Author Archives: chubbycubs

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October 14, 2015

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american, budget, fakeaways, italian, lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

syn-free pizza

I’m in a huff. I left work at 5pm and it took me two hours to get home, saying as every single person in the world decided in unison to drive towards Alnwick on the A1. Bumper to bumper traffic and even though I took a diversion seemingly via Northern Ireland, it was still all very stressful. I’ve mentioned so many times about poor drivers that this barely needs a mention but a big FUCK YOU to the tagnut in the Audi behind me all the down the A1, who despite being stuck in EXACTLY the same traffic-jam as I was, spent most of the time bellowing at me in the mirror like he was trying to put out a fire with swearwords. Apologies that my DS3 doesn’t come with a fucking flight pack, you stupid sunset-coloured packet of shit. Oh and whaddya know, when he DID manage to get past, did he indicate? Did he buggery! Audi drivers: you DO have indicators in your car – there’s a big knob in the car to operate them. 

AND BREATHE.

At least when I managed to turn off and the traffic calmed down I was able to take in a bit of scenery and stop for one of those fantastically freeing extravagant pisses that only men can have by the side of a road or tucked down a layby. Admittedly my knowledge of foofs isn’t exactly shit-hot but it’s my understanding that it’s far more difficult for ladies to have a quick tinkle without having to take everything off or risking falling into a nettle patch with a froth of piss around your ankles. Here’s a fun fact for you though – it doesn’t matter how discreet a bloke is, no matter how carefully he parks his car and how far into a bush he goes to have a wee, the very second urine leaves his helmet a car will promptly appear full of children and nuns, leaving him with the unenviable choice of carrying on and causing offence or having to reverse the flow, which let me tell you now, BLOODY HURTS. It’s like trying to fit a washer to a gushing tap. I bet even Neil Armstrong up on the moon nipped behind the lander for a quick Jimmy Riddle only to be met with a rocket full of Russians gazing balefully at him the moment he ‘pulled the cord’. Anyway, it seems fair that men have the upper hand when it comes to weeing, given ladies can have so much fun with their bajingo. If I was a lady, anything I owned that was even slightly cylindrical would have a very glossy patina to it, let me tell you.

I had to go for an x-ray this morning on my shoulder. Nothing exciting I assure you – I’ve got a trapped nerve or something which is making my neck ache and my fingers tingle unnecessarily. Explain to me this – how comes I arrived at 9am for a 9.30am drop-in session only to be met with a veritable sea of lightly shaking old ladies all ahead of me. How? What time did they turn up for that to happen? I mean I appreciate getting an x-ray might be a day out but if they were anything like my nana, you could hold her up to a bright light and see Mint Imperials through her papery skin rattling around her body at the best of times. Ah nana. I tutted and moaned and then remembered they’d fought in the war for me. So I upped the volume of my tutting knowing the shellshocked amongst them wouldn’t be able to hear for their ringing ears.

Actually, it was a very pleasant experience – pulled into a room, told to remove my shirt, complimented on my beard and then blasted with radiation, which before I met Paul was pretty much my average night out. They did give me two heavy bags to hold to ‘pull my shoulder into the correct position’ which, judging by the fucking weight of the bags, was somewhere in Aberdeen. Of course because it was a big brute of a bloke talking to me, I didn’t want to lose face and drop the bags so I had to stand still, grimacing and squinching my eyes together in pain. I bet he told everyone when I left that I was absolutely dying for a shite. Can’t fault the NHS though – doctor told me I needed an x-ray yesterday and it was done by this morning. That’s almost as good as when I went for a private MRI a few years back, where I paid a billion pounds just to leaf through a copy of Home & Country in the waiting room and be called Sir by the receptionist. Actually, thinking about it, two MRIs and two x-rays in however many years…that surely means I’m overdue a superpower or something? I’d be a crap superhero. Captain Mince. The Anal Intruder. Barry Beige. All possible names.

I’ve got to be careful when I’m visiting the doctors or having anything done, because invariably my anxious mind tries to default to the worst case scenario. I was sitting cross-legged watching the TV before and when I got up to discover my left leg had gone to sleep, well, that was it, I’d diagnosed myself with motor neurone disease (and please, I know it’s an awful disease, that’s why I’m scared of it). I’ve already resigned myself to the fact I’ve probably got a spine like a packet of Ritz crackers that someone’s kicked up a flight of stairs, but really, realistically, I’ll have just pinched a nerve swimming and my body is acting accordingly. Oh it is awful being neurotic.

Anyway, only a little entry tonight because it’s time for The Apprentice. I know, I know. I don’t know why I watch it either. I don’t like Karen Brady, I don’t like Alan Sugar and Charles Littner may as well come out in a cape twiddling a moustache to complete the ‘villian’ role. At least Nick was gentle in his absolutely devastating, soul-destroying cutdowns. Charlie Brooker said it best when he described Alan Sugar as looking like a water-buffalo straining to shit in a lake. I still watch it though, so really, who’s the mug?

Tonight’s recipe is a nice simple idea for pizza without the syns. It’s also without the crust and using a giant mushroom – but at least you’re not having to let your trousers out after. We seem to have had quite the run of vegetarian recipes lately. That said, don’t forget our deal with Musclefood – you can buy 2.5kg of chicken for £9 (click here, you’ll need code SMALLCHICKEN) or 5kg for chicken for £19 (click here, you’ll need code BIGCHICKEN). Then there’s also our giant box of meat for only £40 which is enough for so many meals I could weep. You’ll find details of that right here and I very much encourage you to give a go!

syn free pizza

to make a syn-free pizza, you’ll need:

  • four BIG portobello mushrooms – the bigger the better
  • some tomato based sauce that you’ve made – I just sweat (NOT swear) down tomatoes, onion and a bit of garlic and blitz
  • whatever cheese you want
  • whatever veg you want
  • whatever toppings you want
  • whatever you want
  • whatever you like
  • whatever you say you take your money you make your choice

Remember to weigh your cheese etc for HEA and if you’re adding things like chorizo or olives, syn them!

and to make your syn-free pizza, you should:

  • take the stalks out of the mushrooms and scrape out the gills (the little tiny labia like bits around the outside)
  • put in the oven for 5 minutes on 190 degrees to dry out a bit
  • get rid of any excess moisture
  • top however you want
  • bake for twenty five minutes or until it’s golden brown, texture like summer

Of course, if you fancy more pizza, we’ve done a couple:

If you don’t like mushrooms, you could make it with a base of Smash, but for goodness sake don’t let the tweak police know, they’ll pap themselves.

