syn free spaghetti bolognese

I can’t be the only one who finds eye tests incredibly stressful experiences, can I? I spend an hour or so beforehand obsessively chewing gum and using mouthwash because I know someone is going to be right up in the face and I don’t want them laughing gaily in the Vision Express staffroom at my smelly breath and dry skin. I have a massive anxiety with people being too close to me so sitting there whilst someone leans over me tutting about my answers and adjusting my lenses is a major nono.

It all stems from my first eye test which I shamefully waited until I was 23 to have, after I spent the first two years of our relationship thinking Paul was actually Japanese. Well maybe it wasn’t that bad but I really was blind. I had a very old, lovely but very fat optician who spent about thirty minutes actually pressed up against my chair peering into my eyes with that little light of hers. If I moved my head up, I’d have gotten stubble rash from her chin, and if I had turned my face in either direction I’d have nuzzled right into her boobs. I’ve never had someone be that close to me and not buy me a drink first. She also, bless her, had clearly been eating poo or something beforehand because her breath was bleaching my hair every time she exhaled. Since that arduous half hour, I’ve really worried about eye tests ever since. But I look so much better in glasses so it’s a hard choice…

so to make syn free spaghetti bolognese:

slutspaghetti recipe

Easy recipe this! Follow the instructions above. To my mind, this is a syn free dinner and you could easily make enough for four and freeze two portions of the mince to have with a jacket potato!

The reason it is called sluts spaghetti escapes me, except I know it came from Nigella Lawson and she normally adds butter and marmite. Well, she knows her stuff, but I can’t get away with having such volumptious curves, so I skip the butter.

 

sowing my overnight oats

christ, that’s a revolting image!

Weigh in post coming tomorrow because my photoshop isn’t working for some reason and I can’t make a banner, but because I’m all about the bass style I want to do it properly. I was going to have a night off tonight but Paul, being a darling husband, has just nipped to ASDA to get me some milk and to make me a hot chocolate, so, I feel I should return the goodwill by posting a quick recipe on here. Remember: this post was never meant to be, hence being short! It’s overnight oats time!

how to make overnight oats:

overnight

Put simply – measure out the oats, place in the bottom of the jar, top up with yoghurt and then lots of syn free berries. The oats absorb the yoghurt and the fruit juices and creates a lovely little porridge. You can mix it up with other fruits and yoghurt, just make sure you’re choosing syn-free options or synning accordingly!

Handy thing to make before bed to save time in the morning.

One last thing – Paul actually farted me awake last night. How classy is that – it wasn’t the pitch or volume, just the sheer overwhelming stench. He’s the only one who can take a fragrant thai green curry and make it smell like a cat shit drying in the sun.

Isn’t life a joy…

campfire stew or cowboy stew

CRASS WARNING! CRASS WARNING! SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF BROWN HUMOUR OFFENDS!

Well, that was bad planning. Having spent the last three days with a full-house and needing a flush thanks to the meat loaf, tuna and beef stew, I resorted to taking a Senokot Max thinking it might gently move things along at some point this evening. Half an hour later, I’m stuck on the thunderbox crying my life away as the world fell out of my bottom. So I’m not venturing far today, and I might spend the day ironing instead. That’s the main problem with Slimming World – you’re never quite sure whether you’ll be coming or going one day to the next.

OK YOU’RE SAFE.

I finally gave into Paul’s demands and purchased a tumble dryer. I think he was ashamed at having our George boxers sailing gaily around on the rotary dryer in the garden, with their stretched elastic and rubbed gussets. He still has a piece of underwear from when we first met, he claims they’re the most comfortable pair he’s ever owned and refuses to throw them out. I’m actually surprised they don’t walk out on their own. I railed against getting a tumble dryer for bloody ages because I thought we’d get damp in the house (we can’t have a vented one, there’s no space, so we’ve had to go for a condensing unit) but he won out when he promised me he’d tumble my socks and underwear in the morning before I got out the shower, meaning they’d be warm. Come on, that’s true love right there.

Today’s recipe, breaking with tradition and posting my lunch instead of the evening meal, is the WORLD FAMOUS (in Slimming World circles) campfire stew, given a far more Brokeback Mountain based hilarious name. This is syn-free, makes four servings, and is proper delicious. Also – incredibly easy to make if you have a slow-cooker.

