Virtuous Vegetables

Well, it has been quite a while since my last post, but if you go back to my very first post I did mention that I wasn't sure if I had the time to keep a blog! I also spent several days/nights per week testing various flavours of hot cross buns in the lead up to Easter! I forgot to take photos though so unfortunately there will be no post about them :(

So after a weekend of hot cross buns, dinner at an Indian restaurant, brunch on Easter Sunday and chocolate, last Wednesday I woke up feeling less than on top of the world! But knowing that my fruit and vege order would arrive that day, I decided that dinner would be full of veges and I would be back on the road to virtuous wholesome eating!

On inspection of my vege box, I discovered zucchini, red capsicum, mushrooms, carrots, onion and pumpkin. So I quickly flicked through my mental recipe card index system (yes, I have one!) and came up with a version of vegetable lasagna...which I kind of changed as I went along, but everyone in my house approved of the finished product :)

Vegetable Lasagne

Ingredients
1 butternut pumpkin
1 zucchini
1 red capsicum sliced
mushrooms sliced
2 carrots
1 onion
1 clove garlic
40g olive oil
1 tin tomatoes
1 tin red kidney beans
10g Worcestershire sauce (it was a couple of dashes but I took note of the weight)
5g sugar (this was a couple of teaspoons, again I took note of the weight)
2-3 bay leaves
1tsp TM vege stock
water
1 batch bechamel sauce p58 EDC
lasagne sheets

Method

Slice the long part of the pumpkin into rounds and layer in the Varoma tray. Cut the remainder of the pumpkin into large pieces and set aside.Cut the zucchini in half and then slice lengthways into thin slices. Layer this into the bottom of the Varoma. Set Varoma aside.

zucchini and pumpkin waiting to be steamed

Cut the onion into quarters and the carrot into a few pieces. Drop clove of garlic onto running blades at speed 7 for 3 seconds. Chop onions and carrots on speed 5 for 5 seconds or until chopped to your liking. Add olive oil and saute at Varoma temperature for 3 mins on speed 1. Chop pumpkin pieces on speed 4-5 for 5-10 secs. 

Add mushrooms, capsicum, tomatoes, kidney beans, Worcestershire sauce, bay leaves, stock and sugar. Add water to cover ingredients. (I added enough to make it up to the 2L mark in the bowl, however I had to cook it for an extra 10 mins reduce and thicken the sauce. Next time I'll use less water.) Place Varoma into position and cook on Varoma temp for 20 mins on Reverse and speed 1. Set Varoma aside. If the sauce is too thin, continue cooking sauce with MC off until it has reduced to desired consistency. Pour into Thermoserver. Rinse bowl and prepare Bechamel Sauce.

Assembly

Pour a small amount of sauce over the base of a lasagne dish and place one layer of lasagne sheets in the bottom. Layer ingredients in the following order: lasagne, pumpkin, vegetable sauce, bechamel sauce, lasagne, zucchini, vegetable sauce, bechamel sauce, lasagne, vegetable sauce etc. Continue layering and finish with bechamel sauce. Top with grated cheese and follow packet directions on how long to cook lasagne for. (I forgot to grate the cheese at the start and couldn't be bothered to wash and dry my bowl out so we did without.)

This was delicious and is a great way to use up vegetables which might be lurking in your fridge! As an added bonus, you can always blend up some of the veges first to 'hide' them if you have householders who don't eat certain vegetables! Substitute zucchini and pumpkin for potato, sweet potato or eggplant, or for a gluten free version, use steamed sliced potato in place of the lasagne sheets. Another alternative is to make a vegetable bake using pasta spirals or diced potato, or make a Dairy Free Bechamel Sauce. The possibilities are endless! Enjoy!!

My Hot Buns

As soon as I walked into the supermarket, I noticed (through clever use of product placement) the hot cross buns. Apparently these goodies arrived in stores the week after Christmas but I only just noticed. Proof of my virtuousness in baking my own bread, thus never needing to venture into the bread section!

