Our House – Page 6 – Nightwolf's Den

14 days of cooking with the Thermo

I joined a group on Facebook that challenges you to cook something new with your Thermomix for 14 days. The latest challenge for 26/5 to 8/6 was…

1. – “I’ve had my tmx a yr and I still haven’t made…..” that thing everyone raves about that you keep meaning to try, something that’s so simple but you haven’t got round to it yet, that thing that’s been on the to do list for ages or something you thought you would make in the first week that you just never got round to!!!

2. – winter warmers – hearty nourishing winter meals

With that challenge I decided to make a list of things I’d like to make and thought I’d blog about it.

Monday 26/5 – Yummy Chicken Pasta (recipe community)
Tuesday 27/5 – Pikelets (EDC p57) and lemon butter (EDC p47)
Wednesday 28/5 – Tomato Soup (EDC p 78)
Thursday 29/5 – Impossible quiche (Devil of a cookbook) – first time doing quiche in thermo
Friday 30/5 – Chicken Stroganoff (Devil of a Cookbook) – a family favourite
Saturday 31/5 – Raisin bread (from Thermo Affairs)
Sunday 1/6 – crumpets (recipe community) – a bit of a fail, not sure what went wrong 🙁 and I forgot to take a photo

Monday 2/6 – Super simple sausage rolls (recipe community)
Tuesday 3/6 – converted mum’s one egg meringue recipe – still working on tweaks
Wednesday 4/6 – Apricot Balls
Thursday 5/6 – taco mince (using the packet stuff)
Friday 6/6 – Parmesan Garlic Bread Wheel
Saturday 7/6 – i was out all day so didn’t make anything
Sunday 8/6 – Chicken Cashew Nut (EDC p111)

Overall I think it was a pretty good week. We’ve found some new recipes we’ll add to our family favourites, some that will need a bit of tweaking before we decide and a couple that won’t get made again. I’m looking forward to the next challenge 😀

The road to our new bathroom

As I mentioned in the Home Sweet Home post we’ve recently started renovating out bathroom. We looked at doing it ourselves then decided too hard and after a few quotes decided to go with locals, 2am Construction & Plastering.

When you look at the before pictures you can see why we needed to renovate – wood panelling – everywhere. Old bath. Old sink. Nearly no storage. Mould. And I hate it with a passion. It’s not somewhere I can go to relax and unwind. That & I think it was making us sick 🙁

We had no real idea of what we wanted to do except get rid of all the wood panelling and maybe use our awesome cast iron claw foot bath we’d been given. Sadly after much discussion with the builders and plumber it worked out we couldn’t really use (or afford to use) our bath. Boo. On the upside we have a bath for when we win Tattslotto and build up and get an ensuite on our new bathroom. Hey a girl can dream, right?

The first couple of days was gutting the bathroom completely, plumbing, moving power points and light switches, putting in the new bath and bathroom window. Then it was plastering the walls.

Having no bathroom has been fun but thanks to the in-laws we’ve been showering there.
I’ll be back in a couple of days with the next stage – waterproofing and tiling.

In the Den Kitchen – Leek & Potato Soup

One of the joys of owning a Thermomix is converting all your favourite recipes so you can do them in the Thermo.

I’ve given a few a go but didn’t write them down *doh* so I have started a notebook. Yes, old fashioned I know. Each recipe I convert I’ll be writing down as I go and making notes so I know what works and doesn’t work.

One of the first recipes I’ve converted is mum’s leek & potato soup recipe. I thought, with winter coming up here in Australia (not that you’d know it – it’s unseasonably dry & warm where I am) soup will become a staple on our menu plan each fortnight. I’m sharing the original recipe given to me by mum & my thermo conversion.

Enjoy!

[yumprint-recipe id=’8′]

Soft drinks while pregnant? You bet! {review}

Being pregnant means you should watch what you drink. I had gestational diabetes last pregnancy and really wanted to do whatever I could this time around to reduce my chances of getting GD again this pregnancy.
One of the things I did when I first found out I was pregnant was to stop drinking Coke, well to tell the truth I had to stop because it was making me sick – hello morning sickness!!

Thanks to the morning sickness I was a bit limited to what I could drink without feeling ill – water, sometimes juice, the occasional water cordial. No milk and nothing of the fizzy variety.

