Quote from: Queen Be on June 28, 2012, 10:15:40 am

Not sure I could give up the slow cooker for this method. I cook corned beef in ginger beer and it's just too yummy to stop.

That sounds interesting.  No water,  ginger beer  plus spices? My slow cooker is the oven. When my freezer is  empty I would like to try this as we love ginger here.

Gert

I usually just do a good quality ginger beer making sure it's covered which can be up to 2 bottles, if I have spare carrot, celery and onion I will add but I'm not bothered if I don't. I think there is enough flavour from the beer, but adding some cloves or a bay leaf would not go astray. First time I cooked it for my Dad he stood next to the slow cooker just drinking the cooking liquid with a ladle 

Jude I wish my girls toy room was that tidy, I am too ashamed to take a pic ATM

Today was supposed to be the school sports carnival, my DD1's first, but it was rained out after just an hour 

Well need to save money now, the hotwater service split this morning.  A big expense I definitely wasn't planning for.  Will be spending the day doing some research on what to get. 

Why is it when you just think you are getting on top of things along comes a big expense that you weren't planning for.

Tell me about it. I spent over $750 a couple of months ago getting our fridge and oven fixed. The dishwasher has been broken since Christmas and I have been putting off getting it fixed, the washing up is starting to get to me but until I have the credit card down and paid off Alice (my TMX) I am going to have to hand wash.

My aim is to stick to $250 a fortnight as that's how we get paid, there is myself, DP and two girls aged 3.5 and 5.5. Today I bought meat and chicken  which came to $36.30, I still want to get some chuck steak but it was too expensive where I was today I will pick that up on Saturday at the wholesale butcher. That plus what I have in the freezer should last two weeks with leftovers. Also spent $36 at the supermarket on milk, cheese and a small amount of fruit that the girls begged me for, I usually refuse to buy fruit at the supermarket.

Will do a proper menu plan tonight and figure out what to cook, I am still to cook a main meal in Alice and I am itching to 

I wish I had joined and found this thread weeks ago 

If anyone plans to keep going on the challenge I'd love to be included, I need to pay off the credit card ASAP.

I have a recipe book which I picked up at Aldi a while ago for bread in a bread machine. Some of the recipes look lovely but I have not been using the bread machine as my kids don't like the shape of the bread that it makes    fussy 3 and 5 year olds! Now that I have ordered a nice loaf tin with a lid so I can make sandwich bread for school lunches I am looking at the recipes in the book again.

Most of the recipes state that they make a loaf from 800-900g and use 500g of flour. I have been looking at the bread recipes in the EDC and there are a few different  times in the different recipes. My question is if there is a general rule for how long I should knead for different styles or bread? For example do wholemeal loaves require more or less than white, or is it simply trial and error and experience?

Hope this makes sense   

Hi all!

I'm Be and I hail from the NSW Central Coast. My Thermomix was delivered two days ago and was immediately christened Alice, she is beautiful 

I am  baker at heart so of course the first thing I made in Alice was the chocolate cake and we used the Nutella recipe as icing! Yum! My 3 year old is very impressed.

I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone, learning and sharing.