Enjoy!

J

PS: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you’re a fan of the recipe or the post, there are share buttons below – just hit them to share the recipe with your friends and fellow fatties.

 

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October 13, 2015

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budget, classics, lunch, one-pot, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, soup, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

no fussin’ tomato soup

Watching old episodes of 999 instead of doing what I’m supposed to do tonight, and I love this classic bit of British understatement. A chap who was a passenger in a stunt plane had a calamity when, at 10,000ft, during a loop-de-loop, his chair worked loose and he FELL OUT OF THE PLANE. He survived, and the show cut to him talking to camera where he says ‘I realised something had gone wrong when I wasn’t in the plane anymore’. You think?! Jeesus. If that was me you’d have been able to spot me across three countries as my carcass, and the stream of faeces where I’d shit myself, fell to Earth.

A friend in our facebook group pointed out something today – we’ve been going for OVER A YEAR. We started this blog on September 20, 2014 – quick, go back and look at our lack of humour and earnest WE WILL LOSE WEIGHT THIS TIME prose. The first post is right here. Looking at the blog stats, we’ve published 250 posts and I’ve had over 2,000,000 views – that’s averaging over 5,000 views a day, and recently, it’s been sitting around the 7,000 – 8,000 mark. We’ve got twenty two thousand followers on Facebook, 7,000 or so in our group and over 3,800 folks who have actually signed up to let me enter their inbox on a daily basis. If the average post is around 1,000 words which is what I am for, that means I’ve sat here and typed out 250,000 or so words about us two fat buggers who don’t really do anything at all. 

To me, that is absolute fucking insanity. I’ll tell you why. 

We never see anything through. Our house is a shrine to unfinished projects, passing interests and enthusiastic but ultimately pointless endeavours which have bubbled away to nothing – for example, we have:

  • a £200 GPS receiver which we bought to go geocaching and then put in a drawer when we realised we didn’t have the batteries for it – never been used;
  • ten disco caches – essentially kooky little containers that we were going to hide all over Newcastle…and didn’t;
  • a second computer which we bought to help us enter competitions faster when we were going through our comping phase;
  • a £450 stand mixer when I was going through my ‘baking’ phase (although to be fair, I’d love to bake, it just makes me too fat);
  • two wonderful pairs of walking boots which still have the tags on;
  • see above, but with wellies;
  • see above, but with trainers, gym kit, a gym bag;
  • a scrapbook which contains two Metro tickets and a receipt for M&Ms;
  • a year long contract with David Lloyd which we used for a month – though in our defence we quickly grew tired of pipe-cleaner men strutting around the place looking at themselves in the mirror;
  • a pair of brand new bikes;
  • jigsaws, after Paul saw a nice one in a dentist’s reception and thought he’d give it a go;
  • a full suite of decent DIY equipment, which we studiously ignore…

…and so on. We started the blog with the aim of rattling off a few recipes and giving me an outlet to practice my writing (I used to have another blog about health anxiety called shake, rattle and droll, a title I was so proud of it was almost a shame to cast off my health anxiety and thus stop using it), and here we are a year later with over 200 recipes and lovely folk all around the UK, and indeed outside the UK, sending us lovely messages and reading about Paul’s helmet on facebook. It’s a mad world. 

Anyway, the reason for all this babble is just to say – thank you. Seriously. I’d write and chuckle away to myself even if no bugger in the world read what I wrote but the fact that so many do really cheers my butter-filled heart. I might come across as a brassy, bolshy, confident tart on here but I’m actually quite shy. Put me in a lift with strangers and I’d prefer to stick my finger in the exposed wiring than make ‘polite conversation’. So each comment, each like, each share, each thank you – that makes it worthwhile. OH GOD I’M WELLING UP.

to make syn-free tomato soup:

  • as many ripe and squishy tomatoes as you can get – go to a market at the end of the day and you can pick up crates of the buggers for next to nowt;
  • one strong onion;
  • one small potato;
  • two cloves of garlic

And that’s it! All you need to do is to slice the onion, fry it in a little oil, add the cubed potato and grated garlic and then chop up all the tomatoes and throw them in a pan. You don’t need to add stock, the tomatoes will have enough liquid in (if they are ripe) to make a soup – and leave to cook low and slow for as long as you can. Better it takes four hours on a low heat than one hour on a hot ring. Haha, ring. Just keep an eye on it. When it comes to serving, just blend it with a stick blender and if you’re boring or you don’t like your poo to look like a sesame bun, sieve it to get rid of the seeds and skin. By adding nothing but simple things, it tastes so much nicer. 

Enjoy! Tomorrow (hopefully) I’ll type up more Corsica shenanigans, though as I say that a little alarm is ringing to suggest there’s something I’m supposed to be doing tomorrow night too. Hmm.

J

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October 12, 2015

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fakeaways, lunch, persian, pulses and grains, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes and garlic

Didn’t get to sleep until 4am this morning. Was woken by Shaddapa Your Face at 7am. Brief entry. But you’ll note that we are still to let you down with our recipe-a-day. Proud of that one! 

