Category Archives: fakeaways

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July 12, 2015

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desserts, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, naughty, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, vegetarian

apple pie and ice-cream

Do you ever get that feeling, deep in your stomach, that you’re going to do something and get a raft of angry-faced people throwing badly-typed obscenities your way? I feel like my face has just been published in the paper next to something obscene and I’m about to have my windows put through?

Why? Because…I’m posting a recipe that HEAVILY involves tweaking. 

TWEAK

I know! Christ. Someone better get me some aftersun because I’m about to get my fingers burnt. 

Our official position on tweaking can be found here (it’s a fun read, I assure you) but to put it succinctly, we don’t class blending veg or fruit up as a bad thing, unless you’re eating substantially more than you would normally. Slimming World will tell you that if you mash a banana up on a bowl, it’s five syns, but if you mash it up in your gob, it’s free. The logic being that you derive more ‘satisfaction’ from putting it in your mouth and whilst that is normally the case for me being a cheerfully homosexual young man, I don’t agree with it here. It’s up to you which side of the debate you fall on and either way is fine – but please, I don’t want anyone telling me off. I know the rules, I’m just flexible.

Tonight’s recipe then is apple pie and ice-cream, which was the most American thing I could think of – and it tastes amazing, genuinely. It’s 5 syns if you believe in tweaking and 13 syns if you don’t, but even then – 13 syns for a good quality dessert is fuck all. It’s better than sobbing into your eighty-fifth Freddo and wishing you were dead. And because I love you, I’ve included a way to knock five syns off the entire thing.

BUT before we get to the good bit, here’s one more extract from my American diary. If you’re enjoying it, and seemingly loads of you are, buy it or recommend it and make me a happy, happy bunny! You’ll find the link here.

Day 12 – See, World?

Seaworld! The last time we visited you we were left unimpressed and cold by your displays of penguin entrapment and subpar rides. Would this visit go the way of the Disney parks and win us over for good? There’s only one way to find out! A super-quick breakfast at McDonalds and a trundle on the best I-Ride trolley ever (singing driver announcing all the stops) and we were standing by that lighthouse, posing for pictures. Bit mean of a passing tourist to call me Shamu like. We decided to upgrade our tickets to the Rapid Queue benefit but it wasn’t really needed once you were in.

Can you guess what the first thing these two roller-coaster nuts went on? Of course! Manta. Several times. We drifted through the proper queue area first to see all the theming that has gone into the area, and it really looks something else. It’s worth wandering through even if you weren’t planning to ride. This would be my first time on a ‘lying-down’ rollercoaster and I was nervous, I’ll admit. Paul, having done Alton Towers, knew what it felt like and reassured me that a) it wouldn’t hurt and b) the supports would be able to handle my considerable mass, so I felt good enough to go on.

Oooh and I’m glad we did. It’s possibly one of the best rollercoasters in Orlando – so incredibly smooth, just the right side of scary-fast and a very different experience. I think we rode it about six times in a row, each time trying a different position – the back is probably the best as it is so much faster, but a young lad next to me upchucked his breakfast as we were going round which put a stop to any further journeys around, at least until my own belly settled down. Anyone else like that? I can’t bear seeing people being sick, especially when it looks almost exactly like the breakfast you just bolted down yourself at the McDonalds over the road? He got a really, really dirty look off me (as in angry, I wasn’t given him the flirt-eye, I’m not a emetophile)  and we wandered down to the bottom of the park.

We were gutted to see Journey to Atlantis shut down for the entire length of our visit – between this, Dudley Do-Right closed due to fire and Splash Mountain closed for annual repair, we were destined never to have a holiday photo of our heaving busoms showing through our cheap wet t-shirts. Sigh. I wouldn’t care but I LOVE water-rides. My mum has always said I was a water-baby. But I think that’s her way of making herself feel better for leaving me in the bath for several hours with nothing more than an electric toaster to play with. Sorry Ma…

Kraken next, of course. One of my favourite rollercoasters, if only for the first drop where it feels as though your belly is going to rise up out of your mouth. We can’t get enough of rollercoasters and plan to do a tour of American Theme Parks for our next holiday. But in the present, we were thrown round, span round and dropped down several times over, all the while screaming and swearing, until we got close to the people taking pictures as that’s ‘Disappointed Face’ time. I’ve mentioned it before – give it a try – when it comes to the bit where the photo is taken, put on your most deadpan, miserable face. It’s almost as fun as walking past people filming their holiday videos and QUIETLY swearing away to your partner, so when they get home and stick the video on, they’ll hear a sole voice muttering away. Heh. We do it at home too, though I got caught out walking past someone and saying ‘I didn’t know Ronseal did tans’ – but her unintelligent comeback was hardly worth a comeback. Anyway…

A day out wouldn’t be complete without an ice-cream, and it’s yet another thing that you can’t get a ‘small’ version of, not that we were complaining as we had developed reverse diabetes since then – if we didn’t have our body weight in sugar during the day we would get the shakes and you’d find us in the toilet trying to melt a Jolly Rancher on the top of a spoon. We headed to the ice-cream parlour and enjoyed a couple of smooth creamy ones, all the while watching this American family – the parents had massive ice-creams, the kids had what looked like mini-milks. That’s a method of parenting that I can get on board with! We fannied about a bit on the soft toy attractions and Paul won me a delightful…dragon. Very Seaworld. Given the look of some of the ‘attraction workers’ mind, I was half-expecting to come away with crabs. This poor dragon was promptly given away to a passing child (not because I’m mean to Paul, but because it was huge and we couldn’t be bothered to carry it around) and I won him a little octopus. We still have him, of course, sat on top of the computer.

Thank heavens for Southwest Airlines and their air-conditioning Sponsorship of Cruelty! Yep, it was time to look at the penguins. And I don’t like it. They’re cute as a pin, but that room seems so small, and whilst I’m not a lentil-eating-sandal-knitting hippy, I don’t think it’s right. We took a couple of cursory pictures and moved on. Am I the only one who doesn’t like dolphins either? They leave me cold, with their dead eyes. I did fancy feeding them, but as you have to pay extra and the thought of spending money sends us into a cold sweat, we moved on to look at the manatees. Our kind of animal! Perhaps the most terrifying sight of all was, whilst in the underground viewing cave, we spotted two dolphins seemingly in flagrante. Either that or they were fighting…but he very clearly had his little lipstick out! Dirty rascal. We moved swiftly on.

Oooh, the shows! I can’t remember the names but we watched the show all about clever animals (dogs, cats, pigs, birds etc) and the whale show. As ever, the whale show was cheesier than my previous ingrown toenail – if I wanted to see an overgrown beast flap around and spurt in the water, I’d make Paul take a bath with me.

The show is all about the trainers now, instead of the whales, and it seems daft. No-one cares about your special necklace love. Resisting the urge to heckle, we left just before the rest of the teary-eyed imbeciles, and both agreed never again. The other show mind, the almost-live-You’ve-Been-Framed doodah, was great! We are cat-people see and as we were sorely missing our own litter (Luma and Sola) it was nice to see some pussy action. How do they get the cats to open doors anyway? The only trick our three have managed to come up with is pooing in our shoes if they don’t care for the cat-food, then smirking about it afterwards. Mind you, they’ve since learnt that smirking is indeed bad for their health, as a boot to their buttons can offend.

Coming to the end of the day, there were only a couple of things left on the map to do. Clearly, as you can see, we chose the most masculine attraction of them all, and spent a gay twenty minutes paddling our pink swan (Laura Labia) around the tiny paddling area. All the other swans were filled with little children delighted by the splashing water but we don’t really care for recommended age limits. We had to come back to the jetty once our swan started listing perilously when we were trying to get a nice photo of the two of us. It was JUST like the Herald of Free Enterprise. The last thing was the Skyride Tower, and I just couldn’t do it. I have no idea why, heights don’t faze me, but I think I was worried about having a panic attack whilst up there because it moves so slowly. Maybe next time. A couple more rides on Manta just to ram home how good it was, then we set off for the Wyndham.

Seaworld seems to be a divisive place, doesn’t it? I see a lot of people seeing that they will miss the park out of their schedule as there isn’t much to do. I disagree – they’ve now got two of the best coasters in Orlando, plus plenty for people to look at. It’s a nice day out, less pressured than Disney, more organised than Universal. I’m not so keen on the cooped-up animals but there again, Seaworld do a lot of good for the sick and poorly critters, so it’s a bit catch-22. Ah well. Let’s not  get too deep. This is my big gay trip report, not Peer bloody Gynt.

We ended the day with a meal in TGI Fridays. They’re so different to their English counterparts. The last time we visited one of these in England we were served by staff more interested in talking to each other than serving the customers and the food was horrible. The American version could not have been more different. Our waiter actually sat outside with us for a while asking about England and brought us a little box to take our free desserts back with. I know he was chasing a tip but still, it’s always good to feel welcome. The food was delicious and we worked our way down the cocktail list – it’s about the only place where I can order a Woowoo and still feel comfortable. We walked home – got offered many a lift from those pedicab things where you can sit in the back and let someone cycle you back to the hotel but I didn’t fancy having to pay his medical bills for thigh strain, so we declined. Throbbing feet though, but Paul sorted me out by giving it a good rub so all was well. As for my feet, I just stuck them in the fridge for a bit. Kaboomtish! Day twelve: DONE.

OK, so onto the apple pie. I’ll just park this here…

apple pie

Seriously though, how good is that? This is what you’ll need:

for the apple pie (to make 1):

  • 115g of chopped apple (if you don’t believe in tweaking, this is 3 syns, if you’re tweak, it’s syn-free)
  • a tsp of sweetener (gasp)
  • a squirt of lemon juice
  • a pinch of cinnamon
  • 5g of sultanas (25g is 3.5 syns – so this works out at less than a syn, but let’s call it 1 syn for ease)
  • 25g of Tesco Lighter puff pastry (4 syns)

to create the apple pie:

  • stew the apple by putting the chopped pieces into a pan with a few tablespoons of water, some cinnamon and the sweetener, put the lid on and let it sit on a medium heat until the apple turns mushy
  • break it up with a fork but leave some lumps
  • put into a pie dish
  • take your lump of pastry and roll it nice and thin – then use a pizza wheel or a sharp knife to cut into stripes and lattice across the top of the pie dish. You could decide to cut the pastry into stars or something – but trust me, 25g will go far if you just stretch it!
  • rub a drop or two of milk across the pastry, sprinkle with cinnamon and put into the oven for around thirty minutes on 180degrees – keep an eye on it

to drop five syns:

  • substitute the pastry (4 syns) for 35g of oats mixed with cinnamon
  • miss out the sultanas

for the ice-cream (this serves four reasonably or two greedily):

  • chop up four large bananas and freeze the pieces (takes around two hours)
  • in a decent blender, blend the frozen bananas until smooth, adding syn-free natural fat-free greek yoghurt to loosen a little
  • add a drop or two of vanilla and a pinch of cinnamon
  • pop it into a freezer-proof dish and allow to settle
  • serve!

