Using up Leftovers

This mornings glance into the fridge revealed lots of dishes containing leftovers. 

 I usually make a big pot of soup to use up the end of the week vegetables, but this week we seemed to have dishes of things on the shelves and in the drawers all the veggies were in perfectly good shape to last us all through next week.

So I switched tack and pulled out the bowl with the tuna, the bowl with the sweet potato and the one with the ordinary potatoes that were over from my tea the other night.  Of course on the work top there were eggs, there are nearly always eggs ... thanks girls ..... and realising we needed something with flavour I went over to the polytunnel and pulled up the fattest of the Spring Onions, they weren't really that fat , but their flavour is brilliant so they would be enough.

All these things (except the egg) were chopped up a bit more and mixed together with a sprinkle of dried herbs to add even more flavour., and then with wet hands shaped into four fish cakes.  I didn't need anything wet to add to the mixture as it held together perfectly, but if I had I would have added a little bit of egg.

Then I set up the production line, it takes just minutes to turn naked fish cakes into breadcrumb covered delights.  First a roll in the flour, then a quick dunk all over in the beaten egg and then finally a plonk, roll and turn in the breadcrumbs ....

... which were themselves leftovers back in September.  

I'm not sure if the date on the tub says Sept 13 or Sept 15, either way the breadcrumbs have been frozen since the day they were blitzed and they were absolutely fine.

I like the chunkiness of these breadcrumbs they will turn lovely and crispy when the fishcakes finally make it into the oven later on today, I must remember to blitz them only to this level next time I'm processing stale bread.  I always leave fish cakes or homemade burgers to rest in the fridge before cooking them, and anyway having them ready to use later means that the whole meal will seem more like an instant supper than having to spend too long in the kitchen to produce it when I might be tired or hungry.

What will be having with them, well on my search of the fridge shelves I spied a tub with about a cupful of Faux Ratatouille (no Aubergine), so I will cook a handful of  penne pasta and mix the two together and it will make a lovely side to go with the fish cakes.

All in all a good homemade 'fridge clutter busting' meal :-)

What's on your menu tonight ?

Sue xx

' Hey ho hey ho, it's off to work I go ..... '

' Hey ho, hey ho, it's off to work I go ..... '

It just looked as though Lovely Hubby should be singing this song as he marched over to the polytunnel frames to continue his work there yesterday.

The sun was bright in the sky although it was very deceiving, it was actually freezing cold and the gale force winds had to be felt to be believed.  How he managed to hang onto his boxes of screws, pieces of wood and his cap I have no idea!!

He did spend a good fifteen minutes later in the day trawling around fetching buckets, sheets of plastic, bin lids etc that had been very unevenly distributed around the place.

Bit by bit it's coming on and I should be on target to be growing in the next few weeks.  Hopefully by next weekend the big concrete drainage rings will be buried out of site and ready to do their job in the future.  You'll never know they were even there soon.  More money spent and then buried out of sight, that's why I like to have photographic evidence.

Meanwhile in the kitchen I set to making a pepper and tomato sauce out of some leftover bits and pieces.  It should be nice poured over a pork chop or two for Lovely Hubby's tea.  Well you have to feed a man that is battling the elements to build you a polytunnel don't you  ;-)

Sue xx

Using up the Salmon

After my creamy pasta meal a few days ago, and my day and night of feeling pretty yucky.  I thought I really had to try the salmon bits that had been saved as 'purposeful leftovers', mainly to find out if it had been the cream or the fish.  

I was pretty sure that it was the cream, as I can't and don't drink any milk because of this yuckiness happening previously after anything milky.  I guess when I had the cream I was hoping that by not having any milk for months I might have gotten over my intolerance.  But it appears not.

There was just a little bit of salmon ....

... so I added a bag of veg hash from the freezer and one potato.

I thawed the veg hash out by simply tipping it in it's frozen state into a pan and let the heat as I stirred it around thaw it out gradually.  The potato was popped into the microwave and cooked for eight minutes, once soft I scooped out the flesh gave it a quick mash and added it and some frozen peas to the hash in the pan, then I added the salmon.  I cooked the lot for a couple of minutes and then tipped into a bowl to cool down.  I ate the potato skins with a little butter and a sprinkle of cheese ... waste not want not ;-)

Once it was cool enough to handle I tipped a beaten egg into the bowl and divided the mixture into two.  It was a pretty sloppy mix I shouldn't really have tipped all the egg into it in one go, but after rolling the potato/fish cakes round in some flour they held together enough to be able to get them onto the baking dish.

