Author Archives: chubbycubs

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June 16, 2015

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breakfast, classics, desserts, low syn, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegetarian

quickpost: rhubarb and custard overnight oats

Super quick post tonight as a) I’m tired and b) I need to tidy up before Paul gets home and brays me. I’m like the Little Mo of the street. Christ, I used to have a real thing for Trevor out of Eastenders, which is messed up. But true to my word of a recipe a day, here’s the final overnight oats recipe in my trio of flavours. You’ll find the previous ones here:

rhubarb and custard overnight oats

to make rhubarb and custard overnight oats, you’ll need these:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because they make a good consistency
  • a banana and custard muller yoghurt OR 100g of syn-free natural yoghurt, with three drops of custard flavouring added*
  • 200g of rhubarb
  • enough sweetener to take the edge off the tartness of the rhubarb
  • a drop or two of rose-water (optional)

* you can buy custard flavouring from Lakeland – it’s in their professional flavouring range. You don’t need this, but it does taste lovely!

to make rhubarb and custard overnight oats, you’ll need to do this:

  • mix up your oats and yoghurt, dur, and put it into the bottom of the jar
  • chop up your rhubarb into thumb sized chunks, chuck in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water and a drop of rose water and cook on a medium heat with the lid on until it turns to mush
  • take it off the heat, mix in sweetener if you want it
  • once cooled, pour the rhubarb onto the oats, and seal
  • mix it up in the morning and enjoy!

Rhubarb raw is syn-free and then you add it to water, so really, it’s syn-free, but SW say it’s 0.5 syn for 100g. Look, don’t count it, seriously. You’re not going to turn into Dibley-era Dawn French if you eat something grown in the ground and boiled in something pissed from a cloud. If you were deep-frying it in butter…perhaps.

Enjoy! 

J

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June 15, 2015

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breakfast, classics, desserts, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, syn free, vegetarian

cafe mocha overnight oats – and a box full of faces

Three important messages:

  1. when we cook, it’s nearly always enough to serve four people – but we’re greedy so normally eat three servings and save the last serving for picking at when we tidy up the kitchen. Unless I say otherwise, assume the recipe serves four;
  2. I’m going to stop using that little recipe plug-in I brought in because the good folks who get this post by email no longer receive the recipe – and we can’t be having that – don’t say I don’t listen; and
  3. if you comment on the blog via Facebook, that is brilliant as it means more publicity, but I don’t get a notification so don’t worry if it takes me a while to respond! What it does mean however is that other people can help you if you have a question, and isn’t that just lovely?

Here, what a day. It’s been a dreadful day today for someone who dislikes a) people and b) being the centre of attention. See, I’m one of the first aiders at work, which generally means I get to have a big important first aid box full of plasters and the exciting knowledge of everyone’s intimate maladies. It’s a very responsible position indeed, with matters that are nothing less than life or death – do I issue a corn plaster or a waterproof plaster? Do I check NHS Direct via phone OR online? Do I hide in the toilets until another first aider is found? PRESSURE.

The downside of this responsibility is that I have to attend refresher courses on what to do in the case of an emergency – which to my mind is an easy enough question – flap, wave my arms around dramatically and call 999, although I’m told that’s overkill if someone splashes a bit of hot water from the coffee machine across their hand. I can’t bear these type of ‘events’, I really can’t. I spend so long worrying about whether I’m going to get picked to ‘demonstrate’ that I only just take the information in. It’s hard to concentrate when you’ve got forty factory-workers angrily staring at you and criticising your soft office shoes as an ex-ambulance driver tries to put your arm in a sling.

There’s only one scenario where I’d enjoy being helped into a sling and I’d be disappointed if that occurred in a 20 minute refresher.

I’ve mentioned before about my personal space issues – if anyone comes within 3ft of me my shoulders go up and my head disappears into my shoulders like a tortoise with anxiety  – so people tumbling me around the carpet and trying to get my body into a recovery position is my idea of a living hell. Plus, there’s the added pressure of trying not to break wind as my right thigh is hoiked into the air with the gentle touch of an abattoir-worker and having to kneel down in front of everyone to practice CPR on a dummy that looks like a boiled ham with a crudely drawn crayoning of Sharon Osbourne’s face plastered on it.

Of course, I immediately managed to embarrass myself by nipping to the gents for a couple of minutes before the class started, only to find on my return that everyone had left the lobby and decamped into one of the meeting rooms. I peered through the window and sensed some familiarity amongst the bald heads and let myself into the room, having to cross it to get to the only spare seat, whispering apologies and ‘oh silly me’ faces a-plenty. Ten minutes into the lecture on how to safely lift boxes in a packing facility I realised my mistake and had to walk back across the classroom with everyone’s eyes burning into me. I’m surprised my hair didn’t catch. I found a chair in the other class and glowed with embarrassment.

The three hours passed fairly quickly, although of course I was chosen almost immediately as an example of oxygen deprivation, giving the scenario of ‘If I held a pillow over James’ face, it would take four minutes for his brain to start dying’. Typical. Half an hour in and he’s got me pegged as a pillow-biter.