I’m off to hide under a flameproof blanket. But look at it above, it’s a thing of beauty.

J

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July 10, 2015

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beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, lunch, recipe card, rice, steak, syn free

philly cheesesteak stuffed peppers

Sorry sorry, don’t worry, we’re extending American week for a few days to make up for the gaps. See I went to see Terminator Genisys last night after a cheeky Nandos. IT WASN’T CHEEKY. IT WASN’T COCK-A-DOODIE CHEEKY AT ALL. Sorry but I can’t abide the use of the word cheeky. Having a glass of warm prosecco in a beer garden surrounded by people with red shoulders is not cheeky. An ice-cream amongst the dog turds on the beach isn’t cheeky. Jack Whitehall is cheeky. My arse is literally cheeky. STOP FUCKING SAYING CHEEKY AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH MAN.

So yes, Terminator. It was excellent, in a ‘pop your brain in your bag and enjoy the show’ sort of way. Lots of explosions, people melting, ridiculous action scenes and Arnold Schwarzenegger still looking like a varnished lamp-post with mumps. I really like him as an actor, he doesn’t give a shit and we can all respect that. If you read the snotty “official” reviews you’d think it was about as much fun as watching a beloved dog being put down in front of a crying child, but as long as you don’t go in expecting Peer bloody Gynt you’ll be tickety boo.

I also managed to swizz an extra scoop of Ben & Jerry’s (SYNNED) by telling the charming lady behind the till it was my birthday. I don’t think she fell for it, but rather just wanted me to move away from the counter and stop going ‘aaaah’ and ‘uuuum’ like an old inkjet printer.

Anyway that’s quite enough from me tonight. Remember this week is my time off! Today’s American entry is super long and the recipe is RIGHT at the bottom, so scroll scroll scroll. I’d apologise, but a gay man never apologies for length. If you want to buy the rest of the book. I’m still #1, woohoo, it’s right here. Go! 

 

Day 21 and 22 – lots of bits and pieces

OK, I’m going to cheat a little on these days. I didn’t take any notes and we didn’t go anywhere ‘special’, just mopped up the activities on International Drive and lazed about in the hotel. Remember, we’d been going non-stop for a good twenty days – we needed to rest! To make things easier for me, I’m going to write it as ‘one day’ where we travelled from one activity to the next. We did this, just spread over two days with lots of sleeping and honeymoon-happiness in between. So, this is going to be a long one… cue wavy lines of retrospective…

Breakfast first, and Sizzler here we come. You can’t fault somewhere where you can get an all-you-can-eat heart attack and all the British Fury (in the form of the Daily Mail) you could ever need for less than $10 a head. We should confess – if something is all you can eat, it’s all we can do not to push ourselves past the point of no return. I think it’s because I’m so tight with money that I like to feel I’m getting my money’s worth. That said, it still repulses me to see all the American land-cows loading their plate with chunks of brownies, rashers of bacon and those tiny twiglet-like sausages all in one go. I mean, at least separate the items that simply don’t belong together. I’ve seen people come back from the buffet with plates piled high like a Frank Gehry building, walking slowly lest a stray bit of food drops to the floor. There’s no need! Mind you, I’m up on my soapbox, I’m still the one who smuggles a few pastries out under my moobs to snack on later.

Go-Karting next. There’s a go-karting er…track up by Wet ‘n’ Wild, and we had passed it many a time thinking we would never be able to squeeze our voluptuous rears into the karts. This time round, we didn’t care, and in no time at all were squashed into the kart with ne’ry a seatbelt and a strong smell of petrol in our nostrils. The man in charge was the double of Kenan from Kenan and Kel and this led to me being late off the starting line whilst I wildly gesticulated to Paul to try and point this out. Ah well. I still managed to lap him. Tell you what mind, the amount of blue smoke that must have been pouring out the back of the karts as they chugged Paul and I up the hills must have been terrific. I remember being on holiday in Ayia Napa (before it went all WKD) with my family about ten years ago  – my parents hired two scooters to take us all over the island. My sister and mother jumped on one scooter and zipped merrily right up the steep hill to the hotel, whereas the scooter holding me and my dad struggled for about ten minutes at 2mph, pumping out more blue smoke than the smoking shelter outside Mecca Bingo. Bless. I’ve never been lithe.

Go-karting is good fun though for a few minutes, so might be worth a look. One of the things I want to do when I return is to learn to drive – if this is a benchmark of my driving then bring it on! We moved on, over the road to Tiki Volcano Golf Course, or whatever the devil it is called.

When we first came to Orlando, this was all we would do of an evening – crazy golf, eat, sleep. We remembered this course being amazing but I reckon it’s more down to rose-coloured nostalgia as it was…crap. Everything was chipped, sodden or broken. We still enjoyed the challenging holes (story of my life) but the volcano never went off, even when I cheated at the end and used Paul to distract the attendant whilst I reached through the netting and stuck my ball in the hole for the ‘Free Game and Volcano Erupt’. Damn it! Perhaps it was karma for me slicing my ball into the car-park with an overzealous swing…I rather thought the ball was making a bid for freedom but hey. I bet the course isn’t there when we go back in 2013, though. I won, and we left.

We had lunch at Dennys, which was fun. Our waiter was a pleasant enough chap but super-mega-fat, and he had a distractingly sweaty forehead, to the point where I didn’t bother adding salt to my fries because I was sure enough he’d manage to drench them for me wobbling his way from the kitchen to our table. The food wasn’t great, but you don’t go to Dennys expecting to have your mouth blown off with flavour, after all. It’s another one of those ‘meals’ we can cross off our list.

Now, what can two young lads do on International Drive with bulging wallets and a keen eye for history? That’s right! Titanic: The Experience. A wee bit of background – we love Titanic (the movie), it’s so wonderfully cheesy and after both of us suffering it everytime there was a ‘rainy day’ at school, we can quote big old chunks of the movie at each other. For example, on the plane to Orlando, we managed to shoehorn in a ‘Typical, the first class passengers bring their dogs down here to take a shite’ reference when we descended down the mystical stairs from the bubble to look at those wedged into economy. So yes! We love Titanic. In we went.

For those who don’t know, Titanic: The Experience offers visitors an interactive tour around artefacts from the Titanic and tells the story of the doomed ship through a mixture of actors and props. We were given tickets detailing our new job on Titanic and we were told we could find out whether we lived or died at the end. Drama! Everyone knows that fat people survive maritime disasters – we simply bob in the water until we’re hoisted out, our bulbous ankles kicking in the wind. Either that or we beach ourselves and need to be hosed down with gravy. We were greeted by Danny Devito in a smoking jacket who spent the next twenty minutes telling us about the dimensions of the ship and all those who perished then started the tour. In and out of various rooms we went to be shown artefacts not from Titanic but rather her sister ship. Not sure I get the point of this. I understand it is a bit of a swim down to the Titanic but you can’t advertise saying you’ll ‘see bits of Titanic’ then get them in from another ship! Good lord. Half of the tour seemed to enjoy the tour – but – ‘not the better half’. Arf!

Towards the end, things got surreal – you are led into a room to find out whether you lived or died (we both lived – told you!) and then watched a short movie comprising of all the dramatic bits from the movie, all accompanied by O Fortuna (the music used when the judges slither out on The X-Factor). It’s so crass! The only thing missing was Celine Dion warbling away through her 50p-shaped face.

Two minor diversions. As we were bored and a little disappointed by the whole thing, we decided on a bit of mischief, and upon finding the air-conditioning panel hidden away behind a wall, we dropped the building temperature down to a chilly 10 degrees. What can I say? I wanted to do my bit to add to the realism and I’m simply too buxom to carry off a Molly Brown outfit. The other diversion? Redneck fighting. Yep, in a museum devoted to the many victims of Titanic, a fattychops on a mobility scooter started arguing with his equally well-furnished wife about how bored they were. Awesome. They got wheeled out, to a chorus of our tuts and ‘Well I Never’ – missing out on the chance to ‘feel the chill of a real iceberg’.

Yeah – the chill. The final part of this thrilling experience was the chance to experience a real-life iceberg. Exciting! However, all was not what it seemed. We were shepherded into a room to find the iceberg, which was a slab of ice stuck to a box. Disappointment was etched on everyone’s face. I could have stayed at home and opened our freezer door to replicate this experience – granted there wasn’t a box of Crispy Pancakes wedged in the Orlando version, but we would have got the jist. Bah!  All in all, we did not love Titanic: The Experience. I can only assume they’re using ‘Experience’ in the sense that having a smear test is an experience. Not pleasurable and (I imagine) quite cold.  To be honest, if I wanted to spend an hour wandering around a museum devoted to an old wreck full of seamen, I’d break into Katie Price’s house. Yep, I went there.

From one chilling experience to another – the Ice Bar. We had walked past this place many times and always said ‘let’s give it a try’ but when you’ve got theme parks and wonder to take in, the prospect of spending thirty minutes in a freezer with hooray-henrys didn’t rank up there amongst the must-does. Ah well – with time on our hands, we paid the six million dollar entry fee and we given a charming insulated jacket to wear. They don’t suit fatties – I ended up looking like a hot water tank. Nevermind – in we went. Let me say one thing – don’t bloody bother. Yes, it looks good – everything is truly made from ice, from the bar to the chairs, but that’s it. There’s no atmosphere, no excitement, no music (I think) and the ‘fire’ is a collection of twinkly Christmas tree lights. You’re given a free shot of vodka which was nice enough, but I’m Geordie – frozen wastelands don’t excite me, I have to drive past Gateshead every other day. If you want an extra drink, it’s a case of sawing off an arm and a leg to pay for it. Whilst this is doubtless easier as you’re numb from the cold, it isn’t worth it. I don’t think we stayed for our allotted thirty minutes, and we were out of there before we were brayed to death by the chortling poshos. That made me laugh actually – the place was full of people hooting and neighing thinking they were somewhere special, but come on love, you’re in an air-conditioner unit at the back end of International Drive.

