Quick and easy being very much the key in our menu planning of course, it became a bit dull and uninspiring for awhile so in the interests of getting motivated to cook again, I hit up Pinterest.

I have something like 67 boards with a hundred pins each including a quite comprehensive 'Ready Steady Cook' board of recipes that I've never actually cooked from so I decided to  start giving them ago.

One of my absolute favourites so far would have to be the mushroom, rocket and walnut pesto pan fried gnocchi. Completely delicious and pretty simple too thanks to the Thermi.

I also tried out this Mongolian slow cooker beef served with fried rice. It was super easy and tasty plus handy for leftovers for lunches.
Ideal for a Sunday dinner as you can set it and forget.

With the cold upon us, its time for warm comfort foods and easy options as its dark so much earlier in Winter and we all can't wait to snuggle in our nice warm beds - okay that's just me wanting early nights, the boys would be happy to play until they drop.

I am still thermo-mixing and loving my machine possibly even more than I used to. So much so I convinced my boss to buy one (and I've only been back at work a week) and my amazingly talented in the kitchen aunt when she visited for a weekend last month ... yep, I'm that persuasive when I love something.


Our favourite recipes on rotation at the moment come from my favourite Thermo-mixer, TRTLMT (The Road to Loving My Thermo-mixer). Peta has some of the most seriously amazing yet seriously easy recipes for our whole family and I use her list almost daily.

I have officially discovered one of the easiest Thermomix dinners to prepare during 'arsenic' hour with a screeching overtired toddler at your feet and a cranky baby strapped to you in the baby bjorn!

Honey soy sesame chicken ... and yes, it is delicious! So much so that even the toddler ate a few mouthfuls - which is a huge win here if you have been following along for a while and know about E's hunger strike.

You literally throw in a garlic clove and piece of ginger, blitz.
Add some olive oil & sauté for 2 minutes.
Add chicken and sauté for another 2 minutes.
Toss in soy sauce, honey, cornflour and water and cook for 15 minutes.

Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and serve with rice  and some greens - microwave of course (or a pre-cooked sachet) and you're done. Even the husband was impressed to walk in to dinner on the table and praised me for the effort... I may have omitted the ease of the recipe to him.

I also managed to whip up a batch of fresh baked roasted almond and choc chip cookies during nap time (yes, my one saving grace for my sanity is I can usually get both boys down to sleep at the same time) and sensibly gave half of them to my dad to enjoy and popped half the dough in the freezer for those days when the cupboard is bare and someone pops in.



Any other recipes this easy that other Thermomixers can share with me?

FYI - I did not leave the boys napping together like that, I put C in his bassinet after the photo.

So I've been slow to update on the Thermomix but after a couple of weeks/months, I am even more in love with my TMX ... and so is S!

I've noticed a grocery saving of around $50 a fortnight (we've always had a pretty low bill thanks to meal planning) but more importantly, a massive cut in wastage of fresh produce and a much healthier diet overall with less tinned/packaged food and more whole ingredients. I have to say, we are loving the one pot clean up too!

So to be entirely truthful, I was still not one hundred percent sold on the Thermie when it arrived - worrying given the cost but my mum was so enthusiastic on hers that I figured I'd fall in love eventually. Fast forward a few days and I am head over heels! Everyone needs to have a Thermomix now in my mind.

So when your Thermomix arrives, the consultant delivers it to your home, does a little run through of assembling and washing the machine, flicking through the manual and cookbooks and then gets you started by assisting to make a vegetable stock paste from scratch. Can I say, what a breeze it is to make stock! Roughly chop a heap of ingredients, toss it in and 20 mins later, fresh homemade stock paste.

Sunday was my day to really 'attack' the Thermomix as we made it to the markets in the morning to stock up on fresh produce and then the supermarket. My mum had already made us cheesymite scrolls in her TMX previously and we were all a fan so I thought fresh hot scrolls would make E and I a yummy lunch. They took all of ten minutes to prep (not including dough rising time obviously) from tossing the flour in the TMX to sliding them into the oven with relatively little mess or fuss. Hot out of the oven, E finished a whole one with gusto and I scoffed at least two... maybe three. Buoyed by the ease of preparing a tasty lunch for E and I in record time with no unknown extras, I was looking forward to dinner!

I had decided we would try the creamy tomato and salami fettucine from the Basics cookbook for S and I. We unexpectedly had my niece for a few hours in the afternoon so E went down late and it was 8pm before we were ready to get started on our dinner ... this would be a true test of the TMX value in our eyes - could it provide a healthy dinner quickly and with minimal cleanup. We took our time working through the steps, double checking instructions etc and threw in a few extra's but within 30 minutes we were sitting down to a restaurant quality pasta and both 100 percent sold on the investment.

S has started enjoying cooking but likes to follow a recipe to the tee and is very precise with his measuring, chopping etc which of course takes time and creates a lot of mess. I'm a little more haphazard with quantities etc born from years of cooking and experimenting. Both of us loved that the TMX weighed each ingredient as required, cooked it all in one pan (instead of having frypans, saucepans, knives and boards to clean), timed and stirred it and beeped when ready. It was as good as eating at a restaurant and S told me he was so happy we bought a TMX!

Feeling confident after watching me prep dinner, S got up early this morning and made us some CADA - a fresh muesli of coconut, almonds, dates and apples in the Basic cookbook. He added some greek yoghurt and fresh mango to serve and told me he couldn't believe it only took him 4 seconds to chop the ingredients for a breakfast he would pay over $10 for in a cafe.

I'm looking forward to trying out a few other recipes this week and so our menu looks like this:

Mon
Chicken cashew nut with steamed veg and a soy ginger sauce all prepared in the TMX

Tues
Balsamic steaks on the BBQ with a side of Mediterranean quinoa salad prepared in the TMX

Wed
Chicken and veggie sausage rolls - filling chopped and combined in TMX

Thurs 
Beef stroganoff on mash all done in TMX (including unpeeled potatoes mashed to a creamy texture that disguises the skin!!)

Fri
Home made pizzas with dough made and veggies/toppings chopped in TMX

I will also make up some apricot balls and mini quiche mix for baking one night this week in the TMX to cover E's lunches and snacks.


So, while I've always had a healthy approach to E's diet and at the very least, a balanced one to S and my diet,  I've never been one to read labels every time or rigidly monitor additives etc. but knowing that I can prepare fresh food quickly for my family that is wholesome and healthy definitely makes me happy. I can also see how valuable the TMX is going to be for time saving once B2 arrives as in those early days with E, and even now, there are nights we have toasted sandwiches at 9:30pm because we are both exhausted and can't be bothered prepping anything else.

I would love to hear some of your favourite Thermomix recipes to try.

One of the keys to juggling full time work with mummy and wife duties is meal planning. If your house is anything like ours, neither of us mind cooking but both of us hate thinking of what to have. For us, meal planning saves time and money grocery shopping, saves on waste, helps avoid disagreements over what to have, means we eat healthier as we aren't tempted to pick up fast food  and we get to eat before 9pm each night.

This is what our meal plan for the week looks like:




Are you a fan of meal planning?