Use It All Up Ra-tatatat-ouille

My last Use It All Up recipe - this delicious and easy stir fry - was the most popular blog post for The Store Cupboard Veggie so far.

I'm not sure whether you all just really love stir fry, or whether you are really on board with the idea of reducing wasted food and using up all the bits and bobs in your fridge. Feel free to tell me which it is in the comments below - it will really help me target my posts to talk about things people are the most interested in.

Until then I will blindly stumble on, and suggest another easy Use It All Up recipe - and I know it's a good one because I made something very similar at my latest FoodCycle adventure yesterday. It's always like a stamp of approval for using-it-all-up when it is a FoodCycle staple recipe...one of the main points of the charity is to reduce waste so this is clearly a good a way to do that!

As ever with a use-it-all-up-type recipe don't feel that you have to stick to these ingredients, feel free to shove in a whole variety of vegetables - anything that will cook well in a big pot on the hob and then in the oven.

Just a quick caveat...I don't always take the best food photos, but I'm not sure why this is one is quite so shonky. Maybe I was just really, really, ridiculously hungry?!

Oil
1 large onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves (dependent on size) sliced or crushed
1 chili, sliced
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 large pepper (any colour, or a combo), diced
1/2 butternut squash, peeled and diced
1 aubergine
1/2 courgette if you have it
2 small potatoes, diced the same size as the squash
1 tin of tomatoes
Tsp sugar
Boiling water
Handful french/green beans, topped and tailed
Salt and pepper
Dried herbs (optional)

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.

Saute the onions in a large oven-proof pan (a casserole dish that can be used on the hob is perfect).

Once the onions are softened, add in the garlic, chili, pepper and tomato puree. Fry these off for around five minutes, but be careful not to burn the garlic or chili. Add in the butternut squash and potato and fry this for a couple of minutes.

Remove all of this from the pan and pop in a bowl. Add a little more oil to the pan, and once heated add in the aubergine and courgette. Fry for around 5 minutes, stirring occasionally and making sure it doesn't stick.

Add the other vegetable mixture back in, along with the tomatoes and sugar. Add in enough boiling water to just cover the vegetables - this will depend on your pan size but around 250ml. Stir in the french/green beans

Season well with salt and pepper, and some dried herbs if you have them.

Pop the lid on, and put the pan in the oven.

Cook in the oven for around 30-40 minutes, or until the squash and potatoes are soft. Give it a stir occasionally, and you can add in more water if needed.

Serve with rice, cous cous or quinoa, a dollop of creme fraiche and some fresh mint or coriander (if you have it - I didn't).

Sunshine, garden guests and easy brunch

The sun was actually shining at the weekend - hurray!

We took advantage and had a lovely sunny brunch in the garden. Delightful.

But wait! Who's that watching us from beside the shed? It is our new garden buddies - Walt and Jesse (for all you Breaking Bad fans out there - don't tell me what happens, I'm only at the start of season 5).

Aren't they delicious? They have taken up residence under our shed.

Libby tried her best to out-cute them...

And when that failed...out-pose them...

Attention seeking kitty.

This is just what a sunny weekend morning needs - I know some people don't like foxes in their gardens, but at the moment we are sharing the space quite successfully, and I love watching them gambling about with their foxy mum (and sometimes dad - we assume, I haven't checked!).

Anyway, after we (I) took a million pictures of the wildlife in our garden, we got down to the serious matter of brunching.

If you are ever after a brunch dish for a vegetarian friend, or a meat eating friend for that matter, then this is PERFECT. It is different from the usual choices for brunch, and actually relatively healthy.

I have been experimenting with different methods of poaching my eggs as I have always struggled slightly... these aren't the best I have done, but I will do a follow up post with my new found method!

1 ripe avocado
Juice of half a lime
Chili - finely sliced (optional)
1 tomato - cut into small chunks (16ths works best)
2 eggs per person
Nice crusty bread - sour dough works well, or just a crusty loaf
Black Pepper
Salt

Peel and de-stone the avocado. Pop it in a bowl. Add in the lime juice and give it a good mash with a fork or masher. The lime juice tastes great, but also stops the avocado going brown. Season it up well.

Stir the tomato and optional chili into the avo mix.

Get your eggs on to poach - for these ones I used the swirling vortex of boiling water method. I think my water was boiling too fast...hence the slightly ropey look around the outside. They weren't too bad, but I have found a better method. You will have to wait for that post while I perfect them...

Slice up your bread, and spread with the avocado mixture.

Top with the poached eggs, and crack plenty of black pepper on top. I sprinkled thyme leaves on too.

Serve with a large cuppa and a generous helping of Sunday morning laziness. Sunshine and fox cubs optional, but recommended.

It was too delicious - I had to dig in!

FoodCycle volunteering - take 3!

It has been really rather a long time since I posted a blog post. I have no excuse for this at all - I seem to have been filling my evenings and weekends quite successfully with no time for cooking anything of note or sitting down to write.

So to ease myself back in gently, and as last week was national volunteering week, I thought I would update you on the last time I went FoodCycling in Wandsworth.

For those of you that don't know and haven't seen my previous post on this (check it out here), FoodCycle is a charity that aims to reduce food waste while reducing poverty and building communities at the same time.

The basic premise is that supermarkets and shops throw away huge amounts of perfectly edible fresh ingredients every single day. So FoodCycle volunteers gather up that food on a Saturday morning, and cook a three course meal from the ingredients they are given. It's then served to anyone who fancies a free lunch - with table clothes and proper table service.

This week there was lots of beetroot and mooli, plenty of carrots and caulis, and lots of bashed fruits.

The menu was Rainbow Salad, Spicy Vegetable Pilaf and a Bread and Butter Pudding.

Here is the Rainbow Salad - it isn't the best example (most were much prettier than this), but it tasted delicious. Who knew mooli was so nice just thinly sliced? Not me, but through complete experimentation I have discovered a new ingredient.



Anyway there are FoodCycles all over the country, and if there isn't one in your local area then you can look in to starting one!

I would highly recommend it - it can be hard work in the kitchen, but it is always a lot of fun and I learn something new each time I go. Plus it's great seeing people getting a good hearty healthy meal, with ingredients that would have gone to waste otherwise!