Before we get started, can I just tell you something which made my piss rattle this morning – I was driving to work on a particularly bendy, twisty bit of road when some log-gobbler came hurtling towards me on the other side of the road, white BMW, naturally, easily doing 30mph more than she should have been – and she was PUTTING ON MASCARA. Mascara! At speed! I only noticed because she was doing that stupid jaw-on-her-tits mascara face that seems to be obligatory. I couldn’t believe it. The urge to turn my car around and ram it into the back of her shitwagon was immense. How dare she put people at risk on the roads just so she can walk around with big cow eyes? With any luck she’d crash into the River Blyth and impale her walnut brain on her Max Factor wand. Bah! I can’t begin to tell you how much it annoys me seeing people use their phones / do their make-up / complete a 1000 piece jigsaw whilst driving. It’s fine if you want to crash and die, but don’t take me with you just because you’re so keen to post ‘ROFL drivin on motoway mad tunes YOLO‘ on fucking facebook, you insipid tart.
Honestly. I was so angry I couldn’t finish my shave.
Anyway, it seems Paul may have been premature with his ‘but the bathroom isn’t leaking at all’ analysis, as the ‘tiny leak’ is clearly still growing. I’ve become fanatical about measuring the spread of this tiny leak – we’ve marked out the water stain on the chipboard in the hallway (we have carpet, but we pulled it up to view the leak, we’re not that common) and I find myself compelled to check it every time I go for a jimmy riddle I’m down on my haunches staring wildly at the floor. So doubtless that’ll need fixing, which is dreadful because it means having yet more workers in the house.
I can’t cope with other people in my house – I get annoyed when I see myself in the mirror, let alone burly men with rough-hewn hands fingering my coving. We’ve got someone coming to plaster all the ceilings in the house soon, finally getting rid of the fucking Artex that haunts our dream. You know how sometimes Artex can be applied delicately in gentle waves? Not ours. No, clearly the old biddy who lived here before had the Artex applied via a fucking fireman’s hose – I feel like a pea looking up at the top of an abandoned freezer. It’s awful.
We’ve also just had a man come round to see about painting the entire house – all the interiors, the doors, the skirting boards, plus the greenhouse, shed and massive fence that runs along the property. He immediately started asking questions about what type of paint I was wanting to use – I fear my non-macho answer of ‘a subtle white with a hint of colour’ has already set us off on a bad footing, because he looked at me witheringly and said ‘No, matt, gloss or satin’. Well I don’t bloody know, I’m very much a man who pays others to do anything taxing.
We’ve got someone coming to flush our radiators (not a euphemism) and another bloke coming to fit a new boiler, taking away the current boiler which I reckon was salvaged from Titanic. There’s a man coming to fit blinds and eventually there’ll be a scrap-man coming to take away various shite we’ve accumulated. The last scrap man spent ten minutes chewing my ear about not being able to work (pronounced wuuurk) because of a “bad back” whilst hoisting a fucking tumble-drier onto his flat-bed lorry like he was shotputting in the Olympics.
Finally, we’ve got carpet fitters coming to recarpet the entire house, which means the cats have a blank canvas to smear birds across and do secret pisses every now and then just to keep us on our toes. Or indeed, in amongst our toes. They’re generally very good cats who know to go outside, down the garden path and into next door’s garden where they can shit with gay abandon, but every now and then they’ll decide that really the only place worth anointing with half a litre of eye-watering cat piss is next to my shoes, or in a drawer, or, perhaps best of all, all over the top of the Sky-Box in a protest against hearing the Jeremy Kyle theme tune for the 655th time that week. We got rid of that cat in the end – she went to a better place. Under the wheels of my car. No no I jest, she’s up the road turning into a footrest with paws, remember?
So this means, for me at least, weeks of making awkward small talk and worrying that anything I say is going to look like I’m trying to seduce them in some kind of awkward Bangbus-esque scenario. Honestly, it’s something I probably shouldn’t worry about but I’ve seen too many jizzflicks to know this is how so many of them start. Plus I can’t make small talk so I stay away but then I worry about looking standoffish so I spend my time in such a state of anxious flux that I almost want to pay them just to go away. Urgh. So pray for me.
Tonight’s recipe is another meatball recipe, but I reckon this is the best beef meatball recipe yet – they come out soft, moist and packed full of flavour, and what more can you want from a meatball? Plus the thick, onion gravy is full of zip and the mash is…well, mash, but you get the drift. Serve with broccoli to keep it simple. I know you might not feel like meatballs, but listen, we’ve got air-conditioning in our house, we need this to keep from freezing. This meal serves a comfortable four people. It also makes your farts smell delicious.
you’ll need all of this:
for the meatballs:
- 500g lean beef mince
- 60g tomato puree
- 3 level tsp wholegrain mustard (1.5 syns)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
for the gravy:
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 250ml beef stock
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp gravy granules (1 syn)
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
for the mash:
- 5 large potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
- 125ml skimmed milk (1.5 syns, or HexA)
- 125g quark
- an egg yolk (optional)
- salt and pepper to taste
and you’ll need to do this:
- preheat the oven to 190 degrees
- mixing together all of the meatball ingredients in a large bowl
- shape the mixture into 30 evenly sized balls
- do a little dance
- place the meatballs onto a non-stick baking sheet (you can spray a little Frylight if you like, or stop being a loser and use some oil) and bake for about 20 minutes
- meanwhile, add the potato chunks to boiling water and cook until tender (about 20 minutes)
- make a little love
- mash together with all of the other mash ingredients, or to however you like it
- as those are cooking, prepare the gravy mixture
- get down tonight (ah-ha)
- in a large saucepan heat a little Frylight/oil over a medium-high heat and gently sweat the onion until it becomes translucent
- in a jug or bowl, mix together the stock, worcestershire sauce, gravy granules, salt and tomato puree
- add the gravy to the onions and stir until thickened
- add the meatballs to the gravy, coating them evenly and serve on top of the mash
- if you have delusions of grandeur, you can pop in a sprig of parsley and serve to the oohs and aahs of your adoring family
Enjoy! OH I’ll leave you with this.
J
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