Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It’s back to work I go! After having eleven (yes, ELEVEN!) weeks off work on annual and long service leave, I’m back at work tomorrow...sigh! To prepare for the week, today I made a batch of Vegemite and Cheese Scrolls to take for lunch. I haven’t tasted them yet as they are still warm from the oven, but they were nice and easy to make and they smell pretty yummy!

This week I made my first ever lasagna...! I made the bolognaise and bechamel sauce in the Thermie using the recipe in The Basic Cookbook and then put the lasagna together using store-bought pasta sheets. It looks pretty easy to make pasta dough from scratch in the Thermie, but I don’t have a pasta roller yet so until then, pre-packaged it has to be. I missed the step about leaving it to rest for 15 minutes after taking it out of the oven (we were too hungry to wait!) so it was a bit runny when I first dished it up! But we had the leftovers the next night which were better and not runny at all. Learning from my mistakes!

I also had a craving for pancakes but as K and I are trying to be good I had to find a healthy recipe...which is how I discovered these Healthy Banana Oat Pikelets! With only three ingredients I was super sceptical, but they were actually delicious! We had them drizzled in honey but because they already have the flavour of the banana in the mixture, you could eat them without any topping. 

Saving the best for last...! K and I made this Beef Risotto for dinner and... It. Was. So. Good! I was a bit worried that it would be too meaty but it honestly tasted like super delicious bolognaise served with rice! I thought it was odd that it was made with long grain rice instead of arborio (I thought all risotto used arborio...?) but it actually worked really well. Hands down our favourite recipe so far!

I had some friends over for lunch on Friday, and together we made the chicken, leek and corn risotto I made the first night we had Uma...and the girls absolutely loved it! Then we made scones in the Thermie, and I whipped some cream using the butterfly whisk. Super quick and easy, and using ingredients I already had at home! (I didn’t get any photos as we were having too much fun, and the scones didn’t last long enough for me to get a photo anyway!) 

I am absolutely loving cooking these days...something I never thought I would say! I’m almost disappointed about going back to work as I do shift work which means I won’t be home every night to cook something in Uma Thermie!

What a Week...!

What a week of cooking I’ve had...! Uma Thermie has been put to use every day, often twice a day! I’ve started making breakfast smoothies in the Thermie (making it up as I go). I normally use one banana, a handful of frozen berries, some milk, yogurt, chia seeds and a drizzle of honey, then blend it all for 10-15 seconds and presto - breakfast!

I made these delicious double choc chip biscuits from the Thermobliss blog, which is easily my favourite place to go for recipes and inspiration. And OMG these cookies were amazing! Probably the yummiest choc chip cookies I’ve ever had, and I have had a lot of cookies! I can’t make them again for a long time though, because they absolutely destroyed my wedding diet (eating four in one sitting is not ideal for the waistline!) but they will for sure be a go-to recipe in the future!

K and I made this Cheesy Cob Loaf Dip to take to my nephews birthday party last weekend (again from the Thermobliss blog!) and it was SO good. But once again, not exactly diet food. Oh well, you only live once! And it was absolutely worth every calorie...!

We made lots of dinners in the Thermie this week as well. I made this Mac & Cheese with hidden vegies but I found it a bit bland and flavourless to be honest. I was really looking forward to it because I am a Mac & Cheese lover but this just didn’t do it for me. K and I made the Quiche Lorraine from The Basic Cookbook...and it was the best quiche I’ve ever had! So fresh and tasty. And it was my first attempt at making and blind baking pastry, so I was pretty impressed with how simple it was using the Thermie.

I also made a cottage pie, using the shepherds pie recipe from The Basic Cookbook but replacing lamb mince with beef (I just can’t bring myself to eat lamb...they are too cute and innocent!). I made Curried Sausages for K as it’s one of his favourites...I struggled a little bit with this recipe! There were a lot of things going on, steaming the sausages, boiling the rice while making the sauce, and I added steamed carrots and broccoli as well which was just an extra component for me to deal with. But it was so yum!!! I’ve never had curried sausages before but this will be a regular for us now. The first night we ate it with the boiled rice but I found the sauce was quite runny and the rice didn’t soak it up (I used a combination of brown rice and quinoa which could explain it). So the second night when we had the leftovers I whipped up some mashed potato (definitely my favourite thing to make in the Thermie!) and it was so much better. The potato soaked up all the sauce and it was just delicious! The curry discoloured all the plastic parts (lid, spatula, etc) but I just put them outside in the sun the next day and voila...all fixed!