Tonight’s recipe was something we’d seen somewhere, written down, then completely forgotten about until a bag of quinoa cheerfully fell out of the cupboard. Quinoa is one of those things that looks awful (to me) but tastes fine. Give this a go – it’s comforting and piss-easy to make.

quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes and garlic

to make quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes, you’ll need:

  • 250g quinoa
  • 1.1 litres vegetable stock
  • 90g reduced-fat feta cheese (2x HEA)
  • 300g cherry tomatoes
  • 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 10g mint leaves, chopped to bits
  • salt

then to make quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes, you should:

  • place the quinoa in a saucepan, add the stock and bring to the boil
  • reduce the heat to medium and cook gently for about 25 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally until it reaches a porridge-like consistency
  • fold in the feta chunks like a kind, careful lover
  • add the tomatoes into a hot oiled pan and cook for about five minutes, stirring once or twice so the sides become charred
  • add the garlic slices and cook for about 30 seconds, stirring frequently so it doesn’t burn
  • transfer the tomatoes and garlic into a bowl, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp of salt and some black pepper
  • chop the mint and fold through tomatoes immediately before serving
  • spoon the porridge into a bowl, and top with the tomatoes

Easy. Yeah, it’s a bit ‘my husband works in the city and I’ve got an etsy page selling bunting made from spider dreams and melancholy’ but it’s worth it.

J

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October 11, 2015

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, rice, taster ideas

lemon chicken, spring rolls and egg-fried rice

Spotify just dropped Celine Dion caterwauling her way through My Heart Will Go On into my recommended playlist. She still sounds like a car backing over a cat. How the hell did that song do so well, aside from the fact it gave a reason for Michelle from accounts to hitch up her knickers and scream her way through karaoke night at a Yates Wine Lodge? I love cheese – hell, I even quite like Celine Dion – but I think I’d rather listen to an uncaring doctor telling me I had five months to live.

Only a quick post tonight because I’m feeling a bit blue. Not blue in the ‘quick, go douche’ sense, but in a rather more melancholy way. My very dear, very deaf and well, very dead nana has been on my mind a bit lately. Partly because I found this rather mean photo we took on our iPad when I was demonstrating all the different functions…

IMG_0018

…she was amazed – this was a woman who thought the TV remote was something to scratch her foot with and for who turning off the chip pan was an optional extra. It’s also because when she was alive our Sunday would normally be spent trying to fit in a couple of hours to go and see her. We don’t need to do that now, but I do wish we did. The best part was that the hour or so we’d spend with her would always be the same, to the point where Paul would silently mouth her stories to me as she talked – the time that she had to jump off a bus into a snowdrift, the time she wanted to shave her dad’s beard off, something mysterious about a stolen boiler and that she ‘knew all of the secrets in the village’ like a lavender-scented Sherlock Holmes, only with a slightly better moustache.

We’d spend the hour fighting off offers of sandwiches that were more butter than bread or cakes that, though delicious, you could cut a pane of glass with. I also miss the ‘guess who has died’ game, where she’d gleefully keep that bit of gossip until we were settled in and then start us off rattling through villagers until we alighted upon the poor unfortunate old bugger who’d stroked off into the sun or clattered down a flight of stairs. For someone for whom death courted for many years but never committed, she did sure love talking about the end. My very last memory of her is a delightful one, her shrieking and grabbing Paul’s leg as I told her we were going to adopt six babies from the local ward, and, I had added darkly, one of them was from Africa. She never could abide not having a matching set of anything.

Ah well. Look, it doesn’t do to be too introspective. Everyone leaves the stage in the end. Does no harm to make the most of the moments before, though.

CHRIST that’s heavy. I can’t even segue into the recipe now because it’ll feel weird. Let me throw in a particularly charming slang term to lighten the mood:

“buttering the whiskered biscuit”

I’ll leave you to decide what it means. Give you a clue, only ladies can do it.

RIGHT, so we wanted a takeaway tonight, but I couldn’t face Mags getting furiously into her little Astra and making a scene on our front garden, so we made our own. Lemon chicken and egg-fried rice, served with spring rolls. The spring rolls recipe can be found on a previous post (click here for that) and the rice is simple enough – cook your plain rice, tip into a frying pan with a little cooked onion, get it nice and hot and crack an egg into the middle, then after just a moment or two, break the egg up and push it around the rice, so you have chunks of egg in there. We added some greens from a spring onion for good measure. So: the lemon chicken:

lemon chicken

to make lemon chicken, you’ll need:

  • four chicken breasts, plump and lovely like a dinner-lady
  • 3 tbsp of soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp of rice vinegar
  • just a pinch of salt and pepper
  • 175ml chicken stock
  • 75ml lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp of honey (5 syns)
  • 1 tbsp of cornflour (1 syn)
  • little knob of grated ginger, or use dried ginger, I’m not going to kick your arse either way

By gaw, chicken is expensive isn’t it? The good folk at Musclefood are doing a deal where you can buy 2.5kg for £9 (click here, you’ll need code SMALLCHICKEN) or 5kg for £19 (click here, you’ll need code BIGCHICKEN). I did try and get them to use ‘SMALLCOCK’ and ‘BIGCOCK’ but they wouldn’t bend! BOO. Very good chicken mind, not watery and smelly.

then to make your lemon chicken, you should:

  • chop up that chicken into chunks big enough to get in your gaping gob
  • chuck it into a bag with the soy and vinegar and toss it around for a bit until it’s well coated – then leave it to sit for as long as you dare to let the flavours soak in
  • when you’re ready to get the show on the road, heat a frying pan and drain then throw in the chicken until it is cooked through and you’re sure you’re not going to be sat on the toilet later with the world falling out of your arse – then set aside
  • in another bowl, whisk the chicken stock, lemon juice, honey, cornflour and ginger
  • pour this sauce into the same pan you just cooked the chicken in and let it bubble merrily away until it’s thick and gloopy
  • put the cooked chicken into the sauce and coat every last bit
  • serve – now you don’t need to serve it up in those awful takeaway cartons like we did, we were just being pretentious fuckers, you can serve it on your elbow or throw it on the ceiling for all I’m fussed!

Enjoy it. It’s not quite the same as getting a takeaway but it came pretty damn close. Oh, and if anyone gets a cob on because I’ve tweaked the diet to make spring rolls, I refer you to my charming bum, which you can promptly kiss. We sprinkled on some sesame seeds, remember to syn them if you want them. A tablespoon is three syns.

