I love early autumn.  It’s got the perfect combination of sun during the day and just a touch of coolness at night.  It’s warm enough for leisurely 4pm walks around the neighbourhood while the nights offer you the chance to succumb to the weight of your doona (as opposed to having to wrap it around you tightly in an attempt to vacuum pack yourself against the chill of a winter’s night).

As promised, here’s an update on the Veggie Twister I bought over the weekend.  It’s the Betty Bossy one and retails for $34.95.  There are two colour options – green and pink.

There are 3 pieces to the twister though you only use two of them at a time.  The make is solid and everything screws together for compact storage.  Sharp cutting blades are concealed in the base of each end unit.

To use, all you need to do is cut your vegetable into 6m lengths (so that they fit inside each end unit and can be tightly screwed up.  So far, I’ve only used the zoodle maker end.  The other cutting surface produces wider, chip like slivers of vegetable.

It’s so easy to use, provided your vegetable fits neatly into the 6cm long compartment.  I had to cut the sides off my wider segments of zucchini to enable them to fit properly and spiralize.

There is some wastage with these units, about the same as the pencil sharpener type units.

www.ebay.co.uk

For reference, these are examples of some other spiralizers on the market.  They range from the rather bulky (above) to the simple but potentially dangerous in households with young children (below).

My only mishap with the Veggie Twister was with that too wide chunk of zucchini but it was a quick problem to fix, just had to size it down.

These are my raw zoodles.  Minimal mess to clean up (by my lax standards), maximal zoodle output!

I parboiled my zoodles for 2 minutes before draining well and blotting with kitchen towel (to reduce sogginess when the zoodles got combined with my pasta sauce).

Many people eat them raw or else ‘blanch’ them by letting a hot sauce cook them on contact.  I find raw zoodles a bit harsh on my stomach which is why I fully cooked them.

Not what you’d call a dinner with a high level of food stylist input but the zoodles kept their shape and firmness in my spag bol, just like al dente pasta.

Their firm texture ensured that I didn’t miss my pasta and their being 100% vegetable saw me not getting post dinner pasta bloat.  I was surprised at just how filling my dinner was, sans pasta.  In case you were curious, Cookies and Kate is a great resource for zoodle recipes and cleaner eating in general.  Here’s a link to the next recipe I want to try – zoodles in a peanut sauce.  I’ve also heard good things about zoodle pad thai.

We leave for Singapore on Sunday which means that packing and organising the two of us had to start today.  First order of business was to track down Toddler SSG’s daycare blankie which was missing for most of last week.  I found it today and fingers crossed we still have it this Friday so that it can come with us on the plane.  Freshly laundered, of course.

Snacks and activities have been purchased.  I’m thinking that if everything in our hand luggage has to be double unwrapped before use, eight hours and 20 minutes is just going to fly on by.  I even got my sour cream and chives Grain Waves in a multi pack extravaganza of unnecessary packaging in honour of the flight.

We have Chupa Chups but sadly none are chocolate.

And Ovalteenies!  We have Ovalteenies!  These take me way back to my school snack days.  They were the closest thing we had to chocolate at the canteen.

www.mysupermarket.co.uk

Unless you were a border, of course.  In which case you had the vending machine at the boarding house.  Which had Europe’s Summer Rolls in them.  Might need some of these for the plane and beyond at the hotel in Singapore….

I don’t believe I even thought that!!  We’re going to Singapore for goodness sake!  A food capital of South East Asia.  Why would I even be sitting in my hotel room eating supermarket snacks from home?

Do you ever go overboard packing food for plane trips and destinations where food is the name of their game?  What do you bring?