On the day of the Solstice (and a full moon! and a lunar eclipse!)

I made gingerbread trees for our table. I love making  gingerbread and trees are fabulous for an edible centrepiece. I make mine with spelt for an extra special nutty texture and flavour.

Spelt gingerbread
185g butter at room temperature
1 egg

450g plain spelt flour
170g brown sugar
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp ground nutmeg
1tsp garam masala
190g golden syrup

Place all of the ingredients in the bowl and mix together for 15 seconds on speed 4. Close the lid locked and knead for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and knead for another 30 seconds. Tip the dough out onto a silicone mat and knead together into a ball. Wrap in the mat and rest for half an hour. Roll out (I use a wooden rolling pin but you can use two pieces of baking paper if you like. I go for about half a cm (5mm) in thickness. Cut out 3 stars in 5 different sizes, place on the baking mat and bake at 180C for 10-12 minutes. Place on the cooling rack to cool.

To assemble a tree - melt 100g of chocolate (I use white but you can use milk or dark). Put the three largest stars together on the bottom, askew from each other, using the chocolate to cement them. Let it dry for a few minutes, then do the same thing with the next 3 sized stars and onwards upwards. Decorate with drizzled chocolate leftovers, or cashous, or icing sugar.

On the day before Solstice my Thelma gave to me (eleventh)...

So it's day 11 today and Solstice is tomorrow. I've been asked a lot recently about my plans for Christmas which is funny because it is a day of rest in the Thermocauldron household! We volunteer in the morning and then have an open house in the afternoon for waifs and orphans who would like to be somewhere other than alone, at home, or with relatives. We watch Colin Firth - it's the highlight of my year.

I say that our celebration happens a little earlier than Saturday, and that we have a big dinner with lots of seasonal stuff, and presents, and so forth. Amid cries of "You'll deprive Thermochild of Things! And Stuff!!" I explain that no, she's little and won't get it, and no she's not deprived either - her present pile this year is the biggest. Plus seriously - people enjoy our before-Christmas Solstice event because it's before Christmas.

What I do love about Solstice this year is that I get to do my cooking in 2 days, rather than 2 weeks. This is the menu and how Thelma is going to be working hard:

• peach/champagne cocktails
• fruit punch
• tuna dip
• hommus
• avocado dip
• dukka
• crackers
• raw veges for dipping (ok that's not Thelma-assisted)
• baked veges (the seasoning is Thelma-made)
• rum balls
• chocolate cake piled with whipped cream, cherries, flaked chocolate and strawberry sauce
• fruit sorbet (pina colada aka pineapple/coconut with rum to make it not set as hard)
• chai
• trifle (cake, custard, jelly)
• shortbread tree

Mains are on the bbq as brought by guests, as are salads - but of cours a beetroot one will be in there ;). I don't have any allergies in the guests coming so it means I can make things in rapid succession too with minimal cleaning. 

So today I'll:

• make the trifle cake and put it out to dry a little before soaking it tonight
• make the dips
• make the rumballs
• and the chocolate cake
• and the strawberry sauce
• and the flaked chocolate
• make the spices mix for the veges (as it's also a present)

which won't take me long at all! I think shopping for ingredients, picking the best strawberries and cherries and avocadoes, will take longer.

On the tenth day of Solstice, my Thelma gave to me

Well actually Lori at My Kitchen Robot gave me this idea. At her house on Friday she had a tea that had been gifted to her - a lovely coconut chai. It was delicious and I was inspired to make my next one coconut flavoured! Here's the recipe:

Coconut chai for 2
1/2 quill of cinnamon
0.5cm piece of ginger (or a small amount of ginger in a jar)
2 cardamom pods
3 cloves
A few gratings of nutmeg
3 peppercorns
2tsp black tea leaves
1T coconut shards or pieces or similar (not dessicated)
1tsp raw sugar
300g water
200g milk

Put the spices (not the nutmeg) and sugar, and half of the coconut into the bowl and process for 10-15 seconds at speed 8. Add the water and milk into the bowl. Insert the bowl and put the tea and the coconut into the bowl. Cook for 8 minutes on speed 4 at 80C only. Taste and adjust the sweetness with honey if you like, before serving!

On the tenth day of Solstice my Thelma gave to me

A listing on a great website! Lookit! Super Kitchen Machine has listed this here blog on the list of Best Bimby blogs and Thermomic sites! With a teeny "new" label and everything! But not as many exclaimation marks as here!

Thankyou to MKR at My Kitchen Robot for the heads up about this - a text messag while I was at work in retail the week before Christmas really cheered me up! It's very exciting to be "noticed" by other people but it also means I need to get my finger out and blog here more consistently and more often.

Perhaps some photos as well?

On the ninth day of Solstice, my Thelma gave to me

10 great gift ideas! This was inspired by a post I saw on a blog where the suggestions seemed a little bit off my radar - truffle oil? Why would I want that? I use it to drizzle on eggs or add it as an extra to a dressing or dipping oil, rather than an ingredient in things. Maybe I'm using it wrong?

This was actually inspired by a post over at My Kitchen Robot, not the one that I originally linked to but as Helene has commented about this post not the other one, I've just crossed out of what I wrote. Capiche? I'm confused, I don't know about you.

I've made a few of these as well ;). Here are 10 things that you could make with a Thermomix:

1. Raw truffles, truffles, rumballs, apricot balls, etc etc. So many options so you can find something that suits people who are gluten intolerant, nut allergic, dairy reluctant, low fat, high chocolate.
2. Vanilla sugar. There is a recipe in the EDC but mine was to use 3 vanilla beans and 600g of raw sugar, processed at speed 8 until it resembled sand. Bottle, label, share, use.
3. Lemon butter. Again, there is a recipe in the EDC and I did post about it when I made a lot of it.
4. Spice mixes - so many options to try! Sweet (cinnamon and cloves and sugar), spicy (chilli and pepper and cardamom), warm (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger), lemon salt rub, garam masala style, Moroccan.
5. Spicy tea mix - chai perhaps?
6. Anything that would freeze well, and fill someone's freezer with goodness. It could be sorbet, or some stroganoff, or something else yummy and your signature dish!
7. Vegetable stock concentrate is often requested and I can usually trade a jar for a dozen eggs, or a small favour.
8. Dukkah! I love it and the EDC recipe makes a lot but I use it as a rub for vegetables and meat as well.
9. Spinach pesto - use the last of the spinach in the garden to make, instead of basil, to bottle some
10. Jam or sauce with whatever fruit is around. Citrus, berries, stonefruit are all in season and so suited for bottling! You can also preserve it under a sugar syrup, if you want to use the Thermomix but want to use the lovely fruit whole.

