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April 10, 2015

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beef, beef mince, budget, classics, fakeaways, italian, pasta, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, travel

baked bean lasagna

Usual drill – recipe at the bottom of this post. This week’s Slimming World Classic is baked bean lasagne, just in case there wasn’t a strong enough stench of death blowing out your arse of an evening. It’s actually pretty tasty, though we’ve added mince because we’re such incorrigible rogues…by the way, I’m never 100% sure whether to use lasagna or lasagne, so pick one and roll with it.

You may remember that I said I wasn’t going to talk in a chronological fashion about our trip to Ireland? Well there’s a reason – me saying that we went out driving each day doesn’t sound alluring, so, here’s some more random scattershot thoughts about our holiday, in no particular order.

The first town that we visited was a tiny little village called Waterville, which was actually quite charming. However, it didn’t bode especially well given everything was shut bar one fish shop (I don’t do fish) and a ‘crafts’ shop. I can’t stand ‘crafts’. I just can’t. Everything about craft shops wind me up, from the nonsense tat on offer to the twiddley-dee music playing to the judgemental looks that your leather shoes get from Astrid Moonglow behind the counter. But who buys this shit anyway? Who has ever walked into a craft shop and said ‘Now that’s just what I’ve been looking for – the entire works of B*Witched played on a pan-pipe and fiddle’ or, to that end, what sums up a holiday more than an shamrock-shaped ashtray with ‘I ❤ Ireland’ emblazoned on it in flaking gold Mistral? I’ve never felt the need to fragrance my home with incense sticks which smell like lavender and burning hair and nor do I feel the need to dry my dishes with a teatowel with Daniel O’Donnell’s slightly warped face on it. Frankly, I wouldn’t dry my arse with a picture of Daniel O’Donnell but that’s entirely beside the point. We did the very ‘us’ thing of tutting at the window as we walked past and spent a good five minutes wondering how the hell a craft shop in the arse-end of Ireland stays profitable enough to remain open on a grey, dismal day when suddenly our questions were answered by the sight of an David Urquhart coach straining over the horizon and about 300 Chinese tourists bustling out to take pictures of an inexplicable Charlie Chaplin statue.

As an aside, I had to google David Urquhart there to check the spelling and amongst reviews of his coach company, I found reviews for a Pontins resort which were titled ‘NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD HAV BEEN’ (spelling hers, not mine). Is there ever a sentence that sums up a shit holiday more than that? And the reviews and photos are ghastly – it looks like a prison camp. That said, Paul and I are definitely going to one of these places, if only so I can practice my ‘well isn’t that just LOVELY’ face for a week’.

We also visited Sneem, which to me sounds like an especially complicated part of the penis – you know, like ‘Hannah found Geoffrey would agree to anything, especially when she flicked his sneem and prodded his barse’. It was lovely, although I caused immediate and swift embarrassment to poor Paul when he got out of the car to avail of the public lavatory, as I whirred the window down, shouted ‘I HOPE THERE’S NO BLOOD IN YOUR SHIT THIS TIME HUN’ and drove off down the street, much to the disgusted and aghasted looks of the nearby tourists. He only started talking to me once I’d bought him a Nutella ice-cream. Paul’s easy to win around in an argument (tickle his sneem) – basically, the naughtier I’ve been, the more saturated fats have got to be pumped into him – like a blood transfusion but with a bag of Starmix hanging on the drip stand. In fact, Sneem had rather a lot of lovely places to eat – we tried The Village Kitchen (twice) and it was amazing – they serve black pudding on the pizza, and what’s not to like about that? Mmm. Irontacular.

Fun fact – Sneem’s own website actually describes the village as ‘The Knot in the Ring of Kerry’. Now come on, someone’s having a laugh there, surely? You might as well twin the place with Twatt up in the Shetlands and be done. I’m not even kidding – look for yourself at www.sneem.com. I warn you, the website seems to have been designed on a Game Boy Colour by Stevie Wonder.

We had to leave Sneem as we were told, in hushed, dramatic tones like someone imparting a nuclear code or warning of an oncoming plague, that there was a tractor rally happening and the roads would be chaos. Good heavens – why there wasn’t a full BBC News crew there I still don’t know. I tease I tease, I know you need to find excitement where you can in a place like that – trust me, I grew up in a tiny village where the only excitement was the fortnightly library and wanking, though not at the same time, and certainly not with the librarian as she had a bigger beard than I did.

Whilst I’m here, driving around Ireland – and in particular, the Ring of Kerry, was an unending joy. The rain (which we love, so didn’t bother us) kept most of the other tourists at bay and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. They could do with levelling out some of the roads though because good lord it was bumpy (not helped by the fact that as usual I was driving like I’d stolen the car from the Garda). I was always told to drive like I had a pint of milk on the dashboard and I didn’t want to spill it – by the time I’d finished it would have been butter. I did show a little restraint after a particularly pronounced bump in the road where I almost turned the car into a convertible using nought but my own head.

I did manage to get stuck behind a caravan – almost inevitably – and immediately started turning the air blue due to the fact I couldn’t get past. I’m not against caravans – it’s nice that the happily celibate and doubly incontinent have a place to rest their heads – but I could have parked my car, lay down in the road and farted my way home and it would have been quicker. Every turn in the road required shifting down to first and piloting his Shitbox 3000 round the corner like it was made out of tissue and the branches on the tree were broken glass. I managed to overtake with Paul holding my left hand down so I couldn’t stick my fingers up at him as I went past. There’s no need to drive so bloody slowly!

That burst of anger seems like a good place to leave it, actually.

Tonight’s classic is baked bean lasagne. Confession time: we’ve made this before, but, as per usual with slimming world recipes, it didn’t taste that good. I’m a firm believer in taking proper recipes and slimming them down, remember? So we’ve jazzed it up a bit by adding mince, but you could just as easily leave that out. I’m not your keeper, for goodness sake.

to make baked bean lasagna, you’ll need:

one onion, 250 of lean mince, 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, nice yellow pepper, any mushrooms that haven’t grown legs yet, 2 tins of baked beans, garlic (powder or cloves, but grate finely if you’re using cloves) salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, dried lasagne sheets (pre-soaked if the packet says to do so, but for fucks sake don’t use fresh lasagne sheets or your consultant will be sticking pins in their voodoo doll of you, tub of quark, 30g of parmesan, 30g of extra strong cheddar (both cheeses being 1 healthy extra each) and an egg. Basil leaves and tomato for the top if you’re a pretentious sort.

