Cooking with what you have already.

I'm really bad at this, like really bad. To me a can of veggies is a can of veggies and a sack of potatoes is a sack of potatoes.

I'm trying to get better at this so I can further expand my grocery list and make the most of it, and waste less food.

I have a habit of buying a lot of produce but never using it in time to enjoy it all, mostly because sometimes I'll get something specifically for a recipe but it may not use all that much of it, so what happens to the rest of it? Normally ends up wasted unfortunately. But I promised myself that I'd get better at that.

For example, I bought leeks for the first time the other day, but I only needed the white end from one for a tomato sauce I was making for pasta. Leeks come in bunches (I wonder if that's the proper term?) where I got 3 giant leeks where I only needed a portion of one.

So, today I searched for recipes that use leek, and I ended up making potato leek soup. I ended up using both leeks and the rest of the potato's in the sack. We'll see how it tastes afterwards (hopefully good!) I'll post a picture if people would like :)

Is anyone else bad with this?

I used to be horrible with it, always throwing things out. But then I started planning out every meal of my week (the idea seemed completely insane to me at first). I make a grocery list of the exact amount needed for the week. Fresh stuff every week and I never have to worry about what I'm going to make. I just write down what I want to eat for next week.

I'm starting to do that too, but I do run into situations with the leak that I explained. I only needed a small portion of it and I could only buy 3 giant leaks as one bunch. So what would I do with the rest of it?

So yeah, trying hard to make sure I make the most of my groceries and even expand what I expected to use to make it last longer.

Picture from dinner :D the soup ended up great.

Ramen, .39 cent cheeseburgers, rice, hamburger helper without the hamburger, and snatching fruits and vegs from the fields when i came home for the weekends from college... when i wasn't on base or active duty.. uncle sam's MRE are a god send for a broke soldier.

Is that a wusthof steak knife? Fancy fancy =]

If you're becoming more interested in cooking, I recommend checking out some of the shows by Jamie Oliver. He's pretty entertaining and uses a large variety of ingredients and condiments, lots of great ideas for just about any ingredient.

Yeah I think so. They're my boyfriends knives, we got them a while ago when we had some extra money. He's into cooking and wanted really nice knives, and that's what Nikon suggested to him. I'm really trying to incorporate more vegetables in my dinners, because I'm so boring with them. I typically only like my veggies raw, but I'm trying different ways to cook them or what I put them in to make them more enjoyable and not so boring. Yesterday I made some mashed potatoes and mashed cauliflower with it. It gave it a sweet buttery taste without actually putting more than a tiny tsp of butter in it.

As a college student with an income of about 0 dollars it's very hard for me to actually buy enough food to have it go to waste. Also class makes it so I don't have to cook all that much at home. If you ever have a lot of excess food though and you tell me what it is I'll try to see what dishes you can create.

I think my biggest vegetable I have a hard time finishing up without wasting any is romaine lettuce. I buy it fresh since it's slightly cheaper to cut your own versus buying it in a bag already cut up. I tell myself I'll make salads, but quickly get tired of them. So I end up wasting romaine lettuce due to it wilting and getting yucky before it's all consumed.

Well it's kinda hard to do much with one ingredient. You can plate things on romaine though so you can eat the food by picking it with romaine as a protector.

Yeah, Wusthof makes pretty good western knives, I enjoyed using my friends when cooking at her place.

Here are some vegetable dishes I've been enjoying lately that you may also enjoy:

-Kale, cut up broccoli + cauliflower lightly boiled in chicken broth. Then blend together a clove of garlic with oregano and use it to flavour the butter before adding it to the vegetables.

-Tomato slices with avocado slices, topped with a soft goat cheese, dressed with a good balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I like to set them up like hors d'oeuvres. Slice of tomato, slice of avocado ontop, with the cheese.

-Bruschetta with red pepper slices as a base instead of bread. Topping is made up of finely diced tomato, a bit of finely diced onion, and whatever fresh herb you want to use (basil/oregano/dill), good extra virgin olive oil and salt/pepper to taste (jalapeno pepper if you like spicy). This dish purely depends on the quality of ingredients, especially the tomatoes (it's amazing if you can get your hands on some ripe locally grown organic tomatoes).

-Mashed potatoes. I rarely eat potatoes, but you seem to enjoy them, here is how I like mine. I cut the potatoes into slices first and boil them until they're almost ready. I drain them, put it back on the stove adding butter, olive oil, minced garlic, cut up fresh rosemary, lightly sautéing them for a minute or 2. Then I add in some chicken broth slowly as I mash everything. To finish it, I add in a good parmesan cheese (grated).

If you end up makin one, let me know how it goes.

I think I'll try your bruschetta, as I have all the ingredients already. I need to use more of my tomato. I only used a tiny bit for a sandwich the other day, but I'm such a fan of bread that I find it hard to replace it with a red pepper haha.