6 sleeps til Christmas :)

Firstly, I'm terribly sorry for not writing sooner. The last month or so of term was completely mad: I had about 700 deadlines and 40 exams to do.
Ok, not really that much, but it felt like it.
I did however, have to spend 9am to 6pm in the library every day, apart from a few coffee/hot chocolate/tea breaks, which meant getting home about 6:30 every night. This is where Stanley came in really handy. It would mean I could come home, fill Stanley with a concoction of whatever food I had in, put my pyjamas on and have would have a lovely warm bowl of something waiting for me.

One night I made a sweet potato and butter bean risotto (I was running out of food by this point), which turned out surprisingly tasty.
By following the recipe for asparagus risotto on page 77 of F&E for a guide, my recipe is:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
20g vegetable oil
250g risotto rice
450g water and a stock cube
1 tin of butter beans
1 sweet potato, diced

1) Chop the onion and garlic a speed 7 for a few seconds, then add the oil and cook for 3 minutes/ 100°/ speed 3.
2) Add the rice, potato, butter beans, water and stock cube. Then cook on reverse for about 15/20 minutes at speed spoon on 100°.

It really shows that with a Thermomix, it doesn't take a long time or a lot of effort to have a healthy meal, whether you are a student or not.

Secondly, my term is now over. Hurrah!!! Stanley and I are now back home (he has been reunited with Vera- the TM at home) and I've spent the past few days working at Thermomix HQ, which has been lovely.
Before I left Winchester though, my housemates and I did a secret santa (which didn't stay secret for very long) and I had Grace. My inspiration for what to get her came when I walked into the kitchen one afternoon and found her crouched down in her cupboard with her face in a jar of Nutella. So I made some Chocolate and Hazelnut spread: one jar for her and the other jar as a present for another friend. But somehow the second jar accidentally got opened so I had to eat it. It was an accident though...

By the way, Nutella makes a brilliant filling for a cake! Simply make the Quick Sponge Cake recipe on  228 in F&E and out half the mixture into a loaf tin, spoon lots and lots of Nutella on it and then put the rest of the cake on top. Cook at the required temperature for a little longer than stated. The Nutella will sink to the bottom a bit and the cake underneath it won't cook completely, however, the cake is absolutely delicious, and so good fresh out of the oven.

And finally, as well as working back at TMHQ, I'm busy planning all the yummy baked goods I'm going to make for Christmas. So far I've planned to make a ginger bread house and a chocolate salami (care of Nigella), obviously converted for the Thermomix! I think Stanley and Vera are going to be very busy over the next few days.
Stanley is also going on a little holiday: he is coming with us up to my Aunt's for Christmas: we couldn't have a Christmas without a Thermomix!

That concludes my update! I will try to update more frequently, now I have a little less work to do.
Have a lovely, yummy, chocolate filled Christmas!

Experiments

Apologies for not updating for a while: I went home last weekend and picked up a stomach bug which left me on the sofa feeling sorry for myself (and lapping up the sympathy from my mother).
I then had 2 days back at uni before going up to my Aunt's to visit the new baby in the family (who is super duper cute and I just want to eat him up).

Anyway, before going home last weekend, I had a load of veg left in the fridge that needed using up, so I decided to make a veggie pasta bake. So, into Stanley went:
1 onion, 1 clove of garlic (chopped and sautéed for a few minutes)
then
1 (huge) courgette
2 carrots
2 peppers
Half a brocoli
1 tin of green lentils
1 carton of chopped tomatoes
Some seasoning: a stock cube and paprika

I chopped up all the veg and put it on to cook for 20 minutes, reverse speed 2, 100°, whilst putting my pasta on to cook.
I then got very hungry and very bored waiting for it to cook, and the idea of waiting for a pasta bake to cook sounded silly, so I simply had some of the vegetable concoction on some pasta, which was very tasty.
However, I was then left with loads of pasta and almost a TM bowl full of vegetable stuff, so I decided I'd make a vegetable and pasta soup. So, I added the pasta and some water and whizzed it all up until it was smooth like a soup (I think it was speed 8 for about 30 seconds).
The outcome was a huge quantity of thick soup, which I distributed into about 4 tupperware pots and a bowl for lunch the next day.
It tasted ummm... interesting. It was greatly improved with the addition of grated cheese.
But this kind of cooking is what I love about the Thermomix, you can just put everything in it and see what happens and if it doesn't work, at least the experiment was easy!

I'd love to stay and chat, but my cousin has just brought the baby over, so I'm going to coo at it for a while.

