My un-love affair with my Thermomix

Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of posts about my Thermomix.

I was given it as a Christmas present by my lovely husband. He needed a considerable amount of convincing over a fairly long period of time.  It really is a huge purchase ($1935), so naturally isn't something that you would just jump into.

I had been along to two demos (these last a couple of hours each) and did a massive amount of online research, read the Choice reviews, watched YouTube videos. I also spoke to a few owners.  It seems that is really is hard to find a single Thermomix owner who doesn't rave and throw about 'it's totally changed my life' type phrases.  Mostly they list all the things they now love to cook that they wouldn't have considered prior to having a Thermomix in the kitchen. The first demo I went to made me really want one, and the second confirmed it for me.

It took a little longer to convince my other half, he certainly wouldn't be attending a demo.  I think what really got my husband over the line was sitting next to a couple of his friends at a wedding, and even hearing the guy tell us how amazing the gadget was.

It arrived in early January and I was so excited I could hardly sleep the night before. My local demonstrator brought over the machine and took me through all the basics; how to wash it, put it together, look after, and we then made a vegetable stock together.  That afternoon I proceeded to cook all the things that I really wanted to try TM style, top of the list were: mushroom risotto, soup and peanut butter.

The risotto turned out well, the Thermomix really does make it an easy, weeknight type of meal.  It takes roughly 25 minutes, and then you remove it and allow it to rest for a few minutes, which gets the liquid to the perfect consistency. It tasted fairly good, but the saltiness of the TM vegetable stock concentrate was overwhelming.

Soup-making is also a piece of cake in the TM - no changing vessel, it weighs and times everything, cooks it, then at the end pulverises the soup into a light liquid in a few seconds flat. But the stock base again was such a strong and unpleasant flavour for me.  I could also taste raw onions in the soup - the TM does 'fry' onions and garlic, but truly I would say it doesn't take them far enough to remove the raw flavour. 

Peanut butter making was an utter disaster. I placed them into the steel container and allowed them be processed for quite a period of time. Much to my surprise, this does not make a butter type consistency at all, more a lumpy/mealy texture. Thermomix peanut butter requires an oil to be added, much to my surprise, as I am a regular buyer of the 100% peanut (nothing added) butter from the Natural Health stores.   By this stage I was a bit crest-fallen. My demonstrator had warned me that it is a totally different way of cooking so does take some getting used to, which I understood, but I truly hadn't expected the first day results I got.

The following few weeks I persisted with trying out other recipes from the Everyday Cooking book. This is the book that comes as part of the Thermomix package. The book is basic to say the least, and to me, quite uninspiring. Most of the recipes are so unhealthy, one of the key things promoted by Thermomix, and they particularly around removing processed food from your diet. The quantities of sugar in the baked items is astonishing.  I made the Anzac biscuits for afternoon tea one day and had the biggest sugar hit I've had in years. They tasted delicious, but I couldn't see me making them again. I made bolognese one night for the family and a couple of extras, and again I couldn't get over the permeating raw onion taste, and also the texture of the sauce. The Thermomix is a very powerful machine, and uses a 'butterfly' piece to soften the impact of its blades but the bolognese ended up being almost a total mush.

It also felt to me that I had been totally removed from the cooking process, which I now realise quite how much I love. Cooking has become a type of therapy to me, and it's hands on and sensory when you do it the old-fashioned way. You know the dough is ready from look and feel.  You add a little bit more salt or spice on taste. You continue to stir in stocks until the consistency is perfect. The Thermomix locks the ingredients into a steel container, and although you can turn it off and check, it doesn't feel the as when the food is bubbling away on the stove.

Another aspect of the TM which I struggled with was converting recipes from my existing cookbook collection to Thermomix-style. Much of the time the order in which you do things is reversed, and it is difficult to guess times and speeds for most newbies as the machine is capable of doing so many things at the same time.  The Thermomix forum was a great recipe resource, but also a veritable rabbit warren of information, much of it posted by individuals rather than the company. It was possible to find a version of what you wanted on there, but probably with the chef-inspiration removed.

After a couple of months the guilt of having this white elephant in the kitchen just got too much. I finally fessed up to my husband that I didn't love my Thermomix and wanted to sell it. He laughed for several minutes at the irony of it all.  Luckily for me, these machines are rarely found second hand as they are so well loved! I sold it for a little under the buying price within a few days.

I would like to make clear that I didn't dislike everything about the Thermomix, it just didn't do all that I wanted it to.  And for over $1900 that meant I was super critical. It made incredible mashed potato, and smoothies, and custard. Really top notch, and so easy. No need to continuously stir that custard for 10 minutes, it does it all for you.

