Helping out.

My Dad has cancer. It really sucks. Mostly because he is 64 and may or may not see another birthday. He probably won't be around to see my beautiful children get married or have children of their own, and that breaks my heart. 

When you are a grown woman, who has a parent with cancer, you feel helpless. All the time. Life is busy, and between the farm, family and the day to day of life, I'm not as much help to Mum as I want to be. Spending huge amounts of time with them is hard, as often he's too tired for my kids energy and he's away for treatment a lot. 

My mother is a very capable woman. She amazes me every day with her strength, and her ability to cope under the pressure of watching her husband get sicker.  On top of caring for Dad, she is also carer to my Uncle, who lives in a flat behind their home. He is a lovely guy, with a heart as big as Phar Lap, who would do anything for anyone. But he's hopeless! He needs looking after and hedefinately needs help with cooking. He's in his late 60's and has never left home, and never really needed to look after himself.

Mum rarely asks me for help, but she asked me yesterday if I could cook a couple of meals for my Uncle to have while she's away. The meals need to be easy to reheat and cater to his simple palate. So since I've been feeling useless I embrace the opportunity to help. I know that if his freezer is full, it will be one less thing for Mum to have to worry about.

I began yesterday, with curried sausages, a quick pasta which I refrigerated overnight, a pasta sauce. That gave me the foundation for a great lasagne. The dough was simple, 300g flour and 3 eggs in the Thermomix for 90 seconds. Never fear non Thermy owners, you can mix the flour and eggs together and knead it on the bench for 10 minutes, and it's the same! 

I must admit, I've never made pasta from scratch before. The kids enjoy it so much, that I always just let them do it for me. I found it to be a lot of fun, and very therapeutic!  Anyone can make pasta, you just need a benchtop and a pasta machine (which are really cheap at homewares stores).

After I'd made a couple of lasagnes, I had plenty of sauce and pasta left over. I decided to make some fettuccine. It too was a lot of fun to do, and so very easy. I was having all kinds of fun, right up until the rolling pin fell off the bench, onto my toe (which I think is now broken). Suffice to say, a break was taken from the kitchen to tend to my foot! 

The Thermomix really made my job a lot quicker today, from making the shepherds pie base, the mash, the steamed veg, onion gravy for the sausages, pastry for the quiches - it really simplified the process.  I quite often had mega cooking sessions pre-Thermy, and would spend 2 straight days cooking. I consider myself a great cook, and I am pretty much able to make anything with a knife, wooden spoon and a pan.

My Thermy is great, but it's just an appliance - I'm the cook. My appliance though really made it easy to do so many meals in such a short time span.  The cheese took around 7 seconds to 'grate' - the bechamel sauce took 2 minutes. I could have done these things without Thermy, but it would have taken so much longer. 

One of the things that also really made today run smoothly, was stacking the Thermy. Using the bowl, with something in the basket, and things steaming in the varoma does require planning, but it cuts down on time and energy. 

 

All up I think I ended up doing about 28 meals in around 5 hours. All from scratch using whole food ingredients. There was quiche, fettuccine bolognese, lasagne, beef korma, curried sausages, chicken risotto, salads, shepherds pie, sausages with onion gravy and veg, 2 pizzas and some steamed veggies. Not bad for 5 hours in the kitchen!!

My Uncle was so happy to see all the food, and his freezer is now chock-a-block. It's one less thing for Mum to worry about, and now she can concentrate on Dad. As it should be. 

If anyone wants recipes for anything they see, comment below, and I'll see if I can help out.

Hope everyone is well and happy - and don't forget - Just eat real foods.

Marney x