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to make campfire stew or cowboy stew:

Well – no real need to break down the ingredients – they’re all above, and the recipe is simple – chop the onion and peppers, add everything into a slow cooker, cook on low for eight hours, pull apart with two forks and serve with chips. You will need to add some superfree on the side to make this exactly right, but as a one-off, I didn’t bother, and just had two satsumas on the side. I know, I’m a devil.

A tip though – don’t, for the love of God, put your gammon straight into the slow cooker from the shop. Prepare it a day before by putting it in a pan of cold water, leaving it to sit, and changing the water every six hours or so. This will draw the salt out – you can do the same by boiling it for a bit, but I think that’ll make it tough. Do the cold water rinse for 24 hours and then cook and it’ll taste so, so much better. If you don’t bother, be prepared for your stew to taste like you’ve rinsed it through the sea at Whitley Bay (only without a turd bobbing around in the slow cooker).

Enjoy! I’m off to cry a bit more and put a loo roll in the fridge for later.

J

super speedy “just like heinz” tomato soup

I was told by Paul, with no uncertain terms, that I had to have a recipe done, comic-booked and onto the blog before 11pm or there would be no mattress polka for anyone, given he’s tired. SO, imagine this done in the style of 24 – it’s going to be a quick post, and instead of Jack Bauer yelling at terrorists, you’ve got me accidentally tipping over a whole Magimix XL of cold soup with Roxette’s Dangerous playing in the background. Not QUITE the same high-stakes but well, that passes for drama in our house. I love Roxette, my old flatmate used to play her songs all the time. Mind she also used to leave her dirty knickers behind the radiator in her bedroom, which made the whole house smell of hot shredded wheat whenever the heating went on. I know your business, but I don’t know your name…

ANYWAY. I’ve seen plenty of people on facebook talking about this wonder soup – meant to taste EXACTLY like Heinz soup. I’m always so wary of this type of recipe – I’d rather have a bowl of Heinz rather than a knockoff, but actually…it’s pretty decent! Recipe card:

Tomato Soup

SYN FREE.

to make super speedy “just like heinz” tomato soup you will need:

two tins of beans, two tins of chopped tomatoes, two tins of carrots (with the water), a few pickled onions, a veg stock cube and worcestershire source.

to make super speedy “just like heinz” tomato soup you should:

Throw it all in the blender, pulse it until blended, heat and serve. It does taste creamy, oddly, but I’d maybe omit the carrot water as it makes it a bit starchy. BRILLIANT super-free meal though – onion, carrots and tomatoes all being cracking weight loss food, and baked beans are great for filling you up. There’s nothing more to it! It’ll do for a lunch, after all!

11pm now. Off to bed before Paul kicks off.

J

superfree quiche

Syn free this one, or maybe one syn if you’re anal. Hahaha, anal. Does anyone over the age of 18 not stop for a single beat whenever they type that word in its correct usage? Not only is it hilarious, it’s also delightfully smutty.

I have to say, for all the talk of Body Magic and moving our arses, Paul and I have done spectacularly little this weekend. No, really. I’m surprised I haven’t turned into one of those people who are grafted to their armchairs and have to have a group of men come in and wash me. Not that I’d turn my nose up at that. Our neighbours would love that. My mum once popped around in her police uniform (she’s a legit policewoman, not a stripper) and I’m not kidding, the sound of necks cracking as they craned round net curtains sounded like a giant rolling in bubble wrap.

Between Forza Horizon 2 and The Amazing Race, we’ve had very little reason to shift. Bowser seems reluctant to become a helping-cat, too, which doesn’t help. Our grand ideal of having the cat answer the phone, bring us the TV remote and cook us a three course meal seems entirely unreasonable to him. Anyway, short entry tonight as I’m off to work soon.

Tonight’s little recipe is what I suggestively call ‘Any Old Shite Superfree Quiche’ because frankly, that’s what I put in it.

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I’m not sure we actually need a full recipe here – it’s all on the card. The only thing worth thinking about is synning the little bit of parmesan that I used, but it was such a small amount between four servings that I can’t be bothered. The rest is a case of chucking anything you have going spare / on the turn into a quiche tin, chopped up to reasonably similar sizes. Beat three eggs into 250g of fat-free cottage cheese, mix it all together, put in oven, and keep an eye on it. It might take a little longer as our oven is a fancypants one, but really you can tell when its cooked. Serve with a side salad or excellent for taking into work for lunch.

If I can give you any tips – adding a lot of tomatoes will make it quite wet

I realise that actually, our leftovers sound a bit lah-de-dah, but well, such is life. Our fridge has its own vodka shelf so that’s where we’re at.