The moral of this story is that my trusty Magimix food processor has now earned its spot on my kitchen counter. Love the simplicity!

Baby led weaning part 2

Fast forward a couple of years. Baby number 2 is on her way. Miss K is still not eating consistently well, most dinners in particular are time consuming and laborious. We have some few and far between 'a-ha' moments; eating a whole junior pizza, loving popping edamame at home, consuming bucketloads of carrots and humous, huge excitement at a sushi train experience. All very positive.

But I knew that second time around I had to approach food differently. You know, that  quote by Albert Einstein kept popping into my head 'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result'. I had long time been a reader of Homemade Heart. Talia is an inspirational yummy mummy. But what really caught me the most was her calm & positive attitude to food. And the many very detailed posts on how she started to feed her little girl Tabitha. I decided to spend more time looking into it. But truly, I was already convinced that giving a baby the freedom to explore food was the right way to go. Here are a few of Talia's posts to read a bit more on BLW:
Baby Led Weaning part 1
Baby Led Weaning tips part 2
Fast food for toddlers
I ordered the Baby Led Weaning book and read the first half of the book. I found the book reassuring, but also highly repetitive. It did make me feel that I wasn't completely insane to be going this way, it is a tried and tested method of weaning a baby, but just not particularly a mainstream one.

Avocado sandwiches

I started weaning Miss L a little earlier than recommended. Probably just after five months. She has always been a very physically strong bub, she was sitting in her highchair well at around four months. So I decided to give her baby rusks to get her used to holding things in her hand. At this point, hand-eye coordination was not the best, but that's all part of the process. After a couple of weeks or so she was getting a decent suck on these things!

Following on from that I started preparing broccoli and carrots for her, and cooking them reasonably well. Broccoli was highly successful right from the start. They have a solid-ish stalk to hold onto, and the buds at the top are soft on the gums. Carrots took a little longer, but she was shredding a third of the carrot baton quite quickly too.

Peas and tinned tuna

At six months the range of foods that she would eat had multiplied massively. Rice (we used sushi rice mainly, it's chunkier and a bit sticky), salmon, burgers cut into strips, chunks of potato, batons of roast pumpkin, skinned cucumber, shards of roast chicken, slices of pear, nectarine, banana, watermelon.  Humous sandwiches, cheese slices, tomato...

I really can't remember everything, but I really wasn't making extra or different food for her at this time. It was just about adapting what was being served for her needs. I just had a simple rule in my head - needs to be grab-able and not a choke risk. Anything that is too small to start with is a big no no at this age. So peas, grapes and blueberries were definitely off the list. When I was cutting things up for her I tried to make them as long as possible. Roughly a third of the length of the food sits in the baby's palm, so two thirds for actually eating. In theory at least. Obviously it can be more than a little messy at times.

Miss L is fab with her pincer grip at 10 months

So that really leads to the two things that seem to shock or turn people off the very idea of baby led weaning. Mess & choking risk. I really saw it this way - Mess happens anyway. Babies always want to be able to hold their own spoon, and flick it and throw it on the ground. They always get their sleeves and collars grimy, even when wearing a bib. Things always end up on the floor.

Garden picnics. A great anti-mess option!

Choking is a whole different matter, and potentially a lot scarier. The section on this in the Baby Led Weaning book was excellent and very informative. Babies are much more likely to choke/react badly to something that hasn't been put into their mouths by them. Which makes total sense. And they have to learn to deal with lumps and learn when to break them down by masticating at some point. Never be far from your bub when they are learning to eat. Sitting next to them is best. I've never had more than a couple of coughs from either baby, but certainly miss L is dealing with food much better.

Now at ten months Miss L is a wonderful eater. She tries and enjoys everything. She is focused on the meal. She is motivated by food enough to cross a room for a slice of fruit or a sandwich. I've only seem her grimace at the taste of food a couple of times, but that hasn't stopped her from going back for another bite. I put that down to being surprised by the taste of something, rather than not liking it.  This morning I sat with her at playgroup and she consumed a full bowl of mixed morning tea. It contained sliced banana, mandarin segments, rice crackers, rice cakes, hot cross buns and a sweet biscuit. All in very small quantities, but she ate the lot.  Other mothers are constantly amazed by how well she eats for such a little one.

