Do-it-yourself Home Cook Challenge

One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who are frustrated with cooking is "You buy all these ingredients, use a little in making the dish, and then that ingredient, ginger or cilantro or manchego cheese or fill in the blank, goes to waste. What else do you do with it?"

Enter the do-it-yourself home cook challenge. I see this as an opportunity to not only be frugal and avoid food waste, but also as an excuse to try something new. The only judges are your tastebuds, and the only criteria is whether or not the taste exceeds the trouble of making it.

I present to you a weekday case in point.

1. The ingredient: buttermilk. Now buttermilk isn't that expensive, but I am serious about the food waste thing. Use it! Buttermilk has a long shelf life, and a couple of weeks ago, I bought some local buttermilk to make buttermilk pies as thank yous. The local brand only came in a half gallon, and five or six pies later, I still have half of that. So, another tactic was called for unless I am OK with being the "what kind of pie?" lady.

2. The challenge: find a recipe that uses more than 1/3 c. of buttermilk. And not biscuits, OK. I know I can make them, but do I need to be eating an entire batch? I think not.

3. The bookshelf: the indexes of cookbooks are vital to this challenge. Ah. Found recipe in trusty Martha White Cookbook for Whole Wheat Cardamom Bread. 1 1/4 c. of buttermilk. We have a contender.

I had all the ingredients on the shelf except whole wheat flour. Previous attempts at making whole wheat bread had for me resulted in dry bread that eventually went to feed birds, so I was cautious -- and frugal -- and purchased only what the recipe called for from the bulk bin at Earth Fare.

And look what came out of my oven!

Crusty goodness

I substituted dried cranberries for raisins, and pecans for walnuts, and I have a new breakfast bread to add to my rotation. This is a quick bread, so there's no yeast involved, and it mixed up in literally 10 minutes.

Challenge successful! And I have enough buttermilk for another loaf ... what ingredient do you have right now that you could "use up"?