Yes, it's hard to 'uncreate' a bad impression. There is little evaporation so liquids do need to be limited - without causing sticking.
You may have found organic rolled oats more suitable by the way. Did you use quick oats?

Actually we used actual oats that my dad freshly rolled in his grain mill.  These were chopped as per the porridge instructions and soaked overnight in water.

The problem was the instructions which say 8-9 minutes 90 degrees reverse speed soft - it wasn't long enough or hot enough or fast enough to do anything but produce lukewarm soup.

In the end I did about 6 mins at 100 degrees speed 1.5 and it produced a beautiful creamy result but that was a lucky guess.

These are seriously BASIC functions - I wouldn't call the correct settings to cook porridge a recipe and yet they are totally wrong.

The other one that really makes me angry is the instruction to chop onions carrots etc for 5 seconds on speed 7 - its total mush.  From experience I now do 3 secs on speed 5 for a nice fine chop.  But when you've just dropped nearly $2K on a bit of kitchen kit you expect the instructions for the basics to be accurate.

I've obviously got the old book which is sad

well that's a shame - frankly 1 demo was 1 too many for me.  If I really want a thermoserver, I will just buy one elsewhere.  I hate being pressured into selling things and a stupid bowl isn't going to do it for me. This one looks nicer too:
http://www.thermalcookware.com/main.php?mod=Shop&file=Product&cat=24&pid=22


I am going to visit my parents for a week next week and can't bring myself to leave my thermomix at home so it may well be that when they see it they will want to buy one and then I might have another demo but it won't have the magic 3 households then either. 

I have to say that while the thermomix is the best kitchen appliance I have ever had, the direct selling model is just so irritating.

If you have already had a demo (and you bought your machine from that demo) you should have your thermoserver, if that makes sense.
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Well when I found out about thermomix, I had a demo in order to buy one and they just delivered the machine.  Now they keep talking about dates for a varoma or delivery demo so I can get my thermoserver and I just don't want to host another one right now (and not ever unless a friend specifically asks me to)

just want to report in that I made this tonight and almost followed the recipe except that I used 250g water and 1 tsp massel chicken stock and skipped the wine and also the paprika (because we didn't have any and hubby piped in with it being not an ingredient of strog  ) and no cayenne with the kidlets.

My reason for the extra bit of water was to steam broccoli on top.  I did 20 mins on varoma temp and then did a further 3 mins on 100 degrees after the broccoli was cooked so I could thicken the sauce with 2 tbsp of cornflour.  I think next time I could probably have done 15 mins at varoma but I was nervous about making sure the broccoli cooked - I have to say I was skeptical at the start when I saw the size of the holes in the lid and still skeptical at the 10 min mark when there was no steam in there....

But the reason for my post was that hubby proclaimed it the best strog ever (and he normally makes a pretty mean if traditional one - ie sans tomato paste & paprika) and my dear Mr 6 ate the entire lot AND licked his plate clean.  First time I've ever seen him do that!

Janneeknits, the varoma book can't be purchased, you can only get hold of it by holding a varoma demo...

oh cripes ... think my "free" thermoserve is being withheld on the same grounds 

I finally got my consultant tracked down to send me an order form to get cookbooks so I have been trolling through the posts here to get some feel for which are the best/most useful books but I am supposed to be studying and doing a million other things so was hoping you guys could fast track it for me and tell me which books you think have the best most useful recipes.  i am mainly interested in main meals and I have young children so overly spiced meals are a bit risky.  They like a bit of mild Moroccan and mostly they love Mediterranean food.  Me I like Mediterranean based diet too with a low GL.

I have to say that i find most of the mains in the EDC are too rich having a lot of cream/coconut milk in them or are meals served with carbs like rice and pasta.  We do eat rice and pasta but about once a week each and we don't eat mashed potato only sweet potato.

I've done the apricot chicken risotto and was not impressed.  The lasagne was good but too fattening to be more than an occasional meal.  I'm going to try the stoganoff tonight but with steamed broccoli not rice/pasta. The kids aren't going to come at the curries readily so it doesn't leave much.

I'm also finding that the EDC recipes don't appear to have been well tested so I am assuming that the same will apply to the other books?

My thoughts at the moment are to go with the Cyndi O"Meara booklet, the lunchbox booklet, the vegetarian and the meat on the menu one - would love to hear some feedback if I'm making the right choices.

Also, I thought I read somewhere here about a Varoma cookbook but its not on the list?  I haven't even tried my varoma yet simply because I haven't seen an appealing recipe and I've never really done any steam cooking although I would like to do it because its such a healthy way to cook?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated 

I hope this is the right forum to post this in - I'm new here and a bit unsure.

While I've been waiting to get cookbooks for my thermomix, I found an iPhone app that has 1800 thermomix recipes in it on iTunes.  The only catch - its in Italian 


So I emailed the developer and asked if there were any plans for an English version and this was his reply (which he gave me permission to repost):

Hi, Jane, thank you for your suggestion. We already considered an english version, the problem is, we need to find an already translated recipe database as it is not viable for us to translate our 1800 recipes manually!

We even started translating a small subset (about 200 recipes), but we stopped early because it is a non-trivial task and requires a good knowledge of specific terminology: think about the correct names of all species of vegetables, of meat cuts, of fishes, and so on.... Moreover, to get to the angloamerican market, we also need to convert all measurements from metric to imperial units!

The only solution is to find an already compiled recipe database. It should be in a format easy to import and of course it should be freely distributable. We tried to find something like that but without success. If you have some suggestion please let us know, as we would be very happy to create an english version of our app.

Thank you and best regards
Federico

PS One final technical remark: the recipes don't need to be in a database already, they just have to be in a "structured" format, like a PDF or DOC with a regular and fixed pattern, we will take care of the conversion.

I explained about the metric thing and that they don't sell them in the US so its mainly Australia, Canada, UK etc but I said that I would post this in the English speaking forums in the hope that someone here might be able to get together with Frederico to make an English version happen.

He has a website for the app if anyone is interested I can PM it and you can find it easily in iTunes like me just by typing Thermomix in the search box.  I've downloaded it and am going to try some of the recipes using google translate.

But I thought that if anyone in the Aussie Thermomix world (or indeed anywhere else really) can make it happen, chances are they read this forum...

Hi and welcome to the forum janeeknits.  Our forum is like one big recipe book - you couldn't ask for more variety and ideas so hope you enjoy yourself here.  Sounds like your DH is easily pleased - lucky you.

Actually he cooks better than I do but loves really good tasty food and things like anzacs and lasagne aren't normally things i bother with because there is too much work involved.  The lasagne was great and there was enough to freeze for a second meal although for the sake of the waistline I will be a bit careful with how often we have it.

Tonight we're having a roast cooked by hubby but am hoping to make banana tofu icecream for dessert if the bananas freeze in time.