Enter the 2nd trimester and the end of morning sickness (yay!!) and I slowly introduced milk back into the diet and was ok. There was a definite craving for something fizzy but the amount of sugar in soft drinks is a bit frightening – 28g per 250ml in lemonade and 27g per 250ml of cola. Before you ask no I don’t do diet drinks or no sugar drinks, for one thing I’m not convinced that fake sugars are good for us and secondly I’m not a huge fan of the taste.

When I was offered the chance to try a low sugar, organic alternative I must say I was extremely curious. BIONADE (pronounced Bee-oh-nah-deh) is a range of organic fermented and carbonated beverages from Germany.

On first glance, you could be fooled into thinking it’s a trendy new post-mix alcoholic drink but no it’s a tasty low sugar drink that looks as good as it tastes.

So what is BIONADE and what makes it different from your average soft drink?

it’s 100% certified organic
it’s low in sugar (15.5g per 330ml serve)
Brewed like beer, but non-alcoholic
No colourants! No preservatives! No artificial flavours!
Gluten free. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

There are 4 flavours – ginger & orange, lychee, elderberry and herbs.

First up in my trial was the ginger & orange. Ginger is meant to be pretty good when you feel ill, be it from morning sickness, travel sickness or maybe just feeling a little seedy after a night out. I thought it might taste a little similar to IronBru (it’s a Scottish citrus, slightly gingery, soft drink, often described as “Scotland’s other national drink” (after Scotch whisky) and is the number 1 selling soft drink there closely followed by Coke) but it was more gingery with an nice orange aftertaste. Quite nice. I imagine it would make a good mixer.

I tried the Herb flavour and really wasn’t sure. Don’t think I would drink this one again.

Now I’m not a fan of lychees at all so was pretty hesitant about trying this flavour. Pleasantly surprised! It was sweet and a little tangy. Again it would probably make a good mixer.

I’ve left my favourite til last – Elderberry. It is super yum, sweet, fizzy and very moreish.

Hubby wasn’t taken with any of them but he’s pretty fussy. Miss K loved all of them and they are something I’d be happy to give BIONADE to her as a treat over lemonade or cola.

At this stage BIONADE is available online from http://www.drinks-logistics.com.au/ and selected retailers

And cause I love my readers I have a mixed case of 24 bottles of BIONADE to giveaway to one lucky Nightwolf’s Den reader. Leave us a comment with what you loved to drink when you were pregnant OR what you’d miss drinking if you were pregnant. Entry is open to Australian residents only. Winner will have 1 week to respond once the giveaway is drawn. Giveaway closes 26th March 2014

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Creating Your Goddess Haven

A six-week adventure for when you’re wanting & needing & craving a space that is a true haven for your the Goddess in You! You’ll use space clearing techniques to make your space’s energy sparkle. You’ll learn how to divinely declutter. You’ll dive into inspired interior design. You’ll be empowered with all of the wisdom, tools & techniques you need to make your space feel & look amazing to you. And you’ll end up with a home that is a sanctuary just for you.

That’s the description for Leonie Dawson’s 6 week e-course Create Your Goddess Haven. I’ve decided to give it a go (again) so this week is week 1. I’ll be blogging my results here each week. A bit for myself and as a bit of a motivator.

If you want to join in you can sign up here or join the amazaballs Amazing Life & Biz Academy and get access to this course, a HEAP of other goodies and a great group of wonderful Goddesses.

So I’ll see you back here in a week with a wrap-up of week one.

Big news

Yes that is what you think it it.
We’re expecting bub #2! Due August

I had lots planned for the blog over the Christmas/New Year period but I am suffering through morning sickness (well all day sickness some days) so that all went out the window. Hoping to be back into the swing of things soon.

Hope everyone had a great Xmas & New Year *mwah*

Christmas 2013 pt 6

Can you believe it is nearly Christmas? Are you excited yet? Or are you like hubby and can’t wait for it to be over? I’m still pottering along with the Organised Christmas challenges. Hope I’m not boring you too much 😉

Day 26
Christmas task: Picking Christmas outfits. Will depend on the weather Christmas day. I haven’t even started my handmade gifts, namely cause they are all food gifts so will get done the weekend before Christmas. I trialled a new gingerbread recipe in the Thermomix over the weekend so this will be our gingerbread recipe for this year. You can check it out on the recipe community.
Household task: I cleaned the laundry. Well I caught up on the washing that was sitting on the floor :/

Day 27
Christmas task: Sat down and wrote up what food I need to buy for the food gifts and Christmas day.
Household task: My laptop desk is my office at the moment so gave it a good clean. Also cleaned around it. Even gave my keyboard and mouse a clean *yuck*

Day 28
Christmas task: Made sure all the bits to go to Scotland where finished. Mum is posting them soon.
Household task: Cleaned the lounge room, again. Looked like a bomb had hit it – all be it a glitter/tinsel bomb. Within 5 minutes there was toys everywhere again 🙁

Day 29
Christmas task: Spent the day with Mum working on some Christmas presents 🙂
Household task: Gave the bathroom a good clean.

