Real food flops, we all have them. It’s always frustrating when you make something that just doesn’t turn out right. You spend money on high quality ingredients and then the recipe just doesn’t turn out.
I can’t even tell you how many times this has happened to me! Sometimes it’s as simple as forgetting about my whole-grain rising and not baking well, other times it is simply rushing things. Regardless of I HATE waste! There is little that rubs me more wrong in the kitchen than food not being valued.
If you are anything like me, I’m sure you will enjoy these frugal tips to reuse your real food flops!
Lumpy Mashed Potatoes
Make a potato soup or potato pancakes. A simple Mexican favorite it to mix shredded pot roast with mashed potatoes for tacos.
Bread
Dense bread, over risen bread, too salty of bread… I’ve done all three. There are a few ways I like to use them.
Clabbered Milk
Raw milk turning to clabber is always a sad thing and while it’s not an actual flop (unless you forget to put it in the fridge) it is a sad thing that can happen.
- Use to soak your bread/muffins
- Again feed it to your chickens (they LOVE that stuff)
Kombucha
I have a few bottles of kombucha that I forgot about and let ferment too long right now, sad day but there are a few ways to reuse it.
- Make salad dressing
- Soak grains and flours
- Kill weeds
- Hair rinse
Chocolate
Have you ever tried to melt chocolate and had it seize on you? Kimi Harris at The Nourishing Gourmet has a recipe for chocolate fudge sauce made from seized chocolate.
Running Yogurt
Runny yogurt is a sad thing that has happened to me more than once. Thankfully I stopped having that problem a few years ago (except for my goat milk batch, I don’t know what went wrong there). A Proverb’s 31 Wife has lots of great tips on how to use it!
Failed Mayo
This can make a great salad dressing or you can use it to make chocolate mayonnaise cake. Trust me on the cake, it’s great!
Lumpy Lemon Curd
I love lemon curd! In fact I have a recipe for lemon curd and raspberry curd in my book, Steeped! Sometimes I don’t pay attention or stir well and the egg starts to cook to quickly, leaving chunks of eggs, GROSS. A simple trick is to pour it threw a fine strainer or cheese cloth while it is still warm to strain out the lumps. I like to use the back of a spoon to gently push the curd through the strainer.
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Left over chocolate, huh? I don’t understand. I usually say eat the evidence so nobody knows there was any sort of error. This isn’t really a flop, but I try to make a big meatloaf so that there is left over. The next day, cut the meatloaf into 1 inch-ish cubes for the meatballs in the spaghetti:) Yum.
Yum! That’s a great idea!
Yum. I need to make some raspberry curd. 🙂
I do too! I haven’t made any yet this summer!