There were all shapes, sizes and colours: mini buns, mega buns, traditional buns, fruit buns, fruitless buns, peel free buns and then there’s the totally left of centre choc chip buns! As far as I’m concerned, they’re not hot cross buns and you wont find me eating them at Easter!

While we’re on the topic of things I wont eat, I have become very obsessed with eating only home made preservative and additive free food since Theo arrived. So I finally decided to have a go at making my own hot cross buns. The recipe says to let them prove for an hour and a half, which I did, but in warm weather it may not take that long. So aside from the fact that the proving takes a while, this is a very quick recipe. It took me two and a half hours from start to finish but actual hands on time was probably 15 mins tops!

Unbaked, doughy, aromatic, squishy goodness!

The recipe is from the Every Day Cookbook (EDC), and fresh out of the oven complete with crosses and sugary glaze, topped with meltingly delicious buttery goodness, they were irresistible. My DH and I ate one each and when I questioned whether it was acceptable for us to have another, he saw nothing wrong with idea. However, I exercised restraint and we shared one more! I promptly froze the rest before we ate every one of them!

Glossy, sugary, deliciousness!

I’ll be in hot bun baking mode the week before Easter this year as I plan to make them to give to my nearest and dearest. Let’s face it, everyone loves baked goods and what better than freshly baked bread with a whole lot of luscious dried fruit and spices thrown in!

ThermoDipping!

On Sunday I took advantage of the fact that I could cook whatever I wanted and not the standard demo recipes. We had friends coming for dinner and one is a 'recovering vegetarian' (her words not mine) meaning she is slowly trying out meats, mainly chicken and seafood. Anyway, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try out more recipes from the 'Taste of Vegetarian' cookbook. So I selected a very vegetarian Harvest Nut Roast, and Zucchini Moussaka. I was disappointed. The nut roast tasted good, although it was a little overbrowned due to my temperamental oven! The moussaka was a bit disappointing. Next time, I'll use less onion and chop it rather than puree it. The onion flavour was very overpowering. I took the leftovers to mum and dad's house for them to 'enjoy'! I'm still waiting for feedback...

The absolute highlight of the meal was a dip I threw together in the afternoon. I hadn't had the foresight to organise nibblies and on investigation, found a packet of cream cheese in the fridge. I had no parsley to make herb and garlic dip, I had no sundried tomatoes to make sundried tomato dip. Disaster loomed! Then I spotted it! One red capsicum! I blitzed the capsicum on speed 7 til it was finely chopped and then then threw in my cream cheese and processed it for a few seconds on speed 4  until it was combined. I'll do it for a bit longer next time as there were still some white bits of cream cheese in the dip. But it was deeeelicious!

OM NOM NOM NOM ...NOM NOM NOM...

The moral of the story: Always keep a packet of cream cheese in the fridge and add whatever you feel like, or whatever you've got! eg. tuna, salmon, capsicum, sundried tomatoes, avocado...and make sure you let me know what you tried and how it turned out :)

Frozen Bananas + Nuts + Chocolate...

I knew one could make some kind of quick banana ice cream using frozen bananas so when I had a few sad looking bananas in my fridge the other day I threw them into the freezer and forgot about them. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me once I tasted the ice cream) we have an upside down fridge freezer and the little person who lives with us can open the freezer. So this morning he proudly presented me with one of said frozen bananas and proudly proclaimed "mamama" (little person speak for 'banana'). Realising I wasn't going to get away with returning it surreptitiously to the freezer, I pulled out my A Taste of Vegetarian cookbook,  found the Instant Banana Ice Cream recipe and quickly set about recreating it!

The recipe called for four bananas, 80g roasted salted macadamias and 80g of carob or choc bits. I had one solitary banana so adjusted the recipe accordingly, raided the pantry and fridge, and came up with the following:

1 frozen banana (chopped)
20g roasted salted peanuts
20g of 70% dark chocolate

Mill nuts for 5 seconds on speed 8

Add chocolate and mill for a further 5 seconds on speed 8

 It should resemble finely chopped nuts and chocolate!

