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!