LOVE YOU

J

 

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October 10, 2015

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airfryer, lunch, recipe card, salad, sausages, syn free, taster ideas

sausage and potato salad – oh my

Very quick post tonight – no fussing about. I’ve spent almost two hours picking tomatoes from the greenhouse and all I want to do is recline on the sofa with the Doctor and an IV drip of vodka. This recipe isn’t our own – it belongs to Nigel Slater, but we’ve bastardised it a bit for Slimming World. It contains big portions of both sauerkraut and mushrooms – but don’t let that put you off. Sauerkraut might hold the unique title of smelling better coming out of your body than it does going in, but nevertheless, persevere – the mix of flavours here makes for a lovely Autumnal dish.

sausage and potato salad

to make sausage and potato salad, you’ll need:

  • 200g sausages (we used the sausages from our Musclefood deal, but you can use any as long as you’re sure they are syn free)
  • 350g potatoes
  • 1 brown onion, finely chopped
  • 200g mushrooms, sliced
  • 200g sauerkraut
  • 2 tbsp chopped dill
  • 2 tbsp fat-free fromage frais

to make sausage and potato salad then, you should:

 

  • cut the potatoes into large chunks and place in a large saucepan of boiling water – boil until just tender, drain, and slice thickly
  • cook the sausages according to the instructions – (ours always come out beautifully in an Actifry)
  • when the sausages are cooked, slice and set aside
  • meanwhile, add a little Frylight to a large saucepan, place over a medium heat and cook the onions for about five minutes
  • add the mushrooms and cook until they start to turn a little golden, adding a little more Frylight if necessary
  • add the sausages to the pan with the sliced potato – crush the potatoes with the back of the spoon a little bit as you add them to the pan
  • add the sauerkraut to the pan and mix well
  • remove from the heat and serve
  • add a tbsp of fromage frais to each plate and sprinkle on the dill
  • enjoy!
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October 9, 2015

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dips, dressings, fakeaways, indian, low syn, mince, persian, poultry, recipe card, rice, taster ideas, travel

turkey biryani and Corsica shenanigans

Three things before we set off:

  • I was in ASDA before (the glamour!) and as I was busy upsetting the self-scan machine, I heard some pompous bellend bark at an ASDA employee to ‘fetch me a basket’. The worker had the good grace to point him in the direction of some baskets, but I was instantly reminded why I hate people before I love them. The only thing I would have fetched him was his arsehole through his throat. 
  • It’s approaching poppy season, which means the people whose DNA had to decide between growing black teeth or growing brain cells and promptly decided on the former will be on facebook telling you that poppies can’t be sold in XYZ because of Muslims. I’ve exhausted myself on facebook arguing with numpties, but look, it’s bullshit. The Royal British Legion have confirmed. Just research it!
  • First weigh-in since we decided to give it a bit more effort. I lost 5.5lb (and you’ve seen the meals I’ve been eating!) and Paul managed a respectable 2lb, meaning half a stone’s worth of pressure has been taken off the metal slats of our bed. Good. See, eating properly works, so put down your Scan-Bran and crack on.

A lovely lady at class last night told me I had to crack on with my Corsica holiday trip – and she’s quite right, of course, as ladies always are. So here we go. The last entry finished with us landing at the world’s smallest airport and being given a Peugeot 206: Sloth Edition to trundle around the island in. If you’re not a fan of my writing and you just want the recipe, hit the scroll button, because this is a long one. Like you can’t handle a long entry, you FILTHY MINX. So…

After landing at Figari, and wrestling the keys from a woman who probably could have brought the car in on her shoulders, we were on our way down the N198 (the main road ‘around’ Corsica) to the charming little town of Sainte Lucie de Porto Vecchio, which was a good half hour drive away. We didn’t mind the drive, it gave us an opportunity to let the scenery sink in. Corsica is beautiful – a true island of contrasts, with white beaches, heady mountains, green fields and dusty trees – and not what I was expecting. Our car, protesting as it did every time I dared nudge it above 40mph, shuttled us towards the town, and, us being us, we drive right past the turn off for the villa. Good stuff! We realised our mistake a good twenty minutes down the road and pulled over in a dusty lay-by by a beach to take stock. I could have texted the rep for directions and assistance but Paul had packed away my mobile into the suitcase, locked the suitcase, and put it in the bottom of the boot. It was altogether too much effort to sort. Paul insists on locking the suitcases at every opportunity, partly because they’re fancy-dan editions where the zips actually form part of the locking system. He locked them after we had wedged them into the boot of the car. He remained entirely non-plussed by my bewildered reasoning of ‘who the fuck is going to nick anything from a moving car, a tiny Corsican gypsy hiding in the ashtray?’. Honestly, the things I have to put up with. Frankly, if someone is that desperate to be at my passport that they want to sort through my extra-extra-large t-shirts and his ‘broken in’ boxers shorts, they deserve a reward.

Paul nipped into the bushes for a piddle and came dashing out with an alarmed face – not because of snakes, or scary wild boars, but (in his words) ‘there’s SO MUCH SHITTY BOG PAPER IN HERE’. Oh lovely! That would be a bit of a theme mind. Corsica is astonishing, but by god don’t venture into the bushes to change your clothes, empty your shoes of half a ton of sand or for a piss, because they sure do love shitting and leaving the paper for nature. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t imagine anyone would take their skidmarked paper home like a flower pressing, but at least bury it, don’t festoon the fucking branches with it. Honestly, it looked like Christmas in Worksop.

We stopped at a nearby Spar for groceries. Groceries isn’t quite the right word for the food you buy on holiday, though, is it? The only thing we left the shop with that could provide any nutritional value was the receipt. I’m going to hazard a guess that it will be the only time in my life that a bottle of Limoncello, swimming googles, eight bags of Haribo, headache pills, Pringles and enough bread to build an ark would appear in my shopping basket together. We did buy a token bag of rocket which looked great in the fridge at the start of the holiday and even better in the bin at the end. As a ‘car snack’ we bought a pretzel the size of a steering wheel to eat in the car (I was reassured that I could have dislodged any errant blobs of dough from my teeth with the toenail clipping that the previous driver had generously left on the dash) and we were back on our way. Let me tell you – it’s difficult to drive an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads whilst trying to make sure Paul didn’t get more than half of the bread. We made our back, veering dangerously across the road and spraying crumbs everywhere until we spotted the turn-off.