to make baked bean lasagna, you should:

finely chop the pepper, onion, garlic and mushrooms and hoy in a pan and lightly cook them off for a few minutes in a drop of oil, with the soy sauce and worcestershire sauce added for good measure (a tsp each)
add the mince with all the rakish carelessness of a lorry driver dumping a jazz mag in a hedge and brown it off
tip the beans and tomatoes into the pot and allow to simmer until the sauce is nice and thick
meanwhile, prepare the cheese sauce by whisking violently together the quark, egg and 30g of parmesan, with a good twist or two of salt and pepper
- if you really want to splash out, buy a cheese sauce mix – this lasagna easily serves four so a 7.5 syn cheese mix (which is what the Schwartz cheese mix is works out at a fraction under 2 syns a serving, and that’s nowt!)
layer it in a pyrex dish – mince first (use a slotted spoon to take the mince from the pan to the dish, and that way your lasagne won’t be all sauce…), then the lasagna sheets, then the sauce, then the mince, then the sheets, then the sauce, and then wrap it all in foil and throw it in the oven for 40 minutes on 190 degrees – check on it after 30 minutes to make sure it hasn’t turned to ash
take it out, remove the foil, add the grated cheddar and any poncy decoration you like and pop it back in the oven for ten minutes or so until the cheese is golden and crunchy.

You really ought to serve this with a bit of salad but there’s a lot of superfree in there. So up to you.

I’m off now – Transco are sending an engineer around to fit a tap to my arse to relieve the pressure. Enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 7, 2015

Posted under

breast, budget, classics, one-pot, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free, travel

mushy pea curry

Where to start? Firstly, if you’re here for the recipe, have a good scroll down and you’ll find a recipe for good old mushy pea curry, which although it does look like someone’s already eaten it for you, is tasty, cheap and slimming. Trust me. If you’re here for the long haul, enjoy the first part of my rambling about our recent few days away in Ireland…

You may remember me mentioning that we had no plans and were planning a last-minute holiday away wherever we could find a cheap deal to a decent place? Well let me tell you – don’t bother. The only available flights were to places which you just know will be full of bald English men with red shoulders reading The Sun and eating full English breakfasts at 4pm. Bleugh. I don’t like flying – the thought of flying somewhere with such little reward just ruled going abroad at last-minute completely out. So, the night before we set off, we booked a holiday cottage in the absolute middle of nowhere in the Ring of Kerry, Ireland, and at 5pm the next day our car was packed, Paul had been picked up and we were on our way in no time at all. I normally hide away the sat-nav for reasons below but intrigue got the better of me as to how far I had to drive and the sat-nav was plugged in and on the dash within ten minutes.

Sat-navs are great in principle but I always end up putting mine sulkily away in the glove box after approximately five minutes. We bought a proper fancydan version in the sales but see, I hate being told what to do when I’m driving and struggle with the authority it commands in the car. I always have good intentions of listening to it and indeed, it’s never failed to guide us where we need to go, but I still have an inherent distrust and because Paul always sides with the sat-nav, it causes arguments. Plus, it only has two male voices, Daniel and Kevin. Kevin is a sarcastic knobhead so he immediately gets turned off but Daniel has been upgraded to this weird breathy version who almost whispers the commands at us like some robotic milk-tray man. I don’t know how appropriate it is to have a semi whilst clumsily navigating around the Bangor ring-road but there you have it.

We arrived in Bangor at around ten and, due to being full of wine gums and other sweets, went straight to bed. We’d elected to stay at a Premier Inn but this is always a mistake – not because they’re uncomfortable, quite the opposite actually – I’ve always had a great night’s sleep at a Premier Inn – but rather I spend all night scheming and plotting about how I might make my money back under their ‘Guaranteed Good Night’s Sleep’ promise. The problem with that is, I’ve always found the staff so nice and disarming that I immediately become charming and submissive and don’t dare mention any perceived problem with the room. Bah. We sped down towards Holyhead in the morning and we were at the dock in plenty of good time to sit and wait in the gales and mist before it was time to board the ferry.

Oh! Before I carry on with the tale, let me mention Paul’s idea of breakfast. As we didn’t have time to hoover up an all-you-can-eat-breakfast at the Premier Inn, I bustled him into Holyhead ASDA with the direction of getting a breakfast snack for us. This is what he came back with.

Haway. In case you can’t make it out, it was a little packet which contained a cheesestring, a wrap so dry I could have shaved my three-day-stubble with it, a sachet of knock-off tomato ketchup and (unlike in the picture above, which I’ve nicked from somewhere to illustrate my post) some sliced rolled chicken. It was unspeakably vile. I opened the packet and I swear it hissed when I pulled the lid back. The car smelt like someone had shit out a corpse on the back seat. We got fifty yards down the road before I pulled over and Paul, now with a considerable flea in his ear, had to dispose of the ‘meal’ in the nearest bin. Honestly Holyhead, get your act together. I had tears in my eyes as we drove past McDonalds to the ferry port, let me tell you. Anyway…

You know what I love about the English? The very second they perceive anyone to be at any sort of advantage to them, they start bitching – and this is compounded if they’ve paid extra. Let me explain. Paul and I paid an extra £10 each way on the ferry to be given priority boarding, disembarkation (is that a needlessly clumsy word or what) and access to the Stena lounge. It is the ferry equivalent of first class and we only bought it because the seats in the lounge looked moderately comfortable and there was promise of free snacks. Accordingly, when we drove into the port, we were asked to drive into one of two ‘Premium’ lanes. We parked up and had the windows down only to hear the whisker-faced woman, putting the Tena in Stena Line, in the Audi (shock! horror!) to my right immediately start bitching to her husband that ‘they had paid extra’ and ‘why where we in the second premium lane and they weren’t’ blah blah. He looked amazingly henpecked. She went on and on and on about the perceived injustice of people boarding ahead of her and only stopped when I put my window back up and we both started laughing at her. I think her mood soured further when we did indeed board first – a whole lane ahead of her – and I gave her and her watery-eyed husband a dainty handwave as we drove past. Stupid old mare that she was – it’s not as if those in Premium were going to sailing over on the fucking QE2 and the rest of the passengers were sailing on a floating door.

Once we were loaded onto the ferry, we dashed up the stairs to be the first couple into the ‘Stena Plus’ lounge. Part of the ‘premium’ booking is access to this lounge which is controlled by a surly miss and a set of glass doors. We had to give our surname and were ushered in to avail ourselves of the free snacks, which consisted of those little packet of shortbread that you get in cheap hotels and a few cans of Diet Coke. There were some bottles of wine available for those who were already shaking and slurring at 9am in the morning, plus tea and coffee. Once they had allowed all of the steerage passengers onboard and shut them behind the metal gates, we were on our way.

