THE SHOPPING THREAD :-)

[mcmich]

Some lovely card making supplies - a necessity for me. I'm loving isolation 

[Cuilidh]

Marina, great idea.  We are lucky, we have a family of Geeks, big and little. 
A word of warning.  Last week I found a scam on my IPad.  Telstra account.  Said they were unable to direct debit my account. I smelt a rat as there was a spelling mistake/ typo in the message.  I rang the bank and they were pretty sure it was a scam.  What a waste of time.

Those scam letters can be confronting, especially if they relate to something you do or a company you deal with.  We get heaps here at work, I always look at the email address first and if it doesn't look as if it is related to somewhere or someone I deal with I know immediately that it is a scam.  Other than that, spelling and grammar are always give always.  Once or twice they have been so convincing I actually rang the company from whom it purportedly came to clarify the situation before I opened the email.  Twice they were scams, once it was genuine.

[cookie1]

Well done on spotting the scam Chookie. Thank goodness we have a Geeky DD. She can be very helpful.

[mcmich]

Picked up a bargain today off gumtree, enough new wall tiles for the g/flat bathroom - $15.
Moving house and didn't want to take them with them. Keeping an eye out for a bigger hot water cylinder.

[cookie1]

Well done. 

[achookwoman]

Michele, that’s a bargain.
Was given an Etsy voucher.  Need help in using it.  Finally ordered custom made jam labels. 

[judydawn]

Great buy Michele.

[mcmich]

Bought this home today. A Thermomix 6 (second hand). We went to the police station to get permission to travel more than 50km and was told that it was ok to travel within NSW now. We had to pick it up at Lake Cathie, about 30 mins south of Port Macquarie. A,  2 and half hour drive for us. So happy. Got thermoservers as well - don't know if I will use them. I haven't sold my TMX 5 yet, so will be able to enjoy them both for now.

[K Atie]

Wow that’s a great shopping outing! Congratulations.

[achookwoman]

Well done, Michele.  Looking forward to a report.

[JulieO]

Congratulations McMich, looks like a good buy.  Enjoy having your 2 machines for the time being.  I made a curry in one last night and cooked the rice in the other so they were ready at the same time.  Of course it's not necessary, but very handy. 

[cookie1]

How very exciting Mich.

[achookwoman]

Michele,  what did you cook?

[mcmich]

Michele,  what did you cook?

I tried your no fuss recipe, proving in fermentation mode. I just winged it - no sucess. JulieO was sucessful. I didn't follow any instructions as I couldn't find any. Then made Louise Keats ginger bundt cake. It was great, just didn't grease and flour enough.

[JulieO]

McMich, Bundt pans can be tricky especially the intricate ones.  I read a tip a while ago and that was to use a good amount of non-stick spray then upend the pan onto sheets of kitchen paper so the excess could run off. 
I’ve also used cake release before (recipe on this forum) which is good too but for the pans with lots of little nooks and crannies a spray is easier to get into them.  Good that you could salvage your cake though.

Regarding the Ferment mode, I thought it was only for incubating yoghurt really so it wasn’t something I’d looked into, but I saw a post last week on fb where the person included the link to the recipe below (from UK Cookidoo) for ciabatta rolls which has the method of proving the dough using Ferment mode.  It piqued my interest and so I made the rolls the other day. 

The recipe uses cold water and only ¾ tsp yeast so I guess that explains the 2 hour proving of the dough and there was only 1 rise.  Anyway the recipe explains how to do it (prove the dough in the Varoma) which I did and it worked great, was really happy with that.  I then shaped the dough into ‘slippers’ and they went into the oven straight away without a second rise.  When baked they lost their shape and looked like a tall round misshapen roll.  I didn’t like the consistency of the bread either and thought there was too much bread to one roll, maybe made smaller might have been better but I wasn’t interested enough to try again.
 
I thought about it later (as the original poster was happy with theirs) and the only thing I could think of that I did different was (and maybe Chookie might know),  I didn’t add the amount of salt that was stated in the recipe (12g fine salt).  It seemed far too much to me, I added 1 tsp. 
Would adding more have stopped the rolls from rising as much in the oven and would that amount of salt have made larger holes in the bread?  Mine were more like normal rolls on the inside.

I will use the Ferment next time I make a loaf of bread but I will only set it to prove for 1 hour (or stop it whenever it has doubled). I'll use the usual warm water/more yeast/2 rises that I’m more familiar with and see how that goes. I think/hope it will be a great asset over winter. 

Don’t be disheartened McMich, it’s a great machine even if we have failures now and then when using new methods, that’s how we learn.

Hope this link works alright for you,  If it doesn't, you may need to uncheck Australia in the filters and then it should come up.

https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r537738