On the eighth day of Solstice my Thelma made for me

Cake

A lot of things! I got up at 6am this morning (ugh) and made chocolate cake for my housemate's birthday. I made a double batch of the chocolate cake out of the EDC so I could make cupcakes for TheHusband as well, and it really wasn't a huge batch of cake. Which was odd given the huge amount of butter in it. It was a delicious cake though, with a simple ganache over the top (also from the EDC).

Biscuits

I then made biscuits. I used the chocolate chip recipe out the EDC but put 100g of seeds in with the sugar so that they got creamed in with the sugar and butter. I then added 100g of sultanas at the end and made do without chocolate chips, which I don't like much anyway. I did end up overprocessing the biscuits which had two effects - the butter started to melt so the texture was gross when handling them, and it made the biscuits almost shortbread in texture. Interesting.

Bread

I then put bread in to rise.

Bread recipe that's the best one so far
270g warm water
1 small palm sized collection of raw sugar
15g olive oil
Pinch of salt
500g bread mix, bread flour, flours
2tsp yeast

Assemble in that order in the bowl. Mix for 30 seconds at speed 4-5. Lock lid and knead for 2.5 minutes. I'm not sure if mine needs this long because it's an "ancient grains" mix so lower in gluten, but without this kneading it's like a brick. Leave it in the bowl until it peaks out of the top hole (or set aside in a warm spot to double in size, if you need the jug!). Lock lid and knead for another 2 minutes. Shape into a loaf and put into a cold oven, set to 200C, for 30 minutes or until baked (sounds hollow when rapped on the bottom). 

Vanilla sugar

and playdough
I packed up after mixing the dough, and went to the amazing My Kitchen Robot's house to make things and hang out with my mama tribe. I can hardly call it a "mothers group" when it's more of a tribe than a group. It's the best part of my week most weeks and this time we met at a house. I whipped up vanilla sugar (3 very dried out beans, 600g raw sugar, whizz up and voila! another gift done!) and then made faildough, which was made (a) with the same recipe (b) at the same time and (c) within metres of MKR's deliciously soft and doughy dough, and mine was like, well, putty. Nearly dried out putty. Though I did use different flour, and I used tartaric acid rather than cream of tartar, so that's probably the reason. I'm going to make ornaments out of mine today I think.

Soup

After that, I whipped up soup for 8+ people in 20 minutes. I used the Moroccan Lentil soup but didn't have lentils so added a large tin of 4 bean mix and it was delicious!! It was nommed up with gusto by children and adults alike, and went well with the bread I made while the soup was souping.

So you can just see my car can't you - 3 bags of clothes for someone who's expecting a babe in the new year but didn't get to the clothes swap the other week, a jar of lemon butter to swap for eggs, my picnic basket with flour, food colouring, an onion, premeasured spices for the soup, a tin of beans, two of tomatoes, bits and pieces, Thelma all gravid with proving dough, my bag, my camera, Thermobaby's acoutrement (she travels light though), a sling or two, hat, water bottle etc etc. It might have looked like I'd left home and was moving in.

At least I brought food!

Though TheHusband tells me that when he got home and there was no wife, no babe, and no Thelma - he momentarily thought the worst! That I'd left home and taken all that was important with him ;).

The view, sounds and energy of two dueling Thermomixes on My Kitchen Robot's benchtop was a sight to behold though. It was momentarily confusing to hear one working away, and the other chiming completeness, and both MKR and I had confused looks because we could hear/see our own working but were compelled to answer the chime as well! Mr MKR wasn't sure what to make of it all though when he got home, but I think seeing a happy MKR and fed people made sense to him.

On the seventh day of Solstice...

My Thelma suggested that I post 10 gift ideas for someone who has a Thermomix, because one could suggest that it is the smallest kitchen ever so what more could one want? This was inspired by a post I saw on a blog where the suggestions seemed a little bit off my radar - truffle oil? Why would I want that? I use it to drizzle on eggs or add it as an extra to a dressing or dipping oil, rather than an ingredient in things. Maybe I'm using it wrong?

ETA: Helene of Super Kitchen Machine has commented on the original place that I wrote this comment, to say:

Dear Emma: So sorry that my list was a little off your radar -- but glad to hear it did inspire this list of yours ;-) (thanks for the link, btw!) . The truffle oil was mentioned as something special that I would want for myself. I have never had truffle oil in, or anywhere near my house! It's just too 'precious' for someone as frugal as me. And yes, I agree -- I too would use it oh-so-sparingly to add just a drop or two of flavor to something special. Reason I thought of this is because I had an outrageously good pizza a while ago that was quite scant on the toppings but rendered impressive by the drizzle of truffle oil on top. Gourmet pizza is so easy to do with Thermomix and I am wishing that someone will gift me with a tiny amount of the oil to experiment with. I hope that all your Christmas dreams come true and that you have a lovely time with your little family. I love keeping up with your Thermomix adventures, so have fun and keep up the great work!

