Category Archives: fakeaways

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February 15, 2015

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fakeaways, greek, mince, pasta, poultry, recipe card, syn free

greek turkey meatballs

Surreal sight #477 in Tesco today. Well, no, just outside of Tesco, some biffa standing next to her bags with an inhaler in one hand and a cigarette in the other – she’d take a couple of drags on her cigarette and then a quick puff on the inhaler. Now THAT’S commitment. Even when you can physically feel yourself choking, you carry on – oxygen is for pussies, after all. It’s like opening an AA meeting with a swift half and a celebratory chaser. Takes all sorts. Anyway, there’s a rant coming, so batten down the hatches.

I’m going to write about tweaks today. Before I start, know that this isn’t exactly the official Slimming World position, but rather my own. Obviously.

To me, the ‘no tweaks’ rule is something Slimming World have put into place to stop you blending eighteen bananas into a smoothie for breakfast, or using two tubs of Smash and some Splenda to fashion a small motor car to take you to McDonalds. The logic is over-consuming is easy – you can drink a smoothie in moments but it would take an age to eat the fruit that goes into one, and you’d likely stop before you’d even had a third. You’d need to press a whole lot of apples to make a glass of fresh juice, but one apple would normally curb your hunger.

But people take it to ridiculous levels, and my carrot cake overnight oats from a week or so ago caused a bit of a stir because I said it was syn free despite it having a mashed banana in it. If you follow the Slimming World rule about fruit to its absolute base level, then yes, it should be synned. But, if you apply logic and reason, there’s no difference to me mashing the banana using my fancy-pants potato ricer than there is mashing it between my teeth. Using a masher isn’t going to coat the banana in Nutella, it isn’t going to ‘add sugars’ or ‘release the fibre content’ any different. Sugar doesn’t float about in the air like a midge, waiting to strike the very second you cut into a piece of fruit. Some try and say that you’d use up energy chewing your banana which you don’t do if you mash it in a bowl – perhaps, but I’m not a fucking snake, I don’t dislocate my jaw and swallow the bowl and its contents without chewing, for goodness sake. I have a banana every morning on top of my porridge, the only difference here is that it’s inside my porridge as opposed to sitting on top. It’s still going to be chewed, digested and turned into a gentleman’s egg a few hours later – and I’m not going to fucking syn it!

What irks me more is that there’s always a curious sanctimony applied with the rule, with some people delighting in pointing out ‘BUT THAT SHOULD BE SYNNED’ like they’ve got Margaret MB standing behind them, pointing a pistol at the back of their shaking heads. A rule is a rule, but common sense also needs to apply. I mean, you’re not exactly supposed to stop in the middle of a road, but you do if an ambulance needs to be past – you don’t sit there blocking it, sucking air through your teeth and going WELL THE HIGHWAY CODE SAYS OTHERWISE as some poor bugger has his chest pumped in the back. I’ve been told before that it could confuse new starters, well, perhaps so – but my nephew still craps his pants because he hasn’t got the hang on his potty quite yet, should I start wearing adult nappies so he doesn’t get a complex? Haway!

And finally, what really riles me about being told off about my tweaking is that the very same people will sit there and tut and huff about a cake made from chickpeas but will then make a brownie using a bollockload of artificial sweetener until their countertops look like the inside of Kerry Katona’s fucking nostril. At least I cook proper, healthy, nutritious food instead of manky, artificially-sweetened pap – even if I do have the temerity to use a mashed up banana. FORGIVE ME.

BAH. After that, I could murder a cigarette, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t know where my old salbutamol inhaler is. Anyway, after all that, here’s tonight’s recipe which is actually bloody delicious!

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to make greek turkey meatballs you will need:

300g of chopped frozen spinach (defrosted), 500g of turkey mince (very low in fat), 3 cloves of garlic chopped so finely, an egg, tsp of oregano, salt, pepper, 90g of crumbled feta (45g is your HEA, but this serves four) and you might, dependent on the quality of your mince, need some breadcrumbs – if so, chuck in 25g of dried breadcrumbs (4 syns – so 1 syn each) but we didn’t need them. For the sauce, a pot of passata, garlic, onion. Spaghetti, any.

to make greek turkey meatballs you should:

nothing more to it for the meatballs than combining everything together for the balls into one bowl, mixing and squeezing and really blending it with your hands and shaping it into 24 balls. Stick them onto a non-stick tray and pop them in the oven for twenty or so minutes on 180 until nicely browned. Meanwhile, cook your spaghetti. Make a simple tomato sauce by mixing passata, sauteed onions and garlic. Combine sauce with cooked spaghetti, put meatballs on top.

extra-easy: yup. plenty of spinach and tomatoes in this to make it a go-go-go. You could jazz up the sauce by adding peppers if you were so inclined but this’ll do nicely. The balls are tasty and cheesy, and it’s not often I say that.

