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!!!

Monday 21st November - choc orange muffins, chicken and veg fried rice

Made orange muffins with choc chips (forum recipe) so love this one as I love orange but hate peeling them, so the throw the whole thing in so appeals to me. Haven't had them in ages as dd2 doesn't like them, so I tend to avoid but as I'm making heaps this week it wasn't a problem.

Dinner had a chicken and veg 'fried' rice. I've taken to doing stir fry's on the stove top but I so love the ease of using the tmx, rice in the basket, chicken (marinated) and vegies in the varoma, cook for 16 mins, pop the chicken and vegies with some soy sauce, sweet chili sauce and sesame oil and cook for a minute, mix all together. Yum! And so easy. I prepped (10 mins before going to collect dd, home) then cooked for less than 20 mins and all ready to serve. Whilst it was cooking I did the lunch box washing up and general tidying. Love how the tmx frees you up for other things.

Sunday 29th November - muffins, gravy

Made two batches of muffins - cheese and zucchini and 4 berry. Working on a recipe and will post it when I'm happy with it.

Roast for dinner - made the gravy in the tmx.

Sunday/Monday 9/10th October - boiled eggs, gravy, cheese and zucchini muffins,, porridge

Sunday - breakfast - boiled eggs.

Made cheese and zucchini muffins for lunch boxes (forum recipe)

Dinner was roast lamb - made the gravy in the tmx.

Monday - back to school after the holidays!

Breakfast - porridge

Monday 19th September - porridge, cheese and zucchini muffins

Breakfast - porridge (recipe on here)

Also made cheese and zucchini muffins (forum recipe) for lunch boxes. The girls favourite.

Sunday 31st July - porridge, cheese and zucchini muffins, pork rib marinade

Breakfast - porridge (the recipe we use is posted about a week or so ago, otherwise there is one on the forum)

Made cheese and zucchini muffins (forum recipe) - hopefully will make dd3 happy as she was rather insistent that I had to make wontons for her preschool lunch tomorrow and I didn't. But these are still her favourites.

Dinner - pork ribs (sorry about the photo the top rib looks burnt, but they weren't).

Used this recipe by JD - but made the marinade in the tmx. (grating the garlic and ginger, then adding the rest of the ingredients and mixing)

Really yummy. Everyone loved these ribs.

Sunday 17th July - cheese and zucchini muffins, chicken marinade

School goes back this week so made some cheese and zucchini muffins.

Also made a soy sauce, honey, garlic and ginger marinade for chicken that I stir-fried.

Wednesday 22nd June - porridge, tortillas, orange choc chip muffins

I'm really going to try to find the time to get back into this blog and write more about what I've cooked and include photos. Our meals haven't been very exciting recently, we have so much on that everything has to be quick to make and I've fallen back on a lot of tried and tested favourites.

But took a couple of photos today to liven things up.

Breakfast was the usual porridge.

Lunch made tortilla's (Trudie's recipe from the forum). These really are so much nicer than bought and I must make them more often.

I also made some orange and choc chip muffins (recipe also from the forum). I love these but dd3 always wants me to make the cheese and zuchinni ones but I held my own today, lol. I love how you just throw the whole orange in and it tastes great.

Sunday 5th June - cheese and zuchinni muffins, tomato pasta sauce

Made cheese and zuchinni muffins for school lunches (forum recipe)
And a tomato pasta sauce (out of my head recipe, lol) for the kids for dinner.

Saturday 21st May - pancakes, chicken slice, cheese and zucchini muffins beef curry

Breakfast - pancakes

Snacks - cheese and zucchini muffins. Must make some different ones but they are dd3's favourite and fairly healthy. Cooked in a mini muffin tin perfect for lunch boxes (and preschool don't even complain about them - sent her in with a bite size piece of the lemon yoghurt cake last week and it was sent home - but they feed them honey sandwiches for morning tea!!!!)

Lunch - made chicken pies/slice. Sautéed mushrooms, garlic and butter in the tmx and added to leftover chicken, a dollop of sour cream and pepper. Wrapped the mixture in puff pastry and baked. Everyone loves these.

Dinner - beef curry. Made a curry based on the rogan josh recipe in the Indian book. Was ok, tasted fine but was a bit watery and grey. Added mushrooms, capsicum and green beans for the last 15 minutes to make a complete meal with rice. (also used ground cinnamon etc not whole)

Sunday 8th May - juice, shortbread, muffins, yorkies, gravy

Happy Mother's Day to those that are celebrating today. Hope you were spoilt!

Breakfast - orange and mandarin juice (to go with mother's day bacon and eggs).

This morning made (well dh helped dd1) shortbread. Then some cheese and zucchini muffins for lunchboxes this week.

Dinner was roast lamb - yorkshire pudding batter and gravy made in the tmx.

Sunday 13th March - muffins, bread, chili sauce

Made a double batch of cheese and zuchinni muffins for this weeks snacks.

Made a loaf of bread (missed bread making)

dh made a number of different strength chili sauces.

Thursday 24th February - smoothie, vanilla pudding, cheese and zucchini muffins

Breakfast - smoothie

Then made some cheese and zucchini muffins (forum recipe) these are still the girls favourite muffins.

Also made some vanilla pudding using the vanilla slice recipe from here

http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=4599.0

without the biscuits.

I also use cornflour with a little extra vanilla instead of the custard powder.

Forgot I made a half serving last time so we have a lot of vanilla pudding but it is just so yummy that's not a problem.

