My maternal grandmother could make a pound of mince feed her family for weeks, according to local legend.
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The truth may be somewhat stretched but not the underlying sentiment: she was a frugal and creative homemaker, who did not mince words or waste ground beef.
Genetically we’re on the same page.
I love leftovers and the challenge of turning them into something palatable can be one of the highlights – or lowlights – of the working week.
During the school holidays we stripped our abundant, but scraggly, lemon tree of all its ripe, swollen fruit.
As the chooks were now laying again, a lemon cake was the obvious choice for dessert after a barbecue lunch. Out of the 200 lemons picked, my recipe called for four.
With lemons and eggs aplenty, I preheated the oven and got to work, only to find I was low on caster sugar and almond meal. The polenta, too, had seen better days. I texted my husband down town to add sugar, almond meal and polenta to his trolley.
Reading through The River Cafe’s gluten-free lemon cake recipe, I realised I was half a teaspoon short of baking powder. With my harried husband already in the supermarket car park, I’d rather the cake flopped than raise his ire.
“Great!” I lie through gritted text, “See you soon.”
Turned out the eggs and the lemons were the only ingredients I had in stock for that cake after all.
Convinced we would never get through our healthy stockpile of eggs, I sent a dozen home with my sister-in-law and we ate the others for brekkie.
Come grand final morning, I was one egg short of Bill Granger’s banana bread.
My husband offered to go to the supermarket once more to buy half a dozen eggs, but I wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’ll wait,” I say, convinced we were letting down the self-sufficiency team. “No hurry, ladies. One egg is all I need.”
Thirty minutes later and with the centre bounce looming, I remembered I had thrown the girls half a watermelon scooped out with a melon baller to make a lookalike Sherrin fruit plate. Those chickens had no plans to lay any time soon.
I baked the loaf – minus one egg on principle – while my husband shopped for the grand final main course.
Perhaps motivated by my record of running-out-of-everything lately, he returned with umpteen gazillion sausages, just as many hot dog buns and 12 bags of coleslaw. I assured him our crowd of 20 footy fans would not starve on our watch.
Half the sausages and buns lasted three meals over the weekend, finished off with lemon cake and Granger’s banana-bread-minus-an-egg. We barely made a dent on the coleslaw. As no one could stomach another sausage sizzle, we packed the freezer with leftovers.
By mad Monday we were low on food with a play-date pending. I phoned East Albury IGA to make sure they had hot chooks ready by 10am. Then I headed to the checkout via the baking aisle, knowing I was short of something but flour did not ring a bell.
During the play-date my tween group decided to make traditional lemonade from our remaining 192 lemons. With half a cup of caster sugar left in the canister, the recipe called for ¾ cup! The nine-year-old head chef decided we’d suck it and see.
“Delicious,” the girls say, “Can we sell it out on the street?!”
“I’m out of sugar!” I say, “But I’ve got plenty of coleslaw.”