Herman Has Arrived.

Thankyou Mrs N, my portion of Herman German cake starter arrived today.  Day one!

The Daily Meal.

The challenge of planning meals:
-quantity
-variety
-nutritional value
-timing

I have a thermomix, pressure cooker and a slow cooker.  Also the stove top and oven.
Aunty L gave me a great recipe book for slow cookers and can also use these recipes in the pressure cooker.

I do think though that the family who are receiving these meals; should also be thankful for the effort and appreciative of the challenges.  This weekend, they need to be more involved with the meal preparation.

Chicken Noodle Soup.

Chicken and Noodle Soup.

Brown 2 full chicken breasts in the pressure cooker
Cook, high pressure 6 min with cut carrot and liquid stock (I use thermomix homemade) filled to capacity.
This time I also added fresh, cut chives.
Reduce pressure, add rice noodles and frozen corn bits.
High pressure 3 min.

Enjoy.

Thankfully we have leftovers as another child (12 year old daughter) now has the chicken pox.

Clutter Up Now!

I love decluttering and it seems that many others do; we never see a post about "Clutter up now!"
That is, until now.  The two chairs above were too hard to resist when my parents offered them to us.
That is, because they  have history and they are beautiful.  They are spindle back chairs, some date back to the 1900's.  They came from farms in Barkly East, South Africa; one of them came from a farm in our family.

Eggs, Sugar, Butter and Cocoa Doth a Brownie Maketh.

Pierre Roelofs Better than Brownie Chocolate Cake.
8 eggs
700g dark, soft brown sugar
pinch of salt
280g butter
200g good quality (Dutch processed) cocoa powder.

Line a 23cm x 30cm tin with baking paper
Preheat oven 130degrees celcius.
Warm the eggs and brown sugar over a simmering water and whisk until light and fluffy (10 min by machine). Add salt.  Using the thermomix, I set it to 50 degrees, speed 3.  I did not need the full 10 minutes.
Melt the butter and cocoa powder.  Gently fold them into the egg mixture.  Keeping the mixture as aerated as possible.  In thermomix speak; I took the egg/sugar mix out of the jug.  Put in the butter and cocoa and set it to 90 degrees, speed 3, 3 minutes.  I then poured in the egg/sugar mixture.
Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for about 45minutes.  Turn the tin occasionally until firm and evenly cooked.

This recipe is from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Monday Morning.

Monday morning; all the more sweeter as Mrs B dropped off an almond croissant which I enjoyed with my morning coffee.  9 year old daughter is home with the chicken pox.

French Chicken Pie.

Dinner last night; chicken pie - inspired by 12 year old daughter's choice after flicking through "At My French Table."

Chicken Pie.

brown 4 chicken breasts
add fresh chives, garlic
450mL stock (I used homemade stock from the thermomix recipes)
cook till softened (I used our pressure cooker)
add 2/3 cup of cream (I used lactose free)
cook till thickening
add corn flour

set aside to cool.

Put in pie dish and cover with pastry, bake till golden.

Now You See it and Now You Don't.

The bottom two photo's are the 'before'.  Our blinds screen the day to day mess quite nicely.