Dbee Robinson Artist - The Fat Struggling Menopausal Artist

  How to make Dbees Excellent Mince pies First, make the filling...this needs to be done months ahead, but if you forget, cheat and buy it, just hide the jar! Add an extra splash of your favourite brandy to the pre brought mix to give it that “home-made” aroma. Remember to taste the brandy first; you don’t want to spoil the mix now do you? No like sweet mince? No problem, use apple pie filling with a dash or two of Rum to make it your own style. Better taste the Rum too; you don’t want to spoil this mix either do you? Then it’s on to the pastry, now what was it? Half fat to flour, pinch of salt and add an egg; Easy Peasy. Or you can just buy that too, well it’s the thought that counts and you still have to roll it out don’t you, or you can buy the pre-rolled variety from your local supermarket. No rolling pin? No problem! I use a wine bottle. Problem solved. Now if it was filled with ice-cold water it would keep the pastry cool, but what to do with the wine? Just have a little taste an

Yet again my amazing kitchen duo has created the best cake ever leaving me time to trial a few butterflies on rice paper. Getting the paint consistency just right is always difficult so it's always best to do a few trial pieces first. Too thin and the paint bleeds into the paper, too thick and it causes issues later when backing the painting. All rice paper paintings require backing prior to framing as the paper is so thin. Click here ' Backing a rice paper painting ' to view an epic fail when backing a painting either too full of paint, damaged, etc. Anyway back to the best cake ever. I found a recipe online and adjusted it for my family's taste and to cook it in my new Ninja. Citrus Meringue cake using a Thermomix (TM5)  and baking in the Ninja smart lid (NSL) Note- Minutes (m) / Degrees (d) / Seconds (s) / speed (sp)  To save washing up, grind the orange and lemon peel for the cake in the TM5 first. 240g sugar and the peel from 1 lemon and 1 orange. Grind - sp9 / 8s

Well I never though I would say it but I just may have to. My new smartlid 15-1 Ninja is nearly as  amazing as my Thermomix. When I’m cooking, I open the lid like a kid a Christmas to see what’s inside. Is it cooked? Is it burnt? Have I got an hour of cleaning of the lid? But each time I use it I’m learning more and gaining confidence. Side by side they do most of the work and take out most of the chore in cooking amazing it easy and fast.  Today I cooked sausage, onions, veg and potatoes. The potatoes in the bottom, and using the double rack I put veg in the middle and the sausages and onions on the top. 250ml of water and 10 mins on steam air fry and it’s done. Seriously I thought after 10 mins I would turn the sausages, (the thin chipolata ones) but they were cooked already. So took out the rack and scooped out the potatoes tipped in some gravy thickener into the left liquid and switched to sauté for 2 mins. A little more listed added and the sausages and onions and switch to keep w

Started the day looking at a beautiful sunrise from my studio, and I love sunrises, well, who doesn't.  It reminds me that every day is a blessing and makes me feel positive and happy. It made me think of a book I have been listening to at night to help me sleep. It's called The Little Prince and it's about a pilot who crashes in the desert and meets a little prince from another planet. It's pretty weird to be honest, but cute and the author was a French pilot who did crash in the desert and survived to write this story. It's quite a famous book and the narrator, Humphrey Bower, speaks with such a soft voice it sends me to sleep in minutes, which is great as i'm a bit of an insomniac. Anyway, the little prince in the book loved sunrises and tries to be positive, just like I try to be. Anyway, after such a sunrise my day started on a positive note, and thought I would make a rice pudding with my glut of milk in the fridge. I made it similar to my previous multi-

Having had my Ninja Foodi MAX 15-in-1 SmartLid Multi-Cooker with Smart Cook System 7.5L for a week or so now and feel I am able to to give it some sort of review.  I have cooked a few meals, cakes and bread in it and pretty much pleased. The Steam Bake function makes my cake and bread fluffy and, dare I say the word, moist. I have also tried to cook crispy kale and to be perfectly honest i’m not so sure it’s worth the effort, as it took quite some time to pick out all the crispy kale from the fan in the lid.  The steam function was interesting too, as the vegetables were eventually cooked taking twice the time started in the manual, and the veg was charred. Not sure if that was meant to happen, but certainly not what I expected steam meal to be. But I may have used the wrong setting.  I must also add I have used my Ninja to reheat meals by heating them fast in the pot using the sauté function and then switching to slow cook. I checked with a cooking probe that the meal was above 80 deg

  I feel truly blessed that this is the view from my art studio today. What a glorious sunrise and start to the day. Nature’s colours are truly magnificent and I know no matter how many times I try to paint a sunrise or sunset I will never be able to do it justice. My Australian sunset  was inspired by the spectacular scenery in Australia. The moment I saw the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland I was stirred to paint a landscape that not only captured the moment but the awesome sunset.  But before I get to work in my studio today I am going to steam bake a cake in my new smartlid ninja. Seriously, who knew you could steam bake a cake? And with so many apples from my tree it’s going to have to be an apple cake. This one I created is a little like a carrot cake but with apple to keep it moist, (is it just me that hates that word, moist?) lol. I chop my apple in my Thermomix and squeeze out some of the juice, but you can grate it too.  Apple cake .  4 apples - chopped finely or grated 13

