Crumbs! The cupboards are bare...

We're notoriously a country of wasters. That came out wrong. Not that I'm insinuating that we're all monged out on the green stuff most of the time. No. It's that we throw away so much food which is perfectly edible or, had our heads been sensible and not too big for our bellies, we wouldn't have made such an excess in the first place.
 

But what happens when you need to be thrifty? When the wallet is full of sand and tumbleweed and the cupboard is bare but you can't bear to face the 20p noodle reality. I was faced with this situation yesterday by my good friend Nicky. Sucked dry by her recent home move and a landlord being shifty with his deposit she had only a few pennies and stock cubes to her name.

The e-mail exchange was as follows....
 
  
Nicky: ....i need to call upon your culinary invention skills!
I know you're good at this and i can't think of anything, what dinner can i cook with-

1 potato
1 sweet potato
onion & garlic
a bit of lettuce
a courgette
tin of chopped tomatoes
basil (no cheese argghhhhh)
quorn pieces
frozen peas and sweetcorn
pasta
lentils
rice
and some other ready steady cook stylee store cupboard ingredients like flour etc

No cheese that's the real killer! We're too skint to buy anything. Hope you're having a good day xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To which my culinary cogs whirred for about 15 minutes and I came back with the following:
 
Nathalie: Oh poor you…umm….right will get my ainsley head on.

· pizza (our thrifty version) but without cheese – so make like more of a pesto topping with the basil and courgettes and onion and garlic, you can whack some sweetcorn on too.
· soup – although I appreciate its rather hot for that – lots of chunky veg
· sweet potato crisps
· some kind of stuffed courgette – cook and scoop out innards, mash in with onion, garlic, potato?
· spag bol with the quorn, tomatoes, pasta, onion and garlic etc
· French onion soup
· You could have veggie risotto stuffed into courgettes (another version) or use the lentils for a stuffing too
· Potato and sweetcorn fritters?
· Grated courgette and potato cakes?
· Ratatouille
· If you have curry powder in your cupboard you could make a lentil and veg curry
· Same with chilli – do you have any kind of beans to bulk out with?
· You could make some flatbreads to go with any of the above

Any of those even remotely good?  xxx

My solutions came to fruition and I received the following e-mail from Nicky this very morning:
 
Nicky: My dinner last night was super tasty!
I made potato, courgette, sweet potato and onion rostis, had them on a bed of lettuce with some toasted pine nuts! Christopher was very impressed and has taken the last one for his packed lunch at work today, he shall be the envy of his fellow statisticians!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So the moral here? Well, i'm not entirely sure. But I think there's money to be saved in places you least expect it. www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Nx