Cream Teas and Crafternoons: A bit thrifty

I was inspired by reading a friend's interesting post today on Food Waste, and how it is a really serious issue, and it got me thinking again about how much I waste... I try not to, but with life being pretty busy, and with two rather time-consuming little ones to watch, I start off with good intentions and then get lazy.

Today I resolved again to work on cutting the amount that we waste, both to be more environmentally friendly, and to help the old bank balance.

So, we had a dinner comprised of lots of bits and bobs that needed eating up... Some delicious carrot and coriander soup (carrots were not going to last much longer, and a friend had a surplus of coriander in her garden!) to which I added more potato than in the recipe to make it go a little further. Some bread (made using our wonderful bread maker) and butter, and some cous cous salad, using lots of odds and ends of salad vegetables that we had in the fridge. This was topped off with a lovely rice pudding (not using anything up per se, but a delicious and very thrifty pud!).

To follow in this vein, I then made some breadcrumbs from some stale bread that was lying around... (into the freezer, and then I'm nice and organised for macaroni cheese)

And had another go at jam making with the left over strawberries from our PYO session on Saturday. Again, I think it was a success... Thanks Delia!

On a non food-related note, I had a bit of mending to do for a friend. She had a couple of bags that needed a spot of sewing. One was a doddle- just a strap that needed machining back into the bag. The other was less easy to figure out what to do with- the very pretty fabric had totally worn away and been ripped in places, leaving only the lining visible. I wasn't so sure how to fix this without it looking like a very obvious patch-up job, but a suggestion from a friend was that I just add a panel to the bottom in a heavy-wearing fabric. This worked very well, and I used an old pair of jeans that have been in the fabric stash for a while.