And good lord, what a crossing. We were warned by the captain (via the ship’s loudspeaker, not personally – I mean we’d only paid an extra tenner and that had to cover the forty cans of Pepsi that I’d secreted away into my rucksack) that the crossing was going to be rough due to the strong winds and turbulent seas, and he wasn’t kidding. The Stena Plus lounge is situated at the front of the ferry and the waves were cresting over the top of the prow as it bobbed up and down. It was awful – it was all I could do to eat my cooked breakfast and fret about whether I’d put the handbrake on, envisioning my car rolling around on the car deck and the weight of our car-snacks causing a frightful Herald of Free Enterprise incident. It was a long four hours – I spent most of it snaffling snacks and gambling in the arcades. Oh and another moan! If you have kids, you don’t automatically have the right to use any machine you want or to have people who are altogether more sensible than you to get out of the way just so your crusty-faced little shitmachine can ‘have a go at driving’. I know, awful, but some pompous little knobhead with a bristly-little tache and his child took a look into the arcade, saw Paul and I playing Mario Kart Arcade Edition and said to his child ‘DON’T WORRY DARLING, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO HAVE A TURN ON THESE KIDS MACHINES WHEN THESE FULLY GROWN MEN HAVE FINISHED’. Honest to God, fully grown men. It was all I could do not to pick up his child and toss him into the Irish sea. I wouldn’t mind but we all know that children don’t actually play the machines, they just sit making silly noises and taking up space. Frankly, parents should be made to lock their children in the car and they can spend the ferry crossing on the car-deck, well out of the way. The ferry journey passed, eventually.

Now we managed to get all the way to the Ring of Kerry via Holyhead, a ferry and seemingly eight years of twisty roads absolutely fine and without incident, and we were a mile away from our cottage when it all went wrong. We arrived at the right ‘area’ and that’s where we were told to switch off the sat-nag (typo intended) and open up the owner’s own directions which would guide us merrily to our cottage in enough time to get the hot-tub going and allow us an hour to flick disdainfully through her CD collection and make snide comments about her glassware.

Well, did they fuck. For a start, she had worded the directions as though as we were in Lord of the Rings, all ‘go over the brow of the hill and make a turn (which direction? which hill?)’ and ‘drive on until you feel a chill’. They were crap. You need to understand how remote the area was – imagine in the pitch black trying to find a remote cottage with not so much as a blinking light anywhere to be seen. It took us three hours – THREE HOURS – of steaming around the countryside along farm tracks screaming and swearing at the perceived injustice of it all. I like to think what the poor horse in the field nearby thought of it all when he saw our car appearing over the crest of a hill for the eightieth time and the last few syllables of a swearing tirade against the Irish, Tom Tom, cottages, Citroen, Enya and Guinness as we sped past. No wonder he got his revenge later in the holiday (that’ll be in part 2).

Completely lost and on the verge of driving the car into a peat bog and setting it on fire, we found an isolated little cottage with a light on and knocked on the door. Now imagine that. You’re a lady, alone, cooking your evening meal, when two burly bald blokes come mincing up your track and braying on the door asking for directions to ‘Cum Bag’ (which was our approximate pronunciation of the name of the cottage, which was in Gaelic). The poor lass probably thought she was starring in her own Vera adventure. She took an age to find directions but eventually, helpfully, she sent us on our way. Buoyed with confidence, we shot off and within five minutes we’d taken another wrong turn, driven the car up a forty-five degree incline into a farmer’s field and were left spinning the car around in the mud in the pitch black, with Paul outside of the car bellowing directions on where I should reverse and me unable to hear him as I was revving the engine so hard out of sheer, unadulterated anger. Haha. Just to add a cherry on top of this my reverse sensors were blaring away making out there was an obstacle behind me until we realised it was mud on the sensor.

Aaah. We headed back to the road, sulked for a good fifteen minutes and then decided to go back to the start and try following her directions one final time. We were at the cottage, parked up and steaming, within ten minutes. God knows how, why or what we were doing wrong, but we managed it without a hitch. I was fizzing and it seems like a good point to stop the tale and move onto the recipe…

Mushy pea curry. Yes, I know, it sounds revolting, but most people will eat a chickpea dahl and this is quite like that. I’ve added chicken, somewhat unnecessarily, but that’s me all over. It’s syn free and you’ll be able to get a good few chapters of my book completed as you sit on the thunderbox firing this out for the next two weeks.

Delicious.

to make mushy pea curry, you’ll need:

two tins of mushy peas, one tin of baked beans, a few mushrooms, a tin of chopped tomatoes, two onions, three garlic gloves (minced), a chicken breast, a red pepper, 1tsp of hot chilli powder and two tbsp of curry powder, as hot as you like. You’ll also need a decent pan. You’ll also need a drop of oil and some salt.

For the rice, you’ll need long-grain white rice. Duh.

to make mushy pea curry, you should:

slice the onions nice and thin – use a mandolin! My mandolin has dropped again in price – now only £10, and it’ll save you hours. Plus, who needs the end of their fingers anyway? EH?
do the same with the pepper
cut the chicken up into small pieces and the mushrooms into slices
put the tiny drop of oil into the pan and chuck the onion, mushroom and peppers in there with a bit of salt, and on a medium heat, leave them to sweat down a little
after ten minutes or so, pull maybe a quarter of the onion/pepper out and set it aside in a dish – you’ll use this for your rice;
throw the chicken into the hot pan and cook it hard and fast on a high heat;
now throw in everything else (bar the rice and the quarter of the onion mix, obviously) and mix well – leave it to simmer for half an hour or so
for the rice, add a cup full of rice (literally a cup full – take a cup out of the cupboard, fill it with rice, tip that into a pan with the onion/pepper you set aside, using the same cup add two cups of water into the pan, bring to the boil, turn it down to simmer and leave it for around fourteen minutes – covered with a tight-fitting lid – on a gentle simmer. Tasty, fluffy rice
serve when thickened and tasty!

Enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 23, 2015

Posted under

airfryer, british, budget, classics, low syn, recipe card, sausages

slimming world sausages and mash

One thing I want to get off my chest is this weird habit people seem to have of serving up their Slimming World slops in those awful three part plates. I’m not talking about the plates where it looks like someone fresh off the ‘Special Ward’ has been let loose with a bag of Poundland felt-tips, I’m talking about these:

They’re bloody awful and they’re not a plate – they’re a bloody serving platter! The middle bit is for dip and the sides are for the Sprinters crisps and KP Nots. Plus it looks like the imprint that would be left in wet cement if Jordan did the splits above it. If you’re eating one main meal out of this, why not go the whole hog and get yourself a trough? Argh! It really annoys me.