Tonight (being Saturday) K and I just had a quiet night at home so I made the Pizza Margherita from The Basic Cookbook. It was my first time making pizza dough...and it was so easy! It took about three minutes to make the dough in Uma Thermie, which I then set aside for an hour to prove. Then I rolled it out and shaped it onto a baking tray with my hands (because I wanted it to be rectangular like it is in the Cookbook). I added some tomato paste (which isn’t in the recipe), fresh tomato slices, fresh basil and mozzarella cheese. Sprinkled some salt over the top, a quick drizzle of olive oil and into the oven for 20 minutes...! So easy, and it was really yum!

Disclaimer: I made two of these pizzas but the second one was on the top shelf of the oven and burnt to a crisp...! But the surviving pizza was more than enough for both of us and was cooked to perfection!

Having a Thermomix has given me so much more confidence in the kitchen. I am cooking things I never would have tried to cook in the past because I was scared off by the thought of making dough or pastry etc...but this amazing appliance takes most of the work out of it. And best of all I know exactly what is in everything. I have purchased ingredients from the supermarket that I didn’t even know existed! 

Master Chefs...!

So it’s been over a week since Uma Thermies arrival and I am still loving her...! I went two days in a row without using her, due to being out all day one day and then out for dinner with friends the next...and I was having huge withdrawals! So this morning I whipped up a batch of these Apple and Cinnamon Scrolls. They were super easy to make and they taste pretty good too (even though they look a bit dodgy)! I think next time I need to roll the dough out a bit thinner as I used my Joseph Joseph rolling pin with the 6mm guide (as I thought 4mm was too thin), but the recipe said to roll the dough to 5mm thickness...I think thinner would have been better. But we live and learn!

Flashback to the weekend when we had our gorgeous friends and their beautiful bubbies over for lunch. We had a BBQ and I made a potato salad (by hand...!) so Uma didn’t have to do much work for this lunch. But I did make cheesy crackers (as per my last blog) and this Capsicum and Sun-dried Tomato Dip which was pretty tasty...even the kids were eating it up! 

K and I made Beef Stroganoff and mashed potato for dinner on Monday (both from The Basic Cookbook using the guided recipes). As I’ve mentioned before I’m not a huge meat eater so I found the stroganoff too meaty and mostly just ate the mashed potato, but K loves his meat so he really liked the stroganoff, and even went back for seconds! We also made the TMX meat stock paste which we used for the stroganoff, so now I’ve got the vegie stock and the meat stock in the fridge...just the chicken stock left and I’ll have the trifecta!

As if he doesn’t already spoil me enough, my beautiful K surprised me with a special delivery from the tm shop - a gorgeous wooden slider for Uma Thermie to sit on (it’s very bad to drag them as it can damage the scales so these sliders make it super easy to move the Thermie around the bench), a spatula, and a blade brush. I am a very lucky girl! 

Cooking Up A Storm...!

Well we have certainly been putting Uma Thermie to work since her arrival on Wednesday...! The meatballs and mashed potato were a hit on Thursday night, especially with our gorgeous two year old dinner guest, who kept demanding “more mash” to which we happily obliged...!

Following this, my fiancé (let’s just call him K) and I made a No Bake Mars Bar Cheesecake for my mums birthday...and we had our first Thermie mishap! We followed the instructions exactly, but we couldn’t get the mars bars to melt, and they just kept getting caught under the blades...it was a nightmare to clean the blades when we were done. Despite this, our cheesecake was still a success and was pretty delicious, and I think this is more an issue with the recipe and not really Uma Thermie’s fault! 

I had to make a mini cheesecake for K as he wasn’t able to come to dinner because he had to work, but with me out of the house he made the most of having Uma Thermie all to himself. He made the Ham and Chorizo pasta from the Basic Cookbook (a recipe I’m not too keen on as I don’t like really meaty meals), and he loved it! His only complaint was that the spiral pasta he used was too small and he thinks it will be better with a big penne next time. 

Today I made these cheesy crackers to have with a dip I’ll be making tomorrow, when we have some friends coming up for lunch. The crackers are okay, but I’m hoping they will be better with dip as they are a bit dry on their own...watch this space!

K had his leftover pasta for dinner tonight, so I made myself some poached eggs in the Thermie, and they were perfect. I’ve always struggled a bit getting poached eggs just right in a saucepan, so I’m pretty stoked with how easy they are to make now! 

