Eating Shoots and Leaves

Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes and comments on my A Little Less Grocery Shopping post. Your encouragement means a lot and is helping me to stay focused on limiting both my spending and waste this year. I'm determined to keep improving in this area.

Our cooking is definitely becoming more experimental adventurous as we endeavour to use up our leftovers before replenishing our food supplies. Take tonight's meal, a stir fry with a difference. Instead of our usual pre-prepared stir fry veg mix (cheap but still an expense) we used what veg we had to hand: one onion, the last few stalks of limp celery, carrot shavings (yellow stickered carrots), leftover florets of broccoli plus the stem (peeled and finely chopped), shredded iceburg lettuce, a few chilli flakes and chopped ginger (Very Lazy Ginger, which lasts forever). It's the first time I've used broccoli stalk and lettuce in a stir fry but they worked well and added volume and texture without any strong flavor. And it's amazing how lacklustre veg can suddenly be transformed into something robust with a flash of heat in a wok. To the stir fried veg we added leftover pork from Sunday's roast and a sachet of sweet and sour sauce from Aldi but I'm sure a homemade sauce of soy sauce and fruit juice would have worked just as well. We ate this with noodles as they're so quick and easy. Mouth wateringly good. 

So that's tonight sorted. I still haven't decided on a meal for Valentine's Day. Our youngest is off to see The Lego Movie with friends so it looks like we can please ourselves. Is curry romantic?