Well hi! Now I know you’ve come here for the roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta, and who could blame you? It’s stunning, it’s brave, it’s fabulous, but then so are your twochubbycubs. And whilst we would love to give you that roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta without delay, that’s not our style. If you’re champing at the snatch for the recipe then just scroll down to the photos, as ever, and it’s right there, a roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta ready for your lunches or evening meals. Wondering if I can shoehorn roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta into an opening paragraph in any other ways? Well, there’s one more.
The admin first: thank you, oh so very much thank you, to everyone who has been buying our books and cooking our delicious recipes! Even better, this time around you’re going crazy on social media posting the results of your toil in the kitchen. You need to know that there’s no greater pleasure than seeing eighty-seven chicken alfredos when I open my Instagram feed. It breaks up all the photos of fat men pouting in their knickers but does make having a quick hand-shandy that bit more difficult: I’m usually starving by the time I’ve slicked my knuckles. If you’re on Instagram, make sure to tag us into your stories and shots – we see them all and try to comment where we can, and it really does make things worth doing! We do love you all. If you’re loving the book, please do leave us a review on Amazon, it all helps – and you can buy it below if you’re a bit slow.
Now, today’s writing is actually an excerpt from our ‘about us’ page, which we noticed we hadn’t updated since 2016. You can read the full story of us right here or indeed, wait until the more salacious details hit The Daily Sport. 2016 seems like so long ago, it really does: the things we thought we’d never do: release a cookbook, travel the world, drop our knickers in lorry-parks. When we updated the page it didn’t send a post email out to everyone, and because I demand attention, I’ve decided to include the bit about each other below.
twochubbycubs: James (the writer)
We have experimented with each writing the other’s bio, but frankly, Paul doesn’t put the same level of sass into mine that I desire and so, I’m writing my own. My name is James, I’m 35, six foot two and described, entirely by my own making, as a walking B-Side Pet Shop Boys lyric. Growing up I wanted to be a pilot (but was scared of flying and came from a village where they still scream at the metal dragons when they fly over), a vet (until I put my hand up a sheep’s vagina, though I must stress it was a consensual and monitored situation: I was helping a friend deliver a lamb), an actor (still keeping that one in the bank) and a writer. I’ve always wanted to write ever since a teacher back in middle school graded my mock English Language SATS at a never-before-seen-in-our-school grade 8 – the sense of pride I felt never left me, though I’ll confess to Ms Westgarth (my favourite ever teacher) right now that the piece of fiction I submitted was almost a word for word recap of The X-Files Movie. It feels good to get that off my chest.
My favourite colour is blue (eyes, humour and the lips of my lovers), my favourite band is Muse (too many angsty teenage break-ups involved me sniffling into my long hair to the sounds of Unintended), I’m submechanophobic, mildly trypophobic and a dreadful hypochondriac. I hold my breath when I get in a lift to see if I can make it all the way to my desired floor without passing out. I’m a firm believer in being open about my mental health and long-time readers will know that for all the mettle in my writing, if I’m struggling, I’ll talk about it, because not enough people do. I have four regrets in life with only one that I’ll discuss here: I spent far too much of my life worrying what people think of me. If I could spread one message it would be one of loving yourself, and not in the masturbatory way – though that’s just marvellous too. My confidence now is a relatively new thing and stems entirely from realising that I genuinely don’t give a fuck what the average person in the street thinks I look like, an epiphany that came too late to stop me turning down all sorts of fun situations, both debauched and wholesome. If I could speak to my younger self it would only be to reassure him that he wasn’t a gargoyle and to encourage him to cut his hair short a bit sooner. Nowadays, although admittedly I am prone to periods of introspection when the right person says the wrong thing, I just don’t care. Try it – focus only on those that matter.
Heavy stuff, but then, so am I – I’ve battled with my weight all my life, alternating between one extreme to the other as a hairy Schrödinger’s Fat. When I’m skinny I miss my belly and when I’m fat I miss my toes. At the time of writing I’m back at the stage where you’d deliberate over getting into a two-man tent with me, but I’m happy enough with that. I’m rarely cold and I’m told my gently bobbing boobs are wonderful to sleep upon, plus, I’m now at the age where I can grow a beard, get a paw-print tattoo and market myself as a bear in the gay world. That’s where the cubs part of twochubbycubs is from, by the way – a cub is a young, hairy gay bloke.