Homemade tuna sushi - now a favourite in our house

Our only difficult moment with BLW has been starting at daycare. I explained on day one that she doesn't like being spoon fed (bar yogurt and the odd weetbix, which are always fed by me). This message wasn't really getting through as in the first few weeks I was having daily feedback that she was eating well at morning and afternoon tea (fruit, veggies and sandwiches) but not eating much lunch, which was generally food that had been pureed for the babies, such as chicken & vegetable noodles. I talked to the Director about my concern, and ever since her carers have let her get on with it and embraced the mess. They too tell me that she eats very well and is very entertaining to watch!

Newspapers are a must! That's her bowl at the back of the pic too.

Baby led weaning (Part 1)

Food is very important to me. And has become more so since having a family.

It's also hugely time consuming. Buying, preparing, making, feeding, cleaning up. It's a huge portion of my day as a (currently) stay-at-home Mum. But it's also something that I wanted to do right.

With my first little girl I feel inclined to say that I did it all wrong. That may sound a little harsh, but we really did have a hard time with things. I don't feel that she ate 'normally' until she was over 2. I struggled with feeding her to the point of tears, both our tears that is.

She didn't want to eat, and would sometimes consume maybe half of her recommended calories for the day, and then fill up with milk. This continued for a long time because I would feel relieved that she would drink milk, but then that had the knock on effect of making her less hungry at meal times.

My first food advice came from our local Early Childhood centre. My mothers' group was given a date when our bubs were 4 months old to go back and go through the first steps of getting your child to eat.  There was some very specific advice, but most of it went like this:

- sit them in a high chair, and do not feed them until they can sit upright for a short period of time (supported)
- start with bland foods, like rice cereal. These are 'best' for baby and are a low allergic food.
- blend & sieve everything so there are no lumps. Your baby will not be able to cope with these.
- introduce new foods slowly, every 4 days or so. That way you will know if they have an allergy.
- spoon feed everything.
- homemade purees are best, but new baby products in supermarkets are getting much better.

They also told us that the World Health Organisation keeps changing their minds about when is best to start solids. Between 4 and 6 months. So they told us that 4 months would be fine.

I eagerly sat my little girl in a highchair and gave her the rice cereal watered down with formula a few days later. She seemed interested in having something in her mouth, but didn't eat it. This continued for weeks - we would do a few spoonfuls of one thing or another, but nothing really got consumed.  I made pumpkin and apple purees at home, and these got spat out - I was unable to get rid of the lumps completely, and resorted to store bought baby foods.

Even two months after starting, we were getting through maybe half a packet of spinach and apple puree a sitting. And then a lot of spoon avoidance. Many meals were taking me 45 minutes to an hour, the time it took to distract my little girl and sneak a spoon into her mouth.

By about 9 months the eating was not improving. Miss K's mothers' group contemporaries were eating stews and rice and mushed up pasta at this point, and getting through good quantities too. I just convinced myself that we would get there through persistence and getting her to try new things that she would love! But instead Miss K was becoming anxious around meal times, just like her mum, and was instantly regurgitating anything with lumps, or anything unfamiliar. Granted, I was still tricking her into having all sorts of things put into her mouth that she didn't really want.  But the vomiting was a really bad turn of events.

I spoke to the Early Childhood Centre and they referred me to a speech pathologist.  This is the most common first call for eating problems as sometimes the muscle structure in the mouth can impair eating. She confirmed that there was no physical problem there, just a resistance to food. She encouraged a very gradual introduction of lumps. Say from slightly lumpy mash potato to mashed rice in purees, to adding couscous. None of which was new to us.

At this time I also started letting Miss K have more handheld food. Her friends were eating biscuits and sandwiches at this point. I saw no harm in giving her things to feed herself, especially when they weren't too messy. Looking back, I think this was the way through. These foods became more acceptable to her, and more interesting. She seemed to take more enjoyment in food. She ate fruit like bananas and pears. Slowly things started to improve.

During this time I was also reading Homemade Heart by Talia. Her blog is great reading for both Mums and foodies, and she goes into great detail of how she went with Baby Led Weaning with her little Tabitha. Including lots of photos!
This was a totally new idea to me, essentially it involves letting the baby decide how and what they eat. Messy yet successful I decided to do further research prior to having baby number 2 which I will go into in Part 2 of this post....

Sorry for such a long blog post. These thoughts have been going through my head for a number of years now, I always knew it would be a long one!

Laura x 

Double MoVida day - Melbourne

A few weeks ago I headed down to Melbourne with my sister to meet my Dad to go to the Australian Open Tennis. He flew from Perth to meet us there. It was such a special long weekend. Out of the three of us, I had spent the most time in the city, and I wouldn't call that much.

We met at Rod Laver Arena and spent a full day watching Li Na and Djokovic, amongst others. Such a treat.