J

well burger me, it’s burger in a bowl time

When I heard that this dish tasted just like Big Mack, I thought of an ambulance driver I once knew. Except he tasted like an anchovy.

Meanwhile, just a little entry tonight. Ahem. This recipe is the infamous Slimming World burger in a bowl, or big-mac in a bowl, where the individual components of a big-mac are layered in a bowl with a ‘special sauce’ (not that kind). It’s actually surprisingly tasty and only 1 syn a serving! Just a quick post and I’ll fill it out tomorrow as Apprentice is on and I want to see it. I can’t tear myself away from Alan Sugar.

to make burger in a bowl

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ingredients: 500g extra-lean mince, finely chopped onion (though I think Paul used a butter knife to chop the onions, judging by the pictures), 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 iceberg lettuce, 8 gherkins, 1 small red onion, 2 tomatoes. For the sauce: 3 level tbsp extra-light mayo, 5 tbsp fat free fromage frais (seriously, every recipe I do uses fromage frais, can we not start taken it as a given?), 1 level tbsp of American style mustard, 2 tbsp tomato puree and 2tsp white wine vinegar. Add 1/2tsp of garlic salt and 1/4 onion granules. Pinch of smoked paprika.

recipe: bit of an assembly job this one, but fairly self-explanatory. Prepare the base – slice the gherkins, tomatoes, the lettuce and the red onion. Prepare the mince by frying the onion, mince and garlic until cooked through. Mix all the sauce ingredients together. Put the mince onto the salad and the sauce onto the mince and, if you’re feeling especially flatitious, hoy your healthy extra A cheese on top (30g).

extra-easy: yes – and only a syn per portion. Haha, portion. The gherkins, onion, tomatoes and lettuce are all superfree so that’s your 1/3 hit right there. REJOICE.

top tips: this is a good, filling meal that does oddly taste like a big-mac, if only for the special sauce. Using a good strong, mature cheddar gives it a bit of a kick and means you don’t have to spread your syns. Enjoy!

J

slimming world super speed soup

If you’re a fan of dropping something you can’t pick up, or perhaps you like to lie in bed with your partner tormenting them by sounding the fanfare for the Brown King, or even if you’re a fan of air biscuits, this is the soup for you. You’ll be cutting the cheese in no time at all, and trouser coughs will resonate right through the house. You might even end up singeing your knickers with an inverted burp. Luckily, hopefully, you’ll be too busy exclaiming over your weight loss to complain about popping a fluffy.

FARTS

to make slimming world super speed soup:

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This soup is so easy it doesn’t need a whole breakdown. The key is – stuff a load of superfree veg into a pan, top it up with stock, tin of tomatoes, baked beans, lentils, anything – cook it slowly and softly until everything is nicely cooked. Leave to cool and blend it in the Magimix or with a stick blender, but for heaven’s sake LET IT COOL first. Even if the top is cold, it’ll still be packing heat for ages.

I used all the veg I had sitting in the fridge, and it worked really well with a load of chilli added. It does make a genuinely nice soup and a lot of members swear by it. I’ve added it into my lunch this week, so we’ll see.

It is very, very filling and freezes well, too. We’re off to watch The Amazing Race, goodnight!

J

vegetable curry

I’ve done a bit of rejigging on the blog as I realised it was getting difficult to find all the recipes – so now if you’re looking for them, just click the category on the right and voila, all the badly realised comic-style recipes you can manage! 

Paul’s actually off down in London at the ‘Give Britain a Payrise’ rally. I work in the private sector so my eyes tend to glaze over when he goes on about rallies and protests, but fair play to the bugger for campaigning. Last time I told him to try and keep a low profile, and he ended up headlining the 1pm news with a soundbite about pensions. Even worse, the last time his place of work went on strike, he threw himself in front of someone’s car and called her a scab, without realising it was the Chief Executive inside. Oops. Anyway, he’s coming back home now and the latest text I got was ‘Missing you, dying for a shit’, which I don’t really know how to take but I’ll assume it was meant as a compliment.

I spent all morning lying in bed and willing myself to get up, but I didn’t quite manage it until 1pm. Which sounds lazy, but I’ve had a very long week and our bed is super comfortable. Actually, that’s a bit of a fib as I got up once and managed to moon someone putting a leaflet through our front door at the same time. I should explain. I got up for a wee and noticed the postman had been. We sleep naked, but the curtains were drawn so I went to the front door and bent down, completely naked, at the same time someone pushed a takeaway leaflet through the letterbox. Luckily our front door has that weird frosted glass in it, but I’m still fairly sure he got a damn good view of my tea-towel holder winking at him as I scrabbled to pick up the post. Ah well. This afternoon I decided to take it upon myself to go to B&M to find an elusive curry mix that Slimming World members go on about which is low in syns. Now, I’ve never been in B&M before, and well, goodness me.