Over the road from the Ice Bar is another thing that we have always wanted to do, but always ruled out on safety grounds – the I-Ride Helicopter Tours. I’d love to go in a helicopter but there’s something about the way these guys seem to throw their helicopters to the ground that worries me – like they get rid of one party, chuck another one and away they go – where are the safety checks! The rational side of me knows that a pilot wouldn’t take the risk but still. Or maybe this is all a smokescreen because I was terrified we’d get on board and a light would light up on the dashboard saying ‘Maximum Weight Threshold Reached’ and we’d have to wobble out, shamefaced. Next time we’ll do a proper tour from Disney, methinks. Once I’m slender.

As an aside, I make a lot of jokes about our weight, but we’re not actually that fat. I WAS hugely fat at one point – that, coupled with my long hair, meant I looked like Meat Loaf. I decided to cut my hair (well, I set fire to it lighting a cigarette off a gas hob, which may have accelerated my decision) and lose some weight by joining Slimming World. I lost over seven stone and was in the running for Slimming World: Man of the Year too! However, I lost out when I was asked how I had lost the weight and replied ‘Heroin’. That answer, plus the fact that one of my competitors had a sob-story about being too fat to get onto an operating table, meant I didn’t win. The sods! Since those days, we’ve always been chunky rather than out-and-out fat, and I don’t take my weight seriously. So ignore our self-deprecation, we’ve happy really.

Another golf course – this time, Congo River Golf again. Told you this was our favourite, and despite having done it not so long since, we had to do it again as we hadn’t completed the mini-task of finding things that they offer. We had the course pretty much to ourselves, which led to a few glamorous photos being taken, including a recreation of our famous picture (in our house) where Paul looks bloody horrible – sat staring into the camera with a scrunched up face and smoke billowing out of his nostrils. I think he looks like Albert Steptoe. Undeterred, I got the original photo blown up and framed and I put it in the hallway everytime I know we have an engineer or a gasman coming round. To be fair, Paul counters this by putting up a framed picture of me in a wheelchair at Disney with a scabby leg. I didn’t need the wheelchair, but I was being lazy and wanted to try it out for an hour. I know I know, but we’ve all thought about it. If it makes it better, I didn’t use it to get onto any rides. We thought about stopping at the George and Dragon again just to ram home our dislike of it, but it seemed busy (I think there was a match on) and I hadn’t had my hepatitis vaccinations, we decided against it, and wandered a little further up International Drive in search of somewhere to eat.

We went back to Sweet Tomatoes for our evening meal. I know, we had such a crap experience in there the first time but we went for two reasons – one, we needed some more vitamins, and two, if Andre the Giant (Bumhole) was there, we were hoping he might say something. Sadly, he wasn’t, and we actually had a lovely meal. As I spent most of the last time frothing at the gob and moaning, we could actually enjoy the meal this time around, and I can’t recommend it enough to those who want something other than deep-fried animal and potatoes. Would a Sweet Tomatoes franchise work in the UK I wonder? A salad buffet is a simple idea and all we have over here is the lacklustre fare given at the likes of Pizza Hut where their idea of salad dressing is to sneeze on the lettuce. I guess we don’t have the weather for it. Anyway – we had a good mixed salad (with raw broccoli – oh my yes!), some black bean soup, and an oil-drum full of ice-cream. Delicious! This time around we left a good tip and came away happy.

The final evening at the Four Points was spent washing and ironing all of our clothes, looking out the window at the derelict lots over the road and watching lots of nonsense on the TV. We were tinged by sadness a little – after all, this was now the last leg of the holiday, and the prospect of going home was coming ever closer. That said, we were to finish on a high – Harry Potter, the Universal parks and best of all – Hard Rock Hotel!

A quick review of the Four Points – we thought it was terrific. It’s an unusual hotel which seems to attract an eclectic mix of people – the amount of ‘dashing’ pilots coming through reception would be enough to warrant taking an extra HRT pill amongst the older women, whereas the amount of rich Mexicans coming back with their Mall at Millenia bags may mean you’ll need ear-plugs. The rooms are large, the hallways well-appointed, and the whole hotel polished and clean. It would have been nicer to get a room higher up for the views but as it stood, we could still watch Rip Ride Rockit barrel around at Universal from our room, which helped build the anticipation. The only downsides that I can think of? The pool is TINY. Yes – if you’re a family, I’d think twice about this if you have water-babies, as it really is only big enough for about 10 people. Perhaps I’m biased as the last time I took a swim in it, I was getting eyed up (and that’s not me being arrogant, she was making it blatant) by this well..alright, I’ll be mean, facially-challenged porker. To be fair to her, I’m not sure she was eyeing me up in retrospect – she did have one eye going to the shop and one eye coming back with the change, so who knows. The other downer was the tiny laundry facilities but who comes on holiday to worry about laundry? Not this mincer! Anyway. Phew. I’m knackered. That’s all folks! Universal love tomorrow!

philly cheesesteak stuffed peppers

to make philli cheesesteak stuffed peppers, you’ll need

  • 600g beef steak
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • ¼ tsp black pepper
  • 4 peppers
  • 100g brown rice
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 80g reduced fat mozarella (65g is one HEA)
  • handful of chopped chives

and you’ll need to do this:

  • rinse the rice under cold water to get all dust off
  • bring 325ml cold water to the boil in a small pan
  • add the rice to the boiling water, reduce heat, cover the pan and simmer for 45 minutes (keep an eye, but this is brown rice so it’s got to be boiled in magma until your soul departs)
  • with about 20 minutes left on the rice, rub the beef with the garlic, onion powder and black pepper and cook the beef steak to however you like it – generally with beef we just wipe its arse and wave a match over it and it’s done
  • leave the meat to rest for five minutes
  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • slice the meat into thin, bitesize chunks and place in a bowl to rest a little more
  • cut the top off the peppers and scoop out the seeds
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and cook the onions in a little oil until golden brown and translucent
  • add the onions to the same bowl as the steak
  • using a sieve squeeze as much water as you can out of the rice
  • add the rice to the bowl with the steak and onions
  • tear up the mozarella into small pieces and mix half into the steak mixture, keeping the other half aside
  • place the four peppers into a baking dish and spoon the mixture evenly into each one
  • top with the remaining mozzarella
  • bake in the oven for about 20 minutes
  • top with the chopped chives

We served with tenderstem broccoli. This makes enough mixture easily for four big peppers and then plenty left over, so I reckon you could make six or seven.

J

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July 8, 2015

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american, bacon, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients

pimped macaroni cheese

Boo! I had to work late and do overtime tonight so it’s a very quick post from me – just to put today’s American entry where we went to Discovery Cove and we swam with dolphins. Poor bastards. There’s also a wonderful recipe for seriously loaded mac and cheese – nice and American! Of course we had to jazz it up by adding chives, sausages and bacon. Just scroll down.

Hilariously, my book has climbed to #1 in the Amazon’s Gay & Lesbian Travel section. I can’t imagine the competition is especially stiff but still! I KNEW I should have called it ‘Cruising with Gays’. If you haven’t bought it yet, give it a go, it’s a couple of quid and it pays for Paul and I to buy ridiculous nonsense like Thwomp cushions and giant spoons. If you want it, you can buy it here. If not, scroll to get the recipe!

 

day ten – Discovery Cove and swimming with dolphins

Ah, Discovery Cove day. Booked a long time ago, was I looking forward to it? Not really. I know this is almost blasphemy, but dolphins leave me cold. I think it’s because my sister went through a dolphin phase during the 90s, like most girls, and everything was covered in dolphins. I continued the theme in my teenage bedroom, where everything was covered in seamen. Kaboomtish. That, coupled with having to get my baps out, meant I was a little apprehensive. Nevertheless, we got a taxi and were there in good time, turning up a good half hour early. We had read online that it was worth getting there early to get a good dolphin swim slot in the morning, meaning you could relax for the rest of the day. This done, we were booked for the swim at 10.45.

Breakfast first, then. A good choice, but my buffet-shyness prevented me from getting the full amount I wanted. There’s a cooked breakfast option available but the lady behind the counter looked pretty stern, so I didn’t dare ask for me. There’s also the requisite pastries and cereal if you prefer. We took our time before heading over to the lockers. You are given a little net bag which includes a snorkel, good goggles and suncream – as you’re not allowed to use your own suncream lest it pollutes the water. Then, the tough bit. The wetsuit. Men can either choose from a full wet-suit or a lycra ‘top’, which clings to everything. We did try on the top but it pushed my moobs up in such a fashion that I could no longer see my feet. Ditto Paul. We decided to change into a wetsuit. Jesus. Have you ever tried getting into one of these things, particularly if you’re somewhat rubenesque like Paul and I? It’s like to push water through a cheese-grater. However, ten minutes later, once they had greased us up, we were fine, and dare I say it, the wetsuit was actually the far better choice as it compresses everything in. Clearly the fat was being squeezed somewhere else but I didn’t have any especially big lumps appearing, so it was all good!

Now – time for a serious thought. I read a lot of posts on here about people feeling shy about being fat and not wanting to plod about with it all on show. I’m the same, despite my cool and sexy exterior – quite shy about my jiggly bits. But if you take anything from my trip reports aside from a slight queasiness, know this – you don’t need to worry. I have seen some proper gargantuan heifers over here and no-one ever comments. People might think things in their head but let’s be honest, we all do it. Just remember that you’re never going to see these people again and let it all swing out. Life, and your holiday, is too short to worry about what you look like. But – that said – don’t be setting up a chip pan on the beach, that’s just common.

We spent an hour just drifting around in the lazy river, using our snorkels. The river itself gets to about 8ft in places, but as long as you make sure you can snorkel, you’ll be fine even if you’re a weak swimmer. Paul got the hang of it fairly quickly, but I can’t say I helped him out by sticking my finger in his snorkel-hole. Well, it is a honeymoon. The worst part about being able to breathe and see underwater? Well, you know in programmes like Fat Families or other diet shows, they always show the fat person swimming and all their fat is rippling underwater like an epileptic lava-lamp? That was Paul and I. People didn’t need to throw fish at us whilst we basked, mind.

The river is lovely, full of…stones. Yep, I do think they could gee it up a bit by sticking some little nooks and crannies and things to look at under the water, but it was still a wonderful way to relax. Then – it was time for the dolphin swim. You’re taken into a little tent with your other swimmers, made to sign a disclaimer form to say that any damage or penetration is not Discovery Cove’s problem and then, oh my, the cheesiest video about dolphins ever. It was in this tent that we realised that we were getting proper stink-eye from a woman. She would not let up. I can only assume one of two things:

  • she was jealous because her short, bald husband was not nearly as attractive as mine; or
  • she had finally realised that she was the absolute double of the lampshade-haired cow from those insufferably smug BT adverts – and I really hate those adverts.