On the Saturday we headed to Prahan market in the morning to meet some friends. Amazing market, and no comparison for Sydney (or is there something I'm missing?) It even had an Essential Ingredient inside it, really who could want for more?  

After that I was getting a few tips from Melbournites and Instagram buddies, so decided to wander along to the Movida Bakery in South Yarra.

We had already managed to book a table at Movida Aqui for that evening, but that wasn't going to stop my enthusiasm for a full day of Movida food. Not at all. Going to Movida in Melbourne had been at the top of my foodie places to go for at least a couple of years. 

The bakery is a tiny little place, tucked down a street that looks like it goes nowhere interesting. They only range a few things there - sandwiches, pies, a few cakes and breads to buy for home. But obviously all of it is amazing. 

We had to try the salted caramel doughnuts (I'm so not a doughnut sort of girl either) on recommendations!  Blew my mind. Soft and unctuous, and the caramel had just enough salt to stop that complete sugar overload feeling. I would travel for these, seriously.

We also shared a spanish style lamb & capsicum pie. Perfection. 

After a whole day of city exploring we managed to find Movida Aqui. It's in the heart of the business distract, nested behind the head offices of NAB. 

My Dad and sister patiently waiting for our 6pm table. We were famished!

The restaurant is larger than I expected, but divided by a very large serving area. It had a polished warehouse feel to it with unfinished ceilings and exposed lighting. But furnished with beautiful wooden tables and I totally love those chairs (please get in touch if you know what they are!)

There were six of us eating - and I was chosen to order as I am a bit more familiar with Spanish food than the others. I must admit, with share plating and six of us there was a lot of diving in before photos were taken. I did capture a few though.

Quail a la parilla with sweetcorn puree, pomegranate and pine nuts

I wouldn't normally order Quail, but something told me this dish would be very special. Amazing. I've definitely never tried sweetcorn puree before, and with the pine nuts and pomegranate it made for a sweet and perfect entree. Like I said, wow.

Arroz negro

The arroz negro (black rice) is a squid ink based paella with seafood. The black is totally overwhelming, it looks like the charred remnants of food when it arrived at the table, but had that beautiful paella glisten. Surprisingly the flavour is not disimilar to that of the classic paella, the squid ink almost playing a mind trick. It was divine. There really aren't many places in Australia where you could expect perfect paella, but I knew that it wouldn't disappoint.

We finished the meal with chocolate con churros and the Flan con pestinos. Simple but perfect.

The other dishes that I didn't manage to photograph were:

The mixed hams & chorizo tabla
The carrillera de buey - beef cheek in Pedro Ximenez on cauliflower puree
Alubias verdes - Sautéed green beans with Manchego and bread crumbs

We also had a jug of sangria. It's been a long time since a meal made me this happy. Bring on a trip to Sydney Movida, soon.

Gelato Messina and a food bloggers meet up

 I finally got to cross something off my food to do list yesterday. Gelato Messina. And I was so not disappointed.

It was voted best gelato in NSW in 2012 for the Good Food Guide. That's a pretty big win. And I had seen the fabulous Jill Dupleix visiting the Darlinghurst shop and chatting to the Nick Palumbo.

As an added bonus to getting to eat Sydney's best Gelato on a rainy public holiday, I was also meeting up with the lovely Heidi from Apples under my Bed and Hannah from Dear Asparagus. Heidi is a really talented photographer and writer, and also a nutritionist by trade. I've been reading her blog for a couple of years or so and have always thoroughly enjoyed reading her recipes and all about her travels (I'm still totally jealous about the amount of time she recently spent in Sicily). We're more instagram buddies than anything else as my blog is a bit dormant at the best of times.
Hannah and I have also been in touch a bit via our blogs.  Honestly, so lovely to meet you both.

Double scoops all round!

We visited the Surry Hills shop. It's a tiny little hole in the wall with only a few spots to sit down. But as you can see the gelato really is the queen here. It has a retro feel with the letter boards for the flavours sitting at the bottom of the freezers and flashes of bronze everywhere.
There are at least 30 giant mounds to choose from, with six or seven seasonal & unique flavours on rotation. White peach bellini or Poached fig in marsala, apple pie or bounty, pear & rhubarb or salted caramel and white chocolate (their best seller) along with the classic Italian flavours of gelato and sorbet.

I went with Salted coconut and mango salsa (a sorbet) and pistachio gelato. I'm a little obsessed with nut gelatos at the moment, and couldn't go past trying this one.  The salted coconut was just incredible, new flavours popping with every mouthful. And the pistachio made me very very happy, a little less sweet than many others I've had recently.