Half an hour later I had a couple of lovely fish cakes, which were served on a bed of mixed leaves with a dollop of mayo.  It was very filling and very satisfying to make a full meal out of some little bits and pieces.

And I had NO side effects .... PHEW!!

Sue xx

Leftovers and Good News

 

The other day we had a dish of leftovers from our Mediterranean Veggies meal the night before, a mix of the veggies and a couple of tablespoons of cous cous .... yes we are still working our through the cous cous mountain, and very tasty it is too!!

 

I decided to keep it simple and use some of the frozen breadcrumbs from the chest freezer and a good portion of my bargain cheese (it actually worked out cheaper to buy this one than the 'Basics' range that I usually get).  I grated the full pack and put the unused portion back into the fridge for another day.  Because it is a strong tasting one I only needed about a third of the pack to make for a lovely cheesy bake.

 

I mixed about two thirds of the cheese with the breadcrumbs, usually I might have mixed in some herbs here, either fresh or dried at this stage but as the cous cous was the flavoured variety and the veggies had been cooked with chilli and garlic there were already lots of flavours going on.

 

I sprinkled the breadcrumb and cheese layer and then topped with the rest of the cheese and the whole lot was popped into the oven for the last 20 minutes of the chicken cooking time.

 

This is Lovely Hubby's portion and I had mine with a veggie burger, a last minute addition was half a jar of homemade tomato and chilli sauce as I though it all looked too dry.  

 

 Thinking about it this later it would have been brilliant added to the vegetables and cous cous layer  in the first place.  But as usual it was a leftover experiment and that's half the fun of eating this way, no two meals are ever exactly the same.

 

This weekend we have jumped off the Wales/Berkshire/Wales treadmill and are at home making good use of the lovely sunny day to have a good clear up of the outside things.  Two of our trailers are being scrubbed clean and the smaller one will be packed to the roof with all those outdoor things that are now out of use as the growing season for us here has come to an end.  The larger trailer will be used to carry things from the house next time so it will be so much nicer if we don't find layers pellets or straw stuck to the bottom of our furniture on arrival in North Wales!!

 

While LH gets on with this I'm off for a tidy up of the Veggie Patch to make sure that nothing we need gets forgotten.

 

And some brilliant news for those of you who have been asking via the comments and emails ... my Mum is now the proud owner of her very own lovely little retirement bungalow.   

 

She has the keys, has already ordered new carpet and is meeting with a decorator today to discuss a thorough refresh of the décor before she moves in on 26th of this month.  So it's exciting times for us all at the moment and we both so very proud of her for getting through this stressful and tiring time in one piece.

 

Congratulations Mum

 

Sue xx

The last of the original fresh foods ......

 

 

The last of the original fresh foods ...... have been lurking in the cupboards almost daring me to use them up.  The longer I have managed to eek them out the further my £2 Housekeeping Challenge budget will stretch.

 

 I don't remember buying these onions, it must have been half way through December, well before Christmas at any rate.  They still seem fresh, but sometimes you never know with an onion.  So in the spirit of Four Potatoes and Three Fishes  I decided that this week they must be used.

 

 

 

 

Following on with yesterdays moan at the sheer amount of eggs in stock at the moment I decided that the first recipe just had to contain eggs, so using the first onion, a red one...

 

 

 

... I whipped up a cheese and onion quiche, with three eggs and some little Blobs of Onion Marmalade from the fridge (to add a suitably gourmet edge to proceedings) and not wanting to put the oven on just for a quiche I whipped the last four Sultana Scones made during my marathon Scone making session back in October of last year from the depths of the chest freezer. 

 

 

 

The kitchen quickly smelt rather divine, all savoury and sweet at the same time!!

 

 

 

And of course once out of the oven, still warm and oh so yummy a little taste test had to be done with one of the scones......chef's perks and all that  :-)

 

 

 

Half of another of the red onions was finely sliced, added to one of last weeks carrots, roughly grated, and a few leaves of finely shredded iceberg Lettuce to make a quick coleslaw to go with the Garlic Kievs and Basmati Rice we had for tea (chicken for Lovely Hubby and veggie for me).  So that's one and a half onions gone already.  The quiche was sliced into four and will be our lunches for the next couple of days.

 

Now what to do with the other 3 and a half onions.....

 

Sue xx