Using it up!

A no spend day today! Well I stayed in, rested and cooked using up what I had in store. Today we had wholemeal pasta with leftover red pesto, some mushrooms and tomatoes which I was going to throw out but were just about usable and some bacon pieces and it was lovely! All the better for not costing anything extra from the house keeping. Pudding was the last of the carrot cake. I found 6 kiwi fruits that needed using up so peeled sliced and froze them for fruit salads.

The above is my preserves shelf and I need to start using it up and making this years preserves, we have a good supply of pickled beetroot, some of which is the golden variety, pickled onions with chilli peppers, Mr C's favourites and some of my aunties recipe chutney! There are a couple of jars of plum jam at the back as well. I shall have to dig out some recipes for using each item up.

I am also making a note of what I have to throw away as I hope to cut this down by planning leftover use, sadly today I threw away 4 mushrooms, 1 tomato and 3 tiny satsumas as they were too far gone! I will try to do better in future.

I found a half finished scarf in my knitting bag so am finishing that off either as a gift or for charity. I still have 2 months of wages coming in and want to make sure I waste not a penny, I am however debating buying a pressure cooker as a money saving tool in the kitchen, I used to have one many years ago and need to give this a lot of thought, I used to be scared of the old one to be honest! Early days but I am feeling positive that I can make this work.