Food: Storecupboard Challenge Day 5

The storecupboard challenge enters it's fifth day, and I am still going strong. 

Breakfast

Hot cross bun (freezer) with tinned grapefruit (cupboard). I love both. I am the only hot cross bun eater in the house so when I do invariably buy them at Easter, I usually end up freezing at least one or two. I lightly toasted this (and added butter - not pictured). The grapefruit salad was a very welcome fruit accompaniment and the rest is now in the fridge for the next couple of days.

Lunch 

This looks so like a kids lunchbox! I ate up the other half of the mini naan (leftover from yesterday) , with some crudités (fridge) and some of the tapas meats (fridge). In hindsight I should have whipped up a hummus, as I have tinned chickpeas because it was quite a dry meal. The tapas meats had a really long best before date on them, but now I have succumbed, they are not going to last that long. Luckily, there are quite a few things I can do with them (besides snaffling them as they are).

Still really missing my piece of fruit to finish my lunch.

Dinner

I found a recipe to use up the Puy lentils (again leftover from yesterday's Lentil & tomato salad) in my very old and battered copy of a Good Housekeeping cookery book which I was given as a wedding present by my very much liked and respected Psychology lecturer. It is called French Style Lentils, although I can't find an online version. It is basically just sausages braised in stock with the Puy lentils, garlic and parsnips. 

I only had large packs of sausages in the freezer but I did find a tray of pigs in blankets in the freezer which were much easier to separate (so used 4 mini pigs instead). The parsnips were also frozen - they were in a Lidl £1.50 fruit & veg box, but were so plentiful I couldn't eat them all fresh.

Similar to the fish chowder from Day 3, there is no way that I would have served this up for the family, but I really enjoyed it. Part of me wonders why I don't cook more things that I enjoy, but at the end of the day it feels a waste of energy cooking separate meals for each member of the family.

There were also a couple of glasses of white wine drunk too! By the way, the dress is the Closet Core Charlie Caftan which I made last summer.

Summary

In the spirit of absolute honesty, I did purchase some biscotti today in Homesense but they won't be being opened this week!

Today felt good, although there is quite a bit more thought process involved in planning my meals each day to either use up leftovers, or get things out of the freezer to defrost. I'll be honest, I don't have a good knowledge of how to use my microwave to defrost things, so usually get things out the night before and leave in the fridge.

Total cooking time: 30 minutes (hob)

Total calories: 1,394

Total fruit/veg portions: 5

Total food waste: a couple of dessert spoons of the lentils from the French Style Lentils - it was just too much.