I suppose, given I’m now handing over to Paul for his bit, a little about the other, better half of me. I rag Paul out something terrible on here, always making jibes about his weight or his laziness or his inability to order food without embarrassing himself or his insistence on voiding his bowels whenever we go anywhere or his silly rollerskate car or the fact he owns eighteen lumberjack shirts of varying shades of green and blue or the terrifying truth that his mother looks like Zelda from Terrahawks eight months into a meth addiction or the fact he still can’t tie his laces properly and ducks them into the side of his shoes or even that he literally only listens to Tracy Chapman or the small detail of his whistling nose when he sleeps or, whilst we’re here, the fact he chuckles to himself in deep slumber whenever he breaks wind and let’s not forget whilst we’re on a roll the slight vexatiousness of his incapability of making a decision and for good measure can we please talk about the fact he will nod agreement to anything I say and then say what afterwards the same way my nana used to or even the little way he gets himself literally addicted to Sinex Micromist leaving our bedside table awash with camphoric vapour, but I truly can’t imagine a life without him. He rolls (usually buttered) with all my verbal punches and not a single day goes by without him making me laugh. He’s a good egg, both metaphorically and physically, though I take pains not to let any of you know lest you steal him away.
JX
twochubbycubs: Paul (the cook)
Oh bloody hell, my go. Okay, well, I’m Paul – 34, five foot something and I guess you could describe me as the brains, body and face of the blog. I’m much more a ‘behind the scenes’ kind of guy so as much as you might see James pouting away on the feed, I’m lolloping around there somewhere, likely scraping out the crispy bits from the bottom of the Actifry and grinding multivitamins into his tea. As you’ve probably heard us say loads of times I’m the ‘cook’ and do most of the ‘recipe development’ if we’re going to go all fancy-dan about it. I make the stuff, then James goes on and makes everything look pretty, and serves it all directly into your brain. I think it’s a perfect partnership that works amazingly well, even if I do spend 20% of my time trying to bore a hole into the back of James’ head with my eyes for not using bin liners.
I grew up in a boring little village practically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sugar beet and burning pig carcasses. Growing up I wanted to be a wrestling team’s ‘relief’ but Connexions didn’t have a leaflet for that, so instead I went with my second choice to work doing the lights for travelling concerts. Of course, being me and scatty and mashed on 20/20 I ended up doing fairly tedious admin jobs until I found a job I actually love doing. Favourite colour? Green. Favourite singer is of course my Tracy Chapman. Voice of angel and the only woman I’d turn for.
As you may be able to tell I’m really quite shy so talking about myself doesn’t come easily. I work full-time in a hospital doing all sorts of things that are tremendous fun but will make your eyes glaze over if I explained it to you. All you need to know is that I look just as dumpy in a pair of polyester scrubs as I do in real life. Imagine an apple crumble poured into a sandwich bag. I suppose I’m a bit more stoic and practically-minded than James – I tend to just get on with things whereas he’ll dream up ideas. Again, together, I reckon we make it work really well. We’re excited to see where twochubbycubs go from here. It’s amazing but a weird feeling to think that just a few years ago we were pulling together these blog posts to share with you all – taking photos on an old iPad in our shitty beige kitchen on our black Wilkos dinner plates. Some of our early stuff makes me cringe so hard my urethra burns, but then going through them it’s brilliant to see how we developed and grew into what we are now. It’s like an html version of marking your kids height on a doorframe.
We might not be the biggest or the best, but damn it, I reckon we do alright – and if you’re reading this I hope you do too! I started all of this not being a confident cook at all – I could barely cook a tin of beans – but just gradually, over time, the more I did the basic things like chopping an onion (without lopping off a fingertip) and searing some beef (without it becoming cremated) we got a bit better and a bit better. To think that we’ve now got cookbooks is something I NEVER would have thought would happen. But here we are! Cooking is something that had never really been of any interest to me and most definitely wasn’t anything that came naturally. The blog was borne out of James’ need to write (and my need for him to be away from under my feet) so to share the labour I’d agree to at least attempt to cook, while he wrote the spiel around it and so the cookery part was pure necessity. Having twochubbycubs means that I’ve been able to learn, entirely from scratch, a brand new skill, and I’m so grateful for it. I’m hoping I get to also grow a heaving bosom like wor Nigella.