Gelato Messina also have a large range of ice cream cakes that to me look like sculptural Zumbo creations. My next birthday cake perhaps?

My Thermomix arrives this morning!

After much deliberation and a lot of persuasion, we finally decided to purchase a Thermomix. My local consultant is coming to my house this morning to run me through the main things I need to know about the machine, and then we are going to make a vegetable stock concentrate together.

I honestly feel like I'm a child again and I'm getting a huge present on my birthday! Beyond excited.

I'm looking forward to trying out the essential Thermomix recipes and getting to grips with my new machine. This will no doubt mean that more than a few Thermomix experiments will appear on these pages in the next little while, so maybe this will bring about a return to blogging too!
I also joined the Thermomix Community last night - incredibly large and very supportive forum for TM users.

Grams of my life, part 2

Another week in Instagram. I take so many photos these days with my iphone, I'm not sure anything much would get recorded if I didn't have it. Especially my beautiful babies. The little one is getting big so quickly. At 7 months she is crawling all around our house, pulling herself up on things and bouncing whenever she can. I've been told more than a few times that she has the makings of an early walker, serious eeeekkkkk!

The buckets and buckets of roses above formed the aisle for a wedding we went to last weekend. In the Botanic Gardens in the middle of Sydney, they had their ceremony within the Rose Garden. The last week of November may be the perfect time to have a wedding, the Rose Garden itself is so beautiful and they had thousands of roses looking absolutely perfect just in the beds around the wedding venue. This was an utterly stunning wedding, and as a guest it was perfect. After the ceremony we were served Bollinger and canapes whilst looking across the Botanic Gardens and down to Sydney Harbour. The break between ceremony and celebration was almost 2 hours, I didn't mind a bit as we caught up with friends and took in Sydney. We then ambled down into the heart of the gardens to the Botanic restaurant. They did a fantastic job and we were totally spoilt. Matching food & wines, macaron towers, photo books for guests to take home, Polaroid walls. Best barramundi I've had in absolutely years!

Back to reality, and I'm eternally on the search for the best yogurt. It feels like Australia is just starting to get to the point of premium, local, healthy yogurts that England was producing when I left 10 years ago. I still find myself thinking back to how beautiful the Yeo Valley products were and think how silly I am to be missing yogurt. Still, it's true.

Roaming Cow is very special find, the natural yogurt is so silky and mild. I chose it for my 7month old. It's so tricky to find yogurts that are suitable for babies, full fat but with no added sugars and flavours, gelatines etc etc. Gippsland is the only other one that is widely available but it is much more tart. So Roaming Cow gets a huge thumbs up in our family. I may or may not be consuming more Roaming Cow than the little one.

Coffee at Outpost espresso. Favourite spot.

This is London by M. Sasek. These books are absolute retro classics. The prints are just adorable, I think they would be stunning in frames in kids' rooms too. We gave this to a friend of Miss 3 who had a birthday last week. Many of the major cities have their own books, apart from Sydney, but there is a This is Australia version available.

Our first Gardenia this year. They always make me so happy when they appear, and yet so sad that they only last a matter of days. Sensational perfume.

First cherries of the season. Apparently they have had a fabulous year in Young, NSW. So bring on the cherries. My telly watching snack of choice at this time of year!

Digestive biscuits. Blast from the past. I picked these up at Coles for the base in my Chocolate Key Lime pie recipe, and nibbled on a few during cooking. So comforting to have biscuits from childhood.

A trip into the city on Friday morning, lovely to Sydney all decked out for Christmas. I headed to Laduree to pick up some macarons for my sister's 30th birthday. The shop is situated in the middle of the Westfield and has a little cafe too. They are much more of a classic macaron than the Zumbarons. And very special if you are into macarons.

Little one travelling on the bus in the heat. She was the perfect shopping buddy.

First stop in the city was Becasse bakery. They make superb french pastries, probably the best I've had in Australia. I'm still sad that Justin North had to close the rest of his little corner on level 5 of the Westfield. I loved what they were doing and had a wonderful birthday meal there too.

We had 6 close friends over for lunch yesterday. The theme of the day was lime, I think I went through 15 limes in the preparation of all the dishes. 8 or so for Nigella's Chocolate Key lime pie (do it, do it!) 1 on the grilled sweetcorn, 1 in the guacamole, 2 on the barbeque chicken with lime and garlic, another in the beetroot dip.... Might have been a good idea to work out that they are not in season in Sydney right now....

A gift from T2 from one of our guests. Take me to Morocco teas. I had such a lovely weekend.

Have a great week everyone xxx