Cheers now,

J

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February 14, 2015

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airfryer, bacon, breakfast, british, fakeaways, naughty, pork, recipe card, sausages

full english breakfast savoury oats

BUGGER: we thought oats were syn free! Not sure why – so we cooked the breakfast below without thinking and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was only when an eagle-eyed reader (hello Lisa!) pointed out our mistake that we realised! So this comes out at 12 syns a portion. Good lord. Tasty mind…very rare we cock up but oops!

Oooh has there every been a more dramatic, more twist-filled, more suspenseful storyline than Eastender’s Who Killed Lucy plot? Yes, many times. Anyway, everyone knows she was killed by some livid fashion designer who grew tired of her wearing that awful grey bloody suit.

Paul broke The Rule today. We both agreed that we wouldn’t buy each other a Valentines gift because we’re saving up for something big, and for once in my life I decided to stick to it. Normally I roll my eyes and buy a gift anyway whenever people do that – my nana is a particular bugger for it – ‘OOOH DON’T MAKE A FUSS ETC’ but if you turned up on Christmas Day with a card, well-wishes and lack of present, she’d sit there like you’d swapped her sherbet lemons for hard-boiled piss. But no, this year I stuck to the rules, and Paul promptly presented me with a new bottle of Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver – my favourite scent in the whole world. He’d done well, soaked in all my hints in the car journey on the way home from work, gone to John Lewis and promptly forgot the name and scent – managed to find it by describing it to the perfume lady and through scent alone! Normally I smell like chips and shame, so it’ll make a change to smell all classy like. In my defence, I did ask him whether he’d want a Vivienne Westwood necklace that I’d seen, but he replied by saying that it was a bit too gay. It’s as if the last eight years of sodomy and frotting never happened.

Nevertheless, I had a trick up my sleeve. I’ve secured a white t-shirt out of the wardrobe, hastily printed a picture of Barack Obama on it and turned it into my ‘YES, WE CAN’ shirt, meaning that if he asks me to do something, the answer will automatically be yes. It’s fun and it’s free – what price dignity? I’m glad we don’t own a pool though, a day like this can easily end up turning sour (the “Barrymore Effect”) and the last thing I want is to be found face-down in a swimming pool with a bumhole like a windsock and ‘anal trauma’ on my death certificate. So lord knows what I’ll end up doing today, but at least I’m not The Worst Husband in the World anymore.

Paul’s Valentines card to me was ace, though:

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And mine, in return, was equally as lovely:

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Mine’s printed on recycled ice-lolly sticks, meaning I’d already given Paul wood by the time we had got out of bed this morning, which I’m sure you’ll agree is incredibly efficient. I only noticed one of the whales had lipstick and mascara on when I got the card home, but that’s alright, we’re both confident young men who are at ease with our roles.

Speaking of roles, or rolls, you want to lose some – so here’s today’s breakfast recipe. I wanted to do something nice for breakfast that hasn’t been done yet, and this hits the target. If you’re a fan of overnight oats, give this a whirl – it’s a savoury use for the oats, and creates a thick, stodgy but delicious breakfast, using all the main bits of a full cooked breakfast!

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to make full english breakfast savoury oats you will need:

400g normal oats that you’d use for porridge but not ones with added sugar – you’re allowed 35g for a HEB, so I worked out that if everyone was using their HEB, that leaves 260g of oats, which is around forty five syns each – so for the sake of argument, that’s around 11.5 syns per portion, two stock cubes made into 800ml of stock with a tsp of soy sauce added, 2 onions very finely chopped, a pack of Weight Watchers Cumberland Sausages (4 syns per pack, this serves four, so these will be half a syn) – take four and take the skin off, crumble the sausagemeat into a bowl, and set the other four aside, two eggs, a handful of cherry tomatoes quartered, bacon medallions cut into thin strips, salt, pepper, chilli flakes.

to make full english breakfast savoury oats you should:

get everything chopped and ready to go. You’ll need two frying pans here. In one, cook off the onion and bacon until nice and soft and cooked through, then chuck in the sausage meat. In the other pan, gently fry off the sausages (or you can use an Actifry for this). Let the sausages in both pans cook through, add the tomatoes to the onion and sausagemeat, still cook. Once the whole sausages are cooked, set aside and chop into discs when cool. To make the savoury porridge, tip the oats and soy/stock into a microwaveable bowl, cook for about two minutes until it goes nice and stodgy, then chuck the lot into the bacon and onion and tomato mix and cook off on a medium heat to dry it out a bit. Whilst that’s occuring, fry off two eggs in your other pan that had the sausages on. Assemble on a plate, add the sausage discs, fried egg and lots of black pepper and salt.

extra-easy: well, no – there’s not 1/3 superfree in there, but you could have a few pieces of fruit during the day to counter it. Let your hair down, it’s Valentines Day.

Listen, seriously now – try this. It was delicious – almost a bit haggis-like. You could add chilli sauce, use different sausages, add peppers, all sorts. It’s stodgy, filling and very tasty!

By the way, it was totally Abi who killed Lucy, with Max helping to cover it up. Cheers.

