“Drink?” “G & T please.” “Ice and lemon?”

Oh dear, there is only one very hard and wrinkled lemon in the fruit bowl – not to worry! Problem solved! Frozen lemon slices in the freezer providing both ice and lemon.

Storage and preservation of food was the topic for the third meeting of the West Sussex Love Food Champions. We started the evening by reviewing our goals from the last session, sharing successes and failures. Everyone felt they were making progress and as we tucked into cottage pie and vegetables (even the member who doesn’t like veg had some carrots! – well done Lea!) conversation turned to storage of potatoes. There were tales of smelly, sweaty potatoes in plastic bags, sprouting potatoes and a discussion on whether the containers you can buy to store potatoes really do work. Could broccoli and cauliflower be frozen without blanching first? Some of the group had done this and said it works. Lea, who you may remember doesn’t like vegetables, only buys frozen vegetables so they are available if necessary and this also eliminates waste.

Suzanne stores all her cereals in plastic containers. This she says keeps them fresh and she likes the cupboard to look tidy! Nick seals the inner bag with a peg but with 3 small children the cereal doesn’t last long and keeping it fresh never seems to be a problem.

Although everyone thought they were good at storing and preserving food we have all learnt something new.

Hot tips from this session –
· Freeze lemons sliced, in wedges or whole, Seville oranges for marmalade can be frozen and used as required. Limes also freeze well.
· Freeze leftover cream in the ice cube tray and use in soups and pasta dishes.
· When defrosting fish, place it in a container with some milk, this enhances the flavour.

While looking at The Kitchen Journal the conversation turned to storing recipes as there are quite a number of pages allocated to writing recipes. It would seem that the modern way to collect recipes is in a folder as most recipes are either from magazines or printed from the internet. Recipe cards from supermarkets are also very popular and some come in their own folders. Both my mother and mother-in-law had well thumbed hand written recipe books and some of these recipes I still use. Perhaps one day they will be a collectors item!

We would like to thank the two people who responded to our last entry on the question of “Waste versus Cost”. We particularly liked “Phone a friend and share the fish”. What a brilliant way to spread the word and involve more people allowing us to share our involvement as Love Food Champions.

Only one more session to go – leftovers and what to do with them. Will keep you posted.

Janice Langley