Giving CPR presented a challenge, not least because I was picked to ‘build’ the dummy to practice on in front of the entire class. Social anxiety coupled with someone telling you to ‘pick a face out of the box’ and ‘turn it inside out, clip his ears onto the dummy’ makes for a very challenging ten minutes. I can’t build tension, let alone a fucking latex approximation of some chisel-jawed corpse whilst twenty people stare down at me as I fumble around his plastic lips. It gets better – I then had to demonstrate how to pump the chest (30 presses, hand over hand, between the nips) which meant a good minute of me pistoning up and down, more than likely with the top of my arsecheeks peeping out over my belt in an accusatory manner. Didn’t get any less awkward when someone else took over, because then I had someone’s arse backing into my face as they tried to bring the dummy back to life.

I also made the mistake of asking the teacher some basic tips on how to deal with any possible emergency arising from having a pregnant lady in the office. Well look, I think it’s better to be prepared, and it’s not like I have an intimate understanding of how it all happens. For all I know, it might ding like a microwave, the flaps swinging open like the prize-doors on Bullseye and a baby comes swooshing out like its on a log flume. Well, clearly taken with the fact that someone had actually asked a question, he addressed the whole process of giving birth in blistering detail. I was enthralled. I could tell everyone else was seething because they wanted to be away but I can honestly say I now feel confident delivering a baby. It sounds marvellous – sacks of fluid bursting, feet wriggling out, placentas sloshing out like the sponge in a car-wash – you just need Melanie and Martina and you’d have a brilliant Fun House round.

Ah well. At least I’m trained up if anyone faints, burns themselves, does a Jim Robinson or strokes out. That feels good. And, although I’ve been my usually sassy self about the whole thing, these First Aid courses are amazing. I learn a lot and the presenters are always fantastic. Considering my medical experience begins and ends at being scared of the 999 theme tune, the fact they manage to hold my interest for so long is testament to how good they are. Great work.

Seriously though, click this and tell me that this isn’t a bloody frightening theme tune. It’ll open in a separate window. I used to have genuine nightmares about that. Though not as much as The Outer Limits. Yikes.

Speaking of nightmares, there was no excuse for this box of horrors that I had to use to prop up someone’s legs as I demonstrated the ‘shock position’. 

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Eurgh. I put Paul in the shock position once. I used Durex Heat instead of Durex Tingle. Poor love had to pop a blue raspberry ice-pop in afterwards to fix his nipsy.

Speaking of hot, smoky flavours – here’s a recipe for cafe mocha overnight oats – or chocolate coffee oats. That’s C-O-F-F-E-E. Oh yes sir boss like the drink! Hmm. This will make one jar for the morning.

cafe mocha overnight oats

you’ll be needing these to make cafe mocha overnight oats:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because they make a good consistency
  • 1 Muller Yoghurt vanilla with chocolate sprinkles
  • 1 banana (now, if you’re sensible, mash it in a bowl like a normal person, but if you’re Captain Anal when it comes to tweaking, smash it up in your teeth and then spit it into the jar, because you know, that makes a difference to the syns…well maybe if you’re a fucking sparrow)
  • a good cup of instant coffee, stronger the better

you’ll need to do this to make cafe mocha overnight oats:

  • mix up your oats with the yoghurt and put into the jar
  • top with the mashed banana
  • take your cup of instant coffee and dribble a tablespoon or two into the jar
  • top with a few granules of coffee
  • mix it all together like a bad-ass and put it in the fridge to enjoy in the morning.

You can make this just as strong as you like. The banana adds a bit of sweetness, the coffee adds a pick-me-up. Better made with decent coffee mind, a cup of Mellow Birds isn’t going to cut the mustard!

Enjoy. Always.

J

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June 14, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, greek, lunch, persian, pork, pulses and grains, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

rainbow bulgur wheat salad with bacon and feta

Very quick post tonight as I’m going to work (hooray) to do overtime (hooray) and we’ve still got all of our boring, humdrum Sunday chores to do – such as watching Judge Rinder, playing Trivial Pursuit and ignoring our ironing. Slight moment of excitement when a police van came tearing into the cul-de-sac before, displaying a flagrant disregard for the neighbourhood SLOW CHILDREN sign, which I’ve always thought was a very apt description of the snotty-faced little life-leeches that occasionally visit. Of course everyone was immediately up out of their armchair peering through their nets to see what the deal was. Tsk. So nosy. I of course had to take that moment to immediately nip into the back garden and try to listen in hang out the washing. I didn’t hear anything and no-one was arrested.

Upon my return, Paul pointed out that I’d dashed into the back garden in such a rate of knots that I was still wearing my Spongebob Squarepants onesie from ASDA, plus it was drizzling so not exactly outside drying weather – hardly the most subtle of moves. Ah well. I’m too fat to be subtle. Here’s today’s recipe – it tasted amazing considering it’s such a simple mix of ingredients. It would package up nicely for an office lunch so why not make double and take a few extra portions in throughout the week? Urgh I sound like Delia Smith or something. Don’t worry, I awkwardly shoehorn in a reference to ejaculate in the recipe, so we’re alright.