But here are 10 things that I still use lots, if not more, now that I have Thelma in my life:

1. A good grater to take the zest off things. I get a lot of use out of my Tupperware one as it has a serrated edge on it that just takes the zest off.
2. Silicon baking mat! Really important for baking things that come out of the Thermomix.
3. Large storage containers because once you have a Thermomix you buy flour, sugar, spices etc in bulk. I like Tupperware ones as well for the 5kg ish of flour I buy at a time.
4. A good bread tin for baking the bread that they can now easily make.
5. Something from your own kitchen! Because a baker likes nothing more than to be gifted something to say that they can have a break in the kitchen now.
6. Vanilla essence, paste or beans. Buy some delicious indulgent ones and tie them with a bow.
7. Jars, bottles, tins or similar for storing the things they make! Or a big cookie jar, bread tin, 
8. Tea cups  or coffee cups! I love Bodum double walled ones which are great for serving hot and cold dishes.
9. A nice apron, tea towel, oven mits combination perhaps?
10. A knife and chopping board. I bought an extra special handmade wood one and a lovely knife, because I used them a LOT more now that I have Thelma.
11. I lied - there's an extra one that comes to mind. Dip bowls and platters would also be great!
12. And another! Help! Stop! The ideas are flowing! Cookie cutters? They'd be great!

On the sixth day of Solstice my Thelma gave to me...

A recipe for a great summer salad! MKR over at My Kitchen Robot requested salads to trial and adapt to Thelma and here is my recipe. Pop over to her blog to see photos, the changes she made (including adapting it to quinoa so it was gluten-free!) and some great ideas for subbing mango for what's on hand and local! I've copied her adaptation method here though to show how you can take a recipe and Thelma-ise it.

My tastes like summer salad recipe would be great!

1 cup Israeli cous cous (or other small pasta)

1 cup good vegetable stock

1/2 cup water

300g-500g green salad leaves

100g goats cheese or feta

1 mango

1 small chicken breast

1 tablespoon spices such as chilli, cinnamon, coriander seed, cumin, salt and pepper

1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon olive oil

Mix spices together and rub on chicken. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes. Place stock in a saucepan and bring to simmer. Add cous cous and then the water - it should just cover the cous cous. Simmer covered for 10 minutes or until the cous cous is soft. Drain, reserving the stock. Toss the oil and lemon juice through the warm cous cous. Pan fry the chicken with a splash of oil and 1/2 cup of reserved stock, covered with a lid so it almost poaches. Remove from pan and leave to cool a little before shredding.

To assemble salad, cut up the mango and cheese then put the greens in a bowl, add the chicken and mango and tomatoes and cheese, then the cous cous. Toss gently to combine. A sprinkle of chilli is perfect on top if you want extra kick. 

To adapt to gluten free, sub cous cous for quinoa. Vegetarian - swap tofu for chicken. Dairy free - swap the cheese for avocado and/or toasted nuts (pine nuts, sliced almonds, cashews). Add fresh herbs to compliment. 

Serves 6 as a salad or 3-4 as a main.

Thelma adaptation from My Kitchen Robot

1. Add spices to TM bowl, toast on Varoma temperature at speed 1 for 5 minutes. Grind on speed 9 for 1 minute to turn the spices into powder. Coat the chicken breast in with the spice mix and a little olive oil and the. Put aside for 10 minutes.
2. Fill the bowl with water up to the 1 litre mark and add the stock concentrate. Add the chicken to to lower level of the Varoma steamer and spread the quinoa on the upper tray. Steam for 20-25 minutes, until both the chicken and quinoa are cooked.
3. While the chicken and quinoa are cooking, wash the salad leaves and tomatoes and slice the peaches.
4. Once cooked remove the chicken and allow to cool before slicing. Dress the quinoa with the lemon juice and olive oil while still warm. To assemble the salad, put the greens into a bowl, add the sliced peaches, tomatoes, chicken, quinoa then crumble the feta over the top. Toss gently to combine.
Serves 6 as a side salad or 3-4 as a main.

On the fifth day of Solstice my Thelma celebrated tomatoes with me!!

Oh yay for tomato season! And herb season! So easy to whip up soup and here's mine from dinner.

Tomato feta soup
1 onion
20g oil
6 tomatoes
100g pureed tomatoes
1L water
2T sweet chilli sauce
4T vegetable stock concentrate
1 bunch of herbs
2 spring onions, sliced (oh no! You will have to use a knife! Or process first, remove and then make the soup)
200g feta, cubed

Skin and quarter the onion. Add to the bowl, add the oil, process on speed 4 for 10 seconds. Turn up to 100C for 5 minutes on reverse on speed 2. Add the tomatoes and process at speed 6 for 10 seconds. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 10 minutes at 100C on speed 2. Taste and adjust seasoning. Put a small pile of feta in a bowl then ladel soup over.

Oh the fourth day of Solstice my Thelma made for me...

Strawberry sauce.

So easy. And great when you have something like donuts or chocolate/fruit that needs something extra. It's so quick and instant though that it's easy to whip up to store! You could freeze it as it won't keep in the fridge for long, and always have strawberry sauce/flavour.

Strawberry sauce
100g strawberries
4T icing sugar (about 70-80g of raw sugar, blended down)
1 dash of vanilla
1 squeeze of lemon

Pull the tops off the strawberries and throw into the bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients. Blend down on speed 3 for 10 seconds then up to 6 for another 10. Taste and add more sugar if it's too tart.

On the third day of Solstice, my Thelma made eggy custard for me!

Anyone else struggle just a bit with how "eggy" the EDC custard is? I do. I don't mind it but given that TheHusband and I eat a whole serve of it, that's a whole egg each which does seem to be a lot of egg. And even with less cornflour the custard is still really eggy.

So next time I'll reduce it to:

Vanilla custard
1 egg
500mL full cream milk
80g sugar
1/2tsp of the best vanilla paste possible
35g cornflour

Put all of these in the jug. Cook for 8 minutes on speed 6, at 90 degrees. It will change tune a couple of times and that is really awesome to listen to!

On the second day of Solstice my Thelma made (muffins) for me!

Oh how I love muffins. Once upon a time I was muffin on the precursor to chat because I (a) adore muffins and (b) make really good ones. Here is my adaptation for the Thermomix. Keep in mind that this is a very "loose" recipe. In this case, I adapted what I was making to what was in my fridge and the flours I was using. The recipe in the EDC is pretty good so don't be afraid of using it if you can't follow this or don't have some of the ingredients.