Naturally, as Paul and I can’t get through a day without making an enemy, she became ours, and we spent the rest of the day pulling faces at her whenever she passed. Cow. We were led to our dolphin – Calypso – and our trainer. We stroked the dolphin’s belly, avoided her bajingo which was clearly on show, had flapped at and learnt all about the dolphin. It was a fun half-hour, but as we were alongside a family, most of the attention was spent on the little girls getting to stroke the dolphin and what have you. Which is fair enough, I guess. It didn’t help that their father was a proper knob though, he kept asking really smart-arse questions of the trainer and then correcting her! I can’t bear that kind of attitude, there’s no need for it. Thankfully, our British reserve won through, and we were exceptionally polite. My only lament – I didn’t get to throw a fish in its mouth. But to be honest, I get enough of that at home throwing Skittles at Paul to get him to move. After 20 minutes of tricks and chat, it was time for Calypso to pull us back to shore. You swim out about 50ft into deep water, and the dolphin pulls you back in. It was good fun, and Calypso managed valiantly with both Paul and I, though she did have to be put on oxygen afterwards.

After the swim, you’re ushered into another tent to view photos of the happy day. It’s not hard sell as such, but I do feel it could have been done more subtly, especially given the price of the photos. If you have kids, perhaps it would be best to leave them outside at this point so you don’t feel pressured – as I was with Paul, I had no such luck, and we ended up buying four photos. They’re really good as it happens, so it’s fair enough. After our swim, an early lunch. The food is terrific mind, very healthy and fresh. I had a Cobb salad, purely so I could say to Paul that I had a cob on, little realising the size and scale of the salad. In England, I remember when a salad was thick sliced tomato, cucumber, iceberg lettuce and loads of vinegar. Over here, you need to set aside forty minutes just to plow your way through. Delicious mind.

The other two draws for Discovery Cove are the snorkelling bay, where you can swim around with loads of tropical fish and spotted rays underneath you, and the ray pool, where rays swim around your feet. They’re both excellent, save for the fact that Paul got slapped across the arm by an angry ray, which apparently really hurt. Whilst I was laughing, the ray got me too – and it DOES hurt! We got out of there because we could see it was kicking off. There’s plenty of photos we took with an underwater camera, but I can’t stick them online. They’re all very blurry and blue anyway. I did notice some show-offs with fancy underwater cameras. I admit to being jealous of their superior technology, so next time I’m going to navigate the fish pool in an underwater sub. Might mince a few fish whilst I’m doing it, but ah well.

That is how the remainder of the day passed – swimming, sunbathing, getting lots of free ice-cream and beer, and snorkelling about. There isn’t too much to write about because it was just all relaxing, no being dramas or the like. The only notable event was at the end of the day, when we were getting changed – when I pulled the wetsuit from my body it made a massive, loud, wet fart sound, to which Paul – to his credit, stealing a Phoenix Nights joke, shouted ‘And I’ll name that tune in one’ from the shower cubicle next door. Good lad. Shuttle to Seaworld and then onto the I-Ride trolley back to the Four Points, where the night was spent watching Unstoppable on the PPV TV. Good film that. Day over! 

Over and out.

pimped macaroni cheese

serves 4 (generously)

to make pimped macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

  • 250g macaroni (or any type of pasta – we used spirali)
  • 1 brown onion
  • 6 Slimming World sausages, defrosted, skins removed
  • 5 rashers of back bacon, fat removed and chopped into small chunks
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 400ml skimmed milk (6 syns)
  • 200ml chicken stock
  • 160g reduced fat cheddar cheese, grated (4x HexA)
  • 125g quark
  • 1 wholemeal brown roll, blitzed into breadcrumbs
  • bunch of chives
  • salt and pepper

and when you’ve got all that, you’d better

  • cook the pasta according to instructions, drain and set aside
  • heat a large pan over a medium high heat and cook the onion until softened
  • add the bacon and sausage meat, stirring frequently to stop the sausage meat from clumping – I used a potato masher to keep the mixture loose
  • add the oregano, paprika and garlic, stir well and remove from the heat
  • in a separate pan add the milk, stock cheese and quark and cook over a medium-low heat, whisking continuously until the mixture is smooth – don’t be tempted to increase the heat – it needs to be quite low
  • add salt and pepper to taste
  • combine all of the ingredients together, mix well and pour into a large baking dish
  • sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and chopped chives
  • cook at 190 degrees for about 20-30 minutes

Serve! 

If you want to save syns, we made a macaroni cheese where the creamy sauce came from butternut squash which was equally as delicious – you can find it here!

J

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July 5, 2015

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airfryer, american, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas

syn free dippy cheesy sloppy tater tots

 

The recipe tonight is a mix-up of two American junk foods – the sloppy joe and tater tots. Tater tots are traditionally mashed potato shaped into little cylinders and deep-fried and they taste amazing, but Margaret would be choking on her Blue Nun if she thought I was deep-frying. So naturally we’ve made a few switches and tweaks and let me tell you, this is genuinely one of the best recipes we’ve done so far. Scroll down and enjoy! OH and it’s syn-free!

Anyway, today’s American diary entry, from our book available here, is from the day we went to Wet and Wild, which isn’t some kind of golden-showers den of sin, but rather a scrappy but beloved waterpark at the arse-end of International Drive. I’ve since heard it’s shutting down, which is a shame, but given we probably left indelible skidmarks on some of the scarier rides it’s probably for the best.

 

Day 26 – Jaymes needs a Chute (Wet and Wild)

Finally – Wet ‘n’ Wild. The concrete and fag-end cuckolded sibling of the rather more salubrious Aquatica, held out of our reach for so long by either weather-based closures or burrito-based bum trouble. A prompt early morning call revealed the park to be open, so after fitting a good eight hundred pastries down our chops, we taxied over to have some splish-splash fun. Before entering, we paid our respects to the Metropolitan Express (the very first hotel we ever stayed in when visiting Orlando back in 2008) by nipping over the road and well, wandering past the reception and down into the corridors.

A little bit about the Metropolitan Express before I come to the meat of the day. It’s grim. Proper grim. We chose the hotel because we were on a budget and didn’t know any better – those were the days when we went to Orlando for ten days, didn’t stay at Disney and had a budget of $1000 for the entire holiday, seems unreal now. The staff are well-meaning and very helpful, but security left a lot to be desired – and this clearly hadn’t improved by the fact that we just sauntered into the hotel past reception and helped ourselves to the free coffee laid out for hotel guests. Sorry, but you shouldn’t be able to do that considering it’s at the rougher end of International Drive. If anyone has the place booked, reconsider. Always pay what you can afford rather than trying to save a few pounds here and there. You may think that we were only able to get back into the hotel because we had made such a fabulous impression on the reception staff that they considered us old friends – but this can’t be the case. I’ll tell you why. On the last day of our first stay back in 2008, we decided to er…make whoopy (we were young then) before leaving. What we hadn’t realised was that I had stashed an open packet of Cheesits under the duvet of the ‘spare’ bed in the room, and we proceeded, entirely by accident, to squash the entire packet, and its radioactive orange contents, into the blankets, under the duvet and up the pillowcases. After we had er…finished, we realised our error, and left hastily, the orange stain refusing to shift from the sheets. Heaven knows what Monique thought when she came to clean the room, but considering we had strategically left a Pringle right in the middle of the carpet for four days to see whether housekeeping were doing their job and it remained there right until the last day, I don’t think the housekeeping was up to much anyway. Oh, and the place stank of cheap weed, too. Not that I know what expensive weed smells like, I hasten to add. I did think I had inhaled rather too much second-hand toke once I had seen the carpets in the hallway mind. It was like someone had trodden a quiche into the carpet. Anyway! Back to 2011, back to Wet and Wild.

Remember our snappy fat/wet suits from earlier in the holiday, purchased in Aquatica in a pique of self-consciousness? Well, we were soon back in those, our jiggly bits cocooned safely in bulging lycra, meaning that we looked to all the world rather like two extra large condoms stuffed with cottage cheese. No matter – as long as no-one laughed at me, I didn’t care. We were straight into the lazy river to ‘acclimatise’ to the water temperature. I got sassed by a lifeguard for not diving in, but to be fair, I practically had to smash my way through the ice-crust it was that bloody cold. The lazy river here leaves a lot to be desired, doesn’t it? Admittedly, it doesn’t have the ped-egg flooring that Disney prefers, but still, give us something to look at other than impossibly sculpted lifeguard bodies.

Most of the day was spent doing slide after slide, and incurring injury after injury. The Storm – the natty slide that shoots you down a steep drop and deposits you like many a poo into what looks like a giant toilet bowl was awesome, as ever, even if I did have to sacrifice my Robin Williams back-hair, which was lightly flayed off under my lycra by the rivets on the slide. Brain Wash is as good as ever, and thankfully they’ve set up an automatic lift so you don’t have to carry those colossal rubber-rings up the winding staircase. Paul and I aren’t especially fit, and anything that reduces the need to break a sweat is good for us. Still, it’s a steep climb, and we’re clearly fitter than last time as we didn’t have to set up base-camp halfway up the tower. I love Brain Wash – try and take a second whilst you’re shooting up and down the tube to look up – they play a nifty ‘subliminal message’ video on the ceiling. All good fun. I banged my head – my own fault – on the side as I was too busy pulling a stupid face at Paul as we were flushed out. So that’s injury two.

With a sore head and a flayed back, we took some time to people-watch, milkshake in hand, under the nice umbrellas by the wavepool. And good lord, we didn’t half see some sights. I know I’m a judgemental sod and hypocritical as I don’t like people taking the mick out of me, but I’ll make no apologies for biting my bottom lip and going ‘Ooooh, look at ‘er’ to Paul for a good half hour. Wet ‘n’ Wild seems to attract a more…hmm…Brighthouse crowd, if you see what I mean. For example, one of the sun-loungers was occupied by someone reading Inside Soap. Now who on Earth goes to the trouble of packing a magazine about English bloody soap operas as reading material on a holiday? Bet she orders Egg and Chips in every restaurant. Also – surprising amount of bad tattoos, especially on necks. I can’t abide it. Frankly, if you have to have the name of your child inked onto your lobster-red neck just so you don’t forget their name and birthday then you shouldn’t be bloody breeding in the first place. Still, it doesn’t beat the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen (some years back, in a rough pub in Newcastle) (Raffertys, if anyone is wondering) – the poor bloke had ‘ENGLUND FOREVER’ inked on his hand. See, if that had been me, I would have asked the tattooist to tattoo a wavy red line under ENGLUND and make out like I was being terribly hip and ironic.

