One pot vegetable pasta

After refocusing my mind on the point of this blog, I decided to give this one pot vegetable pasta a go.

This was inspired by this recipe on The Londoner blog, but with some of my top tips in mind. I liked the idea of this dinner as it is really easy to do and looked delicious, but I didn't have all the correct ingredients and had some other half vegetables that needed using.

I have used the basic principle of cooking all the ingredients for pasta and sauce together in one pot as inspiration, but experimented with my own take on it. And it actually worked! As Mr Store Cupboard Veggie said "this is actually quite nice" - high praise indeed.

This would work with a whole variety of vegetables. You can follow what I have done to the letter, or use similar vegetables that you have to hand. Things like sugar snap peas or frozen broad beans would be great, and you could obviously add more tomatoes and some fresh herbs like in The Londoner recipe.

Half an onion - sliced paper thin
Half a pepper, any colour - sliced thinly
1 carrot - cut in to batons
2 gloves garlic - sliced thinly
Some shredded white cabbage
Couple of handfuls frozen peas/broadbeans
12 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
Couple of good glugs of olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
Plenty of salt & pepper
500ml boiling water
Pasta of your choice, snapped in half if using long pastas
Parmesan to serve

You will need a big pan for this recipe. Snap the pasta in half if using longer types such as linguine or spaghetti, and lay it flat in the bottom of the pan.

Basically just plonk all the other ingredients in on top, apart from the frozen veg and parmesan.

Pour over the boiling water. Pop the lid on and heat on high until it boils. Turn the heat down so it is simmering, but leave the lid on. Cook like this for 5 minutes.

Uncover and turn the heat up to medium-high. The only thing you need to do at this point is to keep stirring it, making sure to turn the ingredients at the bottom over to the top otherwise they will stick. Put in the frozen veg at this point - adding them at this stage is sufficient to heat them through and will stop them being over cooked.

Most of the liquid will be absorbed or evaporated. Once this has happened the pasta should be cooked and coated in a sauce of an almost creamy consistency - something similar to risotto. Serve with plenty of parmesan.

Top tips for reducing food waste

So this week I have been thinking about my top tips to help reduce wasted food.

This was inspired by both volunteering for FoodCycle (see earlier post), but also from the fact that I struggled a bit last week and found myself buying ingredients when I already had stuff ready to be used in the fridge.

I'm not going to pretend that cooking from the store cupboard is always easy - in reality some nights you are tired and feel uninspired by what you can see in front of you.

But then I was so annoyed at the weekend when I had to throw away food that could have been used during the week, or certainly rescued before making a trip to the bin. So I decided to come up with some tips to help me re-focus on what The Store Cupboard Veggie is all about - reducing the waste and making delicious  vegetarian food.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be trying to post recipes and ideas with the following in mind. Some will even tick more than one box...how's that for multi-tasking?! Try to remember these when deciding what to eat, and hopefully we can all reduce the waste at least a bit.

1. Experiment - don't be afraid to try using the ingredients you have to hand
2. Don't stick to recipes - use recipes as inspiration, not a step-by-step guide
3. Use it all up recipes - have these on hand for when you have a lot of ingredients that need using, and possibly not a lot of time to use them
4. Use the freezer - to both store left-over food, but also to keep some of those ingredients fresh!
5. Spices - stock up, and actually use them! Having the right selections of spices to hand can transform a lot of tired ingredients
6. Prioritise - what needs to be used? Try to use fresh ingredients before turning to tinned or frozen food
7. Plan plan plan. Think about what ingredients you have, and how to get the most out of them.

FoodCycle Volunteering

Today I spent the morning and some of the afternoon volunteering with FoodCycle Wandsworth - a great charity that is working to combine surplus food with hungry communities! As you know if you have read any of my other posts, I am on a mission to reduce the amount of food I waste at home - and FoodCycle does this too, but on a much larger scale.

They work with local shops to take any produce that is perfectly fine to eat but that people wont buy. Fresh bread from the bakery that didn't sell yesterday, slightly bashed fruit and veg, or boxes of eggs when one or two have been broken. I was astounded by the amount of food that was donated by the local shops. More than two shopping trolleys full of bread and two large bags full of boxes of eggs from one supermarket, for example. Where that would have gone if it hadn't been claimed by FoodCycle is anybodies guess, but I would imagine the bin.

The aim is to make three courses from the donated food, and then serve these to anyone from the local community with a sit down meal. It guarantees a filling and healthy meal once a week for those that may not get it otherwise, plus brings different people in the community together.

The starter was bruschetta, and given the huge amount of eggs we had we decided the best idea was frittata for the main course - already one of my favourites for using up eggs and sad vegetables, see my Home-made Mondays Cauliflower Fritatta.

I was put on frittata duty, and I have never fully appreciated before how long it takes to peel potatoes for 50 portions. Despite the lack of a frying pan, plus an oven that was as much use as trying to cook with a hairdryer, the frittata turned out pretty well I think...I hope....no-one complained so that's a good sign, right?!

This was all topped off with an apple compote with cinnamon eggy bread, and some brilliant community spirit!

So check out FoodCycle, or see if there is anything similar in your area. It was tiring but satisfying, and I would highly recommend it.