Apple and sultana muffins
2 apples (I used Granny Smith), cored and quartered
50g sultanas
150g raw sugar
150g plain white flour
170g plain spelt flour
2tsp baking powder
175g milk
2T yoghurt (I used Greek)
2 eggs

Put the apple in the bowl. Add the sugar and process for 4-5 seconds on speed 6 until the apple is in slivers. Add everything else and process on reverse on speed 5 for 15 seconds. Do not over process as it makes the muffins chewy! Have a peak at it as it goes around - it should look like Bircher muesli / oatmeal at this stage. Add a bit more milk or yoghurt if it needs to be thinner, and a bit more flour if it's too runny. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at 190C for 12-15 minutes (check a skewer is clean on skewering them before taking them out). Cool on a rack or eat them hot!

Oh yum. So good. Good to freeze, will keep for a week in an airtight container, and easy to adapt. Swap the apple and sultana for another fruit. Add spice. Add chocolate chips. Enjoy!

And now for my second love - savoury muffins. There is nothing quite as good as these to take for lunch, for having something savoury at a party instead of bread, for splitting in half and stuffing bits of cheese into etc etc. Again, a very flexible recipe - I've done tomato and capsicum, ham and cheese, salmon and dill, and so on. These freeze really well and I make giant ones when I'm on placement so I can take one or two with me as well as a tin of tuna or something protein-y. Now that I have a Thermomix I can do it quickly and easily.

Spring onion and cheese muffins
100g cheese (I used tasty but anything hard would be fine)
2 spring onions, cut into 2" pieces (trim off the root end)
150g plain white flour170g plain spelt flour
2tsp baking powder
200g milk
4T yoghurt (I used Greek)
2 eggs
1tsp seeded mustard

Put the cheese in the bowl after cutting it into 1" cubes. Process for 3-5 seconds on speed 6 until it's in 1cm pieces. Add the spring onion and process for a few more seconds. Add the rest of the ingredients and process on reverse on speed 5 for 15 seconds. Do not over process as it makes the muffins chewy! Have a peak at it as it goes around - it should look like Bircher muesli / oatmeal at this stage but probably won't as you haven't got the sugar in there. Add a bit more milk if it needs to be thinner, and a bit more flour if it's too runny. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at 190C for 12-15 minutes (check a skewer is clean on skewering them before taking them out). Cool on a rack or eat them hot!

On the first day of Solstice, my Thelma made for me

On Forum Thermomix I posted:

I have 14 very juicy lemons...
So please, lend me your lemon recipes!!! for things that I can preserve. Or else that's a lot of lemon butter Wink Grin.

So I've used up a few things:
14 eggs
7 lemons
Lots of sugar
More butter than you need to know about

= 10 jars of lemon butter so far. Plus some extra for a smidge of a jar that is in the fridge for me. I really hope that this will help spread a bit of Solstice cheer around my lovely friends.

To sum up my approach to this season, here's a post I put elsewhere:

We hold our traditions strongly - celebrate the Solstice with food and candles and wishes for the new year, then Christmas day we volunteer in the morning as a family, and have an open house for waifs and orphans in the afternoon/evening with lots of food and drinks, and a Colin Firth marathon starting with Love, Actually. 

Probably the least "trad" way of celebrating but we've done it 5 years running now and love it. Low cost, low stress, genuine and sincere celebration of what Christmas means to us, and uniquely ours ;). This is my daughter's first and I can't wait to share it with her.

Part of it is also to cook and make many of the gifts we give at this time of the year. This year it'll be a lot of Thelma-assisted ones too.

Forgive me, Thermocauldron Demonstrator, for I have sinned

This is a "guest post" from TheHusband.

Who confessed to me last night that he had gotten cocky with the instructions for making a beetroot salad.

And went 1 second over the recommendation. I wasn't home to discuss this at the time. 

And so instead, we ended up with beetroot mush. Which was tasty. And colourful and edible. It was just mushy.

He sent my friendly demonstrator a note to this effect as well.

When I told her today her suggestion was, of course, "Add a block of cream cheese and you'd have dip!". I'm not sure it would have suited the fish we ate with it though.

Where for art thou, Thelma?

We went on holidays! Sorry for the abrupt transmission ceasing but I didn't really want to advertise that we were away. Because I'm not that dumbarse to invite people to come into my house.

So we went away to the beautiful Second Valley here in South Australia. We rented a cottage that had 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, a small lounge, a toilet and bathroom and that was it. It was walking distance to the beach, and a little shop that sold some bare necessities. We took Thelma with us and made lunch salads, and dinner each night.

Some learnings:

• mince smells foul when it's off as we discovered on the first night
• home blended taco mix works really well in the Thermomix
• if the sauce is too thin when making any dish where you can fish the meat out of the bowl, add a forkfull or two of plain flour, whiz for 15 seconds on speed 4 and voila! a thicker sauce!
• pack vege stock, plain flour, an onion or two, some veges and fruit and a beetroot and you can make a lot of meals while you're away!
• buy meat while you're in the area rather than trying to take it with you

Ask me how to pronounce quinoa

It's pronounced keen wa. It is not a widely known product but it should be. From the wiki on this:

...a species of goosefoot (Chenopodium), is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family. As a chenopod, quinoa is closely related to species such as beets, spinach, and tumbleweeds.

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods.[9] It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. 

It is a brilliant product. It looks fabulous and unfurls its little tale when it's cooked. It is so lovely to make a salad from and here's a recipe that is fabulous for Christmas or entertaining.

Festive salad
1/2C quinoa
900g water
1 cucumber, cut into pieces 2" long
1 tomato, halved
1 bunch of herbs (mixed is good but parsley, dill, oregano, mint or other fine-leaved herbs are lovely)
Zest of one lemon
Juice of lemon
20g olive oil
Pinch of salt

Put the water into the Tmx bowl. Add the basket and the quinoa into the basket. Cook for 12 minutes on Varoma temperature at speed 3. Remove and set aside in a large bowl to cool. Dry the bowl well! Add the zest and process for 5 seconds at speed 8. Add the herbs, tomato and cucumber, lemon juice and olive oil. Process for 2 seconds at speed 5. Yes that short - you don't want a cucumber/tomato dip! Add to the quinoa, taste and adjust seasoning. Serve - I like eating quinoa salad warm.