I’ve had a genuinely quite lovely today at work – great fun. You remember that part of my job is being on a committee whose job it is to plan fun events and little surprises for everyone? When a colleague and I had to parcel up 160 pick-and-mixes for people? Well, I came up with the idea of a giant Easter Egg hunt, so naturally, Paul and I were in my office last night at midnight hiding 200 caramel, Lindt and créme eggs all over the place. Yes, I’ve had 200 or so eggs rolling around in the back of my car for almost two weeks. They were originally in the house but, no kidding, we had to put the eggs into the boot of the car and then put the car in the bloody garage to remove the temptation. So weakwilled and even then, we did a fair few mad dashes to the garage in our tatty boxers to grab a handful. I actually had to top up the eggs out of my own pocket. GASP. So yeah, imagine this greeting you every time you opened the boot:

Seriously, we hid them all over. We had them buried in people’s muesli, parcel-taped under desks, hidden down the tube of a roll of wrapping paper, in vending machines…there were even gold and silver eggs hidden for an extra bonus. The silver egg I managed to hide in the peel of a tangerine which I then wrapped up and put back in the communal fruit bowl. The lucky finder won the booby prize of a jar of pickled eggs. The golden eggs – individually wrapped Lindt eggs in gold foil – were hidden in especially difficult places, including sellotaped to the blind mechanism so it would only appear when the blind was pulled down, another in a carrier bag dispenser, one hidden in our rolling rack system with the clue ‘I’ve hidden it in Baghdad’ (In Iraq, see?) and my favourite, a gold egg in the form of a gold helium star, attached to the balcony on the sixth floor with a 40m piece of garish pink parcel ribbon. The idea being it would float serenely above the building (“Find an egg with a view”) but no, no it sank and smeared along the side of the client meeting rooms. Oops, what-am-I-like. Had to cut the ribbon and pull it back a bit.

The golden eggs were swapped for fancy-pants Easter eggs, see, hence the difficulty! Finally, we had nipped to Poundland (I still can’t get the smell of chip-pan out of my coat) on the Sunday and bought five ‘nests’ which we filled with several little eggs and they were stuck all over the place too. Aaah it was great fun! It’s genuinely one of the best parts about my job because I love shit like this, and being able to indulge it does cheer my soul.

Actually, I love treasure hunts full stop. For our first anniversary, I set up a massive treasure hunt all across Newcastle which started off in our flat – the first clue being frozen in a block of ice that could have sunk the Titanic. The second clue was hidden on the living room wall in giant letters – only I’d done it with UV paint, so it only showed up when Paul used the UV light on his keyring. Once we’d done the treasure hunt, we took great delight in writing all over the wall in the windowless hallway with UV paint – if the new tenants in Ouseburn Wharf somehow decide to rig up a UV light, they’re going to be mortified at what they find. I mean, swearing is so much more fun when no-one can see it…

…mind, that’s not the worst thing I’ve splashed on a wall. Not sure why me and my flatmate thought this was a good idea to do when we’d been on the pop one New Years Eve…

The worst part about this was that, although we painted over it several times with Wilko’s own brand shitty beige paint, it was like painting with milk, and we could never quite get rid of his evil staring eyes. Probably why we lost our deposit. That and the iron-print burn in the kitchen lino when someone tried to straighten my then-long hair with an iron. Oops.

Anyway, this was only supposed to be a quick post but I’ve ended up chuntering on, so here’s a recipe. Well not really a recipe, given it’s pretty self-explanatory…

Mushy peas are free, as is mashed potato (with added cauliflower just in case the peas don’t turn your arse into a mustard-gas factory) and indeed, so are the Slimming World sausages from Iceland. How are they? Alright. They look like someone’s pooed into a condom in some people’s photos but we seem to have cooking them down exactly right – chuck them in the Actifry and watch Judge Rinder for fifteen minutes. By the time you’ve heard him bitching and sassing and flouncing around his pretend courtroom in his black cape like a haunted toilet-roll cover, the sausages are just right. Gravy is synned at 1 syn per 50ml made up gravy and unless you’re one of those people who drown your food in gravy, that’ll be way more than enough.

Anyway christ, this was only meant to be a quick post…!

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Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 21, 2015

Posted under

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

carrot, swede and potato soup

Because that’s when good neighbours become good friends!

I can’t quite believe Neighbours is still going, let alone celebrating 30 years on the air. I was always a Home and Away man myself, partly because as a fat child I couldn’t be bothered getting up to turn the channel over after Fun House. I remember the great disasters like it was yesterday – the big flood, the earthquake, Evil Ailsa, telling my mum she looked like Irene who used to run the diner. Good times! I spotted the 30th anniversary trailer for Neighbours before on TV and I’m happy to confirm that yes, I DO still look like Harold. Mind, that would make Paul Madge, so that really quite tickles me.

Oh, speaking of being tickled, I’ve had a great ten minutes. See, we use something called Spotify which allows you to listen to thousands and thousands of different music tracks. All very exciting. We’ve got Premium which means you can access your playlists on the move and Paul’s phone syncs his music through his car. However, I’ve learned that I can log in from home and change the music playing in his car whilst he’s out and about. Anyway, he’s out driving people to a young Marxist meeting, and I’ve been making all sorts play in the car (Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel by Tavares, Lovin’ You by Minnie Ripperton and my personal favourite, Can You Feel The Love Tonight from The Lion King). His response was a smidge curt:

Eee, I hope he doesn’t kiss his mother with that mouth. Although that would explain his stubble burn.

Anyway, yes, Neighbours – or indeed neighbours, was what has been on my mind.