You could easily omit the bacon  from this salad recipe and go veggie. But I mean, we’re not animals here.

rainbow salad

you’ll be needing these:

  • 4 large sweet potatoes, cut into small 1cm cubes
  • a couple of drops of olive oil
  • 3 tsp of paprika
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of cumin seeds
  • 250g of bulgur wheat (substitute couscous if you prefer)
  • Zest of one lime
  • 1 tin of red kidney beans
  • handful of chopped coriander, but feel free to leave this out if like me you think it tastes of soapy balls
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • a bunch of spring onions – cut up the green part as well as the white
  • 6 bacon medallions
  • 65g of reduced fat feta (cut into tiny cubes)

and you’ll need to do this:

  • preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius
  • in a bowl mix together the potato cubes, 2 tsp paprika, cumin seeds and salt with a drop of olive oil (or Frylight if you prefer) and toss (the potatoes) until the potatoes are evenly coated
  • spread the potato cubes out onto a foil-lined baking tray in one layer and bake for twenty minutes – turning halfway
  • meanwhile, heat a large saucepan over a medium heat
  • add a teaspoon of olive oil (or Frylight, if you prefer) and add the bulgur wheat
  • leave for a few minutes, stirring regularly until it starts to crackle just very slightly
  • add the lime zest and lime juice and 500ml water
  • bring to the boil and add a little salt to your taste
  • reduce the heat and cover the pan so the mixture simmers for about twenty minutes or until it’s cooked through
  • chuck your bacon medallions under the grill to cook, then slice into little strips
  • cut your feta into tiny cubes
  • drain the kidney beans and rinse well under running water, getting rid of all that gunky kidney-bean pre-cum you always get from tinned pulses
  • place the beans in a bowl and sprinkle with a teaspoon of paprika – mix until well coated
  • add the cooked sweet potato, sliced spring onions and bulgur wheat to the bowl and mix.
  • To put this all more succinctly: cook everything that needs to be cooked, prepare everything that needs to be chopped, mix in a bloody big bowl and you’re done.
  • We dressed this with a quick dressing made from natural yoghurt, minced garlic and lime juice – but actually, it stands on its own very easily.

J

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June 13, 2015

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budget, dressings, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chive vinegar – a syn-free flavourful dressing

We got into an argument today in the car-park of a fucking farm-shop. I mean seriously, a farm-shop, it doesn’t get any more middle-class-on-a-Saturday than that. To complete the scene, we had only stopped to see if they sold duck eggs. Anyway, we had parked Paul’s little Micra between the lines of the bay as any normal, educated people would do. Some Red-Leicester-coloured, wrinkly, pendulum-tittied tart got out her car to the left and crashed her door into the side of ours. ‘Accidentally’. And didn’t apologise. I was foaming – not so much for any possible damage to the car (there was a bit of a scrape, but it’s our ‘scrappy’ car so I don’t mind, it only adds to the character) but more for her nonchalance.

When I pointed out that she’d hit our car, she told me (quote) “the fucking wind caught my door”. Looking at her, her face had clearly caught a fucking sandstorm, but that’s by the by. I asked her to be more careful only to be met with a volley of abuse as she stomped off into the shop. Seriously now what happened to manners? It wouldn’t really look too good having two big bald men shouting at one woman so we couldn’t continue, but it took all of my good breeding not to climb on top of her shitty Ford Ka (missing the letters AAAHNT) and take a dump on her windscreen.

I can’t bear people like that. Accidents happen – she did – but fucking apologise, for crying out loud. Since when did it become OK to waltz through life without any personal responsibility? £10 says she’s the type who thinks acting classy is hanging a Magic Tree from her inevitable clit-ring before she sets off for a prison visit. Gah. Anyway. Recipe.

Now you might think this is a bit of a cheek as it isn’t really much of a recipe, but look, one thing I find Slimming World can fall down on is flavour, and this is a nice, simple way of injecting a bit of flavour into a meal – the chive flowers create a subtle onion taste and the vinegar can be combined with a touch of oil to make a decent salad dressing. I have to admit, it looks pretty sitting there in its Kilner jar, but please don’t be tempted to give something like this as a gift. I know that Nigella lassie pretends that she goes around to her friends on the bus with a box of handmade chutney, but this is real-life, and no-one will thank you for some onion vinegar, Kilner or no.

Chive flowers grow on the top of chives, obviously, and you can eat them raw or cut up into a salad. If you don’t have chive flowers, don’t worry – you won’t be able to make this just yet, but chives are the easiest plant to grow. Get yourself to a garden centre, knock all the hairy-chinned old biddies into the flowerbeds, pick up a chive plant and drop it into a container of soil. As long as you remember to occasionally water it and don’t cover it in salt or bleach, it’ll come along nicely, and you can use chives wherever the recipe calls for a subtle onion taste.

chive vinegar

you’ll be needing these:

  • 2 or 3 chive flowers
  • Enough white vinegar to fill up your jar
  • A suitably pretentious jar

and you’ll need to do this:

  • Fill your jar with vinegar
  • Push the chive flowers in
  • Seal and leave to sit for a couple of days
  • Once the vinegar has gone a suitably camp pink, use a toothpick to fish out the chive flowers – or leave them in if you like a strong onion flavour

Enjoy!

