Just a heads up for those considering the Aldi (Crofton branded) cast iron. It is very good and an excellent price but it is the heaviest cast iron I've ever encountered. If you're looking at it in the shop pick it up and imagine hefting it in and out of the oven for example. I was donated an item from an older relative who found it too heavy to use.

I recently bought an immersion sous vide and have been having a pretty good time with it. I think perhaps some forum members would be interested in them. Certainly not for everyone and a bit different but I think it compliments the thermomix nicely.

See:
http://anovaculinary.com

So far I've cooked:
- vegetables - beans, carrots, corn and beetroot at 83c. The beans were ok, better boiled really but the carrots, corn and beetroot were excellent.  Evenly cooked and very tasty.
- chicken liver mousse at 68c for 1.5 hours- mixture blended in thermomix then put in jars to sous vide. This was amazing and really easy because there is no risk of overcooking in the sous vide
- steak at 55c for 1.5 hours - best way to cook steak for a steak sandwich. Won't cook it any other way again! It went quickly onto the bbq to sear after it came out of the water. My butcher kindly vacuum sealed the steaks for me.
- chicken breast at 63c for 1.5 hours - this was cooked absolutely perfectly. I browned it at the end in a frying pan. Definitely a good way to cook chicken breast so that it doesn't dry out or get too stringy. I put each one in a zip lock bag as I didn't feel like getting the vacuum sealer out.
- pork chops at 60c for 1.5 hours - these didn't turn out that well as the pork was still quite tough. We aren't generally that fond of pork chops so that probably didn't help either. Won't bother doing them again.

Going to try minced chuck steak burger patties next. And I haven't done eggs yet!

The most helpful online information is from serious eats (the food lab)
http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab

I've now made these many times and the recipe always works perfectly. The batter keeps well in the fridge too.

For thin crepes good for eating as they are cooked I use 1/4 cup of batter per crepe in a 20cm crepe pan. For slightly thicker crepes good for keeping and wrapping arounds things I use 1/3 cup in the same size crepe pan. I get 12 crepes from the full recipe using 1/3 cup of batter per crepe.

Discovered a very easy dessert using these crepes that keeps at least 24 hours in the fridge:

ingredients
Cooked crepes (one per serve)
2 strawberries per serve
3 slices mango per serve
2 teaspoons lemon curd per serve (I make a half quantity of Tenina's from FFS)
1 teaspoon double cream per serve

method
For each serve put one teaspoon of lemon butter and one teaspoon of double cream in the centre then swirl these together to make a rectangle about 4cm wide and 10cm long in the middle of the crepe.  Put a slice of mango down each long side of the  cream and lemon butter mix and then three strawberry halves down the middle. Then roll up the crepe and put into a dish with the ends down. You can stack the rolled crepes on top of each other and they will be fine. Chop the remaining fruit into a smallish dice and mix it together.

To serve, put a teaspoon of lemon butter on top of each crepe then evenly distribute the chopped fruit on top of the crepes.

Thanks for this recipe. I had great success with it as a single and double quantity.
The breads puff beautifully and I found them fairly easy to roll on a lightly oiled board.
I dusted the first one of each lot with a small amount of polenta and cooked them individually on a pizza stone in the oven.   
We ate them with Greek inspired butterflied lamb /garlic yoghurt sauce / cucumber and tomato mix.

It was quite a different feeling dough and seemed not to rise a lot. Dont be put off by this.

The thing With the GG and the thermomix...

We're probably spending more tax payer dollars working out whether or not we should buy a thermomix than the actual cost of the thermomix.

Aside from that though, the thermomix isn't being purchased for the GG's personal use. It's for the kitchen in Government House. That kitchen caters for a very very large proportion of international dignatories that visit the national capital.  The vast majority of entertaining prime ministers, presidents, diplomats and senior figures from other nations happens at Government House. This is one of the key locations where Australia gives important figures in the rest of the world an impression of itself.

Unfortunately, because of the extreme hesitance of spending money on this facility (partly due to over-zealous media coverage) Government House looks like a late 80s/early 90s brothel.

Last time I went to an open day at Government House the carpet in the main lounge was horribly stained and the colour theme in the dining room was mint green and coral. The kitchen hasn't been updated for decades.

Yes it is all tax-payer dollars, but $2000 for a thermomix in the kitchen at Government House pales in comparison to some of the other tax-payer dollar wastage. 

I'm currently waiting for Thermomixers Pea & Ham soup to cook. I was really annoyed that I couldn't find any ham or bacon bones. I found these smoked bacon bones from C*les but it contained nitrate and there is no meat at all on them. I think they fed them to the dogs before packaging them up, but I bought them as I had everything else needed. Does anyone know if you can buy nitrate free bacon in butchers or is that more of a farmers market thing? or is there no such thing as nitrate free bacon (I just don't like the sound of it)

I'd try Mondo's, Torres (Lake St) or Elmars in Perth. Having said that, it's hard to commercially produce bacon products without nitrates and/or nitrites. Making your own bacon is fairly straight forward. See not quite nigella' website.  I have had great success with her homemade bacon recipe using a Weberq and a smoking box.  Does require fridge space and a bit of patience and time though. Happy to provide more advice to anyone interested.

Great advice above. An additional recommendation (particularly for non-essential items you pack early) is to make a list of what is in each box and give the box a unique identifier. This makes it easier to unpack because you can work out the best order in which to open boxes and leave non-essential items til the end.  Also helps if you need something that is still packed, you can go directly to that box.  I write the unique identifier on the top of the box and every side so it is easy to see no matter what way the boxes are stacked. It does take a little bit of extra time but I have also used the list at times to help calculate contents value for insurance so it does serve a couple of purposes.

Perhaps keep in mind too that you will probably need twice as many boxes as you think . Use good boxes, particularly for items that may stay packed away for some time.

I made a Jaegermeister version of these for an octoberfest celebration. Worked well but I would double the amount of Jaegermeister next time.

Have also made a version with 1 cup of stout reduced down to about 50 ml to be used in place of the liqueur. Also worked quite well.

I recommend chilling the mix overnight before rolling into balls.