Frugal Freezer Fortnight

The Frugal February concept is proving to be a successful experiment. Although I do have to be careful not to cook jacket potatoes three days in a row – tempting when you’ve bought a 5kg bag. So far, I’ve introduced a few new dishes like Parmentier and Moussaka, both of which are great for batch cooking and doubling-up. I’ve also started making my own spice mixes which taste much fresher than the ready-made versions and, of course, I can jack up the spicing. In our case, that’s chilli with everything.

One noticeable effect of the winter storms in Spain has been the enormous hike in the price of fresh vegetables, not just the lettuce shortage that hit the headlines. Grand Frais were charging €5.99 per kilo for fresh courgettes and I inadvertently paid €1.86 for just one medium-sized one in Intermarche. This seemed to be a good time to explore frozen vegetables. I usually keep a bag of green haricot beans (thin French beans) in the freezer, together with the obligatory ‘garden’ peas. But I’d expanded the freezer stock during January’s organisation project to include onions, sliced red and green peppers, spinach and mixed vegetables.

 

The frozen vegetables in France are excellent quality. Research confirmed that frozen is as good as fresh at this time of year, especially for varieties that are technically out of season. We’ve got so used to being able to eat any type of fruit or vegetable all the year round, imported or grown in artificial conditions to meet this need desire. So, I decided to expand the frozen vegetable stock to include leeks (brilliant for leek and potato soup and flammiche), macedoine of mixed vegetables (curries), julienne sliced courgettes, carrots and mushrooms (stir-frys), courgettes, aubergine slices (great for moussaka), broccoli and cauliflower. All of the frozen vegetables I’ve tried so far have equalled or exceeded their fresh counterparts, in costs, ease of use and taste.

Over the past couple of weeks I made a determined effort to double-up whenever I was cooking a suitable meal. This enabled me to make a huge batch of lentil dhal, and give half to a busy friend, and to have a supply of curries and pies in the freezer. I even persuaded OH to make a huge batch of his speciality Pasta Tomato Sauce (with added chilli, of course). This made one evening meal plus two batches for the freezer.

This two-week meal plan is devised on the basis of frozen veg and double-up cooking. At the end of week one there should be five meals in the freezer. Even at the end of week two there will still be a curry and a lasagne to take into week three, all involved hardly any extra effort.

Day of week	Meal	Notes
Monday	Parmentier	Make two; one for the freezer
Tuesday	Moroccan Tagine	Double-up; one for freezer
Wednesday	Pasta with courgettes	Use frozen courgettes
Thursday	Crispy tofu satay	Use frozen peppers and julienne veg
Friday	Sweetcorn burgers (recipe makes 4)	Double up or make falafels
Saturday	Potato and spinach curry	Double up
Sunday	Lasagne, jacket potato and broccoli	Make two; one for the freezer
Week Two Monday	Jacket potatoes with Mexican beans	Double filling and keep in fridge
Tuesday	Enchilladas with tomato chilli sauce	Use bean mix; double tomato sauce
Wednesday	Parmentier	From Monday week one: freezer
Thursday	Falafels	Made from last Fridays burger mix
Friday	Janssons’ temptation	Use that 5kg of potatoes up!
Saturday	Curry and rice	Tagine or spinach curry from freezer
Sunday	Pasta with tomatoes chilli sauce	Sauce frozen from Tuesday; add veg