I am well and truly a Thermie convert (was there ever any doubt?!) and I’m sure my friends and family are already sick of hearing me rave about it, but I honestly think the Thermomix was the best investment I have made in a long time!

Amazing!

Amazing...that’s the only word I can use to describe the Thermomix! We made this chicken, leek and corn risotto last night (using the vege stock paste I had made earlier), and it was honestly one of the yummiest risottos I have EVER had!

As soon as we had finished dinner, my man immediately said he wanted to use the Thermie to make something else! I hadn’t prepared for this and didn’t have much in the way of ingredients, but we were able to make a super easy and delicious sorbet! Using the guided recipe from The Basic Cookbook chip, we milled 60gm of organic raw sugar for 10 seconds on speed 10, then added 500gm of organic frozen strawberries and blended on speed 5 for 1 minute 30 seconds...instant strawberry sorbet! So tasty and not terribly unhealthy either...!

The sorbet doesn’t look like much in the picture because I just spooned it straight out of the mixing bowl but it certainly tasted much much better than it looks! (I need to work on my photography skills for this blog...)

Tonight we are going to make meatballs with tomato sauce served with mashed potatoes. We have some friends popping in for dinner (including a very discerning toddler who will no doubt make her feelings known if she isn’t impressed with her meal!) so the pressure is well and truly on!

She’s Here...!

Uma Thermie is officially in the building...! And she is beautiful. I’m so excited, I have been googling dozens of recipes and religiously stalking other Thermomix blogs and Facebook pages to get recipes and inspiration...and now I can finally start making things!

The first thing I made, with the help of my Thermie consultant, was the vegie stock paste. So easy, relatively cheap, smells amazing and made me feel like a proper chef! But best of all I know exactly what is in it! One tablespoon of this paste plus 500gm of water makes the equivalent of a 500ml carton of liquid stock from the supermarket. And one batch of this in the Thermie made 1.5 jars of stock paste. The recipe can be found here.

I am super excited to make the meat stock and the chicken stock next. They keep in the fridge for a couple of months, but most of the Thermie recipes call for stock of some description so I imagine I’ll use them up pretty quickly. My man and I are going to try a chicken, leek and corn risotto for dinner tonight so I will be sure to let you know how that goes! Stay tuned...

Country Living

Welcome back to my blog! I have always been a suburban girl, born and bred...but a couple of months ago I left suburbia behind and moved to the country with my man and our furbaby. And it was the best thing I ever did! I absolutely love where we live in country Victoria, but it has been a very big adjustment for me. Most of my friends and family are 1.5 to 2 hours away now, so no more impromptu visits and catch ups! Now I have to plan it a week in advance and bring a packed lunch for the road trip! And I just can’t quite get over how EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays in the country! But I have made friends with one of our neighbours, who I have nicknamed Freddie...! You don’t get this in the burbs!

In preparation for the arrival of Uma Thermie this week, I have started to stock up on organic goodies that I can use in my cooking. I found Aldi to be surprisingly full of organic options, whereas our local Coles has very little to offer. And sadly there is nobody that can deliver fresh organic fruit and veg to our little country town (without charging an exorbitant delivery fee) so I’m still on the lookout for that. My fiancé doesn’t really understand my fixation with organic products, but as someone who suffers from an autoimmune disease I am trying really hard to eradicate pesticides from my diet and lifestyle...and hopefully he will benefit from this too! One thing I’m really excited about is knowing exactly what I’m putting into my food, by cooking from scratch with the Thermie.

Hopefully my next post will actually involve a thermomix (considering that was the whole point of this blog!)... Thanks for visiting!

My first blog post!

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Simone and I have decided to create a blog about my adventures with a Thermomix (TM5). I will also include other tidbits about everyday life I’m sure. Now to be fair I don’t actually have a thermie yet...! I have ordered one and will be collecting it in the next week or so...so excited! I am NOT a very good cook at all and having recently moved in with my gorgeous fiancé I have decided that I really need to lift my game and start making delicious healthy meals for us both (#sweatingforthewedding!) and that is where Uma Thermie comes in!

I have cleared a space on the kitchen bench in preparation for Uma Thermie’s long anticipated arrival...nothing like being prepared!

My fiancé and I had a small barbecue to celebrate our engagement last weekend and our family and friends very generously contributed to our Thermie fund, which is the only way I’m able to afford this machine. They are definitely not cheap but I’m hoping Uma Thermie will be worth every penny. To be honest one of the reasons I have created this blog is to encourage me to use the Thermie as much as possible. Even if nobody ever reads this, it will help me feel like I have achieved something!