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.

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.

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!