Before I get started with my quick tale of two pizzas, I just want make a quick plea. Listen carefully. If you’re on facebook and your finger is about to click the mouse button to share a picture with some trite homespun bit of wisdom, take a moment. Think about what you’re posting. If it’s in Comic Sans, it’ll be bollocks. If it ends ‘97% of my friends won’t share it but TRUE FRIENDS WILL’ then don’t do it. If you actually think there’s some poor little bugger sat in a cancer ward somewhere with doctors standing busily counting likes on a facebook status, with the chemotherapy drugs collecting dust in the corner until a post gets over one million likes, then you’re an actual moron and should be shot with shitty shite.
I raise this because I logged onto facebook before and was confronted with a picture of what looked like a xylophone with a dog’s head on it and turned out to be something even worse – a starved and beaten dog. It was horrific and upsetting and I reacted the same way any decent human being would do by recoiling in disgust. The accompanying caption read ‘SHARE IF YOU ARE AGAINST ANIMAL CRULTY (sic) OR IGNORE IF YOU LOVE IT’.
I mean, what a bloody thing to come out with. First of all, if I was a lover of animal abuse, I don’t think I’d nail my colours to the mast (probably using a dog to bang the nails in) by announcing it on Facebook by actively deciding not to share something. Secondly, it’s an abhorrent thing to use such a shocking photo just to get more likes on a status. It’s like those chain letters that people used to get their clappers in a froth over way back when, only more sinister. Consider that before you share dross and put your friends in a difficult position.
Oh and whilst we’re on the topic of facebook again, if you happen to notice that your profile name contains anything other than your own bloody name, then send yourself to the foot of the stairs and have a think about what you’ve done.
Tonight’s recipe is a comparison – we were given a Musclefood pizza to try (chicken and pepper) as part of our smorgasbord of treats to take for a spin. The idea of pizza on Slimming World is enough to make anyone’s legs quiver, but realistically, you can’t have a ‘decent’ pizza unless you really blow your syns. However, this comes close to being acceptable and I’ll tell you why in a moment. But fear not: because I’m an impartial, generous guy – and also because I didn’t want to share my pizza with Paul, I made an alternative pizza-esque creation which is syn free and equally delicious. So you can make your mind up!
This is the Musclefood pizza, available here. It’s 10.5 syns for the whole pizza and actually isn’t bad! I was expecting something akin to sucking on a square of carpet but no, it tasted like a decent, thin-crust pizza. I’d cheerfully recommend hoying a couple in the freezer and then when you’re desperate for a bit of fast food, give them a whirl. They weren’t cheap with the meat, either. You need to understand that isn’t going to be the same as Dominos, and if you’re like us and when the pizza craving hits you need a pizza the size of a combine harvester’s tyre and more cheese on it than a tramp’s toe, this isn’t going to completely satisfy that itch. But if the ten syns stops you spending forty…
Of course, you can make your own – and I’ve come up with a syn-free version that you can wrap your bristly lips around. See?
to make our syn-free pizza, you’ll need:
- one WW (boo hiss) Love Fibre wholemeal wraps (look for the purple and blue packaging, as you can use this wrap as a HEB)
- a good handful of spinach
- a good handful of baby mushrooms
- 30g of goats cheese
- half a freshly grated clove of garlic
- quark
- caramelised onions (you’ll find my recipe for those right here!) or, if you can’t be fucked on making those (although it’s totally worth it), just some thinly sliced red onion
to put it all together:
- thinly slice the mushrooms and drop them into a dry frying pan to let them sweat down
- add the spinach towards the end and wilt it down
- take enough quark to cover the wrap and add grated garlic, then spread it over the wrap
- add dollops of the jam or the red onion, small cubes of the goats cheese, then the spinach, then the mushrooms
- pop under the grill until the cheese has melted
- stuff it down your gob
Listen, you can chuck any old tut onto this pizza. Don’t like mushrooms? FINE. Use chicken. It’s just that easy.
I’m off to watch Bake Off and feel sad that I can’t EAT EVERYTHING.
J