Salad days

While I mean it in the literal sense of the word, salad days means something completely different:

"Salad days" is an idiomatic  expression, referring to a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. More modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a person's heyday when somebody was at the peak of his/her abilities—not necessarily in that person's youth.

I mean it literally - it's been hot and strangely muggy here in Adelaide this week, and now it's damp, a little rainy and cool again. I did take the opportunity this morning to make guacemole from the EDC and then the beetroot salad which is (a) a mainstay of an demo and (b) absofreakingdelicious and (c) perfect for using some of my FoodConnect box which was positively flush with beetroot this week!

Beetroot is so amazing and fabulous to eat raw but there are so few easy ways to do so. Beetroot is a pain to work with but the Thermomix makes short work of it. Perhaps that's the best thing about the Thermomix - it makes food that is otherwise inaccessible much more accessible!

Cake! Stunning cake! Lemon poppyseed in this case.

I made a cake this morning before an Australian Breastfeeding Association meeting. I made a lemon-poppyseed cake (thin-skinned lemons with lots of juice) which was delicious and still warm when I got to the meeting. I didn't make the icing in the Tmx but it was so.good. that I licked the bowl out.

Lemon-poppyseed cake
Rind of one lemon - dry it on paper towel so it doesn't just stick to the edges
250g raw sugar
1/2tsp of the best vanilla extract you can get your hands on
175g butter
4 bantam eggs and 1 humungous egg (or else 3 normal-sized eggs)
60g milk
Juice of the lemon
250g selfraising flour
30g poppyseeds
A pinch of cinnamon

Icing
75g white chocolate dots
1T sour cream
A drop or two of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 175C. Spray a cake tin - I used a circular one from Ikea with hearts on it! Place the rind and sugar in the Tmx and process for 5-10 seconds at speed 7. Add the butter and eggs and process for 15 seconds at speed 6 if the butter is straight out of the fridge. You should cut it into small pieces if this is the case so it processes easily. Add the juice by squeezing the lemon onto the top of the Tmx lid when the MC is in place - this catches the seeds! Sweep the seeds off before you open the lid though. Add the flour and cinnamon, and mix for 30 seconds at speed 4. Add the poppyseeds and mix for an extra few seconds to incorporate. Pour into cake tin and bake for 45 minutes. Check that it's cooked then cool before icing.

To make the icing - melt the buttons in the microwave (takes about a minute). Add the sour cream and the vanilla, stir well and drizzle over the cooled cake. I did it over still-warm cake and it was fine.

This was inspired by the EDC book but is not quite the same as I'd heard the crumb wasn't particularly fabulous with that recipe (it used plain flour and baking powder, and I also adjusted the process to reduce the speed as the recipe goes on).

Keeps for a few days if it lasts that long. Lem

Whole egg mayonaise

My family recipe for mayonaise I have down pat in my teeny little food processor. It is based on a per egg calculation and for potato salad you use the proceeds of 1/2 an egg per person to give you an idea of how much to make. I usually make it 1-2 eggs at a time as there's only 2 of us eating it but it wouldn't be hard to make it with 3 or 4 but at a cup of oil per egg you are making a LOT of mayonaise each time so don't go crazy with quantities.

My best advice - eggs have to be at room temperature before making! It's weird when they're not at room temperature. It stores in a clean jar in the fridge for about 2 weeks before separating which is when you should bin it, but if it's been on the table for a few hours, dipped in to, I'd personally chuck it.

I like using sunflower or canola, cold pressed and organic if possible. Olive doesn't really work unless it's a "light" one and then it's uber processed so I'd rather just use a light oil. You can add up to 1T of mustard or condiment of choice of a similar texture - I've used apple sauce, most mustards, mint sauce, honey, gerkins, herb pastes, tomato paste, quince paste and so on. You might need more oil if that's the case! The more oil you add the thicker it gets so if it's not the right consistency (ie is too thin) add some more oil.

Ingredients
1 egg (60g so 2 bantam eggs)
pinch of salt
pinch of white pepper
pinch curry powder
1T white wine vinegarabout a cup of a light oil

Method
By hand it's easy - combine everything but the oil, whisk together, then add the oil really slowly. Really, really slowly. If it splits, google how to fix it or start again.

TMX method
Put the ingredients into the very clean tmx bowl except for the oil. Turn on to speed 9. Put the mc in place on the lid and pour a third of the oil into the lid - it will drip in at a good rate! Scrape it all together again. Add another third of the oil to the lid and let it dribble in. Now check for consistency - it should be quite thin! You can just lift the mc to check. Add the remainder of the oil to the lid. Taste and adjust then serve.

Wow that's a lot of gremolata...

So what's a woman to do? Turn it into a dip it seems!

Easy dip
Leftover gremolata (or else a bunch of herbs, some garlic, some lemon zest etc etc)
250g cream cheese
2T sour cream

Break up the cream cheese. Put it into the Tmx bowl. Add the gremolata. Close lid and slowly, over 15 seconds, increase the speed to 8. Leave it there for 5 seconds. Turn off. Eat.

It was delicious instead of butter on sandwiches, eaten with good bread and good company, and also on a roll in the oven as sortof garlic bread.

The good thing about making a feast...

Is that even when guests don't turn up, it's still a feast.

I made risotto with a few springs of asparagus and some amazing organic tomatoes from Food Connect Adelaide. From the EDC so nothing exciting there. I made, before that, a gremolata - amazing garnish that is parsley and lemon inspired:

Gremolata
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 clove of garlic
A small bunch of parsley, with the stalks cut off
Olive oil
Salt

Put the zest and garlic in the TMX and process for 3 seconds on 8. Scrape down the edges, fish out the biggest bits of zest and put aside for something else. Like a risotto - it is fabulous! Add the parsley and a dash of oil and process for 3 seconds on 5. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt. On reverse, mix together for a few seconds. Scrape out and use as a garnish on whatever you like! Also great on flatbreads after baking, with more olive oil, or through pasta as a quick and easy dinner.

