Empty the Storecupboard Challenge: Week 18
Is it really Week 18 of this challenge? Zoinks. Guess I had even more food stored up than I realised…
Anyway, it’s been a tasty few days where we’ve had a vegetable gratin, some spaghetti with home made tomato sauce, a chickpea tagine, and I’ve also fed the freezer with a few portions of cooked up soup and casserole mix.
The veggie gratin (above) used up the last of the seasoned breadcrumbs as a crunchy topping for a big batch of garden vegetables with white sauce and cheese. A very nice, fairly healthy dish that I should probably make more often.
The spaghetti with home made tomato sauce (pics below) saw off another 100g of the wholewheat spaghetti, and the sauce was mainly home grown cherry tomatoes with a little onion, garlic, olive oil and home grown herbs. A lovely, simple but delicious mid-week supper that was easy to make.
We’ve also had a chick pea tagine that’s used up a further 25g of tagine spices. That had passata, caramelised onions, a can of chick peas, a few raisins and some summer squash added to it, and it was served with cous cous and Greek yogurt on the side. Those spices are really hot, and this is coming from someone who grows their own chillies and likes a bit of heat. Endorphin rush!
Finally, I also made a soup and casserole base using the whole bag of broth mix. That stuff’s been hanging around so long it’s practically haunting the middle shelf. This was soaked well overnight and boiled up with sliced onion, diced carrots and bay leaves, and it’s gone into the freezer split into a few different bags to be used when the weather starts to turn frosty. Hopefully that’s a while away.
This week’s three meals
We’re down to two sachets of paella spices, the last of the tagine spice, 100g of wholewheat pasta and the last sachet of South Indian style lentil sauce. Almost into the home stretch…
1. Baked stuffed aubergine with spiced lentils. Goodbye finally to the annoying lentil sauce mix, I hope.
2. Quinoa ‘paella’ with veggie chorizo and red pepper. One less packet of paella spices, which taste less saffrony than you’d hope.
3. Spaghetti with roasted home grown vegetables and cheese. Farewell to this batch of wholewheat spaghetti, but definitely one of the few things from this challenge I’ll be repurchasing when it runs out.
What are you going to cook?
Are you doing your own Empty the Storecupboard Challenge? How are you avoiding food waste this week, and have you come up with any thrifty recipes?
Share and tag your pictures with #EmptyTheSC, can’t wait to see them.
