Low waste entertaining

I am having 8 people over for dinner tomorrow (Saturday). I don’t entertain a lot, I don’t really enjoy cooking for other people. I’d rather meet somewhere and relax. Saying that I am not really sure how this happened.

It is going to be 41 degrees (106F) so I don’t want to be doing much actual cooking. I am determined to make it as low waste as I possibly can. This has meant preparation! I started Tuesday night, soaking lentils, and starting a batch of sprouts. Wednesday night I cooked the lentils, due to the glorious heat we are experiencing I was able to drain them Wednesday morning and leave them on the counter and by the evening they had started sprouting! Yay! More nutrition availability! Wednesday night I soaked chickpeas and made pasta. I had to alter the machine, it has been driving me nuts! got the spanner out and broke off the piece that was causing me grief. So much better now. Mental note to self, when it is 28 degrees (82F) inside, cranking what seems like an endless amount of pasta is not ideal. I have never made paste and not cooked and eaten it the same day. This lot I put in a tin in the fridge. I am hoping that it will be fine…

Spanner and piece I removed. Could have used any tool, spanner sitting on top…

Thursday night I cooked the  chickpeas and made hummus dip. I cooked quinoa and brown rice and made the dough for the crackers that I will cook today (while the sun is shining and solar can power it).

When I next make lasagna I am going to stop at this point and use these as sheets.

Today, Friday, I am going after work to the market to get the 3 cheeses that I need, hopefully with no packaging!

All my helpers in the background

The menu:

Dip and crackers

Cous cous salad with lentils. (all the veggies will be from the backyard, maybe some goats cheese)

Green salad, not yet picked. Sprouts are ready.

Pesto pasta salad. Basil to be picked tomorrow.

Zucchini fritters. I have been picking zucchinis all week, I have plenty.

Bread to be purchased from farmers market tomorrow.

Fruit for dessert.

So far everything has been bought in bulk, package free! This is super exciting to me. I have not worked out beverages yet. I hope the cheese works out, I haven’t been to this market before but I am hopeful. It did cross my mind that if I just bought a bag of crackers I could go to bed… I persevered. It seems more labour intensive because I spread it out over a few days, mostly due to not wanting to heat the whole house up doing so much cooking at once.

Done, that is apparently enough to serve 6 adults a huge bowl of pasta, I don’t need that so I don’t know why I made so much, I am going to freeze some. Do you like my super expensive professional pasta holder?

I can’t leave the pasta out to dry for long as Franklin thinks it is a game designed purely for his fun. It is called Let’s swat at the swinging stuff, break it, watch it fall to the floor then walk away.