Day 30
Christmas task: We’re going to friends for an early Xmas tea next week and will go for a drive on the way home to check out the lights.
Household task: Spent the afternoon cleaning up the sunroom as Miss had stuff everywhere. Little does she know her table will be going out into her cubby house she’s getting from Santa and mum gets her sunroom back again 😉 It’s an awesome room for reading/napping during summer and winter. When it’s clean it’s one of my favourite rooms.

Christmas 2013 – pt 5

Day 21
Christmas task: Stock stuffer organisation is underway. Well for 2 people in the house. nothing for mine yet 😉
Household task: I’d created a cleaning kit when I did the 20 days organisation challenge earlier this year so have just topped it back up.

Day 22
Christmas task: Christmas cards mailed.
Household task: Cleaned our dishwasher. All sparkly clean again.

Day 23
Christmas task: Started planning our Christmas baking. I’m making lots of homemade foodie gifts again this year.
Household task: Cleaned our oven. It was YUCK!

Day 24
Christmas task: Did some freezer friendly baking and stocked the freezer again. Also tried out a new gingerbread recipe in the Thermomix. Added it to our list of stuff to make for presents.
Household task: We got stuck into cleaning the kitchen. Gotta love working in a clean kitchen.

Day 25
Christmas task: Have wrapped the majority of out presents.
Household task: Have made my weekend task to clean our bedroom. Started today (Friday) by stripping our bed and washing the sheets, rotated our mattress, put away our clean clothes (yay have an empty clothes basket again), pulled out summer clothes from storage, decided they needed a wash then put clean sheets on the bed. Over the weekend will wash summer clothes to freshen it up, clean up scrapbooking stuff and get the last of the Christmas stuff out.

Christmas 2013 – pt 4

Day 16
(Can you believe we’re only a month out from Christmas!!)
Christmas task: We only have 2 rellies that we send Christmas cards to so these are done and will get posted later this week (along with their presents). I spent some time wrapping presents after Miss K goes to bed. I recently blogged about our advent plans along with a free download.
Household task: I’ve created a file in Evernote of all the dates I’ll add to my Inner B organiser (I get the refill for Christmas) after Christmas.

Day 17
Christmas task: Think I’m pretty much up to date, even have clothing sorted for the couple of Christmas dos we’re going to. Go me lol
Household task: Kitchen drawers are all organised from when I did a huge kitchen clean/cull when we got out thermomix.

Day 18
Christmas task: Created a Christmas playlist. Shared it on Spotify
Our area for displaying cards is still up from last year. It’s some Xmas twine hung above our fireplace and we’re used it on and off through the year to display our birthday cards
Household task: Hubby & I sat down and worked out a list of chores missy could do to help us out over the holidays. It will be interesting to see how long the novelty lasts for her.

Day 19
Christmas task: I addressed our envelopes as we did our cards, so ahead on this. Don’t actually own any Christmas books or DVDs that aren’t always out.
Household task: We’re lucky and don’t have anyone staying with us these holidays. Good thing too as they’d be sleeping on the couch cause we don’t have a spare bed 😉

Day 20
Christmas task: We got the tree & decorations out of the garage and gave them a bit of an air & de-spider web. I hung our advent calendar all ready for Dec 1.
Household task: I hate our under sink space but I’ve tidied it the best I can. A visit to Howards Storage World is in order next time we visit Hobart (I really wish one would open in Launceston – much closer)

From the Den Kitchen – Christmas goodies

One has to love Pinterest at this time of year. Food ideas galore!! I thought I’d share with you some of the foodie things I’ve pinned plus a few other foodie bit & pieces.


Christmas Pizza shapes	Christmas kabobs (mini marshmallows, slices of banana, strawberries, grapes)

Candy Cane Ice cream (Thermomix)	Christmas sugar cookies (Thermomix)

Christmas Choc chip cookies (Thermomix & non- Thermo)	Christmas cheese board

Mint Chocolate truffles	Peppermint fudge