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!

Gluten Free Bread

I spent a lot of time today on the Thermomix Recipe Community looking at all the Gluten Free recipes. I have printed a few off to try but I will need to go to the shops to get some ingredients, not the unusual ones, the basics like almonds!

I did make 2 loaves of GF bread today using this recipe. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had everything I needed in the pantry to make the bread and it was pretty easy to make. I haven't tasted it yet but it looks and smells like bread!

Raw Salad...

4 raw Beetroot
1/4 an onion
1 carrot
1 Granny Smith apple
olive oil
Salt and sugar

8 seconds and viola! 1 raw salad!!! I will peel the apple next time.

We also added 2 husks of corn (raw) to add some colour and save them from the rubbish bin.

DELISH!

Beef Stroganoff with mashed potatoes

Wow, thermomix mashed potatoes and pretty, well, smooth!

The beef stroganoff was really nice, and so easy. 3 easy steps, chop onion, cook onion, throw everything in the bowl, cook and wak away. Simple.

A little salty for our tastes so I guess I will adjust the salt next time. It's all about learning...

Perhaps we could have cut the salt factor down with some steamed veges but in all honestly it was all I could do to put the ingredients together in the bowl I am that tired, the thought of peeling and floreting more veges made me shudder!

Tomato Sauce - Pasta

With Truss tomatoes at $2.50/kg at the moment I have 2.5kg on my bench begging to be used. This morning I used 1kg of them in a pasta sauce. It took a minute to pulverise the ingredients and 30 minutes to slow cook the sauce and it was beautiful... We used it through some mince beef tonight. Yes the sauce needed 'something' extra, but perhaps the husbands tastebuds are not used to the bear basics of flavour?!!

We will play with flavour and additions as we get used to using Thermi but a pasta sacue for less than $3, what's not to like about that?!!

In love

After MUCH deliberation, research, demo's, comparison websites, more research, thoughts of 'would I actually use it' I bit the bullet. I bought a Thermomix!

Sarah G delivered it last night and I have to say, I am in love. I did feel a little like I was at another demo for a fleeting second then I thought 'hang on, I've paid for this, this is MINE!!'

We made a batch of Vegetable Stock paste which was easy peasy and then I made, on my own, the mushroom risotto, again, easy. I didn't have neough rice so I guesstamated the water and it worked out perfectly. The butterfly paddle came off at one point but I didn't freak out, I calmly paused the machine and replaced it. Dinner was yum! A little more parsley than we are both used to eating but, if I can't taste it too much and he doesn't know it is in there then he's not going to complain too loudly!

The hardest thing to do is to not play with it this morning, I have to wrap all the Christmas gifts today, well the ones too us mainly, after drop off as school breaks up today. It is a busy day before speech night tonight but I wanted to start this off and hopefully add something constructive to the Thermomix community.