Mondays are good days to use up leftovers.  There are usually some tasty titbits in the fridge, left over from the weekend.  There are definitely opened jars and cans from the previous weeks cooking and I hate to throw food away.  It seems a wicked waste, when food is such a struggle to so many in the world, to just throw something out.  It may require a bit of imagination but unless they are going off, I enjoy the challenge of making something tasty out of leftovers.

Breakfast is easy – make a smoothie.  Almost anything can be added to the blender and blitzed and pureed in to something at least edible and preferably tasty.  I used some mixed frozen berries and a frozen banana as the base.  I added almond milk, that half can of pumpkin puree, 1 tbsp clementine cashew nut butter and 2 figs which were a bit shrivelled.

The results were very pleasing.  It was so thick I had to eat it with a spoon and the frozen berries and frozen banana made it cold so it was not dissimilar to a soft sorbet.  It was lovely and not a hint of pumpkin taste.

Did I say frozen banana?  Yes I did.  I always buy bananas in a bunch and they always go too brown before I get through them.  So when they are optimally ripe, I put them in the freezer, in their skins, just as they are.

They can then be used in porridge, smoothies and baking.  If you defrost them they go mushy so I wouldn’t freeze them with a view to eating them as a piece of fruit.  Unless of course you like mushy banana!  When I want to use one, I let them deforest slightly as it makes them easier to peel.  If I am in a rush in the morning, I hold the banana under hot running water for a few seconds so I can peel it.  There you go, there’s a top tip that will mean you never have to throw banana away again 🙂

We had run out of milk so I had a black coffee mid-morning.  This coffee with vanilla is lovely and I find it easy to drink without milk.

I wanted to eat lots of vegetables at lunch time so I took the food out of the fridge that I thought needed using up.  The sunflower sprouts, baby plum tomatoes, orange pepper and broccoli were not fresh enough to eat raw so I decided to do a stir fry.  I wanted to eat some oily fish so grabbed a tin of sardines in tomato sauce.

I heated up a tsp of coconut oil and fried the red onion, then the orange pepper, broccoli and rainbow chard stems.  I added some hot water to the rose harissa paste jar, shook well and poured the watered down paste in to the pan.   I added the sunflower sprouts, shredded cabbage, chard leaves and tomatoes and cooked together for a couple of minutes.  I served all the vegetables and then added the sardines to the pan and warmed them through.

The sardines did not complement the flavours really but individually, both the stir fried vegetables and the fish tasted lovely.   That rose harissa was quite spicy!

For supper I defrosted a couple of potato and vegetable cakes from the freezer.  I can’t remember where I got the recipe from but I know I made them by using mashed potato like pastry which I folded over some finely chopped and lightly spiced vegetables.  I detected carrots, peas, spring onions and broccoli in the mix.  I was going to have them with a salad but when it came to it, I didn’t feel like salad so we had baked beans and I also had cheddar cheese.  Real nursery food!  Quite tasty though.

One more leftover too use up; I found a bottle of near empty Cabernet Sauvignon in the dining room.  Having lost 4.5 pounds at Weight Watchers weigh in tonight, I thought I deserved a glass.  I also had a small bowlful of these gorgeous dried fruits and nuts I had bought in Costco.

Some evenings Harvey has a bowl of these with an apple or orange.  Tonight I had some too.  They are lovely but please don’t kid yourself that dried fruits and roasted salted nuts are health food as they are not!  Roasted oils, salt and concentrated sugar are not healthy.  Taste good though.

I think there was only about 100 ml of wine but I sat down to enjoy it with the fruit and nuts.  I felt very pleased to have lost 4 and a half pounds in the last week, particularly since I have worked very hard at eating healthily.  It just shows how you can lose weight when you stick to the plan.

The wineglass and bowl were soon empty, with nothing left over.