What We Ate Wednesday-Quick frozen vegetable curry

Spiderman says my super power is making a huge amount of delicious food for pennies. I can spot a bargain at twenty paces. I can make amazing meals out of leftovers.

This week we've eaten lots of leftovers. I have eeked out ingredients to make several filling recipes.

I have made a  500g pot of soya yogurt (£1.25) go for:
fat replacer in a chocolate cake
the curried sauce over black eyed peas and rice
a cooling topping for spicy potatoes and chickpeas with sesame seeds and peanuts
fat replacer in a vanilla blueberry cake. ( I found a punnet of blueberries in the back of the freezer)

Around Christmas, the discount German supermarket Lidl had bags of potatoes, carrots and parsnips for 19p each. 19p, people! I bought one of each and we ate potatoes in several ways as well as roasted parsnips and carrots twice.

Between Christmas and New Years, they still had everything on sale for 19p. We still had carrots, but I bought us another bag of 19p potatoes.

This week, I made a 19p 1.5kg of small potatoes into:
potato soup made with cashew cheese sauce left over from two pizzas (500g)
spicy potatoes and chickpeas with sesame seeds and peanuts (500g)
red onion soup with 200g potato (red onions were on sale this week 750g for 49p)
Hoppin' John at New Years (300g) 

This is my super power.

So I try at least once a week to make something completely out of stuff we already have. A Cupboard Meal. This week I made a dahl curry with frozen veg.

Tesco has these HUGE 1.16kg bags of frozen cauliflower, broccoli, peas and carrots where everything is cut really small. Just defrost in a bit of boiling water and throw them your curry for the last five minutes. It is a great time saver and a way to get veg in your food.

I always have tins of chopped tomatoes, red lentils, curry paste and brown rice on hand so a curry is always just a step away. I personally prefer curry paste over curry powder-- curry powder is cheaper, but curry paste imparts a richer taste. We love Patak's Balti Paste.


Quick Frozen Veg Lentil Curry 

3/4 cup (175g)  red lentils, rinsed and picked over for any small stones or dirt
1 400g tin tomatoes
2/3 cup(160ml) vegetable stock
garlic
1 TB curry paste or curry powder
some chopped ginger root, if you have it
2 cups frozen veg 

Bring it all to the boil (except the frozen veg) and then bring it down to simmer for about 15 minutes until the liquid is mostly absorbed and lentils are tender.

Meanwhile,  defrost the 2 cups frozen veg in boiling water. Let it sit for a few minutes, then drain. Add the defrosted veg to the curry and let it simmer for about 5 minutes and serve over rice.

It makes three big bowls of curry and if you need it to feed more people, then add more veg and up the lentils to 1 cup and the veg stock to 1 cup. You could also serve it with naan bread to make it even more filling. If I hadn't used up all the yogurt already, I would have made naan for us.

I also like to eek out my ginger root. I buy a fat finger of ginger, peel with the back of spoon and chop into bits. Then I divide into three and use one and freeze two.

*This* is my super power.