I bought a small boiling bacon in the butchers this week, it was only £2.99 and I've managed to get seven portions from it in one incarnation or another - working out at approx. 42p per serving.
First up was an evening meal of my version of Nigella's Gammon in Cider recipe. Basically you boil up the bacon in cider or apple juice (this time I used a combination of both as I didn't have enough of either and that worked fine) with leeks, carrots, onions all tickled up with cloves, black peppercorns, bouquet garni and a good sprinkling of demerara sugar. Nigella suggests adding celery too but as my opinion of celery is that it is possibly the spawn of Satan in vegetable form I leave it out. Served with plain boiled potatoes this is a really filling and tasty meal. P and I had a l-a-r-g-e portion each - if we weren't such piggies we could probably have stretched this to make two evening meals.
Next day I fished most of the leftover meat and veggies out of the cider with a slotted spoon, chopped them up and added to cooked pasta. Covered in a cheese sauce and baked in the oven this gave us another evening meal with enough left for me for the following day's lunch.
To the remaining veggies, bits of meat and the cider I added a couple of boiled potato halves (leftover from the original evening meal) and wizzed it all up with my hand blender to make a rather tasty soup. That gave me two lunches and very welcome they were too on such chilly days.
Oh, yes, all the fat from the boiling bacon went out in the garden for any passing fox, feline, seagull or smaller bird to enjoy. The only thing that made it to the bin was the plastic it was wrapped in originally.
*I had to get P's mega huge dictionary (known affectionately as the 'pocket dictionary') out to find out how you actually spell 'eke.' The description given is 'to make (a supply) last, esp. by frugal use.' Yup, that was definitely what I was looking for.
In my opinion there's not enought eke-ing going on these days. Haha! Well done. Teresa x
Posted by: Teresa | 02/15/2010 at 12:39 PM