Rats!

This post is for those of you out there who labour under a misapprehension about me. You may think, from the blog, that I glide effortlessly through life like a swan, enjoying the waterlilies. 


That I am supremely organised, never wasteful and there is always a well thought out meal on the table when required.WRONG!
I may appear that way, but in truth, my little legs are paddling nineteen-to-the dozen under the water, and just occasionally my feet get rather tangled in the pondweed lurking in the murky depths. 
Case in point...
On Tuesday we were planning to go out, and so I thought I should check the freezer in case I needed to thaw something for the evening meal. There was this box...

I looked at it carefully. Clearly not Vegetable Curry, nor beetroot soup. It looked like sweet peppers - one red half, one orange half. I had a vague memory of sorting out fridge contents before we went away at Easter, and putting some stuff in the freezer.
I checked the current contents of fridge vegetable drawer - which included 1½ courgettes and some onions.

"Ratatouille!" I thought, gleefully [or Gleefully I thought "Ratatouille!" - for those of you SATS fiends who prefer fronted adverbials - although I am in Michael Rosen's camp here] "This would be a good side dish to go along with sausages or chops or something. If I get it cooking now it will be lovely by this evening."
I left the box on one side, dug out my small slo-cooker, emptied a can of tomatoes into a jug, put in the microwave to heat, chopped up some of the fridge veg...and only then did I open the box, to discover those two bright triangles were not capsicums, but cheesecake! They were the two slices left after our pre-Easter Alpha supper.
Fortunately there was a large pepper in the fridge too, so that got chopped up and added to the mix. Later in the day, we came home and ate ratatouille, with pork chops, and had cheesecake for dessert.

Morals of this story;

1. Always label things clearly before you consign them to the freezer drawer. You may think you will recognise them when you retrieve them, but life is very busy and further down the line, you will have no idea what it is!
2. Cleaning off old labels is a good idea
3. You can always salvage something from a disaster- this time I managed not only ratatouille**, but also a dessert.

**Pronouced as per the French rat-a-twee, not as in the film Ratatouille rat-at-two-ee