Fletcher Curry Paste

I am so pleased with my thermomix, it enables me to cook loads of things that I would not normally bother to do because of time consuming messy techniques.

Check out how I now make my own curry paste, I love knowing it is preservative free, is made with high quality ingredients and is the perfect hotness for my whole family to enjoy.

Total Time = less than 15 mins including prep

1. 2-3 tbs corriander seeds, dry roast 100 degrees, 5 mins, speed 2

Meanwhile get the rest of the ingredients out:

• 8 small red chillies from the bush over the fence
• 5-7cm long chunk ginger chopped roughly
• 10 cloves garlic peeled
• 2 tbs paprika
• 1 big lemon skin on quartered (I'll use lime next time but I had a lemon on hand)
• 3-4 lemon Grass stalks roughly chopped
• 70g Olive oil

2. Grind coriander seeds speed 10 till fine, about 20-40 sec

3. Throw in the rest of the ingredients but not the oil. Blend till it starts to turn into paste. You will need to stop every 10 -20 seconds to scrap the sides down.

4. Pour 20g of oil in. Put the Measuring Cup in hole on lid, blend at speed 4. Pour the rest of the oil on the lid and it will dribble in.

5. Check texture, blend more if you need to. Otherwise you are done, put it in a clean jar and keep it in your fridge for a few weeks or freeze it in 100g lots. Makes around 500g.

See in the pictures I have made the Fast Curry from the Everyday Cook Book that comes with your Thermomix. The ingredients include all the usual suspects; garlic, onion curry paste, coconut milk plus potatoes and chicken. It is a weekly staple in our house taking 25mins total, but less than 5mins of my time.

If you don't have a thermomix yet and you want one contact me and we can organise a demo, it only takes 2 hrs and gives you a chance to catch up with 2-4 of your favorite friends or couples while enjoying a 6 course meal.

Saturday morning with Thermomix

It's a cold rainy morning, Daddy's still in bed. Perfect time to try out some breakfast muffins.

1. Simple, throw all ingredients into Themomix. Thermomix has built in scales, so no measuring cups and less washing up, very important.

2. Mix for 40 sec on speed 4. Add berries and mix further 5 sec

3. Pour into greased muffin tray cook in preheated 180 C fan forced oven for 25mins.

TOTAL TIME = 30mins including getting out the ingredients and washing up one bowl (the thermomix bowl) and the muffin tray.

Now breakfast is made for tomorrow morning too, double win. So I can roll out of bed as late as I please and getting the little nippers feed before church will be a breeze. I love you Thermomix.

For these muffins I used:

100g buckwheat milled into flour for 1min on speed 9

160g self raising flour

180g milk

60g olive oil

120g raw sugar

50g oats

2 eggs

1tsp vanilla

200g frozen berries (added at the end of mixing)

Makes 12 muffins

New design

I have been fiddling around with a new pattern these past few weeks and decided that I should definitely write it in several yarn sizes. That way you can knit it with your stash or any yarn that takes your fancy, but mostly so I can test out a bunch of yarns I have not yet tried.

Up until now I have generally brought yarn from Spotlight (a craft chain store in Australia) because where I am there are no bricks and mortar stores for me to visit without making a 3 hour round trip. However after making one of those 3 hour trips to Tangled Yarns in Brisbane how could I go back to Spotlight?

So a parcel of yarn has just arrived on my door step and it contains some staples like cascade and some gormet Misty Alpacca and some rowan and berroco to round things out.

First impressions, well everything feels soft except for the Cascade 220, to my skin it feels scratchy. The colour is fantastic though and if the garment is worn as a vest in the middle of winter the scratchyness won't be a trouble, though I don't think I will buy cascade 220 again...

I am dying to try out the misty luxury Alpaca. But for now I need to finish writing my pattern. As I go through the yarns I will write a proper review of them. Plus pictures of the finished project.

New Design sneak peak

Here is a snap of my new design swatch. I love starting a new design, my mind starts racing with ideas. My favorite part is trying to figure out how each element should be attached to the next, it MUST BE SEAMLESS. I can't seam very neatly so I need to do some experimenting with that.

I have been wanting to make a design that uses slip stitch colour work because I have never used it before and intarsia is not always a pleasure to knit. In my next post I will share with you all about slip stitch colour knitting.

Following my good friend Ruth's advice I have started a blog, it's kinda fun thus far, but then choosing a colour scheme and uploading photos generally falls into that category.

I intend to post regularly (as per Ruth's suggestion) all about my knitting endeavors. I will try to be funny, but mostly won't be funny except for when I am not trying to be, and I will admit at the outset that I am terrible with grammar so if you can't stand that you've already stopped reading.

This is my second daughter, isn't she the cutest little sausage. One of my top models and of course inspiration. Sausage is wearing a cool little eyelet tunic that I somehow managed to knit in half a day! It seems as though it was never touched the needles.

It amazes me how fast you can knit up this dress but I am sure it is more of an 'optical illusion' you see there are no sleeves, and it is a tunic not a dress so isn't very long and to speed things up it is knit in the round so you can get a cracking pace up.

The unusual colour combo comes from running out of pink and a desire to stash bust rather than invest in more pink, I like it what do you think?