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February 10, 2015

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

saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake

I can’t believe it – 1000 followers! Well fuck me! No don’t, actually, I don’t fancy Paul coming at me to cut my knob off for being a hussy and feeding it to the cats. But seriously, 1000 followers is pretty intense. I write this blog because I love nothing more than rambling on about nothing and sharing what we’re eating, so the fact that 1000 of you cared enough to actually follow and have me come in your inbox every day is really quite something. Oh you flirt. A big thank you for that, and to celebrate, I’m uploading a cheese and meat wonder. Be ready.

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Let me tell you what I’m not ready for though – idiots. I saw something today which almost made my heart explode, it was simultaneously so sad and so telling of the future to come that I could barely register it. On an online newspaper article, an argument broke out between someone with the inevitable -MAMMYOVLILANGEL’ following her first name and some other painted idiot about spelling. Her reply? What broke my heart? ‘WEL U DNT NEED GRAMAR THS ISN’T A BUK’

I might have slightly paraphrased there, I was that aghast I couldn’t let it sink in. Since when did it become socially acceptable to be thick and fucking proud of it? I’m not some snob who expects everyone to type like Mavis Beacon and never make an error, but it’s just become ‘alright’ to be dense and not make any strides to fix the problem. I appreciate there are plenty of people out there who struggle, and that’s fair enough, but everyone else, make an effort – don’t revel in your stupidity like a dog rolling in fox shit. If I don’t know something, I learn it. I don’t have a go at the people who do know the answer. It’s the equivalent of me going onto The Chase and if the Chaser got a question right and I didn’t, launching myself up the table and calling poor Anne a FAT SLAHG WIV A SHIT HAREKUT. I find it repellent, and I make no apologies for it.

Pardon me a moment.

Ah that’s better – our cat decided to be sick all over our living room carpet as a thank you for us letting her into the house and popping her bed near the fire to warm her up. Bitch. I wouldn’t care but she could have gone outside to be sick but decided that right in the middle of the living room was truly the best place. It doesn’t help that our living room carpet looks like a magic-eye drawing of a kaleidoscope pattern, so as soon as she was sick we immediately lost it amongst the pattern. It truly is a carpet that you’d expect an insane lorry driver to keep behind his cab to wrap his prostitute corpses in. Stare hard enough and you’ll not only see patterns, you’ll lose your fucking mind. We’re too tight to have it replaced though because it’s really quite decent carpet to walk on – easily the best shag this house ever had before us young bucks moved in, am I right?

OK, this recipe – the picture may not make it look like much, but it was delicious – combining cheese, meat, gnocchi and veg. Make it for a weigh-in night treat, although the syns are low low low anyway!

slimming world cheeseburger gnocchi

to make saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake, you’ll need:

ingredients (this serves four): handful of button mushrooms (sliced), a thinly sliced red pepper and a thinly sliced green pepper, a small onion (diced), 400g of gnocchi (1.5 syns per 100g), 500g of lean mince, salt and pepper, 250g of quark, garlic, splash of worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, a beef stock cube, 280g of light mozzarella, grated. (4 x HEA). Adjust accordingly if you want to make less but for gods sake INDULGE.

to make saucy cheeseburger gnocchi bake, you should:

recipe: cook your gnocchi, which is nothing more than throwing them in boiling water and letting them float to the top. Set aside. Chuck your onions and peppers and garlic into a heavy bottomed pan (suitable for SW) and sweat down, then add your mince and fry it off. You want it fairly dry, so go at it. Crumble a stock cube in for a bit of extra taste. In another bowl, combine the quark, mustard (1syn per tsp, I only added one), worcestershire sauce and salt. Mix it into the beef and veg, chuck in the gnocchi, even it out. Top with all that grated cheese. Into the oven for 15 minutes or so at 180 degrees, then under the grill until you get the top all golden and delicious. Serve. YUM.

extra-easy – well, you’d need to serve it with a salad, as it only has superfree peppers in it. But considering it is so full of goodness, it’s low in syns and tasty! Give it a go. You could up the stakes by using garlic philadelphia (20 syns per tub so only five syns each), but then you’d be a decadent tart.

Enjoy.

J

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February 8, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, noodles, poultry, recipe card, syn free

syn free chicken chow mein

That title suggests that our marriage is heading for the rocks, with some almighty scrap on the front lawn or atop the bungalow like in Die Hard, but no. We’d both look dreadful in a vest, like cottage cheese being strained through a yard of muslin. We’re an odd couple, we so very rarely argue, and when we do, it’s always over in seconds because Paul pulls a stupid face at me until I stop moaning at him. We’re both too laid back to argue – like everything else, if it gets us out of breath, it isn’t worth doing. That said, we did have a disagreement yesterday over what flavour stock cube to use in a recipe (honestly, it’s all go in this house) and it got me thinking of an idea of a blog article – those little tiny things that irk us about one another after being together eight years. So I asked Paul to compile his top five (and oh, because I’m the writer, I get a right to reply), and so…

