I had a cauliflower that needed using up quickly, so made a big pan of cauli mac and cheese, 8 portions - 2 for dinner last night, 2 for lunch today and the rest frozen. I didn't really want to use ordinary milk for the cheese sauce, as I want to save our milk for tea/coffee/cereal, and I knew there was an unopened pack of skimmed milk powder in the larder that had been in there ages.....ideal time to use it up. When I got it out, the date on it was July 2019....oops. It looked alright, it was free flowing, so I made up a small amount to check - it smelt and tasted fine. Made up another 1.5 pints and used it for a cheese sauce, I added a heaped tsp mustard and some sage. Used a pint for the cauli/mac and froze the remainder.
I diced up 2 end crusts of stale bread and lightly fried them in a butter/oil mixture, then sprinkled them on top of the cauli mac, along with some grated cheese. It made a lovely crunchy topping. We had the cauli mac n cheese with some Sainsburys quinoa, sweet potato and lentil veggie burgers....not had them before, they were surprisingly nice.
Well, we're still alive this morning so the out of date milk powder was fine! I must use up the rest of it in the next few days....got plenty of homegrown leeks left so I'll do leeks in cheese sauce to freeze. Husband wants the leeks out of the ground anyway as he will soon need the space for planting new stuff, so yesterday he distributed some to neighbours, leaving them on their doorsteps. I'll make a rice pud as well, that'll please husband (and I like cold rice pud for breakfast!).
We're going to venture out to the supermarket this morning, we have no salad veg left and very little fresh green veg, although we do have frozen veg but it's not the same as fresh. It's very inconsiderate of this virus to occur at a time when we've not much homegrown veg left from last year, and the new stuff for this year hasn't started yet!! 😉😁 I hope they've got some flour in stock too, people have been saying on social media they can't get flour. I guess we're all doing lots of baking now, I'm certainly doing a lot more.
It's daunting to think we have to carry on with this lockdown for at least 3 weeks, but if it saves lives and takes a bit of pressure off the NHS, so be it.
Totally agree. It's well worth it if it means it reduces pressure and more people live.
ReplyDeleteI've used out of date dried milk before and it's always been fine. It's a BB date, I think, not a Use By. Your meal sounds absolutely delicious!
xx
Thanks Joy, I suppose a BB date of 8 months ago is stretching it a bit though lol. Still, as you say, the milk's fine so it will all get used.
DeleteI think it might have to be longer than 3 weeks if Italy, Spain and France are anything to go by. A crushed packet of crisps mixed with a little grated cheese makes a nice topping for cauliflower or mac cheese.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. My mum always used to put crushed crisps on top of her mac n cheese...personally, I'd rather eat the crisps! The crunchy croutons were really nice.
DeleteVenturing out to get some fresh veg too, and need to go to the bank to pay a couple of bills. Tried to pay electric by phone, but they've closed the phone lines, just when we're supposed to reduce contact! I think they all want us to pay on-line but don't like putting bank details on the web. Son has sent us a couple of N95 masks so will start to us them when shopping. Very strange times indeed, but we've all got to pull together to beat this thing and keep everyone as safe as possible. xx
ReplyDeleteI need to sort through my freezer and rearrange stuff so that I can freeze some eg. I have a load of vegetables to use up so might spend a couple of hours today chopping and blanching.
ReplyDeleteit's a nightmare, we can shop online and collect, but the site keeps crashing, we were up early this morning and managed to get an order through, but we still will have to pick it up. We often use out of date dried items. We had christmas pudding yesterday, it was yum, we still have another in the cupboard.
ReplyDeleteLike PoppyPatchwork I had Christmas Pudding yesterday too
ReplyDeleteJulie xxxxx