Time has a strange habit of speeding up during the week.
Monday morning arrives with good intentions and a neatly organised diary, and then suddenly it’s Wednesday evening, someone is hungry, the fridge door is open and I’m wondering how we got here quite so quickly.
Working full time while juggling family life means I don’t have hours each evening to decide what to cook, prepare ingredients, make dinner and then face a kitchen that looks as though a small culinary cyclone has passed through it.
I love good food. I love making things from scratch. I just don’t love spending my entire evening doing it. And that is probably one of the biggest ways my Thermomix® has changed our week.
It doesn’t magically add another hour to the clock. Some days I wish it did. Instead, it helps me make much better use of the hours I already have. And for me, that starts before Monday even arrives.
A little organisation buys me a lot of time
I have written before about how I plan our meals for the week by looking first at what is already in the fridge, freezer and pantry before deciding what we are going to eat.
That one habit saves me time, money and the nightly mental gymnastics of trying to invent dinner at 5:30 pm.
But planning the meals is only half the story. The next step is getting ahead.
I like to spend a little time preparing ingredients for the week so that when workdays become busy — because inevitably they do — part of the work has already been done.
It is a small investment of time that pays dividends all week.
Rather than opening the fridge to a collection of good intentions, I want to open it and see ingredients that are actually ready to use.
Lunches become almost automatic
One of my regular jobs is preparing cooked, shredded chicken for lunches.
Having a container ready in the fridge means lunches can quickly become wraps, sandwiches, salads or bowls without starting from scratch every morning.
I also prepare salad ingredients. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Carrots. Cucumber. Washed, chopped and ready to go.
Suddenly making lunch isn’t really making lunch at all. It is assembling it. And on a busy morning, there is an enormous difference between the two.
I will also grate tasty cheese and Parmesan so they’re ready when I need them during the week.
It’s hardly revolutionary. But this is where I think we sometimes underestimate time-saving.
We look for one enormous trick that will somehow transform our week, when often the real answer is a collection of tiny shortcuts.
Five minutes here. Ten minutes there. One less chopping board. One less grater. One less decision. Those minutes quietly gather together.
My Thermomix® becomes my preparation station
This is one of the jobs I don’t think gets talked about enough.
We tend to think of a Thermomix® as something that cooks dinner. But mine earns its bench space long before dinner.
Chopping vegetables quickly. Grating cheese. Shredding cooked chicken. Weighing ingredients. Preparing sauces and dressings. Mixing. Portioning. It becomes the engine room for the week ahead.
Even something as simple as having scales built directly into the machine makes a difference.
When I’m preparing meat for several meals, I can weigh portions accurately, place them into separate bags or containers and freeze the portions needed later in the week.
No separate scales. No guesswork. No digging through a large packet of frozen meat on Thursday night wondering why I didn’t separate it when I bought it.
Future me is always very grateful to organised me.
They don’t meet often enough.
Cook once, use it more than once
Another thing I try to do is think beyond a single meal.
If I am already cooking rice, for example, can I prepare enough for another dinner?
Can I cook something in the mixing bowl while using the Varoma® above it?
That ability to cook on different levels at the same time is one of those Thermomix® features that sounds quite simple until you start using it regularly.
Something can be cooking below while ingredients steam above.
One machine. More than one job. Less time. Fewer dishes.
That last point deserves considerably more attention.
Because saving twenty minutes cooking dinner only to create forty minutes of washing up isn’t much of a victory.
Using one appliance to weigh, chop, mix, cook and steam means there are often far fewer bowls, saucepans and utensils waiting for me afterwards.
And at the end of a long day, an empty sink feels almost luxurious.
My secret weapon: a folder called Fast Dinners
Inside My Recipes on Cookidoo®, I keep a collection specifically for those evenings when time is short.
My Fast Dinners folder.
Nothing complicated.
Nothing that requires me to begin preparations at lunchtime or remember to marinate something the night before.
Just recipes I know I can turn to when the day has run away from me.
Having that folder eliminates another hidden thief of time: decision-making.
We have all done it. Scroll. Scroll. That looks good. No, I don’t have that ingredient. Scroll. Too long. Scroll. Nobody else will eat that. Twenty minutes later, dinner still hasn’t started.
A collection of dependable quick meals means that when time is tight, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
I simply open the folder and choose.
When I do search, I make Cookidoo® work harder
Cookidoo® has an enormous library of recipes, which is wonderful — until you are hungry and faced with too many choices.
That is when the search filters become particularly useful.
I might begin with the type of meal I want:
- soup
- pasta and rice dishes
- main meat dishes
- vegetarian mains
- starters
- desserts.
But my favourite filter on a busy weeknight is time.
If it has been one of those days, I will often search for recipes with a total time of less than 30 minutes. Not preparation time. Total time.
Because a recipe described as having ten minutes of preparation doesn’t help much if it then cooks for an hour and a half. I want to know when dinner is actually arriving on the table.
I can also search according to the number of portions we need, which saves me opening recipe after recipe that isn’t suitable. And sometimes I work backwards from ingredients.
Chicken and sun-dried tomatoes are ingredients I often have on hand, so rather than starting with What should I cook?, I can start with:
What can I make with what I already have?
It is a subtle shift, but one that saves both time and food waste.