So yes, with my head better and my back crisping up nicely, we decided to do Mach 5. I’m not a huge fan of this ride, because I always manage to lose my dignity somehow – either I come off the mat halfway down or, right at the start, mis-time my bellyflop onto the mat so that I whizz down the slide on my belly whilst the mat cheerfully leads the way ahead of me, just out of reach. Paul’s a genius at stuff like this and never misses, so to humour him, I went on. I didn’t miss the mat. I didn’t come off the mat. Nope, I managed to stay on but, having jumped eagerly, managed to land almost squarely on my clackers, which became pretty much sandwiched between the mat and my lycra-clad body. So – the entire ride was spent having my fertility smacked out of me and I was a very, very interesting shade of puce at the end. Not good. Thank Christ I don’t have to worry about my sperm quality. Paul was sympathetic in that he only guffawed at my predicament rather than fell into hysteria. The tinker. Mind you – he didn’t seem too well either.

Yep, turned out that his ear was playing up again. Ever the trooper, we spent another couple of hours barrelling down the slides and splashing in the water before retreating to the Room of Shame to get changed. We decided to head down to Walgreens to visit their instore doctor, all the while I was silently mouthing my words so Paul felt even more deaf. Mind you, clearly his ear wasn’t too bad – he decided that the sensible thing to do whilst suffering from a balance problem was to have a go on the Slingshot. Yes – that giant tower that you see at the top of International Drive, where those who have been dropped on their heads as children strap themselves into a ball and get slung 200ft into the air, stopped only by two elastic bands. Well, I’m sorry, I’ll do any rides, but I wasn’t going to do that. I don’t trust any ride that looks as though it’s been pieced together by whatever was left over at the Meccano factory. However, being a proper black widow, I ushered Paul onto the ride, and bravely took photos. I wish they had come out well, but it just looks like someone has smeared a blur onto the photo he was going that fast.

 

Apparently, it was brilliant, ear problems or not. Having got that out of his system, we arrived at Walgreens with a minute to spare.

Now, the doctor was fantastic. She performed all sorts of little tests on Paul, and after 40 minutes of clucking her tongue and checking her charts, she diagnosed that the poor bugger had a perforated ear-drum. Of course, I immediately start hyperventilating knowing that we were flying in a few days time, but she reassured us that he would be OK to fly as long as he took the drops she was about to prescribe.

Then, she told us the price. $245 (nearabouts) – $180 of which was for one tiny dropper bottle of antibiotics. Luckily, I managed to floor her with the first punch and Paul ran out with the bottle. I wish. No, we paid up, and I almost perforated his other eardrum whinging about having to pay for something I seem to get routinely prescribed at home like Smarties. Seriously – I could go into my doctors with a missing face and he’d send me on my way with a crate of amoxicillin and a flea in my ear. Thank Christ for travel insurance. We made a tonne of calls later that evening and actually ended up getting nowhere, just one big circle of call centres and idiots who couldn’t tell us what to do. Worst yet – that ended up costing us about $400 in phone call charges from the Hard Rock! Bah. Next time he damages his ear, I’ll just fill it full of cotton wool and use sign language. Only really need to know ‘Feed Me’ ‘Have you douched?’ and ‘Go to sleep’ to get by.

Before turning in for the night, we wandered down to Olive Garden for our evening meal. Absolutely delicious. I don’t remember an awful lot of it save for three facts. First – I was getting eyed up by a splinter-thin River-Island-clad pipe-cleaner of a man who followed me to the loo, only to turn around and leave in disgust when I went into a cubicle and deliberately trumpeted as loudly as possible. Second – the food was scrummy, and the cocktails even better. Third – we gave our server a $100 tip on a $60 meal, because she dealt with us with such aplomb whilst having to serve a table of twelve boorish Americans all waving their hands in the air. See – I’m flying the flag for Britain!

All in all then, a mixed day. We love Wet and Wild – yeah it’s rough and it needs polishing up, and it has nowhere near the level of class that the likes of Aquatica or Typhoon Lagoon have, but if you want fast rides and easy living, it’s the one to go for. Plus – remember my tip for an early morning pick-me-up: free coffee at the Metropolitan Express. But stay there…not on my experience.

So here we go…!

tater tots slimming world friendly

serves 4

you’ll need these:

  • 900g potatoes, cut into cubes
  • 750g lean beef mince
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 medium carrot, finely diced
  • 1 red pepper, finely diced
  • 2 celery sticks, finely diced
  • 500g passata
  • 1 tsp mustard powder
  • ¾ tbsp cider vinegar
  • ¾ tsp chilli powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 tbsp Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Sauce (optional)
  • 40g reduced fat mozarella, grated (one HEA choice, this serves four!0
  • 4 spring onions, sliced

and you’ll need to do this:

  • cook the cubed potatoes in a spoonful of worcestershire sauce in your Actifry, or alternatively place on a baking sheet and bake at 190 degrees until browned, remembering to turn frequently
  • meanwhile, heat a little oil in a pan over a medium high heat and add the onions, stirring frequently until they start to turn translucent
  • add the mince and cook until brown
  • next add the passata, carrots, garlic, red pepper and celery and stir well
  • mix together the mustard powder, chilli powder, cider vinegar and a tablespoon of water and add to the mixture
  • stir again, cover the pan over a medium-low heat and cook for 20-30 minutes until nicely thickened
  • in a grill-safe pan (or baking dish) layer the mince mixture with potatoes, add the grated cheese and spring onions (just slice up the green part) and grill until the cheese has turned golden brown
  • drizzle over with the buffalo sauce and serve

It’s up to you what sides you serve this with to make up the third-speed-food-rule on your plate, but I’m not going to pretend that we didn’t just eat our quarter and immediately go back for more, with the roasted broccoli still in the oven…oops!

I’ll say this – if you cook only one of our recipes, ever, cook this. It makes a pan full of absolute bloody wonder!

TOP TIP: don’t chuck away the white part of the spring onions, put them root-first into a glass of water, and they’ll grow again! Easy.

J

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July 4, 2015

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american, bacon, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, pork, quark, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free

american week: bacon wrapped hotdogs

I feel I should warn you – this is a long one. But if you relax, grit your teeth and just persevere, you’ll enjoy it all the way to the end.

Wah-hey! It’s American week, we’ve got our fancy new banner, and you’re actually getting two recipes today, both of which are easy to make. Before we get started though, just something quick. I found a vest in the reduced bin at Tesco today for £2. I don’t wear vests because I don’t have fabulous arms and I feel the world can do without seeing my milky white, hairy shoulders catching the sun. Nevertheless, it’s good for dossing around the house, but the very moment Paul saw me in it he said I looked like Onslow from Keeping up Appearances. So that’s nice, bearing Onslow was a man in his late fifties who had yellow teeth and a very ‘lived in’ face.

The recipes are at the bottom of this page!

American week means I get to step back from writing and rest my fingers for a bit – so in the meantime, I’m going to post seven days from my honeymoon book. We travelled to Florida for four weeks and it was amazing, and I kept a diary because I didn’t want to forget any of it. I know, mushy. If you enjoy it, please do consider buying it – it means a few extra pennies for our Iceland jar see. And it’s only £2. Click here! So, this is day zero…

 

Day 0 – our wedding and travelling to Florida

Given I’m going to prattle on about Paul and I for oooh…about 50000 words, it seems prudent to introduce us properly, and what better way to illustrate who we are then to talk you through the day I accepted Paul’s ring. Yes, the wedding. We’re not exactly Wills and Kate, though I do have a fabulous arse, but it was a lovely day full of smiles and the perfect start to our honeymoon full of sin, sarcasm and blue sunscreen.

Way back in 2009, also at Disney, I proposed to my stout little barrel of a man and he gleefully accepted. I think it was the fact we were in the middle of a lake and I’d be watching an awful lot of Dead Calm recently that hastened his positive reply. We got honked at by a passing Disney ferry whose inhabitants thought I was down on my knees doing something other than proposing. The nerve. I mean, it wasn’t Christmas! Zip forward to 3 January 2011 and the day before our wedding. Well, the glamour started right from the off with one of the cats deciding to do a dirty protest in the car whilst we ferried him over to my sister to look after. You’ve never seen someone wind a window down quicker than us that day, and because the cat is fearless and would have jumped, he stayed in his messy box all the way to my sisters. It was with tears in our eyes (and Vicks under our nose) to see our pooey little furball depart, but there you have it.

We spent the evening before the wedding in our first treat, a room at the Hotel du Vin in Newcastle. You may think Newcastle is purely the land of bust noses, bare flesh and broken hymens, but we’re more than capable of bringing the class, and this is one of the nicest hotels in the area. I mean, it has a cigar bar attached, for heaven’s sake. Our very first surprise of the honeymoon? We were upgraded to the best suite in the hotel, the Dom Pérignon suite. It was bloody beautiful. It’s the honeymoon suite and I was overjoyed, especially as I had only paid £68 for the room through my shrewd discount plans. A massive thank you to the staff of the beautiful Hotel du Vin, that’s for sure. The room had two bathtubs in the living room, and I think we were in the room for a grand total of two minutes before they were full of bubbles and we were laid in them watching Deal or no Deal on the giant TV and feeling like kings. The bed was wonderful too – it felt like it was 9ft wide – I could lie in it, stretch myself out and STILL not touch the sides. Sometimes I wonder why Paul married me.

After a meal on the Quayside and a romantic stroll back to our room, we settled down to sleep – our last night as bachelors! Here’s a sweet fact for you – in all the time we’ve been together, we’ve never had a night apart. A good start to the marriage methinks! And so…to the wedding!

We had decided a couple of months previously not to have a big do at all, and just a small registry office affair followed by a good dinner. I wish I could say it was for any other reason than the fact we’re both terribly selfish and Northern and thus the idea of spending money to facilitate other people having a good time appals us. Plus, I wanted to avoid the three horrid old clichés of a civil partnership:

  1. non-Scottish men wearing kilts. We know you’re a Mary but let’s not wear a skirt, eh;
  2. rainbow decorations absolutely anywhere. Paul may be the height of a leprechaun but he doesn’t have the cheeky disposition; and
  3. bloody cupcake towers. Nothing cloys my blood faster than this fad for cupcakes. I’m not Polly bloody Pocket. If I had my way, there would only be two cakes allowed – fruit and urinal.