Add bananas and process for about 30 seconds on speed 8.

Mine needed scraping down a few times as I quartered the recipe and it flew straight to the sides of the TM bowl, but with the full recipe it should be fine.

Behold! Instant banana choc nut ice cream. Mmmmmm!

By this stage, my little person had forgotten all about the 'mamama', so I popped the bowl in the freezer for later. When later arrived, a very happy mummy, fed it to (and shared it with) a very happy little person.

For a super healthy version, try this Chocolate Banana Nut Ice Cream

Yum!

ThermoJuicing

I've been wanting to 'test out' Theo's juicing ability for a while and after asking lots of 'how to' questions of other consultants and of some customers, I decided to give it a go last week. So for a couple of days in a row I made juice. After my son, NJ, drained his sippy cup of this juice and promptly asked for more, I knew I was onto something good!

Juice in the Thermomix is made with whole fruit. Yeah so what? So is all juice right? Wrong! Conventional juicers take the juice out of the fruit but leave the pulp (aka FIBRE) behind in the catcher thingy. Not only do you miss out on all that wonderful fibre which helps keep you full for longer and contains lots of goodies, but you also get to pull your juicer to bits and spend hours cleaning the mesh grater doovy whatsit thingy (yes these are technical terms!)

Thermomix juice takes the whole fruit (in pieces) and blends it together with ice and water to create a juice with suspended fruit in it...and your machine will be a breeze to clean. Just rinse and you're done. 

So how does one make Thermojuice? See below...

You will need:

3 pieces of fruit or vegetable
1 tray of ice cubes
200ml water (or more or less depending on what consistency you like)

This makes almost ONE LITRE of juice with just THREE pieces of fruit!!


Place the ice and fruit into the bowl...or get a helper to do it.

Blitz it for 30 seconds on speed 10. It will look something like this.

Then add 200ml water and blitz for 2 minutes on speed 10. It will look something like this.

I put it into a bottle and store it in the fridge for the day...if it lasts that long.

Be aware that the juice will oxidise the longer it sits, so after a few hours it will start to turn brownish.

Now I can hear you all asking about the cleaning, and I guess I had it coming, seeing as I went on about it a little earlier in the post. So here you go. Here is a photo of the bowl once the juice has been poured out.

Ta daa! A quick rinse and you're on your way!

I do love my Theo.

Theo's Story

After much deliberating, (mainly as to whether I will have time to service it) I have made the decision to start this blog. I am a wife, a mum, a Thermomix consultant and a part time high school teacher and this is Theo's story...

Theo came to live with us last year. Theo is a Thermomix and has fitted into the family as if he'd been here for years. If only he had!! Since we've had Theo, we've baked, mixed, juiced, steamed, whisked, crushed, grated and cooked ourselves into a frenzy, creating healthy, wholesome food from scratch using fresh ingredients. 

Oh, and when I say 'we' I do actually mean 'we'. Theo arrived at around 6:30 one Saturday evening. We knew what time he was coming and hubby had decided the first thing we would 'cook' would be frozen pina coladas...what else!! After enjoying the deliciously cooling coconutty, pineapply, Malibu-ey goodness, we set about looking for something else to cook. The following morning, after perusing the Every Day Cookbook, hubby announced (or rather asked...as if he had to) if he could cook Beef Stroganoff for dinner...with mashed potato. My only task was to source the ingredients. In the space of a few hours, my role had shifted from sole cook, to hunter gatherer, I loved Theo already! Hubby eagerly set about weighing and adding ingredients and pressing buttons. The meal was delicious, he had fun and I had half an hour to myself! I loved Theo even more!

My hope is for this to become a place to document our experiences with Theo, food, and all things Thermomix but right now I must go to bed. 

There! I've started! Perhaps I'll post again tomorrow, perhaps something else will come up, but I'll be back again soon-ish.

Jules x