Paul’s five things that rile him about me:

  • I put things on top of the kitchen bin instead of putting them in;
    • this one sounds reasonable to the reader until you realise my logic – I put big stuff on the top of the bin so I remember to take it to the outside recycling bin rather than clogging up the tiny kitchen bin with giant lemonade bottles;
  • I eat all of his ‘lunch’ ham -i.e. the expensive ham that he buys to put in his sandwiches for lunch instead of the wafer-thin shite we buy for the cats;
    • because it’s tasty;
  • I don’t put chicken on a plate when it defrosts;
    • because it’s in a sealed, freezer-proof bag! Plus it means we have an extra plate to wash…;
  • I play odd music whenever I’m typing the blog;
    • this one is fair enough, but I do have a defence, I can’t have the TV on because I get distracted, and I can’t have music with lyrics playing because I start singing, so it has to be score music or soundtrack stuff. Admittedly, he might not enjoy the theme from Rollercoaster Tycoon playing whilst I type but it’s infinitely better than hearing an almost-30-year-old-man caterwauling his way through the Cher back catalogue;
  • I always put my smelly feet on him whenever we sit and watch TV.
    • I’m six foot one, they have to go somewhere, and the floor is cold, whereas Paul is like a little hot water tank pumping out heat – cheaper than slippers.

Things that annoy me about Paul:

  • he’ll happily put the milk carton back in the fridge even if has the tiniest sliver of milk in it – not enough for anything practical but just enough to make sure I try and make a coffee and end up exasperated;
  • he’ll randomly and without warning decide he doesn’t like a food that I’ve cooked plenty of times before, turning serving up a new recipe into a dangerous game of ingredient russian roulette;
  • he’ll cheerfully announce to the room every time he’s been to the toilet;
  • he can’t take a single comment on his driving (although that’s partly because I’ve made him so sensitive about it by hanging on like I’m Sandra Bullock in Gravity every time he goes round a corner at 35mph); and
  • he eats all the fucking cheese in the fucking fridge – for all that he bitches on about me eating ham every time I go to make an omelette or something I’ll find the tiniest crumb of cheese left or even worse, a block with a great big crime-scene-esque tooth-print in it.

Well, if that’s all we have to moan about, I say we’re doing pretty well! At least we’re not the Trevor and Little Mo of the street, which is a shame because I do a brilliant Scottish accent. Weigh in tomorrow and I’m aiming just to maintain or put on a pound – my boss left us with a colossal box of Sports Mixture to work through, knowing my weakness is flavoured animal hoof. So we’ll see.

I’m off to the cinema on Tuesday, though not to see 50 Shades of Grey. I can’t genuinely think of a film I’d want to see less at the cinema, not least because I bet you can barely hear the audio over the sound of what sounds like 250 tiny pairs of bellows pumping away. Work that one out. I just don’t get it, I really don’t – the books were about as erotic as hearing an uncaring doctor telling a child that they’re not going to make their teenage years. Sex as described by the perpetually celibate – I’d get more aroused ringing up the speaking clock for a phonewank. BAH. Anyway that’s out of my system now, here’s tonight’s recipe.

chicken chow mein slimming world

Now, if I’m completely honest, this wasn’t a total success – it tasted alright, but it didn’t blow my socks off. Partly down to Paul adding the wrong stock cube, I reckon – it’s no wonder I’m planning some Machiavellian Gone-Girl scheme to frame him for my murder.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chicken breasts, cut thin, 2 carrots cut thinly, mushrooms sliced any old how, three big spring onions, cut however you like, 100g mangetout, 100g baby corn, two sliced peppers, one pack of dried egg noodles, 300ml stock made with two CHICKEN stock cubes, 1tbsp of worcestershire sauce, 2tbsp of soy sauce and 1tsp of bovril. Also, add some chinese five spice.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you should:

recipe: fry the chicken and vegetables until cooked through – hot and fast. Cook the noodles. Add them. Make up the stock, add the sauce, five spice, soy sauce and bovril. Tip and mix. Serve. That was easy.

top tip: serve with my bloody amazing spring rolls.

extra-easy: yes. Eat this and you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your ears, and, if you don’t follow my advice about cooking the chicken high and fast, you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your arse a good twenty minutes later.

K, must dash.

J

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February 7, 2015

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breakfast, fakeaways, indian, lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

spicy scrambled eggs that’ll take your ring off

I’ve had occasion to go into two places I’d never normally venture this week – a proper designer fashion shop and an expensive perfume place – normally places I avoid like the plague.