Bah! I’m not casting aspersions on anyone else’s wedding but it suited us to have a small, tidy, manly do. So we did. Well, we did toy with the idea of dressing up like the sisters from Shakespeare’s Sister’ Stay video but we were talked out of it. We became Husband and Husband in Newcastle Registry Office, presided over by an official who was the spit of Annie Lennox, and watched over by our immediate family and good friends. As an aside, my gran was there, and she’s brilliant – despite being 87, she’s thoroughly accepting of our relationship and is always asking after Paul when I call up. I mean, there are limits to her acceptance – I didn’t dare explain what fisting was when she asked me one day after seeing the word on my phone (I might add, someone had texted it in a joke to me, I’m not that FILTHY). It still felt a little bit too formal for me, as I’m not used to someone addressing a suit-clad Paul without adding ‘the defendant’ afterwards. We decamped to SIX, the faffy little restaurant on top of the Baltic. It’s very posh. NOW, we’re not a posh lot, and class McCains as a ‘fancy potato style’ but you have to let your hair down once and a while, even if (as is the case in all the males at the table) you don’t have any.

So, a suitably lovely meal was had, only enhanced by the snotty waiter looking down his nose at us and rolling his eyes when I ordered a couple of bottles of reasonably-priced champagne. Well, reasonably priced for them – paying £65 for a bottle of fizzy cat pee gave me such a cold sweat that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to calm my shakes. My nana, bless her, didn’t really fancy anything on the menu (I can’t blame her, I’ve never heard two bits of chard, a sliced tomato and a bloody drizzle of balsamic vinegar described as a French Salad before) but they were very good and cooked her up her own individual meal. I stopped short of asking them to put a glass of Banana Complan on ice, though.

After the meal, we went to the pub for an hour, then everyone dearly departed, and our honeymoon officially started. Yes! Back to the flat to really put the bed through its paces by er…putting the suitcases on it and tipping our wardrobe into them. I have to say, it wasn’t the first type of packing that I had planned for the wedding night. We slept, butterflies in our stomach (SIX would call them an amuse bouché) and in no time at all, we were in a taxi being bellowed at by a rather brusque taxi driver who wanted to know the far end of a fart and when it came from. Honestly. I spent the entire trip to the train station trying to hide the fact I was attempting to take a photo of his face on my phone so I would be able to identify who had burgled our house when we were away. Thankfully, that didn’t arise.

Straight onto the train, into the first class carriage (where you too can travel in style with an extra doily and a few crappy biscuits) and we were disappearing over the Queen Elizabeth bridge, saying goodbye to Newcastle from the bridge. Now here’s a tip for you. If you’re coming into Newcastle (or indeed leaving) from the South on the train, don’t look slackjawed to the right and admire all the bridges, but instead, look on the other side of the river, up the Tyne. As you cross the bridge, there’s a little wasteground, and it’s always full of men out ‘badger-hunting’. Yep – whereas most people are taken by the beauty of the moment, Paul and I spent the first minute of our honeymoon journey playing ‘Count the Cruiser’. What larks!

In no time at all, we were in London, our seedy capital. Kings Cross is lovely, yes, but in no time at all we had tubed our way to Victoria and onto the Gatwick Express, heading for the giddy heights of the Gatwick Hilton. What a place! After spending seven years navigating to the hotel from the train station (seriously, we spent so much time walking there that I almost gave up and set up base for the night), we were checked in by a clearly-couldn’t-care-less-customer-divvy and in our room. Grim. I’m not a hotel snob but after spending the night in the Hotel du Vin only two nights ago, the Hilton’s tired brown sheets and tiny bathroom didn’t exactly enamour the soul. After spending only a moment admiring the view (car-parks are just SO fantastic to gaze at), we trekked back to the airport and checked in super-early (is it still Twilight Check-in if it is during the day?) with Virgin Atlantic. We had pre-booked our seats in the bubble but no sooner had we dumped our bags than the lady behind the counter told us we had been moved. Argh! I was too busy trying to work out the best way to hide her body to take in what she was saying, but when I was back at the hotel I checked online and we were RIGHT at the front of the bubble. Get in! Not only do I get to look down at the cattle-class, but I was going to be on first-name terms with the pilot. OK, maybe not THAT close. And we don’t look down our noses at anyone…well…not much.

We spent the evening in the hotel, watching a home movie entitled ‘Britain’s Fattest Man’ starring Timothy Spall. It was very good, even if we didn’t feel a shred of shame stuffing a pork-pie into our gob the very moment he had his fat chopped off. A good nights sleep was had, and we were ready for day 1…introduction over!

 

Oh how we laughed! So the first recipe is for a berry medley breakfast – we were served something very similar at the Polynesian at Disney, so why not replicate it here?

berry medley

There doesn’t really need to be a guide on what to do, really – I just scooped out a giant watermelon and put all that disgusting, rancid watermelon into the bin. That’s really the most important part, because no-one in their right mind can enjoy watermelon – it’s like sucking on a dishcloth. I’ve had farts with more structure, seriously. Then, fill up the hollow with a selection of berries – in this case I used strawberries, raspeberries, blackberries, a Mary Berry, pomegranate seeds, melon balls and blueberries. I then whizzed some raspberries together with the juice of one lime, mixed the whole lot together, and served with chopped mint. This EASILY serves four and is so rammed with superfree food it brings a tear to my eye. Next…

hotdogs

We had loaded hotdogs at Universal Studios – here we have wrapped the hotdog in bacon but you could easily load it with chilli or tonnes of softened onion. Just do it!

to make bacon wrapped hotdogs, you’ll need:

  • a hotdog bun (now look – dig out wholemeal hotdog rolls, ASDA sell them, but we used a white bun because it looked better for the photo – GASP. The hotdog bun was 38g so I’m calling it a HEB. If you don’t want to do that, that’s OK, just swap out the hotdog bun for a normal HEB breadbun and you’ll be laughing)
  • wasn’t that a lot of bold text? Well I’m a bold guy
  • some cocktail sticks
  • 6 rashers of bacon – now you’ll want decent bacon here, not something that looks like the bottom of a flipflop – you want plenty of meat, fat removed
  • an onion
  • hotdogs or sausages – we used Ye Olde Oake hotdogs jumbo, which work out at 2 syns each, but you could use Slimming World sausages instead, think of ALL THAT FLAVOUR
  • 100g of quark
  • your Heathly Extra allowance of strong cheese (we used Red Leicester and only 35g)
  • whatever side you want, we just did ours with chips because we had so much speed food earlier)

then just do this:

  • cut the bacon into inch long strips and wrap gently around the hotdog or sausage (if you’re using sausages, cook them first – don’t incinerate them but get them to ‘almost done’) – secure the bacon with cocktail sticks
  • pop under the grill for ten minutes or so until bacon is lovely and cooked
  • meanwhile, cut your onion up into small bits and gently saute in a drop of oil or Frylight
  • add chopped bacon from your scrappy bits left over, don’t be adding chunks of fat mind or I’ll slap your legs
  • to make the cheese sauce, carefully heat the Quark through and stir in your cheese – you might need to thin it with a drop or two of milk
  • assemble!

Easy. We had two – an extra finger roll being 6.5 syns, but really it was heavy going, so just have one and fill up on sides! If you use ketchup and mustard, you’re looking at a syn extra per tablespoon or so.

Enjoy! WE’RE OFF!

J

 

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July 3, 2015

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beef, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, steak, syn free

enchilada fries and a ginger nut

Gosh, it’s been five years since Raoul Moat, our local angry-faced ginger peanut, went on the rampage, shot a policeman and then spent four days shitting in a ditch in Rothbury, until the police came along and cut his hair with a shotgun.

I only mention it because he’s all over our local news again today, which makes a change from pissy-knickered biddies whingeing on about wind turbines. I remember it well – Paul and I were in our Quayside flat and we were out on the balcony, looking fitfully at the bushes below because we were sure that a rampaging murderer would be itching for a riverside view. Our local newspaper Facebook feed is awash with windowlickers saying ‘U CAN’T JUJE HIM HES A HERO’ and ‘U DONT KNOW HOLE STOREY’ and other shite. The walnut-muscled knob shot a fucking defenceless man in the face and the simpletons are making out like he’s misunderstood. Pfft. The human capacity for stupidity knows no bounds.

Hey, tomorrow our week long American week starts. We love a theme week here at twochubbycubs and it seems fitting, being July 4 tomorrow, to have a nice American-themed week. Admittedly we’re bound to cause international eye-rolling with our stereotyping but we’re basing it on our experiences when we were in Florida, where we quite literally had to actively seek out vegetables because the chest pains were getting too much. 

To go alongside this (and to give us a week off from writing) I’m going to post 7 days worth from our honeymoon book as we go along, so if you’ve already been a star and read it, I apologise. If not, buy it now, and keep us in pennies! It can be found here. If you’re a fan of my writing, you should hopefully enjoy it…

We’ve also picked and made contact with the winner of the competition to find all the famous faces – thank you to all who entered and your names gave me a good giggle. God knows where you think I’d hidden Thomas the Tank Engine mind. There will be another competition soon, and just for shits and giggles, I’ve hidden a famous face in tonight’s entry – it’s subtle, see if you can spot her. So here we go, because it’s getting late. These are enchilada fries and really it’s just an even fancier, syn-free version of burger in a bowl, with the added bonus that – unlike burger in a bowl – this doesn’t look like someone’s shot their bolt across a plate of mince and iceberg lettuce.

 

you’ll need these:

for the chips:

  • 900g potatoes

for the guacamole:

  • 180g frozen peas (defrosted)
  • 1 red chilli, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • handful of coriander leaves
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 2 tsp quark
  • juice of 1 lime

for the tomato salad:

  • 3 tomatoes, diced
  • 4 spring onions, sliced
  • juice of half a lime

for the sour cream:

  • 250g fat-free natural yoghurt
  • salt and pepper
  • pinch of paprika
  • 1/2 tsp cajun seasoning
  • 1/2 tsp chilli pepper flakes

for the steak:

  • half a tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 800g beef (in whatever form you like – we chose diced)
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 80g grated reduced-fat cheddar

and you’ll need to do this:

for the chips

  • oh, come on now

for the guacamole:

  • add all the ingredients into a food processor, and blend until smooth

for the tomato salad:

  • mix all of the chopped ingredients together and season to taste

for the sour cream:

  • stir all of the ingredients together

for the steak:

  • heat the chopped tomatoes and puree in a sauce pan over a medium-high heat
  • when the mixture begins to simmer remove from the heat and stir in the beef
  • drain off the excess liquid and cook the beef over a medium-high heat to your preference
  • layer all of the ingredients onto a plate and enjoy!