Come Dine at 149

My housemates love Come Dine with Me. It can be almost guaranteed that at 5:30 every evening, someone in the house is watching it. Discussing the show one night, someone had the brilliant idea of us doing our own version. This resulted in diaries and pencils being pulled out and everyone was given a date of when their time to play host was. Then, a list of everyone's food hates was drawn up as well as the rules of the competition (this was all done in lots of bright colours and looked very neat and very lovely - thanks Helen).
So, we started off with Mel, doing a Mexican evening for everyone, complete with home made maracas, which was excellent. This was followed by Helen's Pirate themed evening which included a treasure hunt and all of us smashing eggs on our foreheads (luckily mine was hard-boiled!).

Last night was my turn. After a while of thinking about it, I settled on a Moroccan theme and my menu was as follows:

Pre-dinner:
Cumin flatbreads, hummus, carrot and cucumber

Starter:
Spinach falafel and salad

Main:
Moroccan spiced chicken, roast vegetables and couscous

Dessert:
Individual caramel cheesecakes

After dessert:
Moroccan tea, strawberry chocolates and minty white chocolates

Obviously I had a lot of cooking to do, so I started my preparation on Sunday.

I make the strawberry chocolates from the October Thermomix Newsletter, but halved the recipe as I didn't want 900g of chocolate! (if you want the Thermomix newsletter, just pop them an email and ask to be put on the mailing list, they are great source of inspiration!)

I then made the minty white chocolates:

400g white chocolate, broken into pieces
50g double cream
A few mint leaves
A few drops of peppermint oil

1) Put the chocolate, double cream and mint leave in the TM bowl and melt for about 8 mins, 50°c, speed 1 REVERSE blade (I didn't put the reverse on and had lots of little bits of mint in the chocolates, but if you want it like that then don't put the reverse on)
2) Add the peppermint oil (and remove mint leaves if you've left them whole)
3) Put in the fridge until fairly well set and scoop into little ball shapes (or weird oval shapes which is what mine looked like)

Then I made the cheesecake:

(serves 5)
125g digestives, broken up into crumbs (although I left some bigger pieces in too)
500g soft cheese
65g golden caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
7 (ish) Tbsp caramel (I used Carnation's and just mixed it a bit in the tin to make it smooth)

1) Add the cheese, sugar, vanilla and 5 tbsp of the caramel to the TM bowl and mix for about 20 secs on speed 4. I wanted a rippled look, so I stopped mixing before everything was well combined.
2) Divide the biscuits into the 5 cups and spoon on the cheesecake (I had to make sure all of mine had the same amount in otherwise there would have been arguments that someone got more than someone else).
I then spooned a bit of caramel onto the top of each one and swirled it around with the top of a knife to give it a finishing touch. I then left them in the fridge to chill.

On Monday, I made everything else!

First I made the falafel:

1 tin of chickpeas, drained
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1Tbsp of flour
An assortment of spices: some cumin, coriander, lemon juice, what ever you like can be put in
A handful of spinach

1) I put everything into the TM bowl and pulsed on Turbo a few times until it was a smooth paste.
2) Roll into balls (this made about 20 small ones) and bake in the oven at 200° for about 20/25 minutes

Then the hummus, which I got from the Fast and Easy cook book, and just added additional flavours to it.

And finally, I made the flatbreads!

200g self raising flour (I used gluten free flour)
150ml natural yogurt
1tsp ground cumin
50ml water

1) Add all the ingredients to the TM bowl and mix on the dough setting until a dough was formed (easy really)
2) Take a handful of the dough and make an oval shape, that is fairly flat. Repeat until all the dough it used and put under a medium grill for about 5 minutes until cooked through

And that was everything I made in Stanley!
I think the meal was ok, I didn't kill anyone so that is a good sign (being a vegetarian, serving my friends chicken was a bit worrying).

We rounded the evening off with trying out Henna tattoos, which unfortunately didn't work very well but were fun anyway.

Now we've just got Sam and Grace's meals left before we reveal the winner! So I'll keep you posted on how I do.

Thank you for reading this blog, I've had some really lovely comments about it and I've had over 500 views, which is really impressive, so thank you for taking the time to read it and I hope to update you with more tales of Stanley soon!

Summoning Soup

Upon returning home on Thursday afternoon, I was not in a good mood. Having nearly slept through my last lecture, knowing I would be going back to a freezing cold house, I dragged myself home with one thing on my mind: going to bed.
A friend on my course, Tom, who I was walking home with had something else on his mind: lunch. His plan was to have some soup and lots of bread.
The thought of soup was then far more exciting than pyjamas and bed and it made walking up Stanmore Lane a little easier.