Unlike James I’ve been fat all of my life, never really venturing outside of the ‘obese’ category until recently when we went on This Time Next Year. After always being a big boy I find it really difficult to get out of the mindset and bad habits. Having this blog and all of our various challenges over the years has allowed me to find a good routine that works for me, and although I’m not perfect at sticking to it I’m getting better. At the very least, I know exactly what *doesn’t* work for me which is about half the battle. A combination of lockdown, long COVID, living in a hotel and just general ennui means I’ve fallen off the wagon quite a bit, but I’m working back to get to where I was. Learning where you go wrong and getting back on track is all part of the process.
So, yes. That’s me. You won’t see or hear much of me but I am here, beavering away! You’ve got a much better bit of eye candy in James anyway so enjoy it as much as I do. He’s got a lovely arse. For all that we bicker sometimes he’s the cherry to my Lambrini and I couldn’t be without him and twochubbycubs just wouldn’t be here without him and his genius ideas, and actually being the one that gets things from our hob out there to you, which he does almost single-handedly. And for that, I have now almost forgiven him for giving me the clap on our first date.
PX
Still with us and haven’t managed to bring your dinner up yet? Here’s us through the ages!
OK, that’ll do pig, that’ll do. If you want to read the full article and have some time to spare, take a look here.
Let’s do the recipe then: I present roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta!
roasted pepper, chorizo and mushroom pasta
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 2 massive portions
If you wanted to make this a veggie recipe (and syn free), you could easily leave out the chorizo. We add chorizo to everything because we're filthy slatterns and honestly I'd brush my teeth with it if I didn't think my dentist would bang me out for it.
Paul doesn't like mushrooms as a rule but is absolutely fine with them in this.
This is another recipe from Hello Fresh that we've adjusted slightly for Slimming World. We're using Hello Fresh whilst our house is being rebuilt and honestly, we love it. If you want to give them a shout follow this link and you'll get £20 off, and also send £20 our way too! We're back home within a month - our own recipes will resume soon - but this way we don't need tonnes of space in our hotel room for all the kitchen bits!
Ingredients
- 150g of mushrooms, thinly sliced
- 200g of spaghetti
- two large red peppers, sliced thinly
- one tsp of garlic puree
- 50g of chorizo, diced (6 syns)
- one tbsp of tomato puree
- one tin of chopped tomatoes with garlic
- bunch of chives, chopped
- 100ml of water with a vegetable stock cube in it
Instructions
- heat the oven to 200 degrees
- pop the pepper slices in a bowl with a little bit of oil, tumble them about and then spread onto a tray for the oven, coating with a good dash of salt and pepper - roast them for twenty minutes, turning halfway
- meanwhile, cook your spaghetti until cooked and drain
- in a large frying pan (no oil, use the chorizo oil), cook the mushrooms and chorizo until the mushrooms are softened and golden brown and the chorizo cooked
- add the garlic, tomato purees, tomatoes and stock
- simmer until thick and glossy, about five mins
- add the roasted peppers and cooked pasta and stir like the absolute buggery - you want everything coated
- serve, topping with cheese (if you want) and the chives
I know, we're fabulous.
Notes
Recipe
- leave out the chorizo if you want a veggie or syn free version
- swap chives for chilli flakes if you prefer heat
- add sundried tomato paste if you want to ramp up the tomatoey-ness of it - I don't know it's that is a word, but I don't care, so you crack on young lady
Books
- our new cookbook is getting rave reviews but then, of course it is: 100 slimming recipes to help you save time and feed your family - order yours here!
- our first slimming cookbook can be also ordered now – full of 100+ slimming recipes, and bloody amazing, with over 5000 5* reviews – even if we do say so ourselves: click here to order
- our new diet planner is out and utterly brilliant – you can order it here – it'll keep you going through the next six months!
Tools
- get a Microplane grater for the garlic - you'll never look back
- give the pan a good coating of oil with a mister – this is what we use
Courses dinner
Cuisine Italian I guess, but who can say?
Snazzy!
Want more pasta recipes? Sure thing sugarboobs:
- perfect beef mince biryani (syn free)
- bacon and egg breakfast fried rice (syn free)
- peppers, herb and feta salad with roasted mushrooms (syn free)
- the perfect lunchtime tabbouleh (syn free)
- chicken and mushroom one-pot paella (syn free)
- best ever spaghetti bolognese (syn free)
- fresh bbq sauce (syn free)
- tomato mix pasta with feta (syn free)
- garlic, lemon and parmesan linguine (syn free)
- bolognese and sluts spaghetti (syn free)
- sundried tomato and sausage pasta (half a syn)
Swallow that!
J