 

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June 12, 2015

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budget, fakeaways, lunch, persian, recipe card, savoury snacks, slow cooker, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

red lentil dahl – syn-free and it’ll make you pump

See, told you we’d be going daily with the recipes! Tonight’s recipe is a red lentil dahl might not look incredibly appetitising but it’s the easiest thing in the world to make and full of low-fat, tasty goodness. Plus, without wanting to be crass (oh why not, I always am), it’ll really help things move along. So, if you’re having trouble down below, which is a very common side effect with the SW diet, this recipe will have you releasing an otter in no time at all.

red lentil dahl

to make red lentil dahl, you’ll need:

  • you’ll need a slow cooker for this recipe
  • 500g of dried red lentils
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • a lump of fresh ginger about the size of half a thumb, minced
  • 300g frozen spinach
  • 1tsp ground cumin
  • 1tsp ground coriander
  • 1tbsp curry powder – choose from mild, hot, very hot or OH CHRIST MY RING
  • 1tsp of mustard seeds (optional)
  • Pinch of salt and pepper
  • 1000ml of chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you’re vegetarian – and don’t be tight and use the cheapest stock you can find, it’s a main ingredient here so splash out a little)
  • LOOK – one thing I always say to you is to buy yourself a microplane grater. You’ll never look back, you can mince garlic and ginger in no time at all. Yes, they’re a bit pricey if you compare it to a bog standard grater, but treat yourself. You’re only fat once. Click here to do the honours

to make red lentil dahl, you should:

  • once you’ve weighed out your lentils, give them a rinse in the sink to get the dust off them (that’s what I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
  • chuck absolutely everything into the slow cooker, set it to low and cook for 6-7 hours
  • keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get too thick (something else I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
  • serve with curried vegetables, rice or whatever you like!
  • This does well as a side dish but we take it in for lunch sometimes on its own – like an extra-thick soup. Tasty!

Enjoy!

J

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June 11, 2015

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pork, pork chops, recipe card, syn free

parmesan pork chops, garlic broccoli and smashed potatoes

Right, so here we are, back again to slide into your mailbox with all the subtlety of a kick from a horse. You may have missed our delicious recipes, you may have longed to hear our caustic wit, or you may have struggled without at least eighteen euphemisms for a penis (though here’s two right off the bat you can use freely, though perhaps don’t cry them out at point of climax: “Spurt Reynolds” and, if he’s particularly hung, go for “spam bannister”). Who knows!

We had to take some time off to move the website over from its previous home, tethered to a blog-hosting site like a bag full of dog-muck hanging off a gate, to a fancy new host elsewhere on the Internet that will allow us to customise the blog and make it easier for you, the rabble that read it. How? Let me count the ways…

  1. you can now comment using Facebook – a small change but significant, as if you want to share a recipe, just tag someone in there – plus you don’t need to wait for me to remember to check the spam filter and approve your comments. Not going to lie, I’m terrible at stuff like that. You wouldn’t think I was a super-organised secretary dealing with the cut and thrust of the legal world in real life, would you? Probably for the best, saying as I’m not…
  2. once I’ve figured out how, you’ll be able to search for recipes – that’ll make things a lot easier when you’re trying to tell people about the time I got caught blasting a tune on Paul’s pork trumpet by a wily Irish farmer – just type in ‘mortifying embarrassment’ and you’ll be taken right there;
  3. also coming are more ‘readable’ recipes that you’ll be able to print in a nice neat order. It won’t take all my angry protestations about Frylight and overuse of the words ‘dash’, ‘pinch’ and ‘fuckery’, though, so sensitive eyes should stay away; and
  4. easier to read text – the last blog would scroll awkwardly on mobiles and as the stats say most of you are coming here inbetween playing online bingo and buttering your muffin over internet pornography, I thought I’d help.

There’s also all sorts of tedious behind the scenes gubbins happening and you’ll probably notice the site changing its look as we go on. I’m learning here – I’m not a website designer, I’ve actually had sex before.

How are we? We’re good!

Work continues for the both of us, ever onwards.

Cats are fine, although the white cat keeps coming home with a black face where he’s been rubbing against something sooty. Maybe that’s why some of our neighbours seem to dislike us – they think we’ve got a minstrel routine in the garden.

The only thing to note is the diet – I’ve just been completely off it the last couple of weeks. You may remember I posted about losing my mojo a little, well, it continued. I did try to get back on the horse, but damn it if it didn’t taste so delicious. Two weeks of pizza, McFlurrys, jellybeans and chocolate and I’ve only put on 4lb, and I’ve finally got it ‘out of my system’. I’m ready to diet again! Paul’s been the same but not quite so severe, and has actually lost 2lb. The jammy fucker! Again, I’m going to write a post about all this fairly soon.