I got to work on my soup and suddenly saw a little head poke round kitchen door.  It was my housemate, Sam, who had been drawn downstairs by the smell of the soup. A few minutes later another  head poked round the door and it was Mel, coming to investigate what smelled so good.
So it appears I can summon my house mates with the smell of my cooking. I may see if this works at 8 in the morning!

If you plan on summoning people with the power of smell, here is the recipe for my lentil and tomato soup:

20gm vegetable oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
375gm red lentils
1 veg cube
800gm water
1 tin of tomatoes (400gm)
2Tbsp tomato puree

1) Put the onion and garlic in the bowl and chop 10sec/ speed 8
2) Add the turmeric and oil and sauté 100°c/ 2 mins/ speed 1
3) Add lentils, stock and water and cook 100°/ 20 mins/ speed 2 REVERSE blade (unless you want smush!)
4) Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and cook 100°/ 5 mins/ speed 2

I used 1000g of water, but this was too much as it kept bubbling over the top, so I had to take some out.
This cost about £1.61 to make, and made 3 servings. So each one was about 54p each, much cheaper than a 75p tin of Heinz Tomato Soup that Tom would tucking in to. And much yummier.

I also did some cost comparison with Sam who made a lasagne. Because I'm a vegetarian, I didn't take into account the price of the fillings, just the sauces.
He bought a jar of sauce for his meat and a jar of cheese sauce, which were £1.75 each.
The sauce for my lasagne came to about 65p and my cheese sauce came to 35p. So that is just £1.
Fairly impressive I'd say.

I started this post 3 days ago...

One of the first skills you master when you begin university is the art of procrastination.
Everything that once was dull is suddenly very interesting and it is very, incredibly, terribly important that your time is spent on this newly wonderful task.
For example, today I've learnt that the state of Louisiana got its name from the French word meaning 'Land of Louis', named for the King Louis the 14th.
I also learnt that giraffes can go without water longer than camels can.
And the continents names all end with the same letter with which they start.
See, wasn't that a brilliant use of my time?

One of the best forms of procrastination however, is when it comes to dinner time.
What makes this time so brilliant is that you have to have dinner, so you don't feel guilty about cooking.
It is therefore necessary to drag this process out as long as possible.

And this is terribly annoying when you have a Thermomix.

One thing I thought I could rely on to take a long time was a veggie lasagne, as it normally takes me ages cooking on the hob. True to form, Stanley proved me wrong and whipped one up in no time.
Here is what I did:

For lasagne filling:
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
20g oil
2 carrots
1 red pepper
A handful or so of green beans
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can of green lentils
1 Tbsp tomato puree
1tsp mixed herbs

Some lasagne sheets

Cheese sauce:
20g butter
20g plain flour
200g milk
Pepper
40g cheese

1) Add onion and garlic, chop 5 sec/ speed 5, add oil and sauté 100°c/ 2 mins/ sp 2
2) Add carrot, pepper and beans and chop speed 7 for a few seconds (I over chopped mine and had lasagne that resembled baby food!)
3) Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, lentils and mixed herbs and cook on reverse blade 100°c/ sp 1/ 15 minutes
4) Then put this in an oven proof dish and make the cheese sauce, don't worry about washing out the TM bowl.
5) Add all the cheese sauce ingredients into the bowl, chop 10 seconds, speed 6
6) Insert butterfly whisk, cook 5 minutes/ 90 °c/ 5 minutes.
7) Remove butterfly whisk, blend 5 seconds, speed 8 with no heat.
8) Put the lasagne sheets on top of the lasagne filling, then pour on the cheese sauce.
9) Put into an oven heated at about 180°c for about 15 minutes, until the pasta is soft.

This made about 500 portions (ok about 4/5), it was huge!

Unfortunately this wasn't very difficult to make and being able to leave it meant that I had no choice but to do some work whilst I was waiting. 
And by work, I mean I was catching up on QI on iPlayer.

Another skill that is developed when you become a student is how to eat everything in your fridge in one go because everything is past its sell-by date.
I'm going home for the weekend and I didn't want to leave vegetables in the fridge whilst I was away because they wouldn't last.
So on Wednesday night I made a 'throw everything in and see what happens' curry.
It had:

1 onion
20gm oil
The last of my new potatoes, broccoli, green beans and a red pepper, which came to about 500 grams
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of chick peas
Tomato puree
Various spices that I found in the cupboard, like cumin and turmeric, about 1tsp of each

1) Add the onion and chop 5 seconds, speed 5
2) Having the memories of last nights baby-food lasagne, I chopped the veg myself and added them, along with the tomatoes, tomato puree, chick peas and spices and cooked on reverse blade at 100°c/ speed spoon/ for 20 minutes. 