When Paul and I first started ~~shagging~~ ‘going steady’, we moved into a flat on Newcastle’s Quayside, seduced by the fabulous views of a concrete factory and the Millennium bridge. It was lovely but the entire block of flats were taken up by the kind of pretentious, rah-rah-rah knobheads who we both loathe with a passion. We had a homeless man living in the bin store, shitting everywhere, and someone set up a ‘collection point’ for him. Now, I’m a liberal guy, I really am, but I don’t want to tread in human shit every time I put my bins out. It’s not a lot to ask. Our neighbour downstairs used to have cracking arguments with his girlfriend mind which provided much hilarity until we thought he had belted her and so we called the police. They never talked to us again after that. Well, briefly – Paul had been drying some boxer shorts on the balcony when the wind caught a particularly well-worn pair and blew them over the edge and sadly, because the girlfriend of the lad downstairs was out smoking on her balcony, they landed right on the top of her head. She thought we had done it deliberately and launched an absolute torrent of abuse, we probably didn’t help by shutting the balcony door and screaming with laughter. Oh dear. We only lasted two years there before moving out, with the prevalent memory of the place being the black suede headboard in the master bedroom. Well, it wasn’t black when we left, let me tell you. It looked like a Jackson Pollock painting – what can I say, we were young and keen in those days, and who the fuck chooses black suede as a headboard? Frankly, we needed something laminated.

We then moved to Gosforth into a Tyneside flat, which was slightly less salubrious but a lot more homely. The only problem was our neighbour upstairs, who came down for a vodka when we moved in and then turned completely mad. She was the type who’d happily clatter around on her cheap lino in her best Primarni heels when she rolled in at 3am with that night’s bus-stop encounter gelling on her thigh, but would hammer on the floor and yell about the noise if I so much as yawned. For a good few weeks we crept about underneath like the fucking Borrowers, which was incredibly difficult for two twenty stone blokes to do, before realising that we weren’t being unreasonably noisy, she was, and that we should really get our revenge. Lucky, that was fairly easy.

In our bedroom was a grand, open fireplace which had been somewhat shoddily sealed off by someone putting a slab of stone just above the grate. Her bedroom, immediately above ours, shared the same chimney. Sound was usually muffled thanks to the stone but, after we moved it slightly, we were able to get up to all sorts of mischief. We’d wait until we knew she was in bed, move the stone a tiny bit, and fart up the chimney. As I said before, we are big blokes, and frankly, we fart like bulls at the best of times, but we used to store them up to the point of stomach pains just so we could blow them up the chimney. It must have sounded like someone was practicising the tuba in the chimney stack, especially given how the sound would amplify. We’d also make off-putting sex noises if she had anyone round and, in what I think was the most inspired move, we played a load of Roy Walker sound-clips (like Chris Moyles’ Car Park Catchphrase) when she had her mother around. She moved out about a month afterwards and silence fell. When she left, we felt able to tidy up the patch outside the house, and planted lots of nice flowers which was grand until the snooty moo to the left of us came downstairs and criticised our cheap pots. Cheap! We were on a budget back then, and anyway, it was the rougher end of Gosforth, not bloody somewhere posh. Our retalliation was swift – we went to Poundland, bought all manner of garish gnomes, plastic frogs, tatty windmills and other such flimflam until our garden looks like a roadside memorial to a boy-racer. She never talked to us after that, although I drove past the flat the other day and there’s still a god-awful, sun-bleached frog in the front garden so whoever has the house now must have THE worst taste ever.

Finally, we moved to our current house, and it’s perfect – why? Because we’re a detached bungalow!

Speaking of perfect blends, here’s a soup recipe. YES! YES I DID A GOOD SEGUE FOR ONCE!

Look, there’s no way to make that look alluring or inviting, but it tasted good and couldn’t have been simpler to make. No really, it couldn’t. I bought a prepared soup veg mix from Tesco, where the carrot, swede, potato and onion were all cut up. I threw it all in my soup maker with 600ml of chicken (you could use vegetable) stock, some garlic, salt and pepper, pressed a button, came here to type out the bit above and I’d barely stopped chuckling and clutching my sides when it beeped ready. A quick blend – in the same machine – and we were done. Served! You can buy the same soupmaker as the one I use right here. Somewhat annoyingly, it’s reduced from £140 to £90. Worth getting? I think so. It took less than one minute to prepare the soup, 30 minutes to cook and a moment to blend. Plenty of superfree in there too. Very rare that I think a kitchen gadget is worth the money but I would actually recommend a soup maker. If you get one, why don’t you try tomato, fennel and feta soup, super speedy ‘just like Heinz’ tomato soup, super speed soup, cabbage, kidney bean and sausage soup, kale, spinach and broccoli and pesto soup or onion soup.

Enjoy all!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 15, 2015

Posted under

budget, dips, fakeaways, lunch, persian, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

syn-free houmous four-ways

Only a small post today as it’s mother’s day (so I need to go visit Ripley) and I’m ‘on-call’ for work, with the expectation that I’ll be expected to work into the wee hours again. Fingers crossed this doesn’t happen but it’s not as if I could just turn my phone off…

I am very lucky to have a mum (and dad) like I do. They handled my being a back-door-deirdre with sensitivity and aplomb, which aren’t words you’d immediately associate with our family. I always felt incredibly supportive and they even put up with the various boyfriends that I brought up like a cat with a dying mouse without too much commentary. They even let my ‘friend’ stay for two weeks at a time during the summer holidays. Such a memorable summer. I know a few other gay lads who weren’t so lucky with their parents – I’ve mentioned on here before about the guy who, enthused about being gay since I broke him in, rushed home to tell his parents the good news only for his dad to throw him against a wall and hold a screwdriver to his throat. Good old religion! My parents came through then too – they let him stay at our house and ‘hid him away’ despite his parents turning up in the village where we lived and asking on doors if people had seen him! Crazy times. I think I’ve managed to grow up well-adjusted and happy in myself thanks to my parents and I love them very much for it.

Anyway, enough bloody treacle. In honour of dear old Mother, here’s a rare picture of me and the good lady on a night out. Don’t we look glam?

What a trooper. Still, better get in the car, nip to the graveyard to pick up a nice bunch of flowers for her, and be away. I can fudge away the ‘With Sympathies’ card easily enough, I’m sure.

Here’s a recipe to tide you over:

to make syn-free houmous four-ways:

I love how this looks in a photo, and all four varieties of houmous taste different and fresh in their own ways. All syn free too! They’re just variations of the same basic houmous recipe, below:

lemon and garlic (add an extra couple of garlic gloves, a squidge more lemon juice and decorate with finely grated lemon peel) (don’t take the pith, literally, as that is very bitter – just the top layer, please)
basil and parmesan (10 torn basil leaves, 10g of shaved parmesan, bit of salt) – up to you if you want to syn such a tiny portion of parmesan but bearing in mind you’ll be getting what, 2.5g of it, I wouldn’t bother)
pickled red cabbage (just a few chunks of pickled red cabbage and some of the pickling vinegar added to give it colour)
paprika and sun-dried tomato – I chucked in 1tbsp of sundried tomato paste (1.5 syns, but again, through the laws of dilution, it’s up to you if you syn it)

The basic houmous recipe is simple enough – for enough to fill one of those little square bowls above, you’ll want to use one small tin of cooked chick peas (syn free), a nice round tablespoon of fat free cottage cheese, a garlic clove, pinch of sea salt and some lemon juice. Blend it together, adding a little more lemon juice if you like it runny or keeping some back if you prefer it chunky. It’s up to you.

