How to Be Awesome

You don't need a Thermomix to be awesome. 

You just need some leftover veggies, herbs, sea salt, a couple splashes of olive oil and a blender or food processor. A glass jar, a fridge. 

You need to look at yourself naked, and be ok. Scars, floppy bits, all of it. You're you, and you're beautiful. 

You need to listen to your heart more, follow it whenever you can. 

You need to sleep, move, eat. Live and love like you're mortal, because you are. Grow things. See the way light strikes your world. Examine, feel, taste.

*

Awesomeness comes from the foundations - the basis, the stock. It pours up like water through a tree, so find your roots and nourish them. 

Whatever you need to be awesome - that's what you need. Nothing more. 

*

So stand at the stove. Watch the water bubble off the bottom of the pot, stir in the veggie paste, tip in the skewers of pasta or the hard kernels of rice. Wait, and they will soften, pull in the flavour of the stock and the salt; absorb it. They will take it in and transform, become their better selves, truer somehow. 

Watch it happen. 

Amanda xx

Veggie Stock Concentrate

like the stuff you make with a Thermomix, only without the Thermomix

Ingredients

700 grams raw mixed veggies - offcuts, extras, scrubbed peels, random bits

a handful of mixed fresh herbs

1-2 cloves garlic

150 grams sea salt (I like Maldon)

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Process

I first saw this veggie stock concentrate at a friend's Thermomix demo and had to steal the recipe. (I found a great one here.) I don't have a "Thermie" but I do have a super-powered blender, which easily smoothes up the veggies. You'll need to have a good food processor or blender for this recipe because we don't dilute it with water - that's the point, actually. It's a concentrate, full of flavour and salt*.

*On that note, DO NOT skimp on the salt, even if it seems excessive when you measure it out - it keeps the concentrate fresh and seasons the food perfectly. 

Just blend all your fresh, raw, clean, chopped veggies and herbs and garlic and oil and salt into a paste, store in the fridge (or in cubes in the freezer); it'll keep for weeks (or longer). 

Use it for everything - 1 Tbs per 500mL of water.  

Life-changing. Seriously.