Let me caveat the following by saying that I’m no snob, I don’t mind cheap shops and I don’t care how much something costs. But honest to god, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many polyester-mix fleeces hung in one place. I’m lucky I didn’t come out of there sparking and jolting like Electro from Spiderman. I did, however, get the elusive curry mix – Mayflower Curry Sauce Mix, at 8 syns for 56g (which makes more than enough sauce for two people to have a curry). With this in my hot sweaty hands, and the smell of chip-pans and sour milk a mere memory, I set about making tonight’s meal – a vegetable curry.

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This was supposed to be a chicken curry, but fate put the kibosh on that. I defrosted the chicken, had the audacity to leave the room for a minute to have a slash, only to find upon my return Bowser (our cat) munching his way through it, having dragged it out of the kitchen, across the living room and into his cat house. I was gone less than a minute, and the chicken was steaming hot. He must have been like bloody lightning, so I let him have the chicken and decided to ‘superfree’ the curry instead. He got a stern look and as a punishment, I won’t be turning on his water fountain tonight and he’ll just have to quench his thirst like a normal cat. I’m kidding, I’m far too in love with his button nose to do that.

ingredients: all the veg you see above, and really, anything you have spare. Pack it out with whatever you have left in the freezer, or tins, or fresh – we tend to buy a lot of stuff on the off-chance we’ll use it and then chuck it out, but don’t – throw it all in the curry. It’s a fantastic way of getting your superfree food quota, and this meal is easily over your 1/3 portion size rule. Serve with rice, or chips, or even on its own as a warming treat. It’ll certainly warm you again in eight hours or so.

recipe: cut up all your veg, add a dash of water, steam it until soft but not mush. The mushier the veg, the less nutrients, plus it’ll feel like you’re eating your dinner in a nursing home. To make the curry sauce, add 56g of powder to cold water, and start whisking. Turn the heat up to get the liquid to boiling, then whack it right back down to a very low heat. It’ll thicken in no time at all, but if you stop whisking, it’ll end up lumpy. Mix it up with the veg and serve with your side.

extra-easy: yes – though not syn free. the sauce is 8 syns for 56g of powder but then divided down into portion size, I reckon about 2 syns. This recipe would easily serve four. You’ve got more superfree food in here than you could shake a water-retaining finger at. Best of all, it really DOES taste like takeaway curry.

top tips: this would be made a lot more ‘takeaway’ by taking away a lot of the veg, and remaking it with cooked chicken, garden peas and chunks of onion. It could be made even more takeaway by flicking some fag ash and a few chest hairs in there, and having the ‘chicken’ squeak when you bite into it.

OK, anyway – enjoy. I’m off to shave off my beard. Sob!

J

mustard chicken

apologies for not updating yesterday, but I sat down at my computer chair at 8am and didn’t it until 1am today. Bit tired. I bet I end up being one of the unlucky fuckers who end up getting DVT from working on the sixth floor. My office is absolutely littered with sweets – Haribo on one desk, Celebrations on the other. One of my colleagues seems to be systemically buying out the sweets counter at the Sainsbury’s next door. Not that I mind, she’s a very kind soul and I’m a proper greedy sod.

So, because it’s late, let’s have a simple recipe for mustard chicken:

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At first look, it looks boring as hell. It isn’t! The key is microwaving the turnip/swede. Cut a little hole in the top, and stick it in the microwave for 15 minutes. After a while, it’ll start whistling. Take it out, spoon out the flesh, mash it and mash it hard. Chicken was just fromage frais and a tiny dollop of mustard. Maybe a syn for the mustard but come on.

Now – I’ve got to cut a dash. It’s a night off, I want to watch Alan Sugar fire people, and Paul has bought me a new Pedegg after I wore the last one out. Eeep.

J

ham and superfree veg muffins

Firstly, I apologise for not updating the blog last night but we were both stuck at work! Off to Fatfighters soon so only a very quick post but here is a recipe card for a good snack idea. I know I’ll be putting weight on because I have had too much crap this week thanks to being constantly at work. Sad times.

Paul is my superfree muffin! Enjoy, and I’ll check in later to confirm what damage I’ve done…muffins ahoy!

J