Guided Cooking means less mental clutter
There’s another kind of time saving that is harder to measure.
Mental time.
The Thermomix® TM7 uses Cookidoo® Guided Cooking to lead you through recipes step by step. That means I’m not constantly checking a cookbook. I’m not rereading step seven because I’ve forgotten what step six said.
I’m not balancing a recipe on the bench with one hand while stirring something with the other. Add this. Weigh that. Set the temperature. Continue. There is something wonderfully calming about being guided through the process.
Particularly at the end of a day when my brain has already made approximately four thousand decisions. Cooking becomes less about remembering everything and more about simply following the next step.
And sometimes that is exactly what I need.
And Cookidoo® is about to get even smarter
This is the part I am particularly excited about.
A new Cookidoo® Assistant is coming, using AI to make searching for recipes much more conversational and personalised.
Instead of trying to decide which filters to tick, you will be able to ask for what you actually need.
Things like:
“Give me a quick dinner that’s ready in 20 minutes.”
“I have chicken, spinach and eggs. What can I make?”
“Find me a one-pot meal.”
“I need a vegetarian dinner.”
Or even:
“Help me use up what is left in my fridge.” And then list your fridge items.
Vorwerk describes Cookidoo® Assistant as using AI to understand everyday questions, find suitable recipes and help narrow down choices more quickly. It can also use the ingredients you have available as part of that search.
And that interests me enormously. Because I don’t really need technology to make my life more complicated. I want technology that quietly removes friction. Fewer clicks. Fewer decisions. Less searching. A shorter road between:
“What on earth am I going to make?”
and
“Dinner’s sorted.”
That is useful technology.
I’m particularly looking forward to experimenting with it for fridge clear-outs — telling Cookidoo® what ingredients need using and seeing what it suggests.
That fits perfectly with the way I already meal plan: use what we have first, then shop for what we genuinely need.
Hands-off cooking changes the evening
There is also something wonderful about starting dinner and being able to walk away from it.
Traditional cooking often demands an audience. Stir this. Watch that. Turn the heat down. Check it isn’t sticking. Stir again.
Thermomix® can take over much of that repetitive work. It doesn’t mean I do nothing. But it does mean that while dinner is cooking, I can be doing something else. Getting things ready for tomorrow. Tidying the kitchen. Sorting washing. Taking my dog outside.
Or sometimes — revolutionary concept — sitting down.
The Thermomix® hasn’t removed cooking from my life. It has removed some of the hovering. And that gives the evening a little more breathing room.
It’s not about doing more
There is an irony in buying something that saves time.
It is very tempting to use every saved minute to squeeze in yet another task. Meal prep done? Excellent.
Let’s reorganise a cupboard.
Dinner cooking? Wonderful. Maybe I can answer six emails.
But increasingly, I think the point of saving time shouldn’t always be to do more.
Sometimes the point is simply to have more time. More time to eat dinner without rushing. More time to talk. More time to walk the dog before dark. More time to sit down before the evening disappears.
The Thermomix® doesn’t create that time by itself. It comes from dozens of little efficiencies:
- the vegetables already chopped,
- the cheese already grated,
- the meat already portioned,
- the rice cooking while something steams above it,
- the recipe already saved,
- the ingredients weighed directly into the bowl,
- the dinner that doesn’t require three saucepans,
- the recipe that guides me instead of making me think.
No single one of those things changes my life. Together? They change the rhythm of my week.
More time. Less chaos.
That is probably the simplest way I can explain what my Thermomix® gives me.
It isn’t just about cooking faster. It is about making the entire process — planning, preparing, choosing, cooking and cleaning — feel lighter. A little preparation at the beginning of the week means fewer frantic decisions later.
A collection of quick Cookidoo® dinners gives me somewhere to turn when plans fall apart. Guided Cooking removes some of the mental load. Multi-level cooking makes better use of the time I am already spending in the kitchen. And fewer dishes means I am not finishing dinner only to begin a second shift at the sink.
Because in a busy week, time is precious.
I don’t particularly want to spend mine grating Parmesan at 6:30 pm. If my Thermomix® can take care of that earlier — along with a dozen other little jobs — I’ll very happily take the time back.
I’d love to know…
What part of cooking steals the most time from your week — deciding what to make, preparation, the actual cooking or cleaning everything afterwards?
And if you already use Cookidoo®, do you have a collection of reliable recipes for those nights when you need dinner on the table quickly?
I’d love to hear what’s in yours.
Want to know more about the Thermomix® TM7?
I’m Nicole, a Thermomix® consultant in Australia, and I’m always happy to answer questions, share ideas and help you discover more ways to use your Thermomix®.
If you’d like more information about the Thermomix® TM7, a demonstration in person if you live on the Central Coast, NSW, or virtually Australia-wide, recipes, or advice on how it might fit into your home or travelling setup, I’d love to hear from you.
You can contact me using the Contact button on the blog homepage; click the Instagram or Facebook buttons at the bottom of the blog page to get in touch via Messenger or social media.
Ready to Buy a TM7
If you’ve been thinking about bringing a Thermomix® TM7 into your kitchen, you can order yours directly through me. From quick weeknight dinners and fresh bread to sauces, yoghurt, meal prep and so much more, it’s one appliance that earns its place on the bench.
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