J

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July 1, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

comfort food meatballs with onion gravy and mashed potatoes

Before we get started, can I just tell you something which made my piss rattle this morning – I was driving to work on a particularly bendy, twisty bit of road when some log-gobbler came hurtling towards me on the other side of the road, white BMW, naturally, easily doing 30mph more than she should have been – and she was PUTTING ON MASCARA. Mascara! At speed! I only noticed because she was doing that stupid jaw-on-her-tits mascara face that seems to be obligatory. I couldn’t believe it. The urge to turn my car around and ram it into the back of her shitwagon was immense. How dare she put people at risk on the roads just so she can walk around with big cow eyes? With any luck she’d crash into the River Blyth and impale her walnut brain on her Max Factor wand. Bah! I can’t begin to tell you how much it annoys me seeing people use their phones / do their make-up / complete a 1000 piece jigsaw whilst driving. It’s fine if you want to crash and die, but don’t take me with you just because you’re so keen to post ‘ROFL drivin on motoway mad tunes YOLO‘ on fucking facebook, you insipid tart.

Honestly. I was so angry I couldn’t finish my shave.

Anyway, it seems Paul may have been premature with his ‘but the bathroom isn’t leaking at all’ analysis, as the ‘tiny leak’ is clearly still growing. I’ve become fanatical about measuring the spread of this tiny leak – we’ve marked out the water stain on the chipboard in the hallway (we have carpet, but we pulled it up to view the leak, we’re not that common) and I find myself compelled to check it every time I go for a jimmy riddle I’m down on my haunches staring wildly at the floor. So doubtless that’ll need fixing, which is dreadful because it means having yet more workers in the house.

I can’t cope with other people in my house – I get annoyed when I see myself in the mirror, let alone burly men with rough-hewn hands fingering my coving. We’ve got someone coming to plaster all the ceilings in the house soon, finally getting rid of the fucking Artex that haunts our dream. You know how sometimes Artex can be applied delicately in gentle waves? Not ours. No, clearly the old biddy who lived here before had the Artex applied via a fucking fireman’s hose – I feel like a pea looking up at the top of an abandoned freezer. It’s awful.

We’ve also just had a man come round to see about painting the entire house – all the interiors, the doors, the skirting boards, plus the greenhouse, shed and massive fence that runs along the property. He immediately started asking questions about what type of paint I was wanting to use – I fear my non-macho answer of ‘a subtle white with a hint of colour’ has already set us off on a bad footing, because he looked at me witheringly and said ‘No, matt, gloss or satin’. Well I don’t bloody know, I’m very much a man who pays others to do anything taxing.

We’ve got someone coming to flush our radiators (not a euphemism) and another bloke coming to fit a new boiler, taking away the current boiler which I reckon was salvaged from Titanic. There’s a man coming to fit blinds and eventually there’ll be a scrap-man coming to take away various shite we’ve accumulated. The last scrap man spent ten minutes chewing my ear about not being able to work (pronounced wuuurk) because of a “bad back” whilst hoisting a fucking tumble-drier onto his flat-bed lorry like he was shotputting in the Olympics.

Finally, we’ve got carpet fitters coming to recarpet the entire house, which means the cats have a blank canvas to smear birds across and do secret pisses every now and then just to keep us on our toes. Or indeed, in amongst our toes. They’re generally very good cats who know to go outside, down the garden path and into next door’s garden where they can shit with gay abandon, but every now and then they’ll decide that really the only place worth anointing with half a litre of eye-watering cat piss is next to my shoes, or in a drawer, or, perhaps best of all, all over the top of the Sky-Box in a protest against hearing the Jeremy Kyle theme tune for the 655th time that week. We got rid of that cat in the end – she went to a better place. Under the wheels of my car. No no I jest, she’s up the road turning into a footrest with paws, remember?

So this means, for me at least, weeks of making awkward small talk and worrying that anything I say is going to look like I’m trying to seduce them in some kind of awkward Bangbus-esque scenario. Honestly, it’s something I probably shouldn’t worry about but I’ve seen too many jizzflicks to know this is how so many of them start. Plus I can’t make small talk so I stay away but then I worry about looking standoffish so I spend my time in such a state of anxious flux that I almost want to pay them just to go away. Urgh. So pray for me.

Tonight’s recipe is another meatball recipe, but I reckon this is the best beef meatball recipe yet – they come out soft, moist and packed full of flavour, and what more can you want from a meatball? Plus the thick, onion gravy is full of zip and the mash is…well, mash, but you get the drift. Serve with broccoli to keep it simple. I know you might not feel like meatballs, but listen, we’ve got air-conditioning in our house, we need this to keep from freezing. This meal serves a comfortable four people. It also makes your farts smell delicious.

beef meatballs slimming world

you’ll need all of this:

for the meatballs:

  • 500g lean beef mince
  • 60g tomato puree
  • 3 level tsp wholegrain mustard (1.5 syns)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp onion powder

for the gravy:

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 250ml beef stock
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp gravy granules (1 syn)
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree

for the mash:

  • 5 large potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
  • 125ml skimmed milk (1.5 syns, or HexA)
  • 125g quark
  • an egg yolk (optional)
  • salt and pepper to taste

and you’ll need to do this:

  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • mixing together all of the meatball ingredients in a large bowl
  • shape the mixture into 30 evenly sized balls
  • do a little dance
  • place the meatballs onto a non-stick baking sheet (you can spray a little Frylight if you like, or stop being a loser and use some oil) and bake for about 20 minutes
  • meanwhile, add the potato chunks to boiling water and cook until tender (about 20 minutes)
  • make a little love
  • mash together with all of the other mash ingredients, or to however you like it
  • as those are cooking, prepare the gravy mixture
  • get down tonight (ah-ha)
  • in a large saucepan heat a little Frylight/oil over a medium-high heat and gently sweat the onion until it becomes translucent
  • in a jug or bowl, mix together the stock, worcestershire sauce, gravy granules, salt and tomato puree
  • add the gravy to the onions and stir until thickened
  • add the meatballs to the gravy, coating them evenly and serve on top of the mash
  • if you have delusions of grandeur, you can pop in a sprig of parsley and serve to the oohs and aahs of your adoring family

Enjoy! OH I’ll leave you with this.

cat die

J

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June 29, 2015

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beef, chinese, diced beef, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, steak

beef stir-fry with udon noodles

It’s a more settled evening at The Cubs House – not least because James is working late so it’s just me and The Honeyz Greatest Hits belting out, interspersed with a little Alanis Morissette. It’s only when he’s not here y’see that I get to listen to some proper music. He says he can’t stand much of my music collection but I’ve definitely see him do Mariah hands to a few of Tracey Chapman’s catchier tunes. And as much as he complains he definitely knows all the words to a few Vanessa Carlton B-sides too. And what does THAT tell you?

We’ve actually got quite similar tastes in music which doesn’t cause too much bother except for a few distinct differences – I’m a real sucker for a miserable, piano song whereas he’ll go hell for leather with some indie crap that he’s found on Spotify. Most of the time though we work it out quite well – Barrowman and Eurovision is very much in whereas Muse is only on an off-day and out and about it’s very rare to see us both squeezed into the Micra without the Grease Megamix bursting out the speakers or some other jaunty tune. Just as an aside, I recently got a hire car to take me down to see the family and was given a rather fancy Mazda with a BOSE sound system. Well, believe me when I say I nearly shat myself when it powered up. Not only by the volume but also the bass which rattled my insides so much it practically blended whatever quark-filled monstrosity Magz instructed us to make through her own PRAVDA into pure liquid. I had to turn it down when I got to the A*Teens playlist because the rear-view mirror shook so much whenever Marie went anywhere over a high-C.

But anyway, that’s all a wholly different matter. We’re both actually much more relaxed this evening (well, I am anyway – he’s slumped over an ergonomic keyboard in the centre of Newcastle) at the good news that our bathroom isn’t like one huge giant Weetabix (HexB) gently crumbling into a bowl of skimmed milk (HexA) as we’d first imagined. An unusually hyper-aware James noticed last night a wet patch on our hallway carpet. I’d noticed it too but in this house a wet patch is either where the cats have started a dirty protest at something ridiculous or we’ve gone a little A-over-T with a glass of ginger ale. This was neither, and a quick throwing back of the carpet revealed an enormous wet patch underneath which got our heart racing, and most definitely not in a sexy way (not even a rugged plumber arriving on scene would quell the fear of opening our wallets). We’d had this before, just as we were getting the new bathroom in but was told then that it was probably fixed, unless it was something different. Well, this new patch that arrived instantly got us dreading the worst and images of ripping up the lovely tiling and eating into the Yankee Candle budget were the biggest fear. Turns out too that all home insurance companies are robbing bastards and won’t cover anything. Crooks! Thankfully after a quick once-over by our local, trusty plumber it turned out to just be a leaky overflow which was quickly fixed. New 4k TV budget remains untouched!

In my head that story sounded much more exciting. I do apologise. I certainly put more into it when I was explaining to my boss this morning why I needed the afternoon off. Ah well. I just wanted to give you a taster of what constituted high-drama in the Cub household.

And all this leads to something that is most certainly not dramatic but something of a showstopper. A really simple beef stir-fry dish using only a few store-cupboard ingredients, with a bit of meat (ooh er) and takes only a few minutes. It’s simple, but has loads of flavour. I’ll let the picture do all the talking:

beef stir fry slimming world

you’ll be needing these…

  • Dried thick noodles, or you could use Amoy Straight to Wok Udon Noodles (1 syn per pouch)
  • 225g beef steak (thinly sliced)
  • Pak Choi (chopped)
  • 100g beansprouts, three spring onions (sliced)
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp dark soy sauce
  • 1 tsp mirin
  • ¼ tsp sesame oil (0.5 syns)

and you’ll need to do this…

  • add the noodles to a pot of boiling water and cook according to the instructions
  • drain the noodles and rinse well under cold water, and set aside
  • heat a little oil in a pan over a high heat and add the beef, stir fry until browned and transfer to a plate
  • in the same pan add the pak choi and bean sprouts until crisp but tender
  • add the noodles, spring onions, soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil to the pan and continue to stir until well mixed
  • return the beef to the pan, and serve

Enjoy!