You may remember Delia Smith banging on about these when she wasn’t pissed off her nut. They’re genuinely amazing and it’ll make just the right amount of houmous to fill one of the bowls above. I use it all the time.

BUT OH NO:

Before the Tweak Police are on the phone to Margaret and she’s clambering into the back of a battered Ford Transit with a sock full of batteries to take me out, FAIR WARNING. This could technically be considered a tweak on the Slimming World diet. Is it? Is it bollocks. You’re not eating more chickpeas than you could reasonably eat, and this filled us up enough to skip our evening meal, so kiss it! I’ve done a whole article on tweaking which, if you’re new to this site, you’ll probably get a right good kick out of. It’s here.

Serve with pitta chips (one WW 50/50 pittas (branded as love fibre) is a HEB – toast it and cut it up) and all sorts of superfree slices – cucumber, red peppers, carrots, tomatoes. World is your oyster.

Happy mother’s day all.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 8, 2015

Posted under

budget, lunch, pasta, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients, syn free

syn-free sausage and tomato bake

You’re not just getting a blog post tonight, you’re getting a whole new page and a recipe! Gosh we spoil you. You can find the new page by clicking here and unusually, I’d LOVE feedback – any possible questions, things I’ve got wrong, the usual guff. In the meantime, as a treat for us forgetting to post last week, here’s another recipe – it’s just a sausage and pasta bake but it’s the perfect vehicle for any old shite you have leftover in the fridge.

Firstly, a reassurance – if you DON’T have pasta that is shaped like giant, shaven, tidy vaginas then do not worry – you can use any pasta at all in this. Use a mixture, use the drags from the back of the cupboard with the weevils crawling on it for added protein, use spaghetti, noodles, the works! It’ll be syn free as long as you use your healthy extras for the cheese (70g reduced fat parmesan) and the bread bun.

to make syn-free sausage and tomato bake you’ll need:

ingredients: pasta, two tins of tomatoes, Slimming World sausages (syn-free, but if you want, get some very low-syn sausages and syn accordingly), an onion, garlic, reduced fat cheese, quark and a wholemeal bun whizzed up into breadcrubs.

to make syn-free sausage and tomato bake you should:

recipe: cook your pasta in water so salty it would be a sailor cry, drain and set aside. Meanwhile, chop your onion and garlic, fry it off gently in a drop of oil, add your tinned tomatoes and let it simmer down. Grill your sausages and cut into discs.

Now – for our bake, we added sliced peppers, half a bag of wilting rocket and some jalapenos that were floating around in the fridge. Add whatever you like!

Combine everything in a great big pan and stir it like crazy. Get it all mixed up. Chuck it into a pyrex dish. Add the quark on the top, followed by the cheese and breadcrumbs, and pop it in the oven for thirty minutes. Finish it under the grill for another five to get it crunchy. Serve!

This makes four massive portions and like I said, is perfect for using up any leftover veg or pasta. It’s a very cheap and filling dish and even if you left out the sausages, would still serve as a lovely midweek meal.

Syn free!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 1, 2015

Posted under

budget, low syn, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

balsamic roasted sprouts

For week four, we’re going to…Belgium! Well, sort of. I’ll come to that later…

Admit it, you’ve missed us. I’ve got visions of people wailing and rocking, waiting for the update that just didn’t appear. Well, to be frank, I’m disappointed that there were no Princess Diana-esque walls of flowers created, or that no-one doused themselves in petrol and set themselves on fire on our front lawn. Honestly, people. No, the unglamourous truth was that we’ve both been a little under the weather – and I was out on the piss on Friday night – and needed yesterday to recover.

Now see here, I’m not a big drinker – I tend to be an all or nothing sort of guy, so if I start drinking, I’m on it until I’m bundled into a taxi / arrested for lewd behaviour / do a Winehouse and choke on my vomit. It was supposed to be a civilised night, actually, and it certainly started off that way, with champagne in Hotel Indigo. That civilised chatter lasted about fifteen minutes before talk about bumhole waxing, black fluff and ‘dripping’ got underway and then the night never really got the glamour back. Brilliant night though, even if my mate did end up telling some poor, haggard looking woman with eighties hair and a very cats-arse-mouth (she was tutting at our conversation and rolling her eyes) that she looked like Enya. Taxi!

I like to think I’m a pleasant enough drunk – I’m certainly not an angry drunk or – worse – the moaning, miserable sort – if anything I just become way too affectionate towards Paul. In the interest of full disclosure and to try and prove a point, here’s a screenshot of my texts to Paul on Friday. Bearing in mind I’m the type of person who will chew through his trousers with his own bumhole if someone so much as uses a LOL in a text message to me, I certainly let my standards slip after four bottles of champagne.

God he puts up with a lot, doesn’t he? Look at those times though, I was clearly hammered pretty quickly. In my defence, if there is one, my phone has a smashed glass screen so it’s hard to type properly. Yeah, that’ll be it. I can’t remember anything from after Paul bundled me into the Micra, though he tells me:

I kept falling asleep / passing out on the twenty minute drive home, intermittently burping and slouching over onto his shoulder, meaning he had to keep jerking the car to the left at high speed to tilt me the other way;
I spent a lot of time telling no-one in particular to fuck off; and
when I got home, he opened the car door and I went tearing out like my arse was on fire because I was about to have a technicolour yawn, went headfirst straight into the side of the shed – and then was sick all over our front lawn.

Tell you what mind, I felt right as bloody rain on Saturday after Paul cooked me a low-syn breakfast. Weigh in tomorrow and I think I’ll have put on, but hopefully Paul will have lost. But remember what I always say – we’re aiming to lose weight slowly, so if it goes up or down, it doesn’t matter. I’m certainly in credit. We spent today walking Lester from the cat and dog shelter, but he was clearly Hooch from Turner and Hooch!

Aw. OK, finally, tonight’s recipe. I’ll make a confession – we totally forgot to think of a European recipe this week, so this is a little last minute. It’s a snack idea using brussel sprouts, which to be fair were cultivated in Belgium. We may revisit this one but actually, the sprouts are delicious hot or cold as a snack!