Et voilà, my experimental curry was complete! I had the rest for dinner tonight, so my fridge is empty which can only mean it is time to go home and empty the fridge there! 

The hills are alive with the sound of Stanley

I don't know if any of you have been to Winchester before but there is one thing that makes it stand out from other cities. It isn't the ancient city streets lined with buildings that hold more stories that I could image. Nor is it the Cathedral, a building which is the cultural and spiritual home of the city.
No. It is the hills.
I'm pretty sure the hills move, like the staircases in Hogwarts, because no matter where you go, you are always walking up a hill. If you walk up hill on the way there, you'll be sure to walk up hill on the way back too.
If I don't have a spectacular bottom by the end of this year, I shall be really annoyed.

When I walk home, with a head full of questions like 'how exactly is a one way independent ANOVA going to benefit my life?' and 'do I really need to spend £30 on a statistics book? Won't the lectures cover everything?' (they don't by the way), the only thing that gets me up the aforementioned hills is the thought of a warm dinner soothing my statistics riddled brain.

Fairly lucky I've got a Thermomix then!

One of my favourite things to have for dinner is Lentil Ragu, but it normally takes over an hour to make and to be honest, I don't have the time to faff around in front of the hob, making sure my lentils don't boil over, so I adapted the recipe for Stanley and it is thus:

1 onion
2 carrots
1 garlic clove
250g red lentils
400g chopped tomatoes
1tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dried herbs
1tsp paprika
1 veg stock cube made up to 500ml

1) Add onion, carrot and garlic and chop a few times on turbo until fairly well chopped
2) Saute 100°c/ speed spoon/ 5 minutes, until softened
3) Add lentils, tomatoes, tomato puree, herbs and stock and cook 100°c/ speed spoon/ 20 minutes.
4) Check the lentils are cooked and if not, cook them in 3 minute bursts until they are cooked through.

I like to have mine with ryvita or a warmed pitta bread, but it is equally delicious with pasta or rice for a really filling meal. This also made 3 servings, so one for the freezer and one for lunch the next day.
And the best thing was, I didn't have to wait around in the kitchen for ages, I could go and watch the telly. I mean do work...

Actually, THE BEST this was is that it cost about £1.80 to make (seriously), which is a jolly good job, because it turns out I do need to buy that statistics book.

Stanley of Stanmore Lane

Upon my return to university, I had 2 concerns which many students face: how to eat healthily and how to do so on a budget.

I have the fortune of having a Thermomix at home, a gadget I've had for many years and have grown dependent on it, so when I started University last year, learning to live without it was quite difficult.

However, the very lovely people at UK Thermomix decided to let me borrow a machine to take to Uni to see how useful it was for the student lifestyle.

So, meet Stanley of Stanmore Lane, my very shiny Thermomix. 

I moved into my new student house on Friday, with just myself and one other housemate as the others were moving in on Saturday. We (Helen and I) both felt very strange being in such a large, cold house by ourselves, and when the issue of dinner crossed my mind, I decided a nice big bowl of soup was the best thing to fight away the homesickness. So I made the Curried Sweet Potato soup from the Indian cook book and instantly felt better. 

Plus, this made 3 servings, 2 two portions were popped into the freezer to save for a rainy day.

On Saturday the rest of my house mates arrived, Mel, Grace and Sam, so with all the excitement of unpacking and being back together again after about 5 months apart, I didn't have much time for cooking. However, I made a simple risotto, meaning I could turn Stanley on and leave him to work his magic. I adapted the mushroom risotto, by leaving out the mushrooms and white wine (and added more stock instead) and added carrots, peppers, courgettes and sweetcorn. A teaspoon of curry powder made it absolutely delicious! Again, this made 3 portions, so one was put in the freezer and the other in the fridge for Sunday's dinner.

On Sunday, my housemate Grace wanted to make some soup. Grace, a dancer and who has recently developed a wheat intolerance has what you'd call an interesting appetite. Many nights in first year we would look at what she brought to the dinner table with a look of 'how on earth is that edible?'. My favourite meal of hers being heated chopped tomatoes with broccoli and Wotsits.

Anyway, eager to get people in my house to use Stanley I showed her how to use him and she made a carrot soup, with the recipe taken from the Thermomix website: (http://www.ukthermomix.com/recshow.php?rec_id=19). When it was finished we stirred in a couple of handfuls of spinach and a delicious soup was made!

Grace and Stanley

I'd say that was a fairly successful first weekend with Stanley!