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June 27, 2015

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american, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, recipe card, sandwiches, savoury snacks, snacks

meatball marinara sub with sweet potato croquettes

Ah croquettes! I haven’t seen that word since I was at school and enjoying all the fruits and deliciousness of school dinners. Of course back then it wasn’t fancy croquettes made with sweet potato and garlic breadcrumbs, they were made with ashen grey potato and rolled in radioactive-orange ‘bread’ crumbs. Wonderful!

I used to love school dinners and I hold no love for those who say they were awful. Perhaps they were, but at least you got your 100% of cigarette ash requirement with your turkey dinosaurs (I went to a posh school, they shaped their turkey arsehole-and-eyelids into stegosauruses instead of non-descript Twizzlers, see).

We did have the stereotypical mean old dinner lady, though – Connie (naturally we called her Ronnie to annoy her), and she ruled the hall with an iron fist. Actually, not quite true, she’d had polio as a youngster and didn’t so much have an iron fist as a few ball-bearings. That’s cruel but true. Perhaps that’s why she was always so bloody mean to the kids, to stop them being mean to her…different perspective when you’re an adult. We just used to push past her, risking serious moustache burns, and get in before all the smelly little kids claimed all the chocolate orange tart.

I do remember once going to get my wallet out of my blazer and a condom that I had gallantly/optimistically (sensibly given what I was up to with my ‘close friend’ at the time, well not literally at the time, I had my eyes on the battered sausage) went flying out of the back of my pocket and into the canteen of baked beans in front of me. I got a strong talking to for that, though again in retrospect they should have advised me against using flavoured condoms. It was grape flavour and lurid purple and my friend and I had to get them from the toilets at Newcastle Airport in case anyone saw us.

I feel I should point out that my school was next to the airport – we didn’t have a day-trip out just to buy battercatchers.

It must have been a fairly posh school looking back, because I definitely remember after the pudding being allowed to go back to the canteen and getting cheese and coffee. Admittedly it was a lump of cheddar and a cup of Mellow Birds Brown Mountain Water but still, cheese and coffee at 13. In sixth form we naturally progressed to cigars, brandy and shooting metal pellets at poor folk. Pfft. I actually left sixth form because they tried to make us wear a suit to school . FIGHT THE POWER. Totally worth it.

Anyway, we’re spending the day emptying the green bedroom and the blue bedroom in preparation for turning them into a games room and utility room respectively. You can tell two fat blokes live in this house for sure. So I thought I’d rattle off this blog post early and give you a chance to gaze upon…THIS BEAUTY.

meatball marinara

I know right? The two syns is actually for the sweet potato croquettes, so if you want, just have this with a salad or chips and make this syn-free. Salad or chips, it’s the curse of every fatty.

so you’ll be needing the following

for the croquettes

  • six sweet potatoes
  • one brown bread bun blitzed into breadcrumbs (6 syns, but you don’t use them all, so as this serves two, that’s two syns each)
  • 1tsp of chopped sage, fresh or dried

for the marinara sauce

  • two tins of chopped tomatoes, decent quality if you can get them – if not, add a pinch of sugar to take the acidity off the cheaper type
  • 6 garlic gloves, peeled and cut into very thin slices
  • pinch of crushed chilli flakes
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • nice sprig of fresh basil or 1/2 tsp dried oregano

for the meatballs – take your pick from previous recipes:

We used turkey and bacon meatballs because we had a bag of them rattling around in the freezer from the other day. ECONOMICAL

make the sweet potato croquettes first

  • dice the sweet potatoes into thirds and put in the oven until the flesh is soft and the spirit is willing
  • scoop out the flesh, add your sage and a bit of salt, mix it well until it’s nice and blended
  • shape into cylinders around the size of 10 pound coins on top of each other, or a really disappointing one-night-stand
  • roll in the breadcrumbs
  • place on a non-stick tray and chuck them in the oven for maybe 20 seconds on 180 degrees, but keep an eye on them – you don’t want them to burn, after all, just dry out a little

Set your meatballs away whilst the potato is cooking – you can keep them to one side for later see

to make the marinara

  • tip the tomatoes into a large bowl and using the back of a spoon (or your fingers, as long as you haven’t been picking your bum) and crush any particularly large lumps of tomato
  • Frylight or lightly oil a pan and when the oil is warm, add the slivers of garlic
  • as soon as that garlic starts sizzling (but not burning) add the tomatoes, herb, chilli and salt with another half tin of water
  • if you’re using basil, place it on the top and let it wilt and drop down into the sauce
  • cook low and slow – you’ll need the sauce to thicken, so it’ll be on a medium heat uncovered, stirring occasionally
  • you want it really thick, so really be patient – add a bit of salt or more oregano if you think it needs it
  • once you’re happy with it, get rid of the basil

Then it’s really just a case of cutting open a breadbun (your HEB), layering your healthy extra of cheese on the bottom, placing the meatballs on top of the cheese and then adding the marinara. Serve with a few croquettes and a dollop of marinara sauce for dipping and I’m telling you now, you’ll have a BLOODY GOOD MEAL.

You’re welcome!

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June 26, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, panko, pork, recipe card, speciality ingredients

amazing ham, cheese and pea gnocchi

I know what you’re thinking. James, you promised me a post a day, and here we were yesterday crying into our Margaret Miles-Thingy tea-towels and waiting all night long. Well listen, it’s not the first time I’ve left someone unsatisfied long into the night and it won’t be the last.

See, I’m trying to be more social. Remember me saying how lazy I am a few posts back? That also applies to social events. I get asked to go to various things and usually decline because I’m a) shy and b) incredibly fond of lying on my sofa with a cat in my back hair and Paul squeezing my feet. It’s what I live for. But see I could die tomorrow and I don’t want people remembering me as the person who was always “washing his hair”, despite having roughly the same amount of hair found on my head as you’d find in a Phil Mitchell tribute annual.

So in the spirit of socialising and trying not to die alone surrounded by cats and a stuffed Paul carcass grinning lopsidedly at me like a boss-eyed Humpty Dumpty, I went along to a pub quiz with a couple of friends from work and two other ladies, who turned out to be lovely. I’m glad I went, not least because it was hilarious.

For a start, it was awash with teams taking it far too seriously. I love this. It’s a fucking pub quiz – you’re answering questions about Miley Cyrus, if you get it wrong you’re not going to be taken outside and shot by the Gestapo. The prize was £47! Even so, there was table after table of people in dire need of a wash and some love furrowing their brows and furiously debating which two countries has the most nuclear reactors. For the record, we got that answer correct – USA and France. I watch a lot of Discovery Channel.

That said, we didn’t win. We came…second from last. We did however win an extra point for having the best team name: Bender and the Jets. I think you’ll agree that is awesome, and I’m allowed to say bender, I’ve earned the right – I’ve quite literally taken one for the team on that front. Or back. It’s certainly better name than We’re The Winners or Quizmasters. Neither of those teams won anyway, so egg on their face. It’ll go well with the cum stains on their trousers.

Oh, I also totally pulled. Now it goes without saying that I wouldn’t anyway, but even if I’d been tempted by the suggestion, his face put me right off. Some drunken arse, easily into his sixties and with a face like a smashed crab, asked me if I wanted to know the answer to who sang ‘The Joker’ and then licked his lips lasciviously at me like he was the best offer I’d get all night. I’d get more aroused getting chatted up by the cigarette machine. Seriously, he looked like that guy from The Fully Monty who was in Corrie with a perm:

steve-huson-the-full-monty (1)

I wouldn’t care, we got the answer wrong, so maybe I should have just succumbed to his greasy wiles. Boke.

Finally, our group got ‘hushed’ and then told to be ‘bloody quiet’ by some gangster granny with a nicotine fringe and a mean look about her because we had the temerity to talk DURING THE INTERLUDE. She was trying to play card bingo like the top prize was a couple of extra month’s on a drip – I’ve never seen playing cards turned over with such ferociousness. She turned around again and said ‘AH’M TRYING TO HEAR THE ANNOUNCER’ (I could barely hear her through all the phlegm in her voice trying to scramble out) and we were kowtowed into silence. I wouldn’t care, it’s not as if we were tuning up a brass band or felling trees, we were just talking normally (perhaps with a slight bit of shrieking from me, I’d had liquor). Mardy cow. Oh! And she was cheating. She had her phone out during the countries round. The temptation for me to lean over and whisper ‘Do you mind not cheating so loudly, I’m trying to hear the announcer’ was almost too much.

Card bingo, by the way – you get given a few playing cards, the Quiz Man has a full deck (unlike some of the audience), he announces them randomly and when you’ve turned over your lot, you win. Well, you don’t win. You lose. EVERYONE loses at bloody card bingo.

In all though, a really good night! 

Oh – we lost 4lb between us at class, but that’s almost an afterthought these days. But let me tell you what ISN’T an afterthought – this recipe. It was amazing – it couldn’t have been better even if it had been served of the bumcheeks of the fatter brother from Prison Break. Easily one of our favourite recipes yet!

ham and cheese gnocchi

It doesn’t look so pretty on the plate, and that cheese top looks like the kind of knee-scab you’d pick off in the bath and secretly eat. I know what you’re like, don’t try and gussy yourself up for me.

you’ll need these:

  • 250g of syn-free ham – we used the thicker cuts you can buy in a pack from the supermarket, but really any old shite will do
  • one chopped onion
  • 250g of quark (taste the flavour!)
  • clove of garlic (minced) (yep: get one of these!)
  • 100g of frozen peas
  • 1 x HEA Mozzarella
  • 1 x HEA strong cheddar
  • 400g of gnocchi (6 syns, and this serves four) 

and you’ll need to do this:

  • gently cook the onion in a large pan over a medium heat in a little oil until soft
  • add garlic and stir until it starts to turn golden
  • add the ham to the pan and cook until warmed through
  • add the frozen peas to the pan and stir
  • add the quark and continue to stir until it loosens and makes a thick, creamy sauce – add a few tablespoons of water if it becomes too thick
  • add the gnocchi and simmer for 2-3 minutes
  • once the gnocchi is soft, remove from the heat and evenly spread out the cheese over the top
  • place under a medium grill until the cheese turns golden
  • serve!

Now, what we did at this point was to put it in the oven, with the oven still warm from the grill but not switched on, and left it to sit for an hour or so whilst Paul came and bundled me into the car. When we came back, the gnocchi was almost broken down and the sauce really sticky – it was delicious. However, that might not tickle your buds as it were, so feel free to stick to the script.

Technically, you should probably serve with a salad full of superfree stuff. But hell if you can’t let your hair down every now and then…

J