Welcome to The Kitchen Playground. Cooking can bring great joy and great despair. I hope that the recipes you find here, many of which are very quick to make with the weeknight in mind, help you to experience more joy than despair. Many recipes have instructions for the Thermomix 31 as well as traditional instructions. The emphasis is on real, fresh food that combines flavour, texture and scent to delight the senses.
School holidays have finished and the Ankle Biters have returned to their term time routines. One thing I have noticed about school holidays is that they could easily become very expensive propositions. Not in this house. I’m not wired that way. Poor Ankle Biters. Instead, we have movie days at home with popcorn and biscuits. […]
Take 1 Buddhist Monk, slice thinly, simmer gently until tender… OK, sorry, in our family that is known as Graeme humour. You can blame my dear old Dad. This is a soup I’ve been meaning to try for many years. Finally, it’s time has come and it smells delicious. Just need the Ankle Biters and […]
This soup is a ‘Nana from the depression era’ soup. Incredibly simple and cheap to make with more flavour than the ingredients would suggest. It’s a good one for fussy kids too. Unless you’ve got one of those spoiled, expensive menfolk who insist on a slab of meat at each meal, this makes a hearty […]
It’s school holidays here at the moment. Glorious school holidays. Today, the Ankle Biters had some friends over and I got to enjoy the adult company of their respective mothers. One of the mums has coeliac disease so I took the easy way and made soup for the grown up lunch. The tricky part was […]
The Bread Winner is a dessert lover. Which is unfortunate for him because I am not much of a dessert maker. Not something I grew up with so not something that often occurs to me to make. On the bright side, he does love a crumble and they are super quick and easy to make. […]
A while back I compiled a document full of slow cooker recipes from a variety of sources. Unfortunately, I didn’t note the original sources. Which was not very bright of me. I think they largely came from cooking forums. Tonight’s meal was an adaptation of one of those recipes and it is absolutely superb. We […]
My freezer is 25 years old and it still has its original seals. Which need replacing. Badly. So my current hobby is cramming as much of it’s contents into the freezer above the fridge as possible in order to empty the big freezer and have the seals replaced. Yesterday I puled out a free range […]
Risotto is so quick and easy in the thermomix that it has become my fall back meal when all other plans disintegrate around my ears. Or when I’m feeling extremely lazy. This little beastie was inspired by a poorly stocked fridge, a late afternoon arrival home from a weekend away and the flavours of colconnon. […]
Poor old First Born has one of the myriad of lurgies floating around Melbourne and took today off school. He still felt up to his regular cooking night and decided to use the extra time wisely. He made two courses. First on the menu was chicken noodle soup. In true Kitchen Playground fashion, I’m teaching […]
Poor old First Born is a bit under the weather but we still had slow cooker night even without swimming. He just has a cold but I’m worried that his hearing may be affected. After all he did tell me that at assembly the Principal announced ‘come to school naked’ day. It wasn’t mentioned in […]