Thank you Creampuff - will look that up.  Sounds promising!

thank you everyone, this is excellent!

I'm finding it difficult as a new Thermomix owner, not to feel the need to make a trip to the shops each day to buy ingredients for recipes I come across - especially when I'm about an 8km car trip away from the shops!  I know I'll eventually build up the essentials for my fav recipes but in the meantime, is there a function available (not necessarily here) where I can put in the main ingredients I have at my fingertips and search recipes?  I know there is a regular recipe website that lets you do that but I'm not at the point of converting recipes for creating in the Thermomix yet.

For instance, I have half a piece of silverside roast (uncooked) that needs to be used up, zucchinis by the bucket load in the garden, 5kg of semi sundried tomatoes and lots of berries (various types like logan berries, raspberries, young berries etc) in the garden as well.  I'm not looking for just one recipe to use up all of this stuff but that would feature them as a main ingredient would be great.

Also, I'm hoping to do a big shop tonight so what do you find are your essentials to have in the pantry?  I have quite a bit of beef in the freezer that I'm trying to get thru as it's almost time to have the butcher come out to deal with the next beast. 

Thanks for any advice and I hope I've put this request in the right section!

I had the Bellini for over 2 years and used it 3 times.  I'm not sure what made me think I'd be any different with the Thermomix but I can see it is miles ahead quality wise.  Mine was delivered last Friday and we made the veggie stock.  Then I only got to use it for the first time by myself on Monday due to work on the weekend and knowing that I would need some time to blunder thru my first efforts.

Monday I started to make the gnocchi in the book but then I realised I hadn't put the dial to 'varoma' to cook the potatoes and that the potatoes needed 40 minutes to cool...and I had to be at work in an hour!!!!  So finished off the gnocchi yesterday and it was a huge hit.  I can see that I will have to make two lots next time.  Also made some pesto with sun dried tomatoes.  I changed the spinach in the recipe to parsley (it suggested you could do that) but my parsley didn't quite chop up to the tiny pieces I imagined.  Everything else did though and it was also well received by the family.

Phew!  Now I'm busy searching out recipes for tomorrow's effort.

Oh, and I just want to say that I'm not usually a nervous cook at all.  I'm also not really a recipe follower but I understand I will have to be until I get the gist of this machine!  I can't wait until these early days are under the belt and I'm confident with whipping up stuff in the Thermomix!