Sunday morning

How to write about yesterday?  When there's something new around, it can feel like a journey of discovery and that's a bit how I felt yesterday - on a journey.  I was so tired by the end of the day; new things can have that effect, can't they, but I didn't feel that I'd worked all that hard or that it was in any way a hassle.  And the lack of washing up was significantly amazing!
I think the best thing is to take you through it, menu by menu and I will give links when I can.

First of all, I fancied trying out a milk bread recipe I found.  Now, I am NOT getting rid of my wonderful breadmaker but, when I have the time, I like to make dough in the machine (because it's messy by hand!) and do the rising, the proving and the baking the old-fashioned way.  It's an extremely satisfying process but the dough programme takes for ever (between 2 and 3.5 hours depending on whether it is white or wholemeal) and it does the first rising so you have to watch it and stop it before it starts that.  Also, it's fun to ring the changes.  So I had a go at this recipe, found following a link from the UKThermomix web site.  All I can say is that everything behaved perfectly and I ended up with some absolutely delicious soft bread - six knotted rolls and a loaf.  Strangely enough, while I am finding that most other bread tends to give me indigestion, this did not, not even the slightest hint of discomfort.  Perhaps is is the milk (there's a lot of milk in it) that makes the difference.  Beth, I wonder if it would be better for you.

I adapted the microwave lemon curd and that also behaved well.  I'm finding that the curd sets rather more firmly in the TM than it does in the microwave so maybe I could use more lemon juice.  I will try that next time.  It's a shame lemon curd doesn't keep for long but three weeks is the most I would recommend, and it needs to be stored in the fridge, taking up precious space!

I am having a team meeting on Monday, for the infant staff.  It is now a tradition that I provide refreshments for these meetings (cake, cookies, stuff like that) so I had a look round and found a recipe for Mars bar slices and do you think I can find it again now?  Grrrr.  It's just as well I downloaded it, although it isn't hard to remember.  Melt three Mars bars, chopped into chunks, with 90g butter, stirring all the time, then fold in three cups of coco-pops and I also added some mini marshmallows so it made it a little bit rocky road-ish.  It makes a very gooey, sticky mixture, much more easily made in the TM, and it needs to set in the fridge.  Sorry for not giving the source; if I find it, I will post it and I might post the recipe in TsRs with an apology for not including the link.  (Note to self - from now on, record the link on the recipe)

Ages ago I accidentally created a recipe for oat cakes (like the Nairn ones, for butter and cheese).  It's an easy recipe but oatmeal can be hard to find sometimes.  However, the TM turns ordinary oats into oatmeal in five seconds flat so I adapted my recipe and made some and they were scrummy.  I will post the recipe on Teacher's Recipes soon.

Then I decided to formalise my oaty crumble topping and I have posted the recipe on Teacher's Recipes.  The resulting fish crumble with a bottom of TM cheese sauce, vegetables pre steamed in the varoma (not convinced about the varoma just on its own - it would be just as easy and straightforward using my little steamer on the hob, to be honest), salmon chunks and prawns was just delicious and I am very happy that I have four more nestling in the freezer.

The other thing I did was drain three cans of lychees and put the fruit in the freezer to open freeze. There was a lot of light syrup left so this morning I have gentry simmered it and reduced it to about 1/3 to make a syrup.  I will add some of the syrup to the lychee sorbet I plan to make for lunch and probably some will be good made into a drink with chilled sparkling water, perhaps topped up with white wine (or use sparkling wine).

Dinner is going to be scrummy today.  Leek and potato soup with soft rolls,  mushroom risotto and then lychee sorbet.  All made in or with Thermy - if one is daft enough to shell out a ridiculous amount of money for something, one has GOT to use it, hasn't one!  :-)

On Friday I found some ale that is called 'Two Hoots' and has a cute cartoon of a couple of owls on the label.  As some of you will know, I am a sucker for anything owly so I bought some and it was so nice I looked for it again when I did my shop yesterday.  Sadly, it was all sold out.  Boooo.

I love the quote: 'With great beer comes great wisdom, but we only care about the great beer'!!!