And toasted some pine nuts, fried some veal/pork mince with fresh ginger and some chilli sauce, and made bread.

Yellow chicken curry

Oh yum! This was dinner last night and was lovely and yummy. It was very soupy but that's how I like my curry.

Yellow chicken curry20g oil
1 onion
6 small chillis, frozen so not very hot!
Thumbsized piece of ginger, cut into 5
1 zucchini, diced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 capsicum, cut into chunks
2tsp dried cumin
2tsp curry powder mix
2T vege stock paste
200g pasata or tomatoes
100g water
200g chicken
200g Greek yoghurt

Put the onion, chillis and ginger into the bowl and process for 10 seconds on 6 to break up. Scrape down the sides, add the oil and cook at Varoma temperature on reverse on speed 2 for 3 minutes. Add the spices and continue to cook for another 2 (so set the clock for 5 minutes and keep an eye on it, adding the spices at the end). Add the vegetables and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the chicken, then the rest of the ingredients. Cook for 20 minutes at 100C at speed 1. Let it sit while you make the rice and then eat!

I have decided to cook, as much as possible, on reverse or else you end up with very finely textured food!

Chai tea for one for breakfast

I love chai masala so much that the first thing I did with my new Thermomix cookbook (Fast and Easy Indian Cooking) was to make the chai masala.
Except that the recipe made 6 cups and there's only me.
And I like it spicy.
And not sweet.
And I hate heated milk with a skin.
And to reduce the volume of liquid meant I couldn't put the tea in the basket.
So here's my adaptation:

Chai tea for one
7 cardamom seeds or 2 pods
3 cloves
4 peppercorns
2cm cinnamon quill
350g water
250g milk
3tsp black loose leaf tea
1tsp raw sugar
2mm slice of ginger
1/4tsp vanilla
Nutmug + grater

Put the first 4 things into the bowl. Process on speed 8 for 10 seconds. Add the tea, sugar, ginger, water and milk to the bowl, and process at 80C for 9 minutes at speed 4 on reverse (cause this bruises the ginger but doesn't shred it - this'd make it way hotter though!). Add in a grind of nutmeg and some vanilla at the last minute. Strain to serve.

 Was enough for 2 generous mugs of hot spicy tea for me! A great way to start the day.

All Hallow's Eve thanks for Thermomix

I went to an All Hallow's Eve feast tonight that was mostly brought to you by Thermomix. There was rice in little carved capsicums thanks to TheHusband, spiderweb soup thanks to my demonstrator and her Thermomix, custard for a cake in only a few minutes, and lots of alcohol.

There was a sorbet without the sugar thanks to the latter but it was just very tart and the kids loved it strangely enough. The collective gaggle of them inhaled the soup, ate the bread right up and generally loved on the food.

*That* is one of the most amazing things about Thermomix - it gets the 10 year old in the kitchen, it gets the smalls eating soup and vegetables, it gets more fruit into everyone and with minimal fuss or mess.

Happy Beltane for tomorrow by the way.

Thermomix demo tonight!

Which means I get the Thermoserver and the awesome Indian cookbook tonight. I am a little anxious that no one is going to come though because the people I've invited have not rsvp'd or have to say no. Sigh. Which is a shame because so few people know about the littlest kitchen but would be impressed if they saw it!

I know I was. I was fully prepared to think that there was no reason to buy another machine for our kitchen. Our fully functioning kitchen by the way. But we did and it is fabulous!

ETA: Well be careful what you wish for! There were 10 people at the demo. And everyone went home happy full I think! The beetroot salad was a hit, the lemon/mint sorbet was yum, the vanilla custard was delicious and my demonstrator is still trying gently guide me to becoming one. Which I would love to do at some point when I have my life organised a smidge more.

I have lemons, lovely lemons...

And what does one do with lemons when one has them? I picked a heap of a friend's tree the other day and now I need to do things with them.

There are two parts to a lemon of course - the zesty goodness and the juice/flesh. So I think I'll do something with both. That means making limoncello and lemon cordial I think! Or maybe orange-lemon cordial?

TheHusband test drove the chicken and cashew recipe EDC tonight. Nothing exciting to be honest but some great techniques there for making rice and using the Varoma.

10 things to have on hand to whip up anything in the Tmx

1. Ice
2. Cream
3. Milk
4. Meat
5. Legumes or pulses or beans
6. Tinned tomatoes
7. Vegetable stock concentrate
8. Onion
9. Rice
10. Vegetables

and with those, you can make a Feast!!

Kangaroo and vegetable casserole

Kangaroo is a delicious meat and I bet there aren't too many Thermomix recipes around for it. So here's my first one:

Kangaroo casserole
1 onion
25g butter
2 carrots, cut about 2" long
some pieces of celery, cut about 2" long
500g kangaroo, diced roughly 1"
100g mushrooms, quartered
100g wine (I used white but you could use red)
100g water
2T stock concentrate
1/2T tomato paste
1tsp seeded mustard with chilli
1T cornflour
1 bunch of asparagus

Put onion into Tmx. Process for a few seconds at speed 7. The carrots and celery go in for a few seconds too but don't mince them - just break them up a little. Add the butter, set to 100C and speed 2 on reverse, and cook for 3 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients except the asparagus, and cook for another 20 minutes at 100C on reverse, speed 2 so it's stirring well. For the last 2 minutes, add the asparagus - I just cut it into 3" pieces and stuck it through the hole in the lid and it was perfect!

Serve over rice. Or pasta. Or with mash. Or whatever you like.

Inspired by the Beef Stroganoff recipe in the EDC but adapted for kangaroo, the derth of ingredients in my pantry and fridge, and the need for iron. And asparagus in season!!

Scones! Rock! Yum!

Made the EDC scones today as I popped over to a friend's house at short notice and wanted to take something.

They were delicious!

The EDC cookbook is a really great place to start I'm finding. Highly recommend reading it and trying everything in it. I intend on :).

