Dbee Robinson Artist - The Fat Struggling Menopausal Artist

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 ...

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-...

  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 - cho...

  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 commen...

Pressure king pro 24 in 1 and Thermomix make the easiest tastiest bread ever and a super-fast pina colada microwave sponge  I wouldn't say I love cooking, but I do love eating. And anything that can make my life easier, and tastier works for me. So I have a small Microwave, a Thermomix (TM5) with a cook key, and a Pressure king pro 24 in 1 (PKP). Today I made Olive, sundried tomato, and red pepper bread with herbs and seeds, and after watching the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) cooking last night I had to make a pineapple upside-down cake. And as I had to make dinner too it was a busy day in the kitchen for me.  First I made the Hairy bikers low-calorie Sweet and Sour Chicken for lunch using my PKP by pressure for 15 mins cooking using the chicken setting. It was delicious and wasn't too sweet, and the vegetables did not disintegrate as they sometimes do when I slow cook.  Then, because of the GBBO, and I had half a can of pineapple leftover, from the sweet and sour chick...

 Best Buddies - Pressure King Pro 24 in 1 and my Thermomix TM5 I have had a Thermomix for a number of years. Starting with the robust TM31 and moving on to the larger TM5 with it's cooking chips, (no not potato chips but electrical recipes for the machine), and later upgrading with the aid of a cook key, to online recipes uploaded onto my machine for total ease of cooking. It's the most hard-working thing in my kitchen.... other than me of course.  My TM5 can weigh, cook, boil, simmer, stew, chop, mince, blend, mill, grind, knead, whisk, puree, and has automated white rice, custard and yogurt functions. You could also buy recipe chips for guided cooking which plugin to the machine for you to follow the recipe directly on-screen. And now with the use of a Cook key chip which links to the internet, I can download over 500 recipes directly into my TM5. What a team we make, especially during all this Coronavirus stuff when I am cooking all the time without even one take out. The ...

Black and White Cat with Bamboo I was once asked why my paintings were so expensive? It was for a Chinese painting titled 'Black and white cat with bamboo.' Its a large 46cm x 64cm framed watercolour and ink painting on rice paper that had taken many hours to paint in layers as well as traditional style backing with more rice paper and then framed. Now if I paid myself the minimum wage for the 25+ hours I had spent painting it would be far to expensive and no one would buy it, so I thought £65 was a good price. When I explained it was an original painting that wasn't mass produced but created with love and attention to detail in the traditional Chinese way they began to understand.  I then explained it didn't include all the years learning Chinese art techniques or the many hours and experiments that went wrong preparing and trialing this artwork, it was just for the materials, frame and approximate time spent on this artwork alone. They were then astound...

My Big little bro and gorgeous Sister in Law are visiting from New Zealand and there is a gathering at her Dads house. I'm so excited I could burst. We haven't seen them in 8 years and never met their son Jasper, who, I must add with pride, I helped name. As they are so into organic healthy living on this lovely planet, and do so as Environmentally friendly as they can for themselves and this beautiful place we call Earth, I felt his name should reflect this and suggested his second name be Forest which they chose.  The request for the gathering is for me to bring dessert or a cake so it was to be Caribbean carrot cake   easily made in my Thermomix. ..... or so I thought. now I always check the mix by tasting the batter but the mix tasted a little weird. I should have just stopped there and looked at what I had done but I stupidly did not.  One hour later the cake was removed from the oven and promptly sunk! To be honest I was pretty angry as there was a fresh pi...