If there was one thing I took away from my trips to America, aside from the desire to use a mobility scooter (with built-in cup holder) to go any distance further than 400m and a propensity for being slightly brash but oh-so-sweet, it was a taste for ranch dressing. On our last trip, after three weeks of constant theme parks, our bodies were crying out for anything that wasn’t in burger form or didn’t leave grease all over our beards. Hard to find in Disney! I remember seeing all those giant folks walking around chewing on what looked like a burnt leg. I had to get one, despite reading they were emu legs – they’re not, they’re from male turkeys, fact fans – but even I couldn’t finish it, and I’m used to packing a lot of hot meat into my mouth – I’ve been doing it for years!

So yes, Paul and I finally found a place called Ruby Tuesday’s, with a giant, fresh salad bar…and they had this dressing – ranch – and I’d never tried it before, but honest to God if I’m ever (god forbid) terminally ill and in a hospice, I want Make a Wish to come along and order the doctors to do a blood/ranch transfusion. I can’t get enough of the bloody stuff but it’s so high in fat, being made with buttermilk or sour cream as it is, so usually it’s a no-no Nanette on SW. That said, as a weigh in treat, we’ve used in the recipe below and spent a few syns on it, and I fully recommend you do too – it was a delicious meal, and for crying out loud, it combines cheese, chicken, bacon and potatoes – what more do you want? Note our token attempt at making it healthy on the side there with our salad.

Oh! Before I do the recipe, just a quick comment – thank you all so much for your lovely comments, it really means a lot to us! You might not see them appear right away as I need to moderate out all the porn links and spam we get sent (honestly, I wish my exes would just GET OVER ME haha), but I’ll always get to you! I do fret about appearing rude.

Recipe then, without any further delay:

to make slow-cooked chicken, bacon and cheese, you’ll need:

This is a slow cooker recipe – if you don’t have one, you could create a foil parcel and hoy it in the oven on very, very low for a while, but I don’t know the timings…

ingredients: potatoes – we used rainbow potatoes from Tesco, with a mix of different colours, cut up into thumb sized chunks (use your own measurements for the amount of potatoes you’d like, but we used 1.5kg and that made enough for four servings, two chicken breasts, six bacon medallions or rashers with the fat off, reduced fat cheese, ranch dressing (Newman’s Own), spring onions – and whatever you want on the side in your salad.

to make slow-cooked chicken, bacon and cheese, you should:

recipe: line your slow cooker with foil – you’re going to create a parcel of everything and cook it inside the parcel, so work that out. Actually, that’s a shite way of putting it, sorry! Cut up your chicken breast and bacon into chunks. Then it’s as simple as layering – potatoes, chicken, bacon, grated cheese, slices of spring onion, hoy it all together and add four tablespoons of ranch dressing. Cook on low for eight hours. Serve!

extra-easy: the syns come from the ranch dressing – Newman’s Own for 3 syns per level tablespoon. Now that’s LEVEL, not balanced on the spoon like dressing based Jenga. The cheese – you can have 40g of reduced fat cheese as HEA. I used 100g of cheese – again, split between four that’s nowhere near the HEA amount, so worry not!

Right – enjoy!

J