26th September 2014

I'm going to try to post more often. I think it's really interesting to see how the Thermomix has settled into life here a few years down the track.
I no longer feel I have to use it every day but it's a much loved part of the kitchen.

The last few days the Thermomix has helped make:

Sunday - being a Sunday and at home I made a few staples.

Chicken stock. Still such a regular in our house as we love soup (and other things made with quality stock). I also find store bought stock too salty. (eldest loves it, lol).
So chicken bones, onion, garlic, celery, peppercorns, bay leaf, (maybe a carrot? but don't think so) all in the basket, water in the bowl.
Cooked for 45 mins .

Pancakes for breakfast. Basically use the crepe recipe in the EDC but I make 1.5 + times the mixture, we go through a lot of pancakes and any leftovers go into school lunches.

Strawberry jam and banana muffins. Jam I use 500g strawberries, a lemon (peeled and some of the rind added), 200g sugar and 1/2 a packet of jamsetta.

Monday 25th I made chicken and sweetcorn soup using the stock made on Sunday. With garlic, chili, leftover chicken and a tin of creamed corn. Such a simple and quick soup.  

And today I made this caramel slice. Reading SFI's whilst on the treadmill at the gym this morning and saw this recipe. So simple. Packet of milk arrowroot biscuits, 295g tin of sweetened condensed milk, 125 g butter and choc chips. 

Pop the butter in the tmx and cook at 50 degrees for 1 min till melted, add the biscuits and whizz at speed 9 till crumbed, add condensed milk and mix. Then added some dark chocolate drops and mixed with the spatula and popped into a lined slice tray. Bake 45 mins, 150 degrees. Very sweet and rich and yummy!!!

It's been awhile!

Thought I'd pop in to do a quick update.

The thermomix is still a mainstay in my kitchen, had to replace the seal but still going strong. Oh and, lol, I also need to replace the measuring cup at some point soon as the cup part came off the top - it's now a very short measuring cup! Silly thing was it was about to break into two and I was being super careful with it and then I left it sitting in place whilst kneading pizza dough! LOL, yep of course the top bit flew off as soon as things got bumpy!

OK last couple of days.

Made strawberry jam on Thursday - can't remember anything else, but it's still the easiest way to make jam.

Friday, made stock and wontons. (I still prefer my wontons boiled not steamed so did that but ground/grated all the ingredients in the thermomix - garlic, ginger, carrot, celery, mixed in mince, soy sauce, fish sauce).
And then added garlic, ginger and veg to the stock for the broth to go with the wontons.

Saturday - boiled eggs. Anyone else think the thermomix is the best egg boiler?! I'm not a big fan but it's one of my girls favourite eggs and the thermomix makes it so easy and they don't crack!

Chocolate cake - left the older girls making a couple of the Too Easy chocolate cake's from the EDC and yep even my kids found them too easy - well after they'd found the flour! (how many texts can that take!)

Sunday - Having family over for dinner.
Not sure if I used thermi in the morning but for the dinner I did a curry night.
Desert - firstly whilst clean I whipped cream for the cake (baked yesterday)
Dish 1 - a slow cooked beef and potato curry. I milled a bunch of spices, garlic and ginger in the tmx, (didn't clean out properly as the daal was going in next) added this to beef, onions and potatoes slow cooked on the stove. All put on before guests arrived.
Dish 2 - a chinese chicken curry. (so had all the ingredients cut up and ready to throw in except the frozen peas)  This I used a bought sauce from the chinese supermarket that my kids just adore - adding chicken, peas, onions, celery and mushrooms.
Dish 3 - Daal, my eldest's favourite is the EDC tomato Dahl so that's what I made.
I prepped everything up until the cooking of the lentils, tomatoes etc bit, all sitting in the tmx and then just turned it on when ready to cook)
So all cooking at once, rice in the rice cooker (which grr as always didn't do quite as good a job as the tmx, but at least it was minimal work from me and everything cooking at once so I could enjoy the company) and a lovely big meal served easily. Added in a greek yoghurt side and tomato and cucumber salad (lemon and vinegar dressing similar to the Indian cookbook one) and everyone loved it.

So easy and I have to say cheap to provide a great Indian feast - and we have so many leftovers, fed us today and tomorrow for lunch as well!!
Really all for under $30!

Today  - Monday - leftover day, lol!!

Tomorrow I need to do some baking for school starting back on Wednesday - planning some banana muffins, muesli bar of some sort, maybe some fruit balls. Or if I have some even some rice bubble bars as a starting back at school treat.

21st/22nd October - porridge, stock, minestrone soup, boiled eggs, strawberry jam, lemon chicken and noodles.

Friday 21st -

Breakfast - porridge

Then made chicken stock.

Dinner made Minestrone soup (forum recipe, linked previously on here) at dd1's request. It's also dh's favourite.

Saturday 22nd

Breakfast - boiled eggs

Made strawberry jam. (pretty much edc recipe with 5 mins on varoma at the end and a little jamsetta)

Dinner made a lemon chicken and noodle dish. Usually I prefer to stir fry on the stovetop but was flat out so chopped garlic and onion and sauteed, added chicken and sauteed, added juice of 2 lemons, white wine, water, chinese five spice, mushrooms, broccoli, celery, cooked 7 mins, added noodles (shelf fresh singapore style) and cooked 3 mins. (all the cooking on reverse 100)

I love how the tmx frees you up to do other things during the cooking.

