Pomegranate Lemonade

* This recipe includes support for Paprika * 

It's Boxing Day. A day to clean up the messes, enjoy the leftovers, eat lightly, and relax.  And it's also the day I started my blog, four years ago!

Seems a long time ago that my friend Bel gave me my first blogging tips, and I posted my first little blog post... Thanks to all of you who have followed along! I've learnt a lot over the last four years, and it's partly thanks to all of you, from near and far, who have cooked with me and shared your results, thoughts and tips. I hope I've encouraged you in your creative cooking adventures - I know you've encouraged me in mine! So thank you.

I thought I'd better keep up the tradition of posting something on my blog birthday, so here's a celebration drink which is perfect for this time of year - Pomegranate Lemonade.

I love pomegranates, and the other day when I was browsing the shelves of our local health food store I found a bottle of pomegranate juice concentrate. I just had to buy it, as I'd never seen it in the shops here before, and I knew my Grandmother uses it as dressing for fruit salad. Well, the other day I started to make some of my Raspberry Lemonade, but I had a brainwave and made this instead. It's mouth-wateringly refreshing. I hope you enjoy it too!

Have a lovely, relaxing Boxing Day... and if you happen to have a pomegranate, some lemons, and some pomegranate juice on hand, I hope you'll try this!

Pomegranate Lemonade

1. Grind rapadura on speed 9 for 10 seconds.

- 60g Rapadura

2. Add ice and grind on speed 10 for 10 seconds.

- 300g ice

3. Add lemons, water and pomegranate juice and cover hole in lid with a cup that seals the hole. (I don't use the MC for this as the water squirts out the gap as you pulse - you'll need to hold the cup onto the lid firmly so it doesn't make a mess!) Lock lid, and pulse 3 times on Turbo, or until lemon is chopped roughly.

- 2 lemons, washed, ends cut off, and quartered (not peeled)
- 100g pomegranate juice concentrate
- 500g water

4. Remove bowl lid, add soda water to the 1 1/2 litre mark and push rice basket carefully down into bowl. Pour the juice into a large 2 or 2 1/2 litre jug, holding the basket in the bowl with the spatula to strain. Add more soda water to bowl, swish around, and pour. Repeat until jug is full or soda water is all added. I use a full 2 litre bottle of soda water, so it works out to about 2 1/2 litres of juice.

- 2 litre bottle of soda water

5. Add pomegranate arils and lemon slices if desired, and serve with extra ice.

- arils from 1/4 of a pomegranate
- a few slices of lemon

Menu Plan, Party Food, Camp Cooking and more...

My little Princess (left) having fun at her party!

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've managed to get a menu plan posted - this has been a really busy month! We've had a birthday party, sick kids, camp (where I was one of the cooks, mostly cooking the special diet meals)... plus I've been really, really busy with Thermomix demos... so I haven't had much time for blogging!!!  But thankfully it's school holidays now, camp's over and the kids are almost recovered from the flu, so it's time to catch up.

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First, here's my basic menu plan for this week... 
[tmx = prepared and/or cooked in my Thermomix]


Monday:
(lunch) Tuna pasta (tmx) & spelt bread (tmx)
(dinner) Pizza pies with filling made from leftover roast beef... (tmx)


Tuesday:
(lunch) Spelt pasta with pasta sauce made from leftover filling for pizza pies! (tmx) 
(dinner) Butter chicken (tmx), rice & pappadums


Wednesday:
(lunch) * Varoma demo here - berry fruity dream, cashew & sun-dried tomato pesto, pizza bianca, chickpea & spinach soup, warm chicken-pumpkin-couscous salad, and steamed lemon puddings (all tmx)
(dinner) Leftovers - from demo & butter chicken


Thursday:
(lunch) Baked potatoes, salad & homemade mayonnaise (tmx)
(dinner) Fish, potatoes, broccoli & tomato sauce (cooked all at once in layers in the tmx)


Friday:
(lunch) Fried rice (tmx)
(dinner) Steak, leftover rice (warmed up in tmx), beetroot salad (tmx)


Saturday:
(lunch) Hamburgers with spelt buns (tmx)
(dinner) Roast chicken and veges (gravy in tmx)


Sunday: 
(lunch) Chicken a la King (made with leftovers from roast dinner, on spelt toast) (tmx)
(dinner) Potato wedges with dairy free 'sour cream' (tmx) & raw vege sticks


* If you'd like to see a Thermomix demo for yourself (and you live in Australia), let me know and I'll put you in contact with a consultant in your area.  If you're wondering how often I use my Thermomix and how it saves me time and money, keep reading...

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I promised to also post the menu for my daughter's Princess Party, as I know other mums out there are also looking for ideas for healthier kids' party food... I don't go overboard with parties, so it's pretty simple.  This is what we made:

- Chicken & vege sausage rolls - I ground up bread crumbs and minced the chicken and veges in the Thermomix, added herbs, seasonings, tamari, sweet chilli sauce, etc, and made lots of mini sausage rolls using ready-made butter puff pastry.  (Yes, I'm afraid I didn't make the pastry, as there was just too much to do, and I didn't actually have time to cook for the party until 10 pm the night before! But I did make sure I got the puff pastry made with butter, not the one with heaps of unintelligible ingredients.)  For a spicier version of these sausage rolls with homemade spelt rough puff pastry, see Spicy Chicken & Vege Sausage Rolls.

