This is definitely one of my regular recipes. My kids absolutely love it and I never have excess liquid as some previous posts suggest. In fact, have just made again tonight and once again, my entire family eats it and we never have leftovers. One of my favourite TM recipes of all time.

For all of the Aussies, this book has just appeared as limited stock on the Thermomix.com.au site

I'm glad you're keeping track, JD. Has it really been that long?

KimmyH, I always use your mantra on my kids
"you get what you get and you don't get upset"- never seems to work though!

I use a husband and wife team of cleaners every week for a two storey house and they take 2 hours per week. For a scrupulous house clean such as this job sounds,  I think in 7 hours my two cleaners would have done a good job but certainly, for someone (ie one person) to promise to clean an entire house, including blinds etc particularly after the previous owners had left the house in that state, sounds like it was incredibly ambitious in the first place. I would definitely only pay 75% of the invoice as she needs to be paid at least for doing some work and just write this off as a bad experience.
I found my cleaners through word of mouth and as they own their own franchise (ie they belong to a large cleaning company chain)  I have found them very reliable and trustworthy, plus I have the guarantee of their parent company if anything goes awry. I also had several other firms come to do a house clean as a test run to see what they were like before deciding on my current cleaners.
Unfortunately, with any cleaners I have used they never seem to see the small things that you do so I have found you have to be very specific in asking them to do various jobs around the house and my cleaners know by now how I like things done and they will often do little extra jobs around the house if they see something has to be done even when I haven't asked them to.
Good luck though- sounds like this lady is a piece of work!!

The only mince recipes I routinely do with the TM are the Swedish meatballs and the bolognese sauce (ragu) from the EDC which my kids love. Everything else I do on the stovetop eg pastitsio, lasagne etc.

Thanks all-  the ideas are brilliant.  I think I have been doing too much and expecting less!
To complicate matters tonight- they had their last day of school term two days ago and now they are both complaining of tummy aches and one of them has just starting vomiting- and to top it off, my husband is away again for work.  Time to a) ignore the cleaning and b)put my  dressing gown and bunker down for the night ahead! Looks like mummy cuddles and the washing machine are going to be popular tonight!

Thanks cookie. That's pretty much what I'm doing at the monent on weekends but even though the house is liveable and looks tidy enough I still feel I am working against a tsunami of mess that two hobbits can create in a very short space of time!