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you will need:

a tablespoon of olive oil, a bag of brussel sprouts, balsamic vinegar, salt

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you should:

top and tail a bag of sprouts (take outer leaves off, cut the stem off the bottom). Get a tablespoon of decent olive oil (6 syns) and a good few glugs of balsamic vinegar. Mix them well and put onto a baking tray and sprinkle with some salt. Into the oven on 180degrees for twenty minutes, give them a shake and then cook for another twenty. Serve hot or cold and keep the windows open, because your bumhole is going to be backfiring like an old car. This easily served us twice over, so the two syns in the picture above could actually be lower (I decided that a serving was 1/3 of a bag of sprouts). Enjoy!

I’M BACK, BITCHES.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

February 2, 2015

Posted under

breakfast, budget, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

the perfect boiled egg

four weeks into our diet and we have our Monday results!

james: 3lb off
paul: 1lb off
total: 29.5lb off

So pleased! Remember last week when I said all I wanted to do was maintain this week? Well, smashed it! I’ve had popcorn, Nandos, sweets and all sorts this week too – but balanced it out by having low syn meals and judicious use of my healthy extras. Paul is content with his weight loss too – as well he bloody should be – he always loses weight slow and steady, but see if he loses 1lb a week it’s still 3.5 stone by the end of it. I need to lose more, hence my 2lb a week target! CHUFFED.Also, I only went and got Slimmer of the bloody Month. Well that’s not what they put on the sticker but perhaps they should – I’d love to see a rawer version of Slimming World without all the cutesy-poo guff – I reckon they’d do well to write a few recipes with fuck this and balls to that in there. Paul was second in the Slimmer of the Month queue, so he’s getting anal tonight.That’s right, no matter how clean I get this house, he wants it tidier.I totally pinched that joke from Family Guy. But then they pinched it from the earlier nineties so that makes us even.So, as is the norm on a Monday – we’re having a night away from the computer, watching TV, but I couldn’t leave you empty-handed, like I did with that beggar who wanted a fiver off me not so long ago. No, because I’m the gift who keeps on giving (me, a giver? Well that answers one possible question…), here’s something ridiculous.

10354226_829978947075710_6680781272014671399_n

But of course it is. It’s a sad eyed little chick, ready to be turned effortlessly into poo by my efficient digestive system. It knows what’s coming and it’s not afraid. HEB your toast discs though. Obviously you don’t need to fanny about with the carrot and seeds but it makes it look pretty. Pretty ridiculous. 7 minutes gets you a hard-boiled egg with a lovely runny yolk. If the egg is a big bugger, it might scream when you cut into it, but persevere. I got the idea from the infinitely more talented dosirakbento who is truly a wonder at these things.Cracking breakfast, no?Tomorrow’s dinner? The first in our 50 (!) recipe special, where we find a recipe from each country in Europe. One a week. We’ve even made a fancy-dan banner for it.J

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

January 29, 2015

Posted under

american, budget, low syn, one-pot, pasta, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

hot dog threaded spaghetti

We briefly flirted with having a cleaner last year. See, we are both generally out of the house from 7am to 7pm, and by the time we’ve got home, found a recipe, cooked it and done a blog post, we’re knackered. The idea of pushing a hoover around (bad example, we’ve got a Roomba which makes sad little beep-boops every now and then – probably because it’s clogged up with three cats worth of cat hair) or cleaning the bath fills us with dismay. So, we tried to get a cleaner. The first two turned up once and then never came back, which was mysterious – we actually live in a very clean house – it was just the ‘bigger’ tasks that needed doing. It’s not a ‘wipe your feet as you leave’ sort of house – even the toilet is surprisingly free of skidders given two burly blokes live here. The third (and last) cleaner used to come, do a half-arsed job and go, but then charge us the full amount. We were too ‘nice’ to pull her up on it and she’s been texting every now and then asking when to come back. Frankly, it was terrifying – all I could imagine her doing was rummaging through our drawers and criticising my choice of underwear / spices / sex toys. Because that’s EXACTLY what I’d do.

I’m reminded of a friend who always liked to inspect the medicines cabinet of whoever she was visiting, until she managed to accidentally wrench the whole cabinet off the wall onto the floor after one particularly exciting snoop. How do you cover that up? Nonchalantly state you were looking for a tampon or diarrhoea relief? Or just admit to being nosy? You’d be disappointed if you looked in our bathroom cabinet, it’s full of old shaving foam, heartburn tablets and smart-price netty paper. So yes – every time I knew she was in the house, I’d spend my time panicking I’d be tagged in some off-colour facebook post with her holding up a bottle of lube or our bank statements for all the world to see. We have managed to get rid of her with lots of ‘Oh we can’t afford you anymore’ gubbins, but I bet she’s had a neb at our bank statements so she probably knows that isn’t true anyway. Not that we have a lot of money I hasten to add, we don’t, but we’re incredibly tight so she knows we don’t spend a lot.

We also used to have an ironing lady, because neither of us can iron worth a damn and good lord, I’d sooner iron my own face than work our way through our ironing pile – we both work in an office, so there’s ten formal shirts and six pairs of trousers just from work alone. Remember, we’re somewhat elephantine, so it takes the two of us standing at opposite ends of the garden just to fold our underwear. Plus, we’re both used to one another’s gentle musk – the last thing we need is some hairy-chinned old dear passing out from the fumes released from our boxers as she tries to press in a crease.

One concession we do have is a gardener – when we were given the house, we were completely new to the concept of looking after a garden – and there’s a massive lawn at the front and another big bugger at the back. Paul had a few valiant months of trying to mow the lawn before we accepted defeat and brought in a gardener. He’s smashing, but not too good at following instructions. For example, there’s a little flower bed in the middle of the lawn – tiny, but it holds a heather bush. That heather bush was planted by the mum of the guy who gave us the house (who himself lives up the street) and we always agreed we’d let it flower. Well, WE did. The gardener didn’t – he ran the bloody lawnmower right over the top of it, scattering memories and heather all over the lawn. He claimed he didn’t see it. We were too cowardly to ‘tell him off’ because he had a pair of shears in his hands when we noticed and he’s built like a brick shithouse. So, it was a quick trip to the garden centre to replace the bush. I just hope her ashes weren’t under there. If they are, they’d be in my green recycling bin. No wonder she haunts the house.

She’d certainly haunt this house if she saw what we had for dinner tonight – it was bloody lovely! Simple, only 3 syns, and fun to eat. It’s hot dog threaded spaghetti, see.