- Parmesan popcorn - hot popcorn sprinkled with fresh parmesan (grated finely in Thermomix).

- Chocolate cupcakes - I used my wheat free, dairy free variation of Cyndi O'Meara's chocolate cake, as it's so quick and easy, is moist and delicious, and uses macadamia oil instead of butter.  (Recipe is in Cyndi's book "Changing Habits, Changing Lives Cookbook").  The cupcakes were stacked up instead of a birthday cake, undecorated, and the kids decorated their own with chocolate chips, mini marshmallows (my concession to daughter's plea for some lollies), strawberries, and...

- Strawberry cream - I mushed up fresh strawberries in the Thermomix and whipped them into cream to make it pink, for the kids to put on their cupcakes (for those who could have cream).

- Raspberry lemonade - yum yum!  Homemade lemonade is the best; add raspberries and it's even better!!

- Strawberry Fruity Dream - fresh, pink and delicious - the girls loved it!

- Party bags - I didn't want to fill the party bags with lollies, although I did give them each a chocolate frog and a naturally sweetened lollipop, so I added balloons, bubbles, party blowers, bracelets, and heart-shaped pink and purple play-dough (made in the Thermomix of course!)

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I often have people ask me how often I use my Thermomix, as they worry they wouldn't use it enough to justify buying one... so yesterday I decided to write down everything I did in the Thermomix to see how much I used it.  Here's what I did, including the mixing or cooking times:

- ground up two lots of spelt grain to make spelt flour (1 min per batch)

- made nut butter (2 mins)

- made raw almond milk (2 mins)

- made banana & nut butter protein shakes (2 mins)

- made a double batch of spelt bread dough (2.5 mins)

- made rice-almond milk (7.5 mins)

- made tuna pasta for lunch, all in one bowl (20 mins)

- made pizza dough for pizza pies (2.5 mins)

- cooked pizza pie filling (30 mins)

- steamed veges for dinner (12 mins)

- made choc-orange sorbet for dessert (3 mins)

The Thermomix replaces so many kitchen appliances that you'll find you use it constantly - don't be scared off by the price (in Australia they cost $1939, plus up to $40 postage)- they are so worth it!!!  (And there are payment options that make it affordable for most households.)  I've had one since 2004 (a TM21 which is still going fine - I sold it to my sister last year), and would never be without one again!  


Before I had a Thermomix there was so much I couldn't do, and because I make so much from scratch, I was in the kitchen A LOT!  Being able to walk away while the machine does the work for you saves so much time.  It may sound like I spend all day in the kitchen, but I really don't - I also homeschool four kids, am a Thermomix consultant (so I cook for other people at home demonstrations and classes), write articles for a couple of magazines, blog, draw and paint (when I can), help with a homeschool group and a youth club, do a little bit of graphic artwork from home, teach a parenting class off and on... the list goes on.  So without my Thermomix, I'd be REALLY struggling to keep up with healthy, homemade food for our family.  If you're considering buying a Thermomix, I'd say "Go for it!"  You won't regret it.  Email me for more info about Thermomix in Australia,  and if you are in Australia and decide to buy one after seeing it here on my blog, please mention my blog as your referral :)

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For those who doubt a Thermomix is big enough for your family, let me just say that I wouldn't want to have to cook for a large family without one!  I use my Thermomix to cook for large groups of people, such as cooking at our church's youth camp, and it really makes food preparation a lot quicker and easier.  Here's some of the things I use Thermy for at camp - there are usually about 60 to 100 people to cook for:


- grating blocks of cheese (only takes seconds to grate, it's cheaper to buy the whole blocks and grate them yourself, and it's healthier too, as pre-grated cheese is coated in anti-caking agents to stop it lumping together)
- chopping onions (we filled the bowl with halved onions and chopped them all in about 5 seconds! No tears!)
- grating carrots, apples, etc for salads
- grating chocolate and grinding coconut (for flourless cakes)
- mixing batter for cakes
- grinding grains (for bread dough)
- making bread dough for cinnamon scrolls and cheesey-mite scrolls (for snacks)
- making rice milk and other special diet foods (dairy free white sauce, custards, etc)
- making butter from cream
- making custards & gravies (we did 2 litre batches, and emptied them into a pot on the stove to keep warm - it was quicker than cooking them completely on the stove, and there were no lumps!)
- making sorbet or fruity dream (a couple of batches each afternoon for afternoon tea)
- making cappuccinos, lattes and iced coffees for tired kitchen workers!


...Obviously we eat well at our camps!

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Holidays are a great time to spend time with the kids, cooking up some treats.  The other day my boys were looking for something to do, and decided to make baked apples.  They begged me to put a photo of their creation on my blog, so here it is...

As you can see they were very creative - instead of just coring the apple and slitting the skin around it, they used the apple slinky machine, making it a very fun version of baked apples!

So there you are - it's been a busy month, but I feel a bit more 'caught up' now!


Hope you all have a great week,
Jo :)