  As we were down the allotment again this morning a fast and easy dinner was the order of the day. I made a  Coconut curry  recently in my New Smartlid Ninja, and so I thought to reheat it using the slow cooker function. I got it reasonably hot using the saute function and then switched to Slowcook, HI, 4 hours, but as the curry was already cooked I knew just a couple of hours would suffice. However, I have no idea what the temperatures are for slow-cook and have contacted Ninja Customer services to clarify. We completed our tasks down the allotment and I brought home some chard to slice and add to our curry. I checked the temperature to make sure it was safe and above 80°c and hubby put on an episode of the original Thunderbirds series 'The end of the road' for us to watch while we ate. Have you seen the original Thunderbirds? They are stories made for children using puppets set in the 2060s. However if you really look closely at the scenery, clothing, props and storylines th

I have an allotment which, now i’m semi retired, I can actually enjoy and get things done. But in order to spend enough time down there to do all the things necessary today, dinner will need to cook itself, so Spaghetti bolognese in my smart lid Ninja with its slow cooker setting it will have to be.  Spaghetti Bolognese I set the Ninja slider to Airfry/Hob and set the dial to Sauté to cook 500g pork mince, 2 onions and 2 garlic cloves. Adding a chopped carrot, celery stick and courgette. (As I still have soooooo many to use up courgettes are in everything I cook at the moment even cakes!)  After about 5 mins I added a tin of tomatoes, 300ml stock , 1/2 green pepper, dash of Worcestershire sauce, glug of port, 1 bay leaf, 1tbl oregano, and as we love spicy food I added come chilli pepper too.  A quick stir and set the dial to Slow cook, Hi, 4 hours. Well that was simple and quick for a slow cook.  We then stripped all the apples off the tree and stacked all the perfect ones carefully in

  Today's Smartlid Ninja dinner is a Vegetable coconut curry. (recipe below) I forgot to get it started early to use the slow cook function but as I have made this in a pressure cooker many, many times before, speedy pressure cooking it will have to be.  However pretty worried my calculations are incorrect as I couldn't find a Ninja recipe anywhere, well until I started writing today's blog whilst it cooks in the kitchen and there it was, as soon as I googled it, a vegetable stew but in another type of pressure cooker. Their time states 30 mins, but I have set mine to 15mins at low pressure with a delayed-release. To be honest I have no idea why I even chose low pressure or delayed-release?? It's just dragging out the pain wondering if the dam curry is going to be cooked in time. Only time will tell and possibly bite me on the bottom for not getting it sorted sooner as, thanks to Covid, Hubby comes home to dinner every day. Not because his canteen is closed, but because

  I have found it quite difficult to find recipes for this new machine, even the recipe book is a bit confusing so thought I would have a Julie moment and post a recipe a day on my blog.  What is a Julie moment? It is from that fabulous film ' Julie & Julia ' where Julie recreates recipes from Julia's cookbook and blogs about it. It's a great film and if you haven't seen it already give it a look-see. However please note Julie Powell is a great writer and to be completely honest I am not really a great blog writer, more bog writer, but I will do my best for you all. First I had to clean all the parts as requested in the instructions. Oh my, what a pain that was and I was starting to regret my purchase before I had even cooked anything! After cleaning the seal in the lid I couldn't get it back in its place.  It was like wrestling a mini boa constrictor through chicken wire while looking up under a car.  It took me 15 minutes and a grazed knuckle, due to a sha

  It’s been like a scene from ‘ The Big Bang Theory ’ in my house recently. The one where they were trying to book tickets for Comic Con. Constantly checking and pressing the keys on a computer to get what they wanted. ( Click here for a sneak peak )  I too have been constantly checking daily, almost hourly for the past month waiting for something to finally be on sale in the UK.  What is it I hear you ask…… art supplies, fabulous jewels, amazing clothes?  Nope, it’s a new kitchen appliance. My previous multi cooker had a cooking fit, not a Big Bang, it just  decided to spray Mulled wine and seedless blackberry jam all over my kitchen. (Not a Ninja I must add, but the manufacturer took it back and gave me a full refund immediately) It took 2 hours to clean up, including removing splatter from the ceiling! And thanks to the Havant Repair Cafe fixing my morphic chair I was able to reach the ceiling safely. If you want the jam recipe message me below in the comment section.  I can almost

Now I know many will find this sad, but I love spreadsheets. Mainly because I forget things easily and spreadsheets have formulas that work things out for me so I don't have to think too much. And so I have created my spreadsheet world. My first spreadsheet logged all our DVDs in alphabetical order and split into various genres, kids, chick flick, action, comedy etc. I often grab dvds from charity shops. By having a list on my phone that's easy to view, it stops me from buying ones I already have. It also makes it easy to choose a video to watch, depending on what mood we are into what genre to watch rather than hunt in a cupboard. Then came my Personalised Calendar with our family birthdays and pictures added. This only came about as one year I couldn't find the type of calendar I wanted, but has become the norm. I just love choosing pictures from the current year of memories for the following year. Then, as I found it so difficult to price my paintings, my Artwork spread