Finally, with regards to the blog, you’ll be glad to know one thing – we’re going to aim for more recipes on here. I know a lot of people like my writing and don’t worry, you know me well enough to know I’m not one to keep quiet, but it can be a bit of a chore making a new recipe and also writing a mini-essay of an evening. So the focus is going to be on continuing the delicious food, writing the recipes in our usual sassy style, and writing longer pieces when I get the time to sit and do it properly. I’m also writing a book alongside this so I don’t want to stretch too thin! Our 7777 week was a great success when we looked at page views, so we’ve got several theme weeks pencilled in:

  • America week – expect junk food but SW style;
  • budget week – aiming for seven meals that serve four on a very tight budget;
  • slow cooker week – if only so we can hear hundreds of people simultaneously going OOOH IT JUST FALLS OFF THE BONE;
  • vegetarian week – our lot of our recipes are meat-focused, but then, so is my lifestyle choice, so let’s mix it up a bit;
  • desserts week – there’s a recipe of disaster when it comes to the scales; and
  • breakfasts week – because if I have to eat another fucking bowl of fromage fucking frais with frozen fucking berries, I’ll die.

If you can think of anything you want us to cover, then contact us via the comments, or on our facebook page found here.

I’m going to make a final plea before you get today’s recipe: please, please, please share us. Share the blog by posting www.twochubbycubs.com in whatever group, facebook page or discussion forums you use. Follow us on Twitter and retweet us far and wide. Join our facebook page by clicking here and then share the hell out of it. We do it all for you, of course, but the more people reading the better! We’re like the clap – we want to spread as far as possible.

Right, enough guff – the recipe tonight is for pork chops breaded in parmesan and breadcrumbs. I’m not normally a fan of strong-smelling cheese on my pork but these worked ever so well…

rosemary pork chops

you’ll be needing these:

Chops
  • 2 pork chops (fat removed, and thrown away, no sucking on it)
  • 1 wholemeal roll (made into breadcrumbs) (*HEB*)
  • one egg
  • 4 tbsp grated parmesan (30g being a HEA)
  • salt and pepper
  • Frylight if you must, but a couple of drops of olive oil is better
Garlic broccoli
  • two garlic cloves
  • tenderstem broccoli
Smashed potatoes
  • rosemary
  • thyme
  • as many small potatoes as your big old belly can handle

and you’ll need to do this:

Chops
  • remove all visible fat from the pork chops
  • whisk an egg into a small bowl and set aside
  • in another bowl, mix together the salt, pepper, breadcrumbs and parmesan
  • dip the pork chops into the egg mixture and coat well with the breadcrumbs
  • spray some Frylight into a hot pan and cook for about 6 minutes on each side
Potatoes
  • boil the potatoes until just tender, and drain
  • spray a baking sheet with Frylight and place the potatoes even spaced onto the sheet
  • using a potato masher or a fork push down onto each potato so it spreads out a little
  • spray with Frylight and sprinkle with the herbs and salt and pepper
  • bake for about 20 minutes at 230 degrees until crisp and crunchy
Broccoli
  • trim the bottom of the broccoli stalks
  • spray a frying pan with Frylight and cook the broccoli over a high heat for about five minutes
  • add the garlic, salt and pepper to the pan and mix well
  • turn off the heat and add 60ml of water to the pan, cover with the lid
  • cook for about 3 minutes until tender

Tasty right?

J

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June 1, 2015

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recipe card

just bear with us!

Afternoon all!

maxresdefault

We’re currently in the process of moving the blog and contents over to a self-hosted domain and website, which will take quite a bit of fannying on behind the scenes. Just bear with us! Whilst that happens, there will be no posts as I’ll not be able to – but we don’t think it’ll take more than a week, two at most. The reason we’re doing this is so that we can introduce more functionality into the site, so things like recipes can be done in a printer-friendly format, and searches etc brought in. It’ll be worth it!

J bear bear bear 

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May 31, 2015

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recipe card

my wrath will come down like the cold rain

QUICK: I know I’ve got loads of comments in the queue to clear and approve – bear with me, my app is broken! I’ve read them all and you’re all fabulous.

Came home today to find a clear plastic bag on the front step with a bag of chopped up rabbit in it. This is the pleasure and joy of living next to an ex-butcher with a shotgun licence. I wish he’d be a bit more discreet about it though – my freezer is absolutely full of unidentifiable bags of chopped up flesh and blood. I feel like Fred West when I go to get the fish fingers out. We had someone valuing the house the other week and when I went to get the ground coffee out of the freezer, I saw her wince and suck her teeth like she was expecting a jar of severed cocks to come tumbling out.

The Other Half has disappeared down to Peterborough for a couple of days to attend to family matters, and as much I would have just loved to spend time with my in-laws, I’ve elected to stay behind and attend to all the various bobbins we need doing around the house. What this actually means is that I can lounge around unwashed for three days with Pringles crushed into my back hair, stop brushing my teeth and revert back to sloth form. I dread to think what would happen if Paul went into hospital for a week or something, I’d probably end up looking like Ludo from Labyrinth with half the house covered in newspapers and cats. I do think Paul and I balance each other’s foibles and tics out very well but then see, we were always destined to be together – I’m the yin to his yang, the Myra to his Ian, the Arthur to his Martha (or vice versa if it’s his birthday). He was a poor boy (from a poor family), as was I, but I came with the benefit of having a crazy rich friend who funded all my shenanigans. When I look back on that time in my life, it’s astonishing what I got up to. Case in point: I flew down to Portsmouth to meet up with him on an absolute whim because he had a cold and I felt sorry for him. My friend bought the tickets and sent me on my way, and then bought me four new sets of tickets because I kept cancelling to stay another day. Clearly Paul was so impressed by the fact I flew down in a plane so small and old that I had to hand-crank the propeller before I got on that he decided I was a keeper and moved straight up to Newcastle with me.

