woops...

Looks like my thermi journey went ahead without my blog... I will try and remedy that... I will say that I have jumped on the green smoothie wagon and 30 seconds at speed 9 is fantastic! Will share some of my recipes later as right now I can hear my sewing machine calling me!

Christmas Morning Breakfast

Feeling a little sorry for myself today, I am trying to be 'brave' but when your husband is working on Christmas day and you have made it common knowledge that you are at home alone at Christmas time with your daughter and not one of your friends rings to wish you a Merry Christmas, it sucks!

Concious that I have 4 punnets of strawberries in the fridge and wanting to do something nice for Amelia and I for breakfast. I had a packet of Creative Gourmet crepes in the freezer and decided some warm crepes and some strawberry sauce was in order... 2 minutes of weighing ingredients and hulling strawberries, 4 minutes later we had a delicious sauce to pour on the crepes, DELISH!

Traditionally a maple syrup kinda gal she did deflect and declare te strawberry sauce yummy!

Look at that sugar kicking in!

Maple syrup  on the 2nd and 3rd ones...

And a dash of cream to cut through the sweetness...

Wigilia

Wigilia (pronounced Vigilia) is a Polish festival or feast held on Christmas Eve. I don't know the origins but I do know what my late MIL used to do each year I had with her. Slowly she taught me how to make the beetrrot soup and I helped her a few days before the 24th make the little 'ears' that went in the soup. These are called uszka (pronounced ooshki) and traditionally have a mushroom filling in them. They aren't dissimilar to tortellini and during the year MIL used to 'cheat' and use a veal store bought fresh tortellini instead. But for Wigilia they have to be vegetarian. The year she died was the Christmas we planned on video-ing the process, one of my very few regrets in life.

On the table each year there was the soup (barzscz), herrings (sledz), hard boiled egg, sliced tomato, white onion that has been soaked in vinegar, black bread, prawns, smoked salmon, pan fried fish and a potato dish (usually potato salad).

I can't bring myself to make the Christmas barszcz in the Thermomix but I really wanted to give the bread a try, I mean, how hard could it be right?! Right! I found a recipe that had the 'flavours' in it that I remember (being gluten free I can read a bread recipe and taste it, as bread, proper bread, is something I dearly miss!) and sent the link to my thermi consultant as I wasn't sure about the melting, kneading and rising aspect as I have never converted a convential recipe to a thermomix recipe. Sarah is amazing!

Thankfully the day was warm so rising the dough in a warm place, I was spoilt for choice. It certainly rose well!

Here is the link to the original recipe and if you would like the themomix conversion just send me an email and I will put it together for you. I cooked it for quite a bit longer than the recipe said because as it turned our I didn't have any wheat flour so used what GF I had mixed with some slightly out of date GF bread mix. It got the vote last night as really, really good bread which pleased me as I wasn't sure and was ready to toss it in the bin.

In the thermomix I also made, a seafood dipping sauce (which was great!), I boiled the eggs, made the royal icing for the gingerbread house decorations, a cabbage coleslaw and I am sure I did something else but I can't remember!

Here is our non GF decorated gingerbread house, not bad for a first ever effort.

Bakes meatballs

We made the meatballs again tonight for dinner. Because I had a bit of time on my side I decided to bake them this time. They smell delicious!

cont...

And they were delicious! I think these will be a regular item on our menu plan. They are super easy and super yum. Baking them was easy and I would say easier than frying them and would be my prefered way of doing them, seconded by husband.

I think they go best with a tomato and basil type sauce. Now to perfect that... with our tastebuds so used to the commercial sauces and their massive sugar content it's hard to retrain them to find the more natural subtle flavour of homemade...

GF Profiteroles

Sarah G (my thermomix demo lady) told me the profiteroles in the GF cookbook were easy to make. I have been thinking about a dessert to make for Christmas and thought I would try them out. The recipe is pretty easy to follow and theya re in the oven at the moment and smell divine!

I will take some pictures of these if they turn out. :-)

Now to make some custard! Vanilla or Chocolate? Hmm... maybe both!

* When leaving the roles in the  oven to cool, if your oven has a tight seal on the door, the escaping steam will make the nice puffy roles go flat... boo hoo...

The vanilla custard is divine though!

Cooking up a storm!

Yesterday we had an omlette for breakfast using the varoma. I didn't quite read the instructions properly and it took 15 minutes to make it. Had I read the instructions it shoul dhave taken about 7! Still, it was delicious and Stef said 'you can make this again'.

Then I shredded some cooked chicken and mixed in with avocado and mayo for sandwich fillings.

We had been invited out for dinner before viewing some local Christmas lights. Not wanting to turn up empty handed I thought I would make a coleslaw of sorts. Beetroot, carrot, apple, onion, olive oil, sugar and salt. I had a peeled orange left over from my demo earlier in the week so I thought I would pop that in too! It did make it a 'wet' so we drained (and drank) the juice (it was yum!) but the salad was really nice! Everyone liked it too which is always rewarding.

I must start taking pictures...

Italian Meatballs

At the request of Amelia for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner I hopped back on the Thermomix Recipe Community website and came across this little gem of a recipe!

You don't 'need' a Thermomix to make this recipe but the mixing part of meatballs (which I hate) was made 'that' much easier with it! I used all beef mince and GF breadcrumbs and topped them off with a jar of organic tomato and basil pasta sauce I bought at the butchers a few weeks ago.

Crisp on the outside, moist and soft and tasty on the inside these meatballs are on the make again list. Everyone loved them and they made heaps!

Delicious!