the chance, unfortunately the freebie copy never arrived but I decided to buy my own copy anyway, I just couldn't wait :-)

 

 

It really is my sort of book.

 

Set out for ease of use with hundreds of ideas for using up those little teeny tiny leftovers you find lurking in the fridge, the ones that perhaps your head says "ahh throw it away it's not worth bothering about", but your heart says "that was tasty, it cost me money, I want to use every last little bit".

 

I read it from cover to cover the minute it dropped into my post box and that same night made this ...

 

.... I can't really say it was made with leftovers, just things that were sat waiting to be used in the fridge, but now I know how absolutely delicious this sauce is, it is going to be my 'go to' recipe for any leftovers that I do find lurking there.   Of course I've had this sauce before and have cobbled together my version of it many times, but this one has the proportions just right and that makes it soooooo very tasty.

 

It would go wonderfully with chicken, with salmon, (oooh smoked salmon would be brilliant), with leftover vegetables or Quorn pieces, with meat balls for Lovely Hubby, anytime a tomato sauce would not be right or simply not fancied, I now know that this one would be.

 

And who knew you could make scones with porridge, I will be making purposeful leftovers to try this one out!!

 

So this is definitely a book well worth having within easy grabbing distance on your kitchen shelves, laid out alphabetically so you can go straight to the ingredient you have, so it is very easy to use, and with the 'Handy Hints' and 'Cook's Treats' dotted through it's inspirational.  Suzy also has a section at the back with Basic Recipes and Guidelines and a final chapter on building your basic Storecupboard.  There is a link that will whizz you straight to Amazon on my sidebar

 

All in all a brilliant book and one I would heatedly recommend.  If my free copy ever shows up it will be winging it's way to my lovely Mum, who's another queen of using up every last little scrap she finds lurking at the back of the fridge or cupboard.

 

 

 

And talking about making the most of everything you have around, remember this sad Parsley plant, left unwatered when we went away that half recovered and was then hacked to within a centemetre of it's life .....

 

 

... here it is this morning, just one week after it's 'haircut', looking green and happy and full of newly emerging goodness.

 

 

Something that lives next to the Parsley on the kitchen windowsill are these two Basil plants, on the agenda today to be turned into jars of goodness to be tucked into the cupboards for eating over Summer.

 

A day in the kitchen is most definitely called for, temperatures have plummeted here and it is much too cold for me to be able to plant outside the seedlings from the greenhouse, I do hope it picks up a bit for this weekend, I'm running out of space in there.

 

Sue xx