At least, I hope that’s what it was. There’s a photo of us somewhere in history of us both lying in bed, taking a selfie (I know), with me looking into the camera with my usual boss-eyed squint, and Paul smiling dreamily at my wallet just at the edge of the shot. I had the last laugh there though, I’m in charge of the money. I’m like The Banker from Deal or no Deal, but that would make Paul Noel Edmonds, and as he’s NOT a beard with a twat hanging off it, the analogy doesn’t quite work. I’d be able to show you the photo if I’d been on board with Facebook and the like at the time but I wasn’t.

See, it took me almost five years to move onto Facebook and embrace all the soporific self-aggrandisement that came with it, but once I took the plunge, uploaded 7.3 million pictures of my cat and some filtered photos of Paul, I can see how useful it is, even if I spend more time than is healthy tutting at people’s poor choice of cutlery and inability to tidy away the fucking wires at the back of their telly.

Pardon me a moment.

…

…

…

I had to go and open the door for Sola, who was scrabbling at the glass on the front door like crazy. I half expected her to have her paw pressed up against the glass with NOT PENNY’S BOAT scribbled on it. She’s been doing my nut in today because she’s doing her passive aggressive trick of meowing to be out and then immediately scratching at the door like a man who has woken up in a body bag. I’ve mentioned before that she’s loosened a bit of the door frame so that she can pull it back with her paw and rap it against the door, meaning for about twenty minutes you get LET ME IN THE HOUSE I’M HUNGRY AND COLD AND YOU’RE CLEARLY COMFORTABLE SO YOU MUST MOVE’ in fucking morse code. It’s so loud. Bitch. She’ll waltz in with her tail in full ‘FUCK YOU’ mode, go to her water fountain and then immediately start meowing to be out again.

No recipe tonight as, with Paul away, I can’t be arsed to cook for one, so I’m having a jacket potato with beans and a chat with the cat.  Both cats are in a huff because they went for their injections yesterday, although Bowser is especially put out because I managed to drop his cat-box as I was putting him into the car and he went rolling down the drive inside the box like a Gladiator in an Atlasphere. Have no fear, he’s alright because the box was stuffed with towels and a plate of cooked chicken, but we could barely drive for laughing. That’ll be the RSPCA kicking down my door later then. I did go to Morrisons (the glamour – it never ends) to try and pick up some treats but I became so despondent with all the harsh yellow lighting and the dead-eyed 3.40pm reduced-item-clutching zombies that I picked up the first nauseating bit of pastry I could see and came home.

As it happens, I managed to pick up a Morrisons All Day Breakfast Pasty. Which is fine if your idea of an all-day breakfast is some indistinguishable orange gloop, potato with all the texture of a wet sneeze and a sausage with the meat content of a sofa cushion all wedged into a suitcase of fire-retardant pastry. For one thing, the pastry was so thick and dry that I had to be put on a drip just to finish the second half. And the smell! Listen, I wasn’t expecting a Heston Blumenthal level of magic and wonder, but I prefer my food not to smell like someone has just cut a cat turd in half and basted it in a dying man’s breath. I put most of it in the bin, and didn’t even need to pour Fairy Liquid on it to stop me going back later in a fit of greed. YOU LISTENING MORRISONS?

Anyway, this potato isn’t going to eat itself.

We’ve finally got round to making a Facebook page BTW, which makes things easier – if you like it, you’ll get our posts automatically appearing in your newsfeed and plus, it’s easy to share! https://www.facebook.com/twochubbycubs enjoy enjoy.

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May 28, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients, syn free

I could be brown, I could be blue! baked spaghetti

Haha, weigh in tonight, and although we couldn’t stay, it was full of surprises – I’ve put on a 1lb after the most dedicated week off you’ve ever seen, which included:

  • more vodka during Eurovision than could be deemed reasonable, despite acts such as Israel and Serbia;
  • two Dominos in one week;
  • a pizza the size of a bus steering wheel followed by ice-cream and sweets and a second dinner when I got home;
  • a complete lack of exercise;
  • cookies, sweets and other nonsense gobbled up at work – and – and this one is shocking;
  • I had CHEESE AND SPICY BEEF on my Subway salad today.

Cheese! I thought since having my pencil sharpened last year I’d seen the end of having cheese on my hot meat, but there you go. Boke. Here, it gets better – Paul actually lost a pound AND he was still wearing his god-awful ‘Yes, I’m a registered sex-offender’ god-awful boots that we bought in the Brantano sale for £2.44. I reckon he’s been stirring ex-lax into his nightly Options. Yes see that’s how rock-n-roll we are in our household – a nightly hot chocolate and then into bed to listen to Radio 4. We do normally fit some blisteringly hardcore gay sex in at some point, all is not lost. Anyway, once we’ve enjoyed the Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, we’re going to have a good run at SW. In the meantime, here’s a bit about my cats that I wrote earlier today.