Thursday 22nd September - porridge, boiled eggs, strawberry jam, pineapple slushie

Breakfast - porridge.

Made boiled eggs to go with salads and cold roast chicken for dinner. Still just love how easy it is to boil eggs in the tmx and how they never break.

And made strawberry jam. (I use jamsetta and cook for 10 mins at the end on varoma to thicken it up)

Afternoon tea was pineapple 'slushie', basically pineapple sorbet but used tinned pineapple and juice (not frozen) so it was more a slushie. Kids all loved it.

Friday 15th July - jam, mince, stock, gravy, ice cream, veg

Made a few things today, not sure if I can remember them all.

Made strawberry jam.

Made savoury mince - this was used on wraps for lunch (burrito's sort of) and also leftovers for tomorrow. It's my birthday so not planning on doing any cooking.

Made chicken stock.

Made gravy for chicken and mushroom pot pie for dinner (whilst browning mushrooms in a frying pan, then added the sauce and chicken to the mushrooms ready to go in the pies).

Made mixture for strawberry icecream.

Steamed veg for dinner.

Sunday 15th May - juice, apricot jam, pizza dough and sauces

Breakfast - juice

Made apricot jam.

Dinner - pizza - made the pizza dough and the sauces (garlic butter, and a tomato base) in the Thermomix.

19 March - smoothie, boiled eggs, stock, jam, cottage pie

Breakfast - smoothie and boiled eggs

Made chicken stock

Strawberry Jam

Dinner - cottage pie.

Made the mashed potato and the mince and bolognaise in the tmx.

Added frozen mixed veg and topped with grated cheese before baking.

For those that love to hear of my kids strange eating habits, dd'2 2 & 3 had a bowl of the frozen veg with added grated cheese for a starter, lol.

Wednesday 22nd December - mayonnaise, coleslaw, tortillas, strawberry jam

Morning - garlic mayonnaise (using the whole egg, then oil then flavouring recipe from the forum)

Then made some coleslaw to use up the mayo in the bowl.

Lunch - tortilla's.

Afternoon - strawberry jam.

Sure there was another use in there but dinner was sushi (oooh could have done the sushi rice in the tmx, used the rice cooker as always) and breakfast was eggs so not sure what else.

OK not TMX but also dehydrated a load of oregano - it's gone manic with all this rain!

Saturday 20th November - bread, rice, tikka paste, strawberry jam

Made a loaf of bread.

Made rice at lunch time (to go with leftover swedish meatballs and other lunch stuff).

In the afternoon made some staples.

The Tikka Paste from the Indian cookbook - mmm smells yum, looking forward to using it, this week's plans are for Butter Chicken.



Also made Strawberry Jam.
Used frozen berries from the local Frozen Berry place and it's come out great (I do always use jamsetta with Strawberry Jam), really pleased as this is a very economical way of making the jam (and easy as no hulling/washing etc, lol).


Out for dinner.

Thursday 28th October - grated cheese, jam, muffins, salsa, ragu

Thursday 28th October
Morning - grated cheese to go on the girls puff pastry scrolls for lunch (and extra for dinner)

Afternoon - made orange and carrot marmalade.
1 lemon, 2 oranges (370g), 2 carrots (200g)
blitz speed 5 for 5 secs
Added 500g water (think this was a little too much)
cooked 30 mins, 100° speed 2 reverse
Added 750g sugar
cook 30mins 100° reverse speed 1
Didn't think it would set so added half a packet of jamsetta and cooked 10 mins more.

In the end it set very well so not sure how it would have gone without the jamsetta.

Dinner we had nachos.
So made a Salsa

300g tomatoes
1 spring onion
1 capsicum (or mixed capsicum to equiv of 1 whole - I did green and red)
bunch of parsley
20g olive oil
juice of one lime

Put tomatoes, spring onion, capsicum, parsley in TMX and chop 8 sec sp 5 (or however long for the consistency you want).
Add olive oil and lime juice and mix 10 sec, sp 1.

I like my salsa spicer so added 1/2 teaspoon of tabasco - in future will add 1/2 to 1 chili at the beginning.

Adapted from a recipe on taste.com.au



Then minced some beef and made up the EDC ragu (for tonight's and tomorrow nights dinners)

Tuesday 28th September - porridge, jam, gravy

Breakfast - porridge

Made strawberry jam.

Dinner was roast so made the gravy in the Thermomix.

Wednesday 25th August - porridge, choc balls, pastry filling, jam, Baf's chicken, Strawberry Dream

Lots of work for the Thermomix today.

Breakfast was porridge

In the morning I made choc balls again as the girls really liked them- double the recipe from before but it was a bit runny (think I added too much water) so add 100g of shredded coconut (so I can't have them but that's probably good, lol).

Then I minced up garlic, spring onion, chicken, zucchini, mixed herbs and paprika to make 'sausage rolls' for lunch.

Then I made strawberry jam - as per edc added 25 g jamsetta and then also cooked it for 10 mins on varoma at the end.

Brilliant - perfect consistency and really yummy.

Dinner was baf's chicken http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=1063.0 - dd2 and I really liked this but the other two weren't keen on the cheesy sauce - no idea why?!! It was yum!!

Desert I made strawberry dream (1/2 portion of the Fruity dream recipe in the EDC) with frozen strawberries, sugar and egg white. Yum, girls asked for more! The pic of my portion is a bit defrosted by the time I got round to it.

So simple and yummy will definitely do that again with different fruits.