Cauliflower curry and (bil)berry pie

I have a LOT of cauli, I need to do something with it. First thing to come to my mind is of course cauliflower curry.

A LOT of cauliflower! Used my biggest frying pan.

Cauliflower - 0,10€, tin of tomatoes 0,33€, oil+spices 0,30€, coconut cream*? milk?  0,20€, rice 0,60€, all together 1,60€. I used those small zucchinies that stop developing and rot or fall off the vine, handful of green beans and spinach (leaves and stalks). I don't have any garlic left, so I use garlic chives. It was a bit runny to my liking, because I accidentally added water before I added coconut milk.

There's at least two portions left with extra rice for something else, maybe fried rice next week? I was a bit shocked when I saw how much the boys ate this, I thought I could have this as my lunches next week! So - a nice sunday dinner less than a 0,30€ per portion!

Okei, hb and boys had chicken, that adds up more than 5€ for the meal, or 1,40€ per portion. But still, 1,70€ per portion!

I have three more caulis to use up! (actually I have four, because I bought one regular cauli just before I got these outcasts)

I quite often bake something on Sundays, today I made bilberry pie. Didn't have enough bilberries, so I used some black currants from the freezer.

Here the standard pie is open one, this one is my go to berry pie:

(very poor picture even in my standards, sorry)

The bottom is very easy (100g butter/margarine/oil, 1/2 dl sugar, 3 dl flour (I used 2,5 all purpose flour and 0,5 dl oats, 1tsp baking powder, vanilla sugar - I used meadow sweet sugar) and the filling is quite simple, too. Berries, 4dl yoghurt (or any other "sour" milk product), 1/2 dl sugar, 1 egg and 1tsp vanilla sugar. I used vanilla yoghurt so  didn't use sugar or vanilla. This was less than 1,50€ the whole pie. And as you can see, it is very good - I wasn't fast enought to have a picture before someones already helped themselves!

*I bought this huge tin of coconut cream some time ago, if I remember right it was 1,99€ for a 2,9 l tin! It could have been 2,99€ - it was dirty cheap anyway. I had to divide it into smaller portions. I made a nice mess when I had the bright idea to put it into small ziploc bags... But now they are in the freezer, easy to use when needed.

When no-one else wants to have

Every now and then I'm able to pick up food from ... well, it is not technically a food bank. This local lady collects out of date- food and unsellable produce from several shops. Then she gives it to people in need. Sometimes there is too much food (like on the beginning of May, when the local baker went bonkers and baked 4 times more bread than ever sold and muffins about 10 times more - he's now retired, it wasn't a good thing) or there is food nobody wants. The the lady sends me a message "there is this an that, would you like to have some?" And usually I grab my bag and go to see if there's something we can use.

So things I get are outcasts of oucasts, no-one is left without food if I get that food. (I pay her few euros for gas or give her a roll of plastic bags).

Yesterday she sent me a message "There is a ton of cauliflower and peas". Ok,  I can use some cauliflower.

As you can see, they are NOT superfresh and top quality. No, they are not, they are on their way to feed horses and chicken and compost. For normal people. For me, they are ok, I can cut away dark spots, I can peel carrots before using.

That's not all I got, I just didn't take photos of everything, and some of the priduce went to my parents and to my sister. There were:

- 8 caulifowers (3 purple, 3 yellow, 1 green and 1 white)

- 3 aubergines

- 5 zucchinies (courgettes)

- about 20 tomatoes

- a bunch of spring onions

- two kilos of carrots

- one packet of soup veggies (piece of leek, swede, carrot)

- 5 litres of field peas

- 15 mushrooms

- 4 sweet buns (with jam filling and sticky sugar coating)

- 2 bags of buns

- one loaf of sourdough bread

- few small peppers (didn't count)

- three jars of salsa

- one plum

- two bananas

I paid 4 euros (that's the coins I had in my car).

The bread and buns went all to the freezer. Some of the tomatoes were firm and nice, I sorted them out and others I roasted in the oven with some garlic chives and salt and oil. Aubergines, zucchinies and peppers went on to another casserole dish - I couldn't fit them all to one pan.

Tomatoes cut in half. Only two of the tomatoes went to compost, quite good considering those were already throw aways.

I added some dried parsley and oregano (from my polytunnel) and garlic chives to season the veggies.

They were lovely. Now I have enough prepared veggies for the next three days. Peas are shelled and I will pour some boiling water on them to prepare them for the freezer.

But then, I need to do something with the caulies and carrots. 

There were some brown spots on zucchinies, few tomatoes were a bit bad, so I used only half of those few. Peas were not sweet anymore, but they'll do nicely in soups and stews. I think I'll eat bananas and plum as they are, I've made a lot of fruit salad lately (from outcasts of outcasts), I'm not in the fruit salad mood now.

Like this one:

Strawberries were from my veggie plot, apples and pears were outcasts, watermelon was on sale 0,99€/kg. I made some sugar syrup with lemon juice and almond juice (I have no idea what it is, I got it from Italy, it gives a nice maraschino cherry taste ) AND I added watermelon rind preserve made by myself!