This recipe for a happy man is very appliance versatile. The whole shebang can be done on the stovetop. It could be made between stove top and slow cooker, stove top and oven, in the thermomix, or in a combination of thermomix and slow cooker. No matter how you make it, it’s the perfect blend [...]
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The Kitchen Playground method of surviving the school term with a working mother is to use school holidays to do some bulk cooking. The idea is that I will end up wit lots of baked goods for lunches and enough precooked meals to get me through the nights that we get home late. These school [...]
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Monday night. Swimming night. Dinner needs to be made ready in the time it takes the Ankle Biters to shower and change. So Monday is generally a slow cooker night in the colder months. I do all the prep on the Sunday night and pop it in the fridge ready to be put in the [...]
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I found this little gem whilst trawling the internet recently. We adore refried beans but I do have a problem with the amount of (usually saturated) fat they contain. I also hate buying canned bean products as the price is so much higher than using them dried. The smells that have been wafting through the [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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The preparation for this dish is reasonably time consuming with all the chopping and browning but it is well worth it. Particularly as it makes a truly mammoth amount of soup. We get up to five family meals from one batch. Ideally, I would do this in my mammoth stock pot but as I’m lazy [...]
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Despite Tuesday not being a work day, I spend an awful lot of it at work. Lil Miss has her swimming lesson in the morning and First Born has his in the evening. By the time we get home from the evening session, it is already well past dinner time for little Ankle Biters and [...]
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Well. Melbourne is a land of extremes lately. From the seemingly unending drought, the searing heat and the dreadful, heartbreaking burning, today was both chilly and wet. Yes, wet. Joyful rain, real rain. A wonderful excuse to pull out the slow cooker again as panacea to my current painfully hectic schedule. I headed over to [...]
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