I have to say, the approach to the villa wasn’t very inviting – it looked like the start of every dodgy serial-killer film I’ve ever seen – and the architects had carefully and assuredly made sure to put as many possible pot-holes and boulders on the drive-way, so that the 100m drive up to the villa made me feel like a trainer in a tumble drier. It was worth it, though.

Casa_Julia_LowRes_Sept14_SH_02

living_dining_terrace master_bedroom_2

Casa Julia! I’ve stolen the photos from Simpson Travel’s website because frankly, my photography skills are up there with Stevie Wonder’s. I could be alone in the world and still manage to get the back of someone’s head or a rogue thumb into my shots. Anyway, we paid a king’s ransom for the villa, I’m fairly sure they can let me use their photos. Isn’t it beautiful? It accommodates ten people, so naturally it was just the right size for Paul and I to mince around naked and use every single bed to get the full value out of the holiday. Anyone else do that? God forbid the maid would get a moment to herself, we were too busy crinkling the bedsheets and leaving chest hairs in every conceivable crevice to care. Paul went for a dump almost immediately, despite having ‘freshened the air’ at the airport a mere hour ago. He uses new toilets like one might stamp a passport – to say he’s been. 

Nevertheless, the suitcases hadn’t been unlocked more than half a minute before I was fully undressed and scampering to the pool. That’s a fib, I’m too fat to scamper. Let’s go with trundle. Lumbered. Yeah – I lumbered excitedly to the pool. That doesn’t work either, actually, because you can’t lumber with enthusiasm. How the fuck do you describe that grotesque speedy ‘shift’ that us fatties do? Shall we say I galumphed to the pool? That means to move in a ‘loud and clumsy way’, which describes the way my thighs slap when I go at speed. I galumphed to the pool. Not quite ‘Arnold raced out of the door’, mind.

I spent five minutes teetering on the step of the pool because it was SO BLOODY COLD. Not because it wasn’t heated, it was, but because I was so overheated in my ‘English’ clothes that anything less than a pan of boiling jam hurled in my face would have felt a bit ‘nippy’. Paul shouted encouragement from the lavatory (thankfully that was a one-way process – I don’t think the locals would have been especially pleased to hear my Geordie tones shouting ‘PUSH’ and ‘IS IT CROWNING YET’ across the fields) but that’s rich coming from him. Paul has never, ever just ‘got’ into a pool. He has to inch himself in, letting the water hit each part of his body and letting out a tiny scream as it does so….OOOH ME ANKLES…OOH IT’S COLD…OOOH IT’S ON MY HELMET…CHRIST MY GUNT….and so on. He’ll then spend ten minutes with it lapping just under his tits before finally he’ll crack and tumble in like a falling mountain. A fatslide, if you will. I’m the opposite, I’ll dither and fanny on for a little bit and then just jump in. I’ve got the luxury of all-over hair, see – the cold doesn’t bother me so much because it has to penetrate my shag. It does rather look like someone has pushed an old persian rug into the pool, however. Even the air-filter gasped rather unnecessarily when I waded in, I thought.

Once I’d managed to acclimatise to the coldness of the pool and my scrotum had stopped resembling a Shredded Wheat, it was lovely. I swam around in that fat-person style – 2m of front-crawl, bob under the water, kick my legs about, lie on my back. I got a bloody fright when I felt something swim underneath me and envisioning some kind of aqua-wild-boar, I hurtled (again, however a fat man hurtles) to the other end of the pool only to realise it was the bloody pool cleaner. I hated it immediately. I have an inherent and deep phobia of machinery in water ever since I watched 999 and watched some poor horse-faced lady get stuck underwater when her pony-tail was sucked into a filter. Brrr. Although looking back, everyone was panicking and screaming but really, no-one thought to grab a pair of scissors? Anyway, this little device looked like a Roomba – a smooth circle of menace attached to a hose and with three turning wheels, and it’s job was to beetle around the pool during the day (when normally, the guest would be out), sucking up leaves and hair and tagnuts. It was creepy. It moved silently through the water aside from a tiny electrical hum every now and then and all I could think was that it was going to either get entangled in my arse-hair (imagine THAT 999) or it’ll somehow become live and fry me in the water like an especially fatty pork chop. I couldn’t relax until Paul finished his dump, fished it out for me (the robot, not the poo) and placed it to the side, where it lay gasping and spluttering and wishing me dead. We did manage to turn it off before it drained the pool. Phew.

We then spent a hearty two hours getting in and out of the pool, lying on every sun-lounger and swinging in the hammock that rather put me in mind of a big metal bollock. By god they were comfy. I looked for them online when I got home only to discover they were over £1,000 each. I like comfort, but I don’t think an afternoon lying in the mild air of Northumberland quite justifies the cost. Plus, I’d need to be dressed here, and it just wouldn’t be the same. I was swinging away in my hammock telling Paul all my thoughts on the stewardesses and Corsicans when his lack of answering – and his rumbling snoring – told me he was off to sleep. Ah well. Regular readers will know that we can’t go more than a few scattered minutes without impressing some kind of embarrassment on ourselves and it was my time to shine with a trip to buy yet more beer and bread. Beer and bread, it genuinely doesn’t get better than that for a fatty. Don’t worry needlessly however, we weren’t forgetting our roots – the beer was an entirely unnecessary raspberry froth called pietra (recommended by a far classier and tasteful friend) and the bread a foccacia with pressed olives and bacon wedged inside. We’re that fancy. Leaving Paul in the hammock to fart away to his heart, and indeed his arse’s, content, I stole out of the villa with a view to restocking the fridge with all manner of local ‘nice things’ from the other grocery shop I’d spotted down the road.