I really begrudge having to pay £200 to insure two cats who are healthy, worm-free and trackable. Especially when they’re so spoilt they have their own water fountain and bloody ensuite shed.

Of course, insurance wouldn’t be quite so necessary if our cats didn’t dice with death on a daily basis, and entirely through their own choice. See, they recognise the sound of our car approaching, and the very second they see the bumper of my car appearing at the end of the cul-de-sac where we live, they sprint across the front lawn in front of the car and run ahead of us, like we’re the star attraction in a tiny cat parade. They then proceed to run around the tyres, rubbing themselves up against the scalding chassis of the car, until one of us picks them up and they proceed to turn our face into mince with their razor-sharp welcome. I don’t think they feel we’re home until one of them has left an oily paw-print all over our shirts. They’re also forever eating things they shouldn’t and I’ve seen Sola, the tiny cat, fighting a dog and winning. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she smokes.

Sola we retrieved from some chav on an estate who was selling kittens on the basis that if no-one wanted them, she was going to leave them by the side of the road. I’d like to have left her by the side of a road, preferably trapped by her legs in a burning labia-coloured Vauxhall Golf, but I digress. We couldn’t drive at the time so we had to take two buses and by the time we got there, she was the last one, the runt of the litter. She meowed the way home and tried to commit instant suicide by falling off the balcony of our apartment. Thankfully, she only fell one floor onto the balcony below, but that made for a slightly awkward exchange because we weren’t talking to the neighbours at the point since we inadvertently told his girlfriend that he was having an affair with someone else. Genuine mistake. We also thought he was belting his lass too, which was wrong. That made for a few difficult bus journeys on the Quaylink, let me tell you.

They missed out not keeping Sola, for although she’s the most uppity bitch you’ll ever meet, she has the nicest fur you’ll ever feel. It’s the type of fur you can imagine ultra-rich women making gloves from. That’s partly because she never lets you stroke her – probably sick of trying to lick gravy and sweat from her fur to even entertain us. She’s the epitome of aloofness although for all of her delusions of grandeur, she’s certainly not averse to sticking her nose right up Bowser’s arsehole like she’s sniffing for truffles whenever he wanders back in from outside.

Bowser is the other cat, the tom, and we also got him from a very downmarket area. We heard on the grapevine that he was one of about ten trillion cats that had been found living in one of those houses you see on Hoarders. We could only take one and so we took the first cat that came over. If we had our way, we’d have more cats than furniture, but we’re realists – I already begrudge spending so much on Bite ‘n’ Chew, and not just because of that rebarbative little ‘n’. He settled in straight away, walking around like he owned the place and battering the other cats until we had his bollocks cut off. Now he comes in each day missing massive chunks of fur from fighting but touchwood, they haven’t got his eyes yet.

We also used to have Luma, and she was a lovely, fat cat who was painfully shy and used to hide, no matter how much coaxing, fresh tuna and fuss you tried to make of her. She had plenty of personality when she wanted to – she held us ransom for about two weeks by pissing on our Sky box because we had the bare-faced cheek to switch her to Tesco own brand cat food. Perhaps she was trying to electrocute herself, I don’t know, but she managed to break my Doctor Who series link so I sulked for a week. Along similar lines, I was once lying in bed and she came bumbling over, wheezing away in that gentle fashion, for a stroke. Naturally, I made a proper fuss of her in this rare moment of tenderness and she turned around, showed me her tiny cigar-cutter bumhole and sprayed a tiny jet of foul smelling nastiness right in my face, before sauntering off as I screamed like it was ammonia. We gave her away to a family friend in the end because she was fighting with our other cat all of the time and she’s far happier now, by herself, with an octogenerian who is too slow to catch her and rich enough to spoil her, though I did spot a packet of Viagra in his bathroom cabinet when I was dropping her off so god knows what she actually sees. No wonder she looks so haunted when I spot her.

baked spaghetti

to make baked spaghetti, you’ll need:

250g spaghetti, 500g lean beef mince, 6 Slimming World sausages (defrosted), two 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 200ml passata, 200g Quark, 80g reduced fat cheddar (grated), 1 green pepper (diced), 1 onion (diced), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 egg, 250ml chicken stock, 80g reduced fat mozzarella (using up two HEAs), 1tsp mixed herbs, salt and pepper

to make baked spaghetti, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the spaghetti according to instructions and set aside. For those who can’t cook spaghetti, don’t forget to breathe in AND out whilst doing this
  • mix the chopped tomatoes, passata and mixed herbs (and a little salt and pepper if you like) in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer whilst you do the rest…
  • meanwhile, chop the green pepper and onion and mince the garlic cloves
  • spray a little Frylight (heathen! use oil!) into a large saucepan and cook the onion and green pepper over a medium-high heat until softened
  • add the garlic and stir well
  • squeeze the meat from the sausages (the casings should be easy to pull away, given SW sausages are essentially toe clippings, best wishes and old newspapers wrapped in a diaphragm) and place in the pan along with the mince and cook until well browned, remembering to break up any clumps that form
  • in a separate bowl mix together the quark, egg and cheddar with a little salt and pepper until smooth
  • pour the tomato sauce into the cheese mixture and stir well, adding 250ml chicken stock and continue to stir
  • in a large pan or bowl, mix together the spaghetti, meat and sauce until really well mixed – don’t worry if it looks a bit watery, it’s a SW recipe – if you can’t drink it without choking, it’s not SW friendly
  • tip into a large casserole dish, top with the shredded mozzarella and bake for 30 minutes
  • enjoy! It’ll thicken down in the oven. Promise.