My first task was to buy some jewellery for my boss who was leaving – so in I minced to Vivienne Westwood, expecting to be immediately shooed back outside by some harridan with a broom with exclamations of ‘WE DON’T WANT YOUR SORT IN HERE’ like a stray cat in a butchers. I don’t do high-end fashion. Hell, I don’t do fashion at all – I buy most of my clothes from Tesco because I couldn’t care less what I look like as long as I’m clean and warm. Now the interesting thing was that my preconceptions about the designer shop were entirely wrong – the assistant behind the counter could not have been more friendly, warm or welcoming, despite me standing there in my Florence and Fred shirt and elastic trousers. Actually, I did have expensive shoes on, if that helps. Us fat men can’t spend money on normal clothes but by gaw can we put it away on bags and shoes if we need it. She asked me what tone my friend was, I had no idea, whether she liked silver or gold, I had no idea, whether she was classic or modern, I had no idea. She masked her exasperation impeccably. I did almost want to tip her over the edge by asking if they had shirts in my size – looking at the offerings on the rails the only way I could wear a Vivienne Westwood shirt is if I folded it in two and used it as a handkerchief. One jacket that I thought would have been suitable for my two year old nephew was hastily put back when I realised it was an Adult M. Nevertheless, after a fashion, we managed to pick out a tasteful piece of jewellery and whilst I cold-sweated my way through paying for it, I engaged in a polite chitchat with the assistant, until she told me that the rug I was standing on was worth £9,000 and all I could think is that I’d covered it in cat-hair from where I had set my rucksack down. The cats use my rucksack as a sleeping bag, see, and no, I don’t have a fag-bag or a murse. So…

The next stop was a fancy-dan perfume shop for a different gift for a different friend.  I hate these places at the best of times, because walking through a perfume department is like being pepper-sprayed by eighteen old ladies at once. I find most perfumes repellent and as a general rule, if you walk near me and it smells like you’ve had a bath in Charlie Red, things aren’t going to end well. It didn’t help that the lady behind the counter was clearly only flying with one engine because she kept repeating the last three words back to me like a parrot – I was asking for some advice on perfumes and it was like I was in an echoey tunnel. ‘LIKE SOME PERFUME?’ followed by ‘DON’T KNOW MUCH’ and then ‘PAYING BY CARD’ and ‘FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE’ got real vexing, real quickly. Plus, I know it’s par for the course when you work on a make-up counter, but I swear she’d put her make-up on with an emulsion roller – it was on so heavy I felt like I was undergoing rorschach testing, I nearly shouted out throbbing cock when she bent down to check my card. You shouldn’t be able to remove 90% of your face with a damp wet-wipe and to be honest, I’m yet to see someone who doesn’t look 100% prettier when they don’t have half of Superdrug on their face. Says he, the fucking oil painting. Ah but see, I MIGHT have a face like a bucket of burnt Lego*, but I’m not bothered.

Because I’m early posting today, here’s a picture of breakfast from this morning. I think Slimming World can be quite challenging when it comes to breakfast because the portion of cereal you’re allowed wouldn’t fill me up – I normally use a ladle when I’m having my coco-pops (as an aside, I had originally typed cock-pops there, and only spotted the error when I was proof-reading – wouldn’t that be a nauseating cereal, though the box-art would be amazing) and there’s little else to have in a rush in the morning. Understand this – I’d sooner spend another ten minutes doing the snooze-sleep-shuffle than get up and fry an egg. I usually just eat a tin of beans with an egg stirred in, but that’s frightfully common. But today I thought I’d try something new, and after a quick flick through my recipe books (I must get those pages laminated) I found an Indian recipe for egg bhurji – spicy scrambled eggs, which I immediately set about cooking with my usual culturally insensitive bastardisations. Tell you what though, it was absolutely delicious – I ate the lot. Give it a go and never look back. Syn free and absolutely rammed with superfree foods too!

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to make spicy scrambled eggs (egg bhurji), you’ll need:

ingredients: cumin seeds, a tiny bit of olive or frylight if you must, chopped onion, chopped pepper (I used an old red and yellow pepper I had), garlic, chopped ginger, three eggs, frozen peas, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a chicken stock cube. You’ll also need a chopped chilli or some chilli flakes and garam masala – though I couldn’t find any so I used some curry powder.

to make spicy scrambled eggs (egg bhurji), you should:

recipe: it’s a one pot delight! First, put your oil into the pan and put the cumin seeds in there on a reasonably high heat until they snap, crackle and pop. Chuck in the ginger and chilli, saute for a moment or two. Then the onions for two minutes. Now, the pepper for another two minutes. Cook high and fast. Tip in the chopped tomatoes and the peas, and cook for another two minutes. Next in goes the curry powder/garam masala and salt, mix, and keep bubbling away – you don’t want lots of liquid. I added a stock cube at this point just because I like the taste – if you do that, don’t add more salt. Now crack your eggs into a bowl, beat them up, pour into pan and keep stirring. Remember to keep the heat high but keep stirring so nothing catches – you want the liquid to evaporate off. Serve quickly with coriander. I hate coriander, and I think you’re morally reprehensible for using it.

extra-easy: yep – syn free too, though if you’re absolutely anal you should syn the oil. But come on. Lots of superfree food in this and certainly more than you’d normally get in a breakfast.

Seriously – give this one a go. It’s just scrambled eggs but tastier, and it’s something different. Keeping things mixed up is the way forward.