You may recall that I can’t speak a lick of French. I really can’t. I only managed one year of ‘French lessons’ before I got so bored it was either transfer to Spanish or defenestrate myself. Actually, we used to take our lessons on the ground floor so the most I could have hoped for was a grazed knee and an audition for drama school. It didn’t help that our French teacher had an eye full of blood for seven months. It’s all any of us could look at. No wonder I never learned my pronouns for goodness sake, he looked like the Terminator 2 poster rendered in Microsoft Paint. After a year I transferred over to learn Spanish and well, no me arrepiento, right? That said, I’m always keen to at least try, so I spent the fifteen minutes walking down to the shop reading my language app and practising out loud anything I may need to say – ‘…huit tranches de jambon, s’il vous plaît’, or ‘une petite portion de fromage local, mon amour‘ or indeed, ‘…pouvez-vous me montrer aux préservatifs extra-forts?‘ I genuinely thought I’d be welcomed and praised for my attempts, that perhaps someone would admirably slap me on my back and strike up in French with me about the local political situation or Greece’s turbulent economy. Thank fuck they didn’t – me repeating ‘QUOI’ over and over wouldn’t have quite the same effect.

Anyway, you can guess, that didn’t quite happen. No. I minced around the shop, filling my basket with ham and eggs and cheeses and, somewhat inexplicably, a box of blonde hair dye because I had a fit of the vapours and thought about dyeing my hair blonde because I’m on holiday, which has to rank up there amongst the ‘unlikeliest thing to do because I’m on holiday’ together with having a colonoscopy or visiting the dentist. My basket was full of deliciousness and I was immensely proud of myself for engaging the various shop folk in stilted, bare-bones chatter. I spotted the beer I’d seen earlier and put two six packs in my basket. All good. No. In my haste to reach for a bottle of mixer, my basket tipped over and deposited everything I’d picked up all over the bloody floor, each beer bottle shattering at once in the most noisy fashion. It would have been quieter if I’d ramraided the shop in a fucking train.

Time stopped. Every single person in the shop – indeed, the island – span around to look at me in a most accusatory manner, as if I was some tiny-scale terrorist. I stood there, desperately fishing around in my head for any relevant French, but I could feel every last French word in my brain popping like champagne bubbles, rendering me entirely mute and confused in a sea of glass and blood-coloured beer. Finally, the silence was broken by the absolute harridan behind the till yelling and shouting at me in incomprehensible gibberish and waving her hands around like Tony Blair bringing in an aeroplane. After a good couple of minutes I FINALLY remembered and I blurted out ‘je suis désolé‘ over and over until she FINALLY twigged I couldn’t understand her. Do you know what is shameful? I only know ‘je suis désolé’ from a bloody Madonna song. Thank God for ole Vinegartits! Some genuinely tiny hairy man came bustling out from the back with a brush and set about clearing away the glass with such exaggerated sighs and harumphing that I almost emptied out my tomatoes and gave him the paper bag to breathe into. I wish I knew what the French was for FAT, ENGLISH, CLUMSY OAF. I felt paranoid that the cow behind the counter was going to put a tannoy announcement mocking my silliness so I hastily paid (her slapping the coins down into my hand with such venom that if I turn my wrist towards the sun, I can make out the imprint of a two euro coin under my thumb) and scuttled back to Paul, who hadn’t so much as noticed I was out of the pool.

To make up for my folly, he prepared a delicious tea of French bread, cheese, ham, grapes and that great equaliser, Pringles. ROSEMARY FLAVOURED PRINGLES, mind you. Living the dream! We spent the rest of the evening lounging and watching Modern Family on the Chromecast.

Sweet Jesus. I’ve typed 3,000 words and all I’ve managed to do is get to the villa and drop some beer. I need an editor! We’ll leave it here, because the tip-tapping of this tiny Mac keyboard is getting on my tits. What do we have for dinner tonight? Turkey biryani! I’m making a bit of effort to use turkey mince where I can because it’s cheaper and a lot of you ask us for cheaper recipes – plus it’s very low in fat. That said, if you’re feeling like a decadent trollop, swap in beef mince. Don’t let the long list of ingredients put you off – it’s easy to make and tastes delightful. Ah fuck, I said delightful. That’s one of my least favourite synonyms.

turkey biryani

to make turkey biryani, you’ll need (deep breath):

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 500g turkey mince
  • 1″  knob of ginger, finely chopped
  • 1 chilli pepper, finely shopped
  • 1 tsp of cardamom seeds
  • 1 tbsp each of ground cumin and ground coriander
  • 6 cloves or half a tsp of clove powder (but you’re so much better with actual cloves)
  • 1 cinnamon stick or half a tsp of cinnamon (see above)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 tsp crushed black peppercorns
  • 1 tin of tomatoes
  • 300ml chicken stock
  • 25g sultanas (4 syns)
  • 250g basmati rice
  • 1/2 tsp tumeric
  • salt
  • 100g fat­free yoghurt
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 2 tbsp chopped mint (or 1 tsp mint sauce)

You can get away with leaving out the odd spice, just use what you have. 

then to make the turkey biryani, you should:

  • cook your onion gently, until nicely golden
  • add the turkey mince and cook over a medium heat until cooked through
  • stir in all the spices bar the turmeric and leave to cook for a minute or two
  • add the tomatoes, stock, sultanas and a pinch of salt
  • bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to let it gently cook for around forty five minutes
  • meanwhile, preheat the oven to 160 degrees
  • cook the rice however you like – we use the one cup of rice to two cup of water rule – add the turmeric before it boils – BUT STOP after ten minutes – you don’t want the rice fully cooked yet
  • mix together the turkey and the rice and place in a casserole dish
  • cover and cook in the oven for 25 minutes, add a little more stock if the rice isn’t cooked after 20 minutes
  • meanwhile, core the cucumber of its seeds and then grate it into the yoghurt, adding the mint
  • serve everything together

Yum. I am so tired now.

J

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October 8, 2015

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american, budget, lunch, mince, poultry, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas

courgette and turkey meatloaf balls

Well, howdy. Just a quick post tonight as we’re both feeling pretty lousy for a myriad of different reasons – all rather banal and a bit wimpy but will be solved easily with some trash telly and a cup of tea on the new sofa. Which, I have to say, is divine. I don’t know how we existed before we had a reclining sofa. My ankles have never been so unswollen!