J

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May 26, 2015

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breast, poultry, recipe card, syn free

german potato salad and paprika chicken

I’m officially running on fumes – I haven’t been to sleep since Sunday night, and god knows why – I’m not suffering with insomnia or anything exciting, just didn’t feel tired last night. Which meant I was up typing up some new stuff for the book at 3am in the morning and driving into work at 6am. Actually, that’s a bit of a fib and in the spirit of being open and honest, I was actually kept awake by my body thoroughly rejecting the remnants of our bank holiday blowout – a Dominos pizza. I told Paul to order something nice and he ordered a bloody pizza with onion bhajis on it. Is it any wonder I spent most of the night dancing the sour-apple quickstep and bemoaning the fact I hadn’t put the baby wipes in the fridge to cool my nipsy?

I’m not surprised we both got ill, frankly. I mean, for a kick off, a Dominos pizza is like a zillion syns – I’m surprised Margaret herself didn’t kick my door in like a drug enforcement officer and snatch the Slimmer of the Month certificate off the fridge. Plus, it was almost two hours late thanks to the delivery driver getting lost. To put that in perspective, the Dominos we order from is probably around 5 miles away down a straight road. You couldn’t get lost if you tried. I mean admittedly the driver was as thick as a donkey’s cock and could barely string a sentence together, but even so, it’s not that taxing. I should sue.

Book is coming along nicely mind (but combined with our workloads being all over the place, means I’m not having the same amount of time to write for the blog – but don’t worry!) – here’s a couple of small excerpts:

On sparrows:

Paul was being terribly polite and British about the whole thing but I immediately weighed in on the argument to point out that ‘the Sparrow Ambulance was tied up attending to a coal tit with hurt feelings’ and that I lamented the fact I hadn’t had the foresight to fashion the poor bugger a tiny sling from a spent match and a postage stamp’.

On hotels:

Instead we showered, shrieked a bit, use the tiny hairdryer to attempt to dry my back hair despite said hairdryer being so weak it barely shifted the top off my free cappuccino, and unpacked our suits.

On flatulence:

Remember we were in a stable block too with other guests in adjoining rooms – it probably sounded like we were mixing cement all night.

On Paul:

I don’t know what Paul does to the crotch of trousers and boxer shorts but you’d think he had a sack of iron filings instead of a scrotum, because they’re always torn to shreds within a few days worth of use so every time he crosses his leg a bollock drops out like the last tangerine in the fruit basket.

Ah yes! How about a recipe? This was actually my favourite meal in a long time and really could not have been simpler to make. Serves two mouth-breathing fatties.

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to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you’ll need:

ingredients for chicken: two decent sized chicken breasts – you don’t want one of those nasty supermarket breasts that look like the sole of a built-up shoe, treat yourself and get decent meat, plus garlic powder (1/2tsp), 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, pinch of black pepper and 1.5tbsp tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

ingredients for german potato salad: three large potatoes, 4 bacon medallions cooked and cut into strips, 40ml of rice vinegar, 65ml of chicken stock, 1tbsp of dijon mustard (technically I think this is a syn, but split between two…well I won’t tell if you don’t), half a decent sized red onion cut nice and fine (or use red spring onions if you can get them, which we can, because we’re geet posh as owt), tablespoon of fat free greek yoghurt, 20ml of white wine vinegar, some chives for the top if you have them kicking about but don’t shit your pants if you haven’t got them in.

to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you should:

recipe for chicken:

  • combine all the spices with the Worcestershire sauce to make a rub and rub that rub (great writing there, would recommend) into the chicken, getting your fingers deep into every moist crack and really ensuring your meat is slick and covered
  • pop into the fridge to marinade – longer you leave it, the better, but you can hoy it under the grill for around ten minutes a side and cook until the juices run clear when you finger it (the chicken that is, not you)
  • serve with your salad, but oh no, you’ll need to make the salad, so here we go..

recipe for german potato salad:

  • boil the potato for 25 minutes (you want them firm but a bit soft around the edges, like a middle-aged man in a Luton brothel) and then cut into thumb sized chunks (normal thumb, we’re not using Jeremy Beadle as a comparative);
  • NOTE: don’t bloody skin the potatoes, the skin is the best bit
  • as soon as the chunks are cut up, tip in the rice vinegar, mix and let them soak for a moment or two
  • add the chicken stock
  • in a little bowl mix the white wine vinegar, yoghurt and mustard together (whisk quickly, it’ll start to split if you so much as blink) and tip over the potatoes – mix again – don’t be shy about mixing, it’ll rough up the potatoes as you mix
  • add the onion and bacon
  • when you’re ready to serve, chop some chives over the top
  • the longer you leave this dish to sit, the better it’ll be

As ever, enjoy!

J