🧅 TREE 430: Use it all up

Food price prices are up and and climbing. Lots of products aren’t available. The foodscape is not a happy place. Today and tomorrow, The Intuitive Cook Katerina Pavlakis (as featured in The Guardian!¹) is coming to the rescue with two posts stuffed with super-practical help.

Grow slowly
Jeff

One: This is Us.

Are you feeling the heat on your household budget right now? I suspect most of us are! Cooking at home can be a big money saver, especially if you get into some thrifty habits. Thriftiness is an attitude, a willingness to put perfection aside, and to think outside the box instead. The basic premise: use what you have, and use it wisely. Start with looking in the back of your your fridge and cupboards. Useable food is usually hiding in plain sight!

Here are some creative ideas:

• Implement a weekly chuck-it-all-in meal.

• Spices and condiments – don’t wait for the next speciality recipe, just taste and add where you see fit.

• Use common sense with dates on food. In my house, if it looks OK and smells OK it’s edible.

• Stretch your ingredients with leftovers to make them go further.

• Jazz up leftovers with a fresh sauce or topping.

• Use all the parts – cauliflower leaves, broccoli stems, kale ribs, carrot greens, beetroot leaves… are indeed all edible (plenty of recipes out there).

• Freeze off-cuts, stems and peelings, as well as roast bones in a ziplock bag as you go, then make a big batch of stock/soup.

• Use the “bad” bits: Spotty, squishy or shrivelled fruit or veg is (mostly) perfectly edible! Stew to make a delicious compote or sauce. Stone-hard cheese bits make are a great umami boost in soups and stews.

Tomorrow I’ll share my “build a meal with anything” method :^)

Two.

One of life’s true joys. Hooray for playgrounds!

Three.

Sudan Archives has been putting out brilliant songs this year.

1. Probably because she was featured in TREE first.