The hardest thing about using a Thermomix for making dinner...

is that everything in the Thermocauldron takes minutes and it takes an hour to bake the lasagne.

Tonight I made bechemal sauce. It took 7 minutes. 8 if you count from wo to go and weighing. It is like a plain custard and is just as good.

Yes, I did eat some out of the jug with a spoon.

I made bread this morning and well. It is delicious and I got a loaf and 8 rolls out of the batch. This is way too much for my little family atm so I will halve the recipe next time.

Give us this day, our daily bread...

The bread from yesterday wasn't fabulous. It's dense and rich but not what I like. On scouring the Forum Thermomix I found lots of hints and tips though and a good basic recipe to try. A few things that I suspected at the time I needed to change:

• More kneading - towards the 2 or 3 minute mark even
• I can leave it in the bowl to rise! Rather than taking it out and phaffing around.
• I was right to add more flour to get the ball to come together.

Not a problem though - just need to fiddle around! Lunch rolls might work better than a loaf as well.

I plan on making yoghurt this afternoon after work too. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

And on Saturday we...

Baked: bread is a'rising right now. I used my standard recipe from the breadmaker days - heh that'd be last weekend as the breadmaker bit the dust on Sunday night! and I needed to add an extra 20g of flour to get it to come together as a ball in the TMX. So my bread recipe is:

Bread recipe #1
240g water
370g breadmix
1tsp plus a pinch of yeast
15g olive oil
pinch of salt

Add ingredients in that order to the Tmx bowl. Process on speed 7 for 5 seconds. Lock lid and knead for 90 seconds. Turn out dough and wrap it in a silicone mat, eaving it for 20-30 minutes. Shape, brush with water, and put in a cold oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

Breakfasted: This morning TheHusband made himself steelcut oats and shared the recipe as well:

Steelcut oats
1/3rd C steelcut oats
1C water
1 pinch of salt

Put these in the bowl and cook at Varoma temperature for 20 minutes on speed 4 on reverse. Enjoy.

Icecreamed: And I just whipped the icecream that I made the other day, a la EDC, so that we can have it for dessert tonight. It doesn't make very much in the end does it? 500g of icecream isn't 500mL even, so the L tub I had was a little bare. I made it with some AMAZING vanilla from Vanilla Online so it has little caviar running around in it.

Steel cut oats, and a salad

TheHusband made steel cut oats into porridge this morning. He starts work early, and it just got earlier as he changes to 6:30am starts next week, and has quite a physical job so needs a wholesome breakfast and steel cut oats are the best.

He used the EDC recipe for porridge but cooked for 20 minutes. This cooked them perfectly. He started following the porridge recipe but steel cut oats take much longer to cook so it's not surprising that it needed much longer!

I made a salad today but it was a flop - the piece of Ginger I had was too large so hthe salad was hot and unpleasant. Shame as it was all veges.

Pumpkin scones and pizza dough

Today saw me whip up some pumpkin scones in the Thermocauldron. They worked really well. I'll share the recipe when I get a chance. It's an Aunt Flo one though, in case you're dying for it rightnow!!

ETA: now's my chance! So I took Aunt Flo's recipe and turned it into this:

Pumpkin scones
20g butter (1T in the recipe)
110g castor sugar (1/2C in the recipe)
a pinch of salt
1 egg
300g cold mashed pumpkin (1C in recipe)
380g self-raising flour (2C in recipe)

Preheat a very hot over (220-230C). Weigh the pumpkin, cut the peel off, dice, steam, and cool - so I started with 300g and ended up with 260g or so. Put it in the Thermomix and process of speed 6 for a few seconds to mash. Add the rest of the ingredients. Process at speed 4 for 3 seconds. Keep in mind that the worst thing you can do for scones is over process them! Lock the lid and knead for 30 seconds. Turn the dough out onto a silicone mat, smoosh flat to about an inch thick, use the spatula to divide into scone-sized blobs and pop into the oven for about 12 minutes.

I have taken to making notes in my EDC cook book about banal things like the weight, roughly, of an egg yolk. This is because I have access to some bantam eggs which are teeny tiny and I'll need a few to equal an egg yolk from a normal size chicken. I'm typing this not at my computer (in bed actually) so can't remember how much is weighed but as the rest if the recipe is usually by weight, I should keep note of this.

I also made the ragut and another risotto, so have lunches for the week. TheHusband likes leftovers too so that the meals serve 4 easily means we can cook our way out of spending money on lunches.

Speaking of which - TheHusband made pizza dough tonight. He had a ball doing it and said it was easy, and the hardest thing was cleaning up. He said it slightly more emotively than that though!

And on the third day, there was oatmeal

One thing I will say about the EDC is that some of the recipes need a lot of tweaking. None of them indicate how many it serves either.

This morning TheHusband made oatmeal, and so did I when I got up later. It was delish! But would easily serve 4 people so it's a bit if overkill for 2 of us. We prefer to use steel cut oats though so will have to experiment there.

Tonight for dinner I whipped up a chicken and broccoli curry. I made a few tweaks - no coriander as I detest it, no curry leaves in the house, used chilli bamboo shoots instead. The chicken ended up tender and stringy and it was really good. A definite tick here.

Oh Thelma! You came and you made me a coffee...

Thelma arrived last night. My demonstrator is awesome, walked me through the first angst at maybe breaking/scratching/ruining it meal which we shared with TheSister and TheHouseguest. I made spinach risotto and it was so yummy that it got yummed up straight away. It fed 4 hungry souls and is out of the Everyday Cookbook so I won't repost here.

I took TheSister home, ran some errands, put the babe to bed and then made lemon custard. Which was yum as well. Also from the EDC. Also yummed up.

This morning I've made porridge (half serve from EDC - works great!) and coffee. My own invention. Less than 24 hours and I have invented a recipe! I'm sure it's been done before but hey, I thought about it and applied it to the TMX so gold star to me.

