Freezer Roulette - Day Two

This evening's Cullen Spink was delicious.  I tweaked the quantities, adding more potato and water than was required and I left the potato slices whole.  The cayenne pepper provided a bite and the turmeric a pale golden hue.  There didn't appear to be enough fish but its strong smoky flavour made up for it.

Today's discovery is a pair of chicken drumsticks, which will do very nicely for my daughter's tea tomorrow.  She'll have them drizzled in olive oil, baked, perhaps with a couple of cloves of garlic smothered in IKEA gravy and served with a jacket potato.

Last night and again tonight I've also taken out a couple of wholemeal rolls for packed lunches.

Apart from a small loaf of interesting bread to mop up our soup I haven't had to buy any extra food today.

Freezer Roulette

I don't know about you but my kitchen is bursting at the seams with food, in the fridge, in the freezer and in the cupboards.  What's the problem with that, I hear you ask.  Well, it's because some of it has been there for a long time.  Instead of using it up I go out and buy more food, and the jars and packets and tins spread out over the surfaces until there's very little room left to work.  It's got to stop one day and the New Year seems the best time to begin.

So, starting tomorrow, I've set myself the challenge of preparing a meal based around at least one ingredient from my stockpile.  I'm beginning with the freezer.

For the uninitiated, this is an Arbroath smokie, a smoked haddock, originating from Auchmithie, a fishing village a few miles north of Arbroath.  My smokie was one of two I bought at the Tobacco Factory market some time ago. We ate the first one the day we bought it, dotted with butter, flashed under the grill, with Mark's oaty groaty bread and diced beetroot.  Its partner was frozen for a later date, which is now tomorrow.

A quick Google produced the ideal recipe, Cullen Spink, a variation on the traditional Cullen Skink.  I have enough potatoes, onions and other ingredients to produce a meal for two.  I know that my daughter will not eat so smelly a fish, and will be happy enough with yesterday's leftover sausage casserole.

Now that wasn't too hard, was it?

Ways with Stale Bread - 1

I took half a 3-day-old baguette and sliced it lengthways. I brushed the slices with a couple of glugs of oil spiked with crushed garlic. I laid the slices of bread on a baking tray and grilled them until golden brown. They went perfectly with a bowl of vegetable soup, eaten in my sunny back garden.

The oil came from a jar of sundried tomatoes. I buy jars of sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers and artichokes from Aldi. When I've finished all the vegetables I use the oil in dressings etc. It's full of flavour. Too good to throw away.

Why?

Heinz have launched a new Fridge Pack. At 1kg it holds approximately the same amount of beans as 2 1/2 standard tins, and its purpose is to provide families with beans 'on tap'*.

However I don't get it. If a consumer finds it difficult to eat her/his way through 410g of beans at one sitting, why would s/he opt for 1 kg instead? Especially if there was no savings per kg to be made!

I don't know what kind of plastic the jar is made of, but even if it is recycleable, facilities for doing so are much less common than for aluminium cans. My guess is that most of them will end up in landfill sites.
Besides, what's so difficult about decanting the remains of a tin of beans into a sealable container and storing it in the fridge? Just as effective and a lost less waste.

* Paula Jordan, Marketing Director at Heinz

Aluminium Foil

The production of aluminium foil is an extremely wasteful process.

Bauxite, from which aluminium is smelted, is mined in open cast pits in countries such as China, India, Guinea and Kazakhstan. Thousands of tons of waste rock are produced, villagers are often displaced and rivers and soil are polluted. Large amounts of energy are expended, almost half of which is generated from fossil fuels, contributing to the greenhouse effect.

So reducing, reusing and recycling are all the more essential. I try not to use too much foil and never throw it away until it's too torn or holey for anything but the recycling bin.

Today I spotted this 100% recycled kitchen foil. It may have been around for some time but this is the first time I've seen it. It's made from car components, guttering, railway sidings, cookware, stadium seating and scraps of industrial cables! The aluminium is heated to over 650 C . The impurities are burned off and the molten metal is filtered, poured and rolled to produce thin sheets. Recycled aluminium uses 80% less energy to produce than from new.

This roll should last me for a while but I know where to look when I eventually need some more.

SOS Fruit

It wasn't until my elder daughter left to go to university that I realised exactly how much fruit she ate. Now that she's gone the rest of us are struggling to get through our weekly organic fruit box. This afternoon as I was carrying out one of my irregular inspections of the contents of our fridge I came across not just one, but two punnets of red grapes. If they'd been seedless they would have been devoured by my younger daughter, but she doesn't like having to spit out the pips and, to be perfectly frank, neither do I. So they'd been left to grow slightly soft and wrinkly.

Not wanting to waste them I pressed them through a metal sieve to extract the juice. It was a bit strong on its own but was perfect when diluted half and half with tonic water.

My husband then fried some tired looking apples to go with our pork chops for dinner.

Tomorrow I must remember to look out a recipe for a cake involving pears.

Blog Action Day 2010 - Water

Do you keep the tap running when you brush your teeth?

If the entire population of England and Wales kept their taps off we could save 180 megalitres of water every day! This would be enough to supply nearly 500,00 houses.
I am constantly amazed by how even the most insignificant individual action can have such a tremendous effect when replicated across the population.
Don't let anyone tell you that what you do, or fail to do, doesn't matter.