Firstly, if you happen to have any leftover bolognese left over from the spaghetti bolognese from the other day, and the lasagne cups from yesterday, then serve it with this dish. If you don’t, knock up a quick sauce from celery, tomatoes, peppers, onion and carrot. This is the ultimate leftover meal – I’ve spread one core ingredient over three meals – this would do for a lunch!

to make hot dog threaded spaghetti, you’ll need:

ingredients: your leftover bolognese, spaghetti and a tin of giant Ye Olde Oak hot dogs. They’re 2 syns each and you get six in a tin, more than enough – I say three each. If you use another brand of hotdog, make sure you check the syns – minced up arseholes and eyelids can be surprisingly high in syns!

to make hot dog threaded spaghetti, you should:

recipe: there’s nothing more to this than slicing up the hot dog into little discs, pushing the uncooked spaghetti through it however you like, and cooking the spaghetti. Serve with the bolognese and your HEA cheese! As I said, perfect for a lunchbox. Easy!

extra-easy: as long as your bolognese is stuffed with superfree, you’ll be fine with this.

Haha – jesus. I told Paul I was going to do a quick blog post and that I’d be done in ten minutes. And here we are, forty minutes later. Oops. I just like the sound of my own typing, I guess!

Enjoy the recipe – remember to share!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

January 24, 2015

Posted under

airfryer, beef, budget, cured meats, low syn, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

square egg, snacks and injuries

Previous readers may recall that a few months ago, I had to go for an MRI scan on my heart. Exciting. I described it at the time like being sucked into a Polo-coloured sphincter. Well, after weeks and weeks of fitfully looking at the letterbox waiting for news, I finally got a letter from my doctor yesterday which said everything was OK, heart was beating as it should be and I had nothing to worry about, bar being too handsome for most people to deal with. Typical NHS restraint. I’ve actually (touching wood) been remarkably lucky with my health so far – found a lump in my boob a year or so ago but it turned out to be nothing exciting (I’m surprised it wasn’t an M&M, to be honest) and a couple of bouts of anxiety throughout the last few years. I don’t want to dwell on anxiety, but it’s a very funny thing – people who wouldn’t take the piss out of you if you had a broken leg or lost the sight on one eye feel quite chipper making snide comments about anxiety behind your back. I don’t see a mental illness as less important than a physical one, but the world has a long way to go before that status is reconciled.

Ah well.

The only injuries I’ve ever had of note both have typically me causes – I’ve got a scar on my forehead from ~~a killing curse launched at me by the greatest Dark Wizard who ever lived~~ cartwheeling into the side of a door. I remember going downstairs (the cartwheel having been done in my bedroom, which was surprising because it remains the only bedroom I’ve ever been in where I had to back out onto the landing to turn around) with a cartoon egg-shaped lump on my head only for my mum to hoy a big bag of peas on it and sat me down in front of Countdown until I stopped trying to make an 18 letter conundrum. The second time I tore my lip open and bent (but didn’t break) (I don’t think) my nose to the left by using my face as an impromptu braking device on my bike – forgot that my brakes didn’t work as I thundered down a hill the only way a fat lad on an old bike can, hit the front brakes, bike stopped immediately and I sailed through the air like a clay pigeon. Only I landed on my face. This time, I think I was knocked out, as my only memory is my sister running home to get my mother who took me home, wrapped a tea-towel from the side in the kitchen around my face (I can still taste I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and strawberry jam if I lick the scar) and left it to sort itself out. I’ve got a big scar on my bottom lip which I can see if I push my lips flat against my teeth, but other than that I’m fine. Actually, reading all this back, it makes it sounds as though I grew up in Mr Bumble’s workhouse, but that’s far from the truth. My mum just didn’t want the nurses to question all the other bruises and marks on my body.

And that’s a joke too, before anyone tries to respectively put us on the register. I always received medical aid where necessary and my parents were – and are – very loving!

Speaking of very loving, how about this for an evening meal? Up here in Geordieland, we call an evening meal made up of lots of different little things (normally sandwiches, cakes, pork pies etc) a tea-tea, but I know there’s lots of others. Paul informs me he used to call it a picnic tea but I find that hard to believe because it conjures up a charming spread served on gingham tableclothes and bone china, whereas I know from his many tales that he never tasted food that didn’t have 4% Lambert and Butler ash in it until he moved up here.

Like yesterday, with this being more of an ensemble dish, there’s little point in doing a recipe, so instead let me break down the various bits:

pickled onions – you can have most pickles for nothing on SW, so fill up – and try sauerkraut, it’s bloody delicious, although too much pickled cabbage will leave you with veritable knicker-stainers later. Open a window.

tomatoes – buy a variety to add colour and keep them out of the fridge – they’ll taste so much nicer.

pitta chips – you’re allowed one wholemeal pitta as a healthy extra – toast one, cut it up and serve with…

…sweet potato houmous – blend one large cooked sweet potato with four tablespoons of fat free yoghurt, one garlic clove, two tablespoons of lemon juice, salt and a 200g tin of chickpeas. Don’t blend it too smooth, it’s better with a few chunks. Just like the best of us.

roast potatoes – cut up some new potatoes, put them in the Actifry with an Oxo cube to cover them. Delicious.

pastrami wraps – make a sauce of four finely chopped gherkins, four tablespoons of fat free fromage frais and half a teaspoon of mustard powder. Smear onto a slice of pastrami, stuff it full of rocket and roll it up.

chicken wraps – nowt more fancy than a gherkin wrapped up in a slice of chicken!

square egg – they taste so much better than a normal egg but I’ve heard it makes the chicken walk funny. WELCOME TO MY WORLD, COCK.

A perfect picky dinner. Now off to watch Before I Go To Sleep with Fattychops. 100th post coming soon!

I used this little gadget to make my egg cube, by the way!

twochubbycubs

slimming, sassy recipes

Category Archives: budget

baked bean lasagna

to make baked bean lasagna, you’ll need:

to make baked bean lasagna, you should:

mushy pea curry

to make mushy pea curry, you’ll need:

to make mushy pea curry, you should:

slimming world sausages and mash

carrot, swede and potato soup

syn-free houmous four-ways

to make syn-free houmous four-ways:

syn-free sausage and tomato bake

to make syn-free sausage and tomato bake you’ll need:

to make syn-free sausage and tomato bake you should:

balsamic roasted sprouts

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you will need:

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you should:

the perfect boiled egg

hot dog threaded spaghetti

to make hot dog threaded spaghetti, you’ll need:

to make hot dog threaded spaghetti, you should:

square egg, snacks and injuries