Coffee for one
1 scoop ground coffee*
100g water
100g milk

Put into the TMX, close lid, put in the measuring cup (MC)**.
Cook for 7 minutes on speed 4 at 80C.
Raise to speed 8 for 20 seconds.
Strain well through a fine seive and serve.

I can't see why this wouldn't be able to be multiplied for more people so coffee at my place?

* The same amount you'd use if you were making plunger coffee. You can grind your own - 1T coffee beans, speed 8, 20-30 seconds.
** That's kind of the Thermomix equivalent of any knitting pattern that says "Join in the round, taking care not to twist", isn't it?

Today's the big day!

I wish I felt half as excited as that post title suggests. My dealer Thermomix consultant tells me that my package is on the truck with the delivery driver today. I have had very little unbroken sleep and am enthusiastic on the outside but inside I'm half-asleep still. This is fairly normal at Chez Someone though as we have a small person in our lives. I'm told the sleep thing passes after a few years.

Anyway, Thelma arrives today! My Thermomix has told me she wants to be named Thelma. Which to me isn't a very feminine name but more of a tall, broadshouldered, large handed, no nonsense kind of woman who would just as soon as help you with scones as help you break up a stump. It's apparently unusual to name a Thermomix with a woman's name though - most of those that get named are with male names, like Robbie the Robot. But Thelma it is.

I've been thinking of things to make - liqueurs, soups, drinking chocolate (which is ironic as I don't like chocolate), spice rubs, salts and herb mixes. And with Giftmas around the corner, perhaps some hampers for those that we will see? Hrmmm...

We are planning a trip away though somewhere, some time before December as we can't take leave that month, and for once I don't give a hoot about cooking facilities as we'll be taking Thelma with us! I wonder how to get a bag for her?

So all I have so far is an email...

I got an email! Our thermomix is on its way to my dealer Thermomix representative. She suggested that I think about what I want to make. I think I'll do a risotto first, but it also got me thinking about things that we buy, at the moment, that I want to make.

This is for lots of reasons. We don't have any food allergies or issues here but try to eat Real Food (ie the ones that don't have ingredient lists and nutritional panels) as much as possible. This falls down with a few things. We love Nippy's iced coffees, TheHusband has a sweet tooth, and we buy yoghurt, stock powder, baking powder and so many other things that I'm sure we don't need to buy and with the right tool, recipe, experience and amount of gusto, I could make.

Yoghurt comes to mind as well. I'd eat more if it was there, easy to make, not too sweet and not too gritty, slimy or weird, not too fruity but not too tart.

Tonight's dinner was an awesome morrocan pearl barley and carrot soup that I made a few weeks ago for a camp I catered, reheated with some prawns and some (fail) dumplings - fail because I used plain flour instead of anything that was going to rise. As I was stirring it, I thought that it'd be an awesome and easy recipe to Thermo-convert! Will have to think on that as it was a play on this red lentil and celery soup and I am going to have to learn how to change recipes from normal to Thermocauldron!

What is this all about?

Still waiting. Tap tap tap - that's the sound of my foot impatiently WAITING. Tmx won't be here until next week now, which is annoying but only mildly. It's not unexpected when there's a burst of orders and it's fine really - I have a great friend in my tmx consultant so it's nothing personal!

So in the meantime I get to tell you what this blog will have a focus on:

• Seasonal food - what's in season, what's available, what's great
• Cooking for two adults and a babe
• Hosting dinner/brunch/lunch with ease
• The Silly Season 2010 and onwards
• Gift making from the kitchen
• Kitchen/hearth witchery

Why is it that the silly season has started in October? My calendar is full full full for October and into November. My in-laws probably think I'm crazy for asking what the plan for Christmas is but it's not that far away! 10 weeks will just fly by I'm sure. 

Places to learn more about my TMX

Even before I get my hands on it!

• Super Kitchen Machine
• Forum Thermomix
• YouTube
• Best Bimby and Thermomix Blogs
• Thermorecipes
• Joy's Thermomix Experiences
• British Larder
• The Kitchen Playground
• The official Thermomix website in Australia
• UK Thermomix recipe log
• Brazen's Culinary Adventures (esp her list of places to find more recipes!)
• Full Little Tummies

Now to get a name for it. My iPod is Munchkin, my car is Illian, my phone is hated so doesn't have a name... Robbie the robot? Will have to meet it and find out!!

And did you know - if you accidently put you iPod in, say, the washing machine and have to wait 3 minutes for it to drain because it's a front loader and all you heard was a kthunk as it rotated to indicate that there was something in there that shouldn't be, a wipe off and 2 days in a large box of rice will dry it out and it'll be fine, really.

A good thing that a TMX can't fit in a washing machine, huh.

The first things I'm going to make

• A risotto. I am nutty for it and want to make a spinach and goats cheese one.
• Chai tea.
• A curry.
• Apple and cinnamon porridge.
• Who knows what else.

I will have to work out steel cut oats in the tmx for MrSomeone as that's what he does for breakfast. Off to do some searching!

Joining the club

On the weekend we decided to buy a Thermomix. They cost roughly $2k and despite being offered a bit of a deal by buying it at the Good Food and Wine Show it's still a lot of cash to drop on a piece of kitchenware.

Why did we buy? Cause it is a "we" purchase, not just something I wanted or TheHusband purchased.

1. We live in a normal size house with 4 adults and a child.
2. Kitchen space is at a premium.
3. I got a return-to-work bonus and wanted to do something else with it other than pay bills.
4. There are so many things I want to do with it!!!!
5. It will save us money and time and dishes and effort.
6. We eat from scratch much of the time and this will expand our cooking adventures!
7. We own a LOT of appliances and this means tossing a few!
8. We are thinking of emigrating in a year or so and we would only take this with us.
9. I am looking forward to working with a really good-quality, purpose-built, well-designed, powerful and reliable tool.
10. We make lots of things from scratch but still buy flour and dips and drinks and things and there is so much I don't know about that food and how it's made.

The worst part is the time between purchase and receipt!!! I can't wait!!!! In the waiting time, I've made a list of things that we're getting rid of, and have bought new spices.

Now to decide what the first thing I make in it is.