We have a friend coming over for supper tomorrow night, and he requested lasagne. Now, I’m not going to give you a recipe for spag bol sauce – everybody, pretty much, knows how to cook it, and knows their way is the best way. And anyhow, I never cook it the same twice running.

We have no bolognese sauce in the freezer (an appalling oversight). We have no mince in the freezer. So Using It Up is not going to go all that well for this meal, but if a guest requests something, who am I to turn him down? So I hurtled up to Normans yesterday and bought a kilo of minced beef, and Pete trundled off on his bicycle and returned with carrots, courgettes, onions and mushrooms.

Last night, I whizzed up four onions in the food processor, then half a dozen carrots, and two courgettes (far too hot to stand in the kitchen chopping veg). He did lots of garlic, and foraged for herbs in the garden, and I sliced a bit carton of mushrooms. I’m trying to cut down the amount of oil I use, so as an experiment, I bunged all the veg and the garlic into the slow cooker, with a small sloosh of olive oil and left them to cook down on low for an hour or two. Which seems to have worked absolutely fine; at least, it smells alright.

Tonight, I will finely dice two rashers of back bacon (four rashers need using, so the other two will do for our supper with pasta, onion, herbs and parmesan), and fry them off in a little oil. Then I’ll brown the mince. Bacon and mince into the slow cooker, tin of tomatoes, small carton of passata, good slosh of red wine, and seasoning, and that can cook off while I’m at Morris practice.

There’s some milk that’s on the turn that can go into the bechamel sauce. There are two huge boxes of rhubarb in the freezer, so one of those, with the wizened Bramleys in the veg drawer, will make a crumble or rhubarb cake, so in fact, not too bad.

p.s. I always put a layer of fresh spinach in my lasagne, with a bit of nutmeg on it. Tarts it up a treat 🙂

Using up:
1 tin tomatoes
1 carton passata
some milk past its best
a box of frozen rhubarb
bacon that needs eating
some of the flour mountain (for pudding)