This recipe comes courtesy of the latest ASDA magazine and tweaked a little bit to make it Slimming World friendly. I hate those magazines, I really do. They’re always full of gap-toothed kids doing something cutesy-poo whilst some yummy-mummy type looks on. Blechh. So, anyways, here it is – courgette and turkey meatloaf balls. This is a great recipe to make from whatever’s left in the cupboards at home – turkey mince can always be found in our local supermarket reduced so we’ve got a freezer full of it, and all the other bits are probably floating around in your kitchen. And now you’ve finally got a recipe for that softening courgette you’ve all got in your fridges…

IMG_2092

Here’s what to do:

to make courgette and turkey meatloaf balls, you’ll need:

  • 1 courgette, grated
  • 500g lean turkey mince
  • 2 spring onions, sliced
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1 wholemeal roll, made into breadcrumbs (HEA)
  • 2 tsp mixed herbs

and then to make the courgette and turkey meatloaf balls, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200°c
  • squeeze as much liquid as you can from the grated courgette and then place in a bowl with the spring onions, garlic, egg, worcestershire sauce, breadcrumbs and herbs
  • line eight muffin tins holes with greaseproof paper (or spray with frylight)
  • divide the mixture into eight, roll into neat balls and plop into the holes
  • bake for 25 minutes

and that’s all there really is to it. Easy! We served ours with some mashed potato and baby turnips but you do whatever you like. The only uses 1/4 of a healthy extra so go to town, why not throw in some syns as well?

Enjoy!

P

 

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October 7, 2015

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card

tomato, soy and sesame chicken

Genuine quickpost tonight because, you know, Bake Off. One final chance to see Mary Berry gum her way through someone’s cake and me to wince whenever they say ‘baaaaake’. Nearly there, James.

Before we get to the recipe, a quick word about Slimming World’s new soup, available to buy now at Iceland. I picked up the tomato and basil flavour. After ELEVEN minutes in a microwave, it came out like this.

IMG_2087 

Mmm. Doesn’t that look about as inviting as a punch on the fanny? I genuinely don’t mind their food and I think the ready meals are a great idea if you’re a) pushed for time or b) insufferably lazy, but this was revolting. All I could taste was salt – it was if they’d used the Atlantic to bulk it out. I’ve never had to stop halfway through a bowl of soup for a bottle of Lucozade and a flask of water before. Plus, it looks so unappetising, all separated and pillar-box red. If anyone out there reading used to watch Bad Girls, well, it looked like what crazy Di Barker made in a bowl to stop Jim Fenner leaving her. Plus, £1.50! Aside from the fact it looks like something you’d see dripping out of a pipe in a field near Sellafield, that’s FAR too expensive for what should just be tomatoes, stock, basil, potato and a bit of onion. When I can be arsed, I’ll throw up a recipe on here for tomato and basil soup.

Tonight’s recipe is for a sticky chicken breast covered in soy, sesame seeds and tomato paste. It couldn’t be easier to make. The marinade comes in at 12 syns for the lot, but divided by 4 is only 3 syns a serving. Plus, if you were so inclined, you can have 2 tbsps of sesame seeds as a healthy extra…

IMG_2088

to make tomato, soy and sesame chicken, you’ll need:

  • four chicken breasts
  • 2 tbsp of sesame seeds
  • 2 tbsp of soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp of sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp of tomato puree

and then to make tomato, soy and sesame chicken, you should:

  • mix the oil, puree sauce and seeds together
  • cover your chicken breasts in the marinade
  • leave for as long as you like
  • bake in the oven for 25 minutes 
  • serve!

Done

J

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October 6, 2015

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beef, beef joints, british, fakeaways, low syn, recipe card, sauces

roast beef with french onion gravy

BEFORE I BEGIN. We have a major backlog of comments. I turned off notifications for the blog when I went away on holiday, forgot to turn them back on and just noticed I’ve got 78 comments to approve. Oops. If you have commented and you’re sitting there thinking what a rude fucker I am for not replying, I apologise profusely. I’ll work through them. OK? So calm down!

Gosh. Finally something to do with that slab of beef I’ve had chilling in the kitchen going a bit green. Yes, I set him to work cooking some roast beef for ma dinner. BOOM. He deserves to be put to work, anyway, for the cheeky crack he made about me in my new coat, which zips right up to under my chins. Upon seeing me (and remembering that I’m especially bearded at the moment) in my fancy new coat, he told me my ‘face looked like a seventies porno muff’. Nice!

I’m spending the evening looking at hotels and bits and bobs to do in Iceland. We’ve decided to give Air B&B a go. 

I know, I know. We’re asking for trouble. 

I’ve always wanted to stay at a B&B, because they’re usually somewhere beautiful and it doesn’t quite feel like you’re sleeping in the jizz-dust of 1,000 businessmen that have literally come before you. But I just can’t. For one, I have a shit poker face, and if I was shown into a room and I didn’t like it, the disappointment avalanching across my ashen face would immediately make me an enemy of the host and she’d spit in my breakfast. I can’t bear chintz and flimflam and unnecessary accessories (although that would make a good band name, no?) either, so unless it was a perfectly sterile room decorated in tiny nice things, I’d feel uncomfortable. Then there’s the small talk – I don’t want to be fussed over as I try not to die in my morning coffee or asked where I’m going / how I’m getting there or tutted at when I don’t take my boots off. I’d spend the entire time away agonising over any little offence I may have caused that I’d simply need another holiday afterwards to relax. 

That said, I did once see a B&B on Four in a Bed where about two hundred cats roamed the property and it was pretty much a guarantee that you’d end up in bed with a hairy Persian sitting on your face – and well, that sounds good to me.

Speaking of cats, we took ourselves off to Mog on the Tyne (what can I say, I’m a sucker for puns – I’d eat my dinner in a clap clinic if it was given a pun for a name…something like Spotted Dicks or The Leaky Bucket) a couple of weeks ago. Mog on the Tyne is Newcastle’s first cat café and, with a rare afternoon off, Paul and I decided to try it. 

