Yesterday I froze the peeled (in TMX) cloves from 2 large bulbs of garlic and I removed all the little green bits from the centre. You wouldn't believe how handy that exercise has been - just open the bag and take out how many pieces you want.  Next time I buy garlic, it will be a bagful! I just love shortcuts.

I lived in Darwin for 2 years around 1970 and we bought home a bottle of saki.  At our homecoming party, some of our guests tried it and my now dear departed girlfriend's personality changed dramatically with just 1 drink of saki - potent stuff!! Thanks Cookie, I though that too but it will be a while before I get to this recipe - so many I want to try now - who needs cookbooks with so many interesting recipes on the forum.

Thanks Thermomixer for your advice too. Maybe in future it would be handy to have substitutes for products not usually stocked in our pantry and often hard to get around the suburbs.

I actually got out my huge slow cooker this morning to cook up 8 lamb shanks which I was going to share with my daughter but a friend rang and I invited them to tea tomorrow night as I had the perfect meal slowly cooking in the background. Poor daughter and husband will miss out but they didn't know it was going to be offered anyway.  Obviously this is a dish that can't be done in the TMX but I will be doing the mashed potatoes and steamed vegies in it of course.

I second that   Nice to see you back on air Unconundrum.  Don't know what book you are referring to as far as the mushroom risotto goes, my recipe book (pge 85 everyday cookbook) doesn't have any parsley in the recipe whatsoever. DH didn't like this one either though so next time I will try Joys idea of substituting half of the mushrooms with sundried tomatoes and only using 430g rice so will see if that improves it.  Makes heaps though, only going to do 1/2 qty next time.

Thanks to our overseas friends for this information - will certainly do myself a batch now for the freezer.

Go Cookie1.  Just when I was thinking I must lose some weight you go and post something like this   They sound lovely.

It won't be me Cookie1  , it is only a footy match and I never let them upset me  .

Yes I did Cookie1 and they were perfectly cooked.  Depending on the size you cut them I guess but I did mine for 30 minutes and put 1 litre of boiling water in the TM bowl - my steaming book says 500g but I went for 1 litre because I think I read somewhere that it works better. I cut the potatoes into 1/8ths, carrots 2cm slices, cauli into medium sized florets (they all went into the varoma dish) and the thin asparagus I placed on the varoma tray on their own and did them all for the same time.  Must admit, this is my first time just cooking vegies on their own and was surprised I got it right.  So much tastier than boiled vegies.