Excuse the slightly blurry photo before I realised it was a little out of focus, dd2 had eaten it all, lol.

Lunch and dinner we just had bbq chicken and salads.

Wednesday 16th February - smoothie, ltm, mozzarella, tomato and basil muffins, quick curry, garlic spice chicken, rice, veg

Breakfast - smoothie

Lunch - I made a quick curry with leftover cooked meat, tablespoon curry paste, 1/2 a tin of tomatoes - 10 minutes, 100°, reverse speed 1.

Did some snack making.

1. Some LTM's. (rice bubble bars, forum recipe)

2. Mozzarrella, Tomato and Basil muffins.

Felt like different muffins and dd1 had been keen on tomato and basil the other night so made up this recipe. I really liked these as did the older two, dd3 didn't. But a really nice light muffin.

This recipe makes 24 mini muffins.

Ingredients:

200g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 egg

200g milk

1 tomato quartered

150g mozzarella

1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh basil

20g oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 200°

Place basil in bowl and chop 4 seconds Speed 7

Add Tomato and mozzarella and chop 6 seconds Speed 6

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, egg, milk and oil, Mix speed 4 10 seconds.

Pour into greased mini muffin tins and bake for 15 mins.

Dinner - Garlic spiced chicken with rice and vegetables.

Made a chicken marinade:

1 tbsp fresh oregano

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp paprika

20ml white wine vinegar

20 mls sherry

1 tbsp honey

Chop garlic and oregina 5 seconds speed 7

Add rest of ingredients and mix

Place chicken on baking paper in an oven dish and pour over marinade.

Heat oven to 180°

Place 800ml water in tmx bowl (no need to clean out from marinade)

Rice in basket.

Place chicken in oven and cook the rice for 16 mins, varoma temp, speed 4.

Place vegetables in varoma and add with 10 mins to go.

The chicken could also be cooked in the varoma in foil parcels.

Increase cooking time to 20-25 mins depending on thickness.

Really loved this marinade and will do again. Was a hit with all the kids. A nice sweetness and flavour.

Tuesday 8th February - smoothie, cheese and zucchini muffins, Mini cheese and bacon quiches

Breakfast - smoothie

In the afternoon made some more Cheese and Zucchini Muffins for lunch boxes and

made mini quiches using this Egg and Bacon Pie recipe http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=4057.0

(made a dozen in a muffin tin) We had some for dinner with salad and leftovers for lunch boxes tomorrow.

Sunday 30th January - hash browns, smoothie, cheese and zucchini muffins, guenter's crackers, chicken kebabs, potatoes and veg

Breakfast

Hash browns - did the removing 1/2 the mixture after 3 seconds and then blitzing the rest and think it went well.

Smoothie

Guenter's Crisp Crackers

Found these hard work to roll out, but then read a new tip to put the dough through a pasta machine! Would have made it much easier. I also left them in the oven as it cooled as the recipe said but they ended up a little overcooked.

Made the herb ones and they were very tasty so will try again.

Cheese and zucchini muffins - Yes school goes back tomorrow so more fridge/freezer lunchbox foods made, these were always a favourite.

Honey, lime and soy marinade for chicken kebabs.

Then cooked baby new potatoes and steamed veg in the Thermomix to go with the meats for dinner.

Saturday 11th December - cake, banana muffins, tortilla's, ravioli, lentil curry

It's dd1's birthday party tomorrow (going to Putt Putt Golf at Dural) so cake making today.

Made the large chocolate cake from the forum, also made a variety of blue and purple chocolate butterflies and stars to decorate it, as well as blue chocolate 9 (she's turning 9 obviously).

Also made some banana and choc chip muffins (forum recipe), for general eating and also will send a variety of these and cheese and zucchini muffins for dd2 to take to school on Monday for a class picnic.

Lunch - made Trudy Olive's tortilla's. (forum recipe)

Dinner - spinach and feta ravioli, made the filling in the tmx (cooked spinach, added feta and blended) and also the pasta dough. dd1 made up the ravioli's. (not the best example as this was one of the last ones when we were running out of filling).

And later dh made himself lentil curry (from his own very long winded recipe - smelt great though).

Thursday 9th December - smoothie, muffins, sundried tomato and capsicum dip, chicken stock, soup

Breakfast - smoothie

Made cheese and zucchini muffins (forum recipe)

Made Sundried Tomato and Capsicum Dip (EDC) - this is really nice and makes masses, next time I'd do half the recipe if just for us for dips.

Made chicken stock and soup for dinner.

Wednesday 17th November - bread, orange muffins, boiled eggs, squisito cabretto, custard

Today made a loaf of bread.
Running low on kid's lunchbox stuff so made Orange muffins (still loving this simple recipe and makes heaps).
Boiled eggs for tomorrow's lunchboxes.

Dinner we tried the Squisito Cabretto from the Meat on the Menu book.
(basically a goat and tomato stew)

I thought this was really nice. Only thing was I added some garlic at the start and carrots near the end.
A nice stew in a light tomato sauce. dd1 found the bones in the goat a bit annoying (though being cooked for an hour it was very tender and lots of the meat had pulled away from the bones), dd2 didn't like the meat (she can be fussy like that) and dd3 had a great time pulling the bones off, lol.

Dessert was vanilla custard.

Thursday 4th November - choc orange muffins, stock

Made a batch of choc orange muffins as were running low and some for the kids to have at mother's group.

Made stock from the bbq chicken carcass. Now to plan what yummy soup to make from it.