It’s brilliant. The food is basic café food – paninis, quiche, brownies et al – but the focus lies squarely on the ten or so cats that mill around the place, fighting, purring or – as is always the case with me – showing their bumholes as you try to finish your brownie. The café is fitted out with all sorts of toys, climbing frames and beds and the cats seem perfectly content – of course they are, they’re getting made a fuss of. You have to pay a fiver each for entry (which is unusual, because in the Bigg Market, usually it only takes a Blue WKD and a ten-deck of Lambert and Butler to be guaranteed entry) (sorry) which pays towards the upkeep of the cats, and the food is reasonable quality. It was a charming way to spend an hour and I’d heartily recommend it if you’re a cat fan. Of course, if you’re not a cat fan, then you have other options available, such as having a quiet word with yourself regarding the direction your life has taken. Our favourite cat was seemingly everyone else’s – a beast of a pussy called Stan who had suffered a nasty road accident. Aye, he took the bend at Billy Mill roundabout at 50mph in a Ford Capri and lost control. 

No, he got run over and although he’s fine now, he’s unable to put his tongue in his mouth, meaning he has a permanently dopey expression. I’ve shamelessly stolen a picture from another blog because all of my photos look like I’ve taken them using a potato (credit to fragglerocking.com – click here to read their report).

stan-fraggle

Now then! You can find more details on Mog on the Tyne at their website – www.mogonthetyne.com – give them a go!

Of course, the bonus of visiting Mog on the Tyne was that as soon as we got back, our cats were all over us like flies on muck. I felt like a husband cheating on his missus, especially as the cats kept sniffing the end of my fingers and recoiling (which to be fair, I do myself). Awkward.

Right, tonight’s recipe.

roast beef with french onion gravy

to make roast beef with french onion gravy, you’re gonna need:

  • 1kg beef (silverside or topside) – tip if you’re a tightarse, scour the reduced sections in your supermarket on Monday morning, they’ll always be shifting beef
  • 8 small carrots or four large ones or two massive carrots or one carrot as big as your leg – chopped

Sorry, can I just jump in here and say how much I hate logging onto Slimming World’s website to check syns? It’s the ‘Log in and Love It’ slogan. Love what? Using a website that acts and feels like it was built back when geocities was a thing? Love typing ‘olive oil’ into the syns checker and getting nothing but typing ‘artisanal rice crackers’ and getting Tesco’s entire stock inventory? Fucks sake.

  • 1 celery stick, chopped
  • 170ml white wine (6 syns)
  • 600ml beef stock
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 500g brown onions
  • 1 tsp honey (1 syn)
  • 3 sprigs of thyme
  • 1 tbsp corn flour (1 syn)

Shit the bed! Eight syns! Yes, but the syns all belong in the gravy and unless you’re going to be drinking from the gravy boat, you’ll not get anywhere near eight syns. Hell, this serves 4 anyway. So calm down.

to make roast beef with french onion gravy, like a big bloody pansy, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 160 degrees and heat a large casserole dish
  • lube up your meat with a little oil and plenty of salt and pepper
  • pack your meat in the warm, waiting dish and return to the oven to brown for about ten minutes
  • meanwhile, spray a frying pan with a little Frylight and fry the carrots and celery for ten minutes, and it’s alright to spend five minutes shaking your fist at the sky at a cruel God who decided celery should be a thing
  • plop your meat out of the pan, and slap it to one side
  • pour the wine into the casserole dish and boil for two minutes over a high heat
  • pour in the stock, return the beef and add the carrots, celery and bay leaves – you’ll feel like such a posh fucker using bay leaves
  • cover and return to cook in the oven for two hours, turning the meat halfway – you don’t need to wait at the oven until exactly sixty minutes to turn it, this isn’t The Cube
  • meanwhile, thinly slice the onions and heat a little oil in a large frying pan
  • stir in the onions, thyme and seasoning to taste
  • cover and cook gently for twenty minutes on a low heat until the onions are soft but not coloured (racist)
  • remove the lid, increase the heat and add a little more oil and the honey and cook the onions until they caramelise, stirring often
  • remove the thyme sprigs, brush the cat’s teeth with them or something
  • when the beef is ready remove from the casserole dish and leave to rest
  • reheat the onion mixture, stir in the corn flour and cook for one minute
  • mix the onions into the casserole dish to make a thick gravy – you’ll want it thick enough that it runs down the side of your meat and makes your tatties sticky
  • slice the beef and pour the gravy over the top – now, if you’re not good at slicing meat, let someone competent do it – Paul cuts meat like he’s shaving a fucking ice-sculpture with a chainsaw – we only get two slices a pop from our sourdough
  • serve with a fabulous selection of superfree food, or, in our case, more roasties than ten decent people would eat

Get it down you!

J

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October 5, 2015

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dips, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, indian, low syn, lunch, recipe card, salad, sandwiches, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

curried chicken salad

Let’s see if we can actually do a quick post. No waffle. Tonight’s meal idea is actually good for a quick lunch, or for hoying onto a jacket tatty for a quick dinner. Not a fan of celery? Leave it out and put a bit of chopped onion in. Don’t like curried things? Well, tricky, but add paprika instead. Not a fan of me? Then simply kiss my arse. Doing well on the 85 recipes deal mind!

curried chicken salad

to make curried chicken salad, you’ll need:

  • 85g fat free natural yoghurt
  • 20g dried apricots, chopped
  • 3/4 tsp curry powder
  • juice from 1/2 lime
  • pinch of cayenne pepper
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped (we got 13 breasts in our box from Musclefood)
  • 2 celery sticks, chopped
  • 3 spring onions, chopped
  • 1/2 mango, chopped

A little tip – chop everything up nice and fine – small chunks are always better.

and to make curried chicken salad, simply:

  • mix together the yoghurt, apricots, curry powder, lime juice, cayenne pepper and salt in a small bowl and set aside
  • in a large bowl mix together the chicken, celery, spring onions and mango
  • pour the dressing mixture over the chicken and toss to coat
  • serve on whatever you like!

DONE. Still 200 words mind! 🙁

J