Ham Hash Cakes - more things to do with leftovers

I am always on the look out for tasty and nutrious recipes using leftovers and I saw this one for Ham Hash cakes in a recent edition of my Mums Best magazine.

All it consists of is mash potato, sprouts (both of which can be leftovers) and ham (an ideal way to use cooked meats going out of date). You just dice the ham and mix all three ingredients together, shape into flat cakes and fry in olive oil until crisp, brown and piping hot.
Don't forget that although sprouts are in abundance at this time of year, you can replace them with any left over veg, carrots, cabbage etc will be just as tasty!

It is also a take on the Tuna Fish Cakes I make, from a Sainsburys recipe from their "feed your family for a fiver" selection of dishes which is just tuna, mash and spring onions.

One of my favourite dinners of the year is our Boxing Day meal of cold turkey, bread sauce, mash and pickles along with any sausages wrapped in bacon or sausagemeat and stuffing balls, that may be left over aswell. This year we turned all the leftover veg into a traditional bubble and squeak with a difference, by mashing roughly in a baking tray and topping with grated cheese before popping into a hot oven. It was really tasty and don't forget these kind of meals shouldn't be just for the festive season, as they save you money and cut down on waste at any time of year.

Making Use of Leftovers - Banana Cake

We have had a bit of leftover fruit this week, with the kids being off, so Little Man and I have been baking. I got this receipe from the internet an age ago, it is so simple to make (I don't even use scales, just guess work with weights) and very tasty! Ideal for using up bananas that have gone black. Great for pack lunches, picnics or with a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon, I really must go and put the kettle on!

4oz butter or margarine
6oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
2 eggs
2 large or 3 medium, very ripe bananas

Heat the oven to gas mark 4; 180C
Grease a 2lb loaf tin.
Mash the bananas with a sturdy fork.
Cream the butter and sugar together and mix in the eggs
Mix together the two yellow sludges you now have.
Mix in the flour.
Scrape into the loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes then lower teh temperature to gas mark 2; 150C and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Try to let it cool (turned out on a rack) before you devour it.

A fab credit crunchy recipe for Spring

This receipe is taken from the Blog "Backwards in High Heels" with permission.


Four fat, ripe tomatoes that actually taste of something.
Half a cucumber.
Two handfuls of slightly stale bread – ciabatta or good white sourdough.
A handful of basil leaves.
Extra virgin olive oil, the best you have.
Malden Salt.

Cube the tomatoes. Sprinkle them with two or three good pinches of sea salt and let them sit for half an hour to bring out the juices. Cube the cucumber. Cube the bread, and fry it up a little in a dry pan, until it is golden around the edges. Tear the basil. Mix it all up in a big white bowl, and add as much olive oil as you wish. I use quite a lot, making sure that the bread soaks most of it up. Add a couple of screws of black pepper. Check for seasoning. Sometimes I add a tiny dash of lemon juice, and, very occasionally, a few black olives.

That’s it – a perfect spring salad for the credit crunch

Making the most of your leftovers

What do you get when you cross a food-obsessed culture with a global recession? A serious spike in lunchbox and thermos flask sales, so here are some great ideas to get you thinking about using your leftovers.

I was reading a personal finance blog yesterday and offered the author some advice on what to do with her leftover vegetables. Soup at lunchtime is the perfect antidote to cold, blustery days. So on rainy Sundays, make a big pot and freeze it in portions.
So basically you just boil up all your leftover vegetables with an onion, garlic if you wish, a stock cube then simmer until veg is soft. Blitz in a liquidiser or food processor to your desired thickness, season to taste and hey presto! It is great served with crusty bread and you can take it to work in a flask, or get out of the freezer in the morning and warm through when you get home from work.

Cornish pasties - a meal in a parcel - were the original working lunch, and you can make them really easily. Put some of your chosen filling on a disc of puff pastry (again, there are endless variations you can play around with) and fold it over into a crescent shape. Seal it by squeezing between your fingers and thumbs and dabbing it with a little egg yolk. Then bake in the oven. A great alternative to boring sandwiches in both adults and kids lunchboxes. A large pack of puff pastry is approx 95p (this would make loads) and this is a great way to use the last bits of cheese up or any processed meats - just add some onion or tomato. To create a more traditional Cornish pasty, use leftover meat and veg from the Sunday roast. I keep a pack of puff pastry in the fridge at all times and cut off small chunks if making pasties or more if I need the topping for a pie. You can also make a large roast dinner pie with all your Sunday Roast leftovers and the addition of some thick gravy and some fried onions. Serve with mash and beans.

On average we waste a third of the food we buy. That amounts to around £600 per year for an average family. There are some really easy ways to lower your lunchtime food wastage. Freezing bread in the portions you need to make sandwiches, for example. And leftover salad can be ripped up and added to pasta salad or put into sandwiches or wraps the next day.
One of the biggest issues is that £1bn worth of homemade meals are being binned every year, so taking your leftovers to work or making another meal out of them, saves a great deal of money.
People tend to be unsure about how long they can keep leftovers for, but the standard advice is that they will be OK for two days in the fridge and then you should eat them, or freeze them.

Feed the family for a fiver

I am sure you have all seen the sainsburys adverts "feed the family for a fiver", well yesterday I tried this one out - chunky beef casserole and it was great. I didn't have any crusty bread (as per the advert) to serve with it, so 1/2 an hour before dishing up I added some dumplings (this actually worked out cheaper than buying a french stick as the dumpling mix was 49p and made the meal bigger and more filling). There was only 4 of us for dinner yesterday and to be honest this wouldn't have stretched any further, luckily one child has gone off meat, so the meat went 3 ways quite nicely. My son had cricket practice yesterday, so I was out for a couple of hours whilst this was cooking, so a great meal to put on whilst the kids are out at activities, or you pop to the supermarket, doctors etc. Don't forget you can easily subsitute for other supermarkets value ranges, you don't have to use sainsburys ingredients. For singles or couples you could obviously cook using the amounts in the recipe and freeze into portions, so it would be a really cheap meal for you. We really liked it so give it a try here sainsburys online.