Cooking Meals With Scraps 1.0

Hey hey hey!

You know when your freezer is so full but you can’t really identify anything and you keep buying more and more to add to the pile? Well, that is what has been happening to us to be brutally frank. We just returned from a glorious holiday to Jamaica, and it’s as if we can’t really find food to eat and yet the freezer has lots of food in it as does the fridge and pantry. So we have come up with a plan, which has inspired a new series on the blog: Cooking With Scraps. So this is 1.0 and the others will follow.

We are going to methodically go through what ingredients we have and cook proper meals with them. In fact, we will only buy the basic staples until we have gone through most if not all of this food.

What’s on the menu?

On the menu today is…..

Come to think of it, I don’t even have a name for it so perhaps you can give it a suitable name. We’d love to hear what you think too so please write it in the comments. Great! So I can tell you the ingredients that need using up today. Continue and you will see what we made.

Here goes:

salad leaves

cherry tomatoes

white potatoes (some of them had started to chit or grow, so they needed to be used up.

sweet potatoes

grated cheese

parmesan cheese

bolognese sauce

pasta sauce

jerk sauce

salt and pepper

basil

The Dish

We cooked up a tantalizing, Italian-smelling lunch! You would be so proud of us. After washing and peeling the potatoes, they were put in boiling water to parboil. In the meantime, the bolognese, jerk, and pasta sauces were mixed together and a little salt and pepper were added.

After 10 minutes the potatoes were drained and added to an oven-proof dish and the rich sauce was poured over. It looked amazing as the sauce tried to find its way over bits of potato and some settled at the bottom. The dish was then topped with grated cheddar and parmesan. It spent another 10 minutes in the oven and it came out smelling really yummy and looking great!

It was enhanced with fresh basil that made it look even more Italian. We had it with the salad and a lovely dressing.

Try it guys. Food waste, in our estimation, is really abominable. This reminds us of one of the dishes we prepared for a family on the TV program Shop Smart Save Money some years ago. The challenge was to do a Spring clean of the fridge and cupboards to see what meal/s we could come up with. It was really interesting and I do wish they would bring back programs like this.

So check to see what food you have lying around and use it up before it goes off. Hard times are coming, guys. Prepare for it. And don’t think that all meals have to include meat. Protein also comes from other sources such as eggs, peas, beans, nuts and grains

Remember to tell us in the comments what you would name this dish and if you would like to see the video then check our Youtube channel.