  • just kidding, I’m fucking beautiful. No matter what they say. Words can’t bring me oh fuck off.

J

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February 1, 2015

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chinese, diced pork, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, pork, recipe card, rice

one syn sweet and sour pork

Look, here’s the deal. Come hell or high water, by the end of today we are going to have new curtains installed in our bedroom. It needs to happen. See a while ago I took our blinds apart so that I could paint the little bit of wall behind them, then promptly lost the chain that holds them together so that now, every tiny gust of wind and they splay around in all directions, rattling and bumping into each other. That wouldn’t be so bad, except we have to leave our windows open in our bedroom at night – how else could the cats deliberately go outside, get wet and then get under our duvet at 3am and press their tiny wet noses against our bumcheeks? We can’t build a cat-flap into our doors as they’re the wrong type. So given how windy and cold it is, our bedroom at night is always a) freezing and b) like sleeping through a particularly budget production of Stomp. It’s lucky that we’re both the type of person who likes to be entangled up in each other when we’re asleep – I reckon one morning we’ll just wake up as one person, melded together like the wax in a lava lamp. Fuck me, that would make typing this blog difficult.

Plus, god knows what our neighbours must think – our windows being open all night and us being in a bungalow means every fart, mumble, snore and sleep-cough echoes around the street. No kidding, I once finished an overtime shift at work and upon getting out the car at 3am I couldn’t understand what the strange rattling noise coming from the engine was until I realised it was Paul’s snoring from over 100 yards away. Worse still is that I’m forever talking and laughing in my sleep – Paul’s recorded me merrily singing Cerys Matthew’s bits from The Ballad of Tom Jones whilst deep in slumber. Plus, we’re always talking incoherently to each other, normally burbling away merrily about being too hot, too cold or ‘don’t fart, the cat’s in the bed and you’ll gas the fucker’.

So, whilst the neighbours would still be treated to the cacophony of noise from our bedroom, we can solve the blinds rattling – and that’s today’s project. You may recall that we’re both equally shit at DIY (remember our current bathroom situation?) so I can only assume this will end up with one of us in A&E and our home left a burnt out shell. We have to be the only couple out there who has a £200 drill and exactly 0 clues about how to use it. Ah well, wish us luck.

Today’s recipe – posted nice and early because then you can go out and get the ingredients, is sweet and sour pork – and for once, this is a recipe we’ve dug out from a Slimming World book instead of either making up ourselves or adapting another recipe. So if it’s shit, blame Margaret. Ahaha no, it’s tasty, trust me.

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to make one syn sweet and sour pork, you’ll need:

ingredients: 500g of pork, fat off, cut into chunks. One large onion and one large red pepper, deseeded and cut into strips. Two large carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks. Sugarsnap peas, just cut into chunks. Garlic cloves, finely chopped. You’ll also need 1/4tsp of chinese five-spice, 1 level tbsp of cornflour, 4tbsp of tomato puree, 1 tbsp of white wine vinegar, 4tbsp light soy sauce, 150ml of chicken stock and some dried egg noodles. You’ll also need a pineapple (RETCH), cut into smallish chunks.

I absolutely fucking detest pineapple (BOKE),  can I just make that clear. Whenever I’m prescribed anything at the doctors and the allergy notice comes up, mine actually says pineapple (OOH NASTY). Which is a bitch when it comes to my fruit-punch flavoured suppositories, I have to say.

I know that’s quite the list of ingredients, but you’ll use only a small amount of each of those, and the rest can be put away in the cupboard and used for different recipes, or to feed the weevils, whichever is more appropriate.

to make one syn sweet and sour pork, you should:

recipe: sear the pork in a hot pan. SW say spray it with Frylight, but urgh, don’t, use a bit of olive oil. You’ll not die. Hot pan, nice crust on the pork – chuck in a bit of salt and pepper. Take the pork out and replace it with all the chopped veg. Stir fry for a few minutes, chuck in the pork, and keep it all stirring. Hot and fast, just the way you like it. Meanwhile in a bowl mix 2 tbsp water with the chinese 5 spice, garlic, cornflour, tomato purée, white wine vinegar, soy sauce and stock. Add the mixture to the pan, stir and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 3-4 minutes until thickened. Whilst this is taking place, you’ll want to use your other two arms to cook and drain your noodles. Pop the pineapple (BLEURGH) into the pork and veg and stir. Serve.

top tip: as I always, always say on this blog – if you’re wanting uniform matchsticks, or you’re just too lazy to fanny about cutting up carrots with a knife, buy a julienne peeler. It’ll do the job in seconds. You can buy them from Lakeland or on Amazon – and here’s a handy link. You don’t need one, mind, a knife will do the same thing.

extra-easy – only one syn per serving, and that comes from the cornflour. You’ll need it to thicken the sauce off, but really, think how many syns this would be from the local takeaway. Best part? If you cook too many noodles, you can use them to make noodle cups to go with my cheese and meatballs recipe from yesterday? What, you don’t remember it? IT’S RIGHT HERE AND BLOODY DELICIOUS. Oh me oh my.

OK. I’m off to try and figure out the curtains. £20 that we’ll both give up after ten minutes of looking online and end up playing on the Wii U instead.

Don’t forget to share and tell everyone about this blog – it’s really growing!

J

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January 31, 2015

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fakeaways, italian, noodles, pork, pork mince, quark, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas

meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests

Ah now look at that – we haven’t had a quickpost this week, so tonight is the night – just the recipe today as I’m out and about! Normal service will resume tomorrow. And anyway, don’t be greedy – I did a big blog page earlier today on the ‘my favourite things’ post. Gimme a break damn it! WE’RE BUT TWO LADS!

meatballs and cheese sauce

This is another ‘use it or lose it’ meal where most of the ingredients are leftovers and/or stuff we haven’t got round to cooking. We’re trying to minimise leftovers, see? GO GREEN. We always keep a bag of frozen meatballs (made ourselves) in the freezer, the noodles were leftover from last night’s meal (sweet and sour pork – that’s coming online tomorrow, oooh a peek behind the curtain!) and the veg was what was left rolling around in amongst the vodka at the bottom of the fridge.

to make meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests, you’ll need:

ingredients: for the meatballs – pork mince, salt, pepper, dried sage – squash all together with your hands, shape into small balls and chill until needed. For the cheese sauce – 250g quark, 110g lightest philadelphia (HEA for me) and 30g of parmesan (HEA for Paul) and mustard powder. For the nests, use any leftover spaghetti or noodles. You’ll also need an egg and any old bollocks you have left in the veg drawer.

tip: make double the amount of meatballs, then freeze half. To freeze, put them on a flat plate not touching each other, freeze them, then pick them off the plate and put into a bag. That way they’ll stay separate and easier to work with.

to make meatballs in a cheese sauce served in noodle nests, you should:

recipe: start by making the cheese sauce, which is as easy as adding the quark, philadelphia and cheese into a pan and heating it slowly until it all comes together. Allow to cool. Then, get your noodles/spaghetti, coat them in about half of the sauce and include a beaten egg, and mix quickly. Get a muffin tray, do the frylight/oil thing (whichever you prefer!) so they don’t stick, and get a handful of spaghetti and put it in each muffin slot. Shape them so there is an indent in the middle. Hoy them in the oven for about 25 minutes and take out when golden – I took mine out a trifle too soon. Whilst they’re cooking, cook off your meatballs. If you’ve got a decent non-stick pan, have the confidence to let them get a good crust on them – they’ll take about 10 minutes on a reasonably high heat to brown off. Top tip – near the end, throw in a good glug of worcestershire sauce if you want – on a high heat, it’ll deglaze the pan and give your balls a nicer colour. Yes. Then, it’s just assembly – work your noodle nest out, put a dab of cheese sauce in the indent, top with a meatball. Serve your veg on the side with any leftover meatballs and cheese sauce. DELICIOUS.

extra-easy – yes, and syn free – the veg on the side is superfree, naturally. Try it!

Goodnight.

J

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January 29, 2015

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

hot dog threaded spaghetti

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

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

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

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

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

hot dog threaded spaghetti slimming world

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

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

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

to make hot dog threaded spaghetti, you should:

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

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

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

Enjoy the recipe – remember to share!

J

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January 27, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, noodles, poultry, recipe card

peanut butter chicken noodles

There was some discussion with colleagues today about babies and we often get asked the same thing – would we like to adopt? Well no, not there and then obviously, I don’t have a car seat – but could we be one of those gay couples who have a child?

The answer is an emphatic no. Or an astounding nope. Or a camp NOOOOOO-WAY-HUNAAAAAAAY. I genuinely can’t think of something I want less in my life than a baby. Paul is fine with them, cooing and marvelling over their ruddy cheeks, but I’m not – all I see is a red-faced, spewing, bawling bundle of energy that would leave me terrified and exhausted, the human equivalent of turning on the light in a gas-filled room. I seem to lack that warm, friendly gene that can look at a baby and think ‘aw how sweet’ – I just see about 1000 different ways that I’m going to accidentally damage the poor bugger – immediately drop it on the floor when I try to cuddle it, or rest my chin on their soft skull and make their skulls look like an ashtray, or suddenly develop a violent tremor and immediately end up in a Louise Woodward situation, or I’ll sneeze and deafen the poor bugger. It’s just awful, and to that end, I’ve spent my entire life avoiding babies – I’ll go sit in the toilet at work if someone brings their child in because I’m terrified that my lack of emotion will shine through. People must think I have a hair-trigger bladder the way I dash to the gents as soon as I hear a Mama and Papas hatchback pushchair being wrestled with in the lobby. I think babies sense this unease because they just start crying as soon as they see my face, the same way doctors, close friends, family, beggars and other men do. My nephew, who admittedly is a gorgeous, funny little tyke, cried his eyes out at me for almost eighteen months, finally thawing at Christmas when I had shaved off my sex-offender beard and brought gifts.

Plus, we’re entirely too selfish as a couple to even think about having a baby. We struggle to remember to wash and clean ourselves, let alone something pink and squashy and full of off-colour poo. At least the cats know enough to go outside for their craps and if they meow and rub along our feet often enough, the occasional pouch of Felix will be dropped in their bowls from on high. One of the many benefits of being gay, aside from all the cock and being able to wear each other’s clothes, is the fact you don’t have to spend money on anything but yourself. There’s no school uniform to buy, there’s no school trips to pay for – every penny can go on hobbies and fetishwear. It’s just great, and I know I’d immediately resent something that I had to pay out for on a regular basis – I still shoot mean looks at my car for taking all our money. BAH. Finally, there’s the biology of it all – the thought of having to yankee-doodle into a paper cup and mixing it with Paul’s like some sort of bleach-smelling watercolour set puts me right off.

So no – no children. Cubs Towers will remain forever more a two-man tent. And quite bloody right too.

Anyway, if I had a baby to look after, I wouldn’t have the time to type these recipes and Paul would be too tired to cook them, so you’d be fucked, too. So hooray for homosexuality, and onto tonight’s recipe, which is the delightful (and synned) chicken and vegetable peanut-dressed noodles.

peanut butter chicken noodles

You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? USE YOUR SYNS. Please, for the love of Slimming World, don’t see the syns and think you’re not going to bother. It’s your main meal of the day, spend the syns and bloody well enjoy it. This serves 2.

to make peanut butter chicken noodles, you’ll need:

ingredients: 2tbsp tesco reduced fat peanut butter (4 syns per tbsp), 300g dried noodles (we use the chilli ones from Sainsbury’s – 1 syn per 150g), 300g of frozen veg (or indeed, anything you want – peppers, fresh veg, sweetcorn, go nuts!), a diced onion, one minced garlic clove, 1/4tsp of ginger, 1/4tsp of salt, 1tbsp of water, 2tbsp of teriyaki marinade (you’ll find it in the world foods aisle, especially in the Japanese section – ours is by Kikkoman and is syn free).

to make peanut butter chicken noodles, you should:

recipe: make your sauce first by combining the teriyaki, peanut butter and water. Set aside. Then cook the noodles, drain and set aside. heat a large pan, fry off your onion in a smidge of oil and chuck in your veg, together with the ginger and garlic and salt and cook it through quickly. Add the noodles and the peanut sauce, stir fry for a moment longer until everything is hot and delicious and coated, then sit back and feel smug.

extra-easy: always. 5 syns a portion, but that’s fuck all in the grand scheme of things and all that superfree veg make it a perfect little dinner.

enjoy – I’m off to NOT feed, wipe, bathe or care for any little sprogs. Good job, right…

J

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January 21, 2015

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american, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, taster ideas, vegetarian

butternut squash macaroni cheese

It’s lucky I don’t have a gambling problem. Well no, it’s lucky I’m Geordie enough to be so tight I wouldn’t DARE have a gambling problem. TV is absolutely awash with ads for online gambling sites, and they’re such utter, utter bollocks. Invariably, they’ll have some drooling slab of beef watching some whizzy virtual reality site flash by, gambling with hilarity and a big shit-eating smile on his face, all the while chucking a few £1 bets on and watching the money roll in.

Well let me tell you this isn’t the case. I make quite a bit of pin money on the side by gambling for ‘free’. and I’ll come to that later, but a good part of that comes from having to play online bingo. Online bingo is the antithesis of fun. Put simply, you’re paying good money to watch a pen automatically dab off your numbers in the hope of winning a crap jackpot against thousands of others. However, there’s more – in the adverts you’ll see sprightly young ladies giggling away and typing supportive messages to one another in the chatrooms, whereas all I’ve ever seen is punters with one good set of teeth between them and usernames like ~~!!!PIXIE_DUST_ROFL~~!!! and TISHMAM4LIFE desperately trying to outdo each other’s bad spelling. Even the photos of the winners are invariably harsh – all slack-jawed, light-bendingly dense landmasses with terraced chins and poor taste in acrylic outerwear holding their cheques for £667 like they’ve won La Primitiva. Bleurgh. When even I can’t eke a little fun from reading people’s chatter, you know there’s a bad job.

BORING SENSIBLE BIT HERE

Anyway, the free gambling thing. I use Quidco, which is a cashback site, so if you’re doing online shopping you would go through Quidco, it tracks your purchase and offers you a small amount of cashback which gets deposited back into your bank account at the end of the month. You pay £5 a year and it’s very safe. There seems to be a intrinsic distrust of these sort of websites, which is fair enough, but this is a massive site used by thousands and I’ve never had a problem with it. Even old motormouth Martin Lewis recommends in. So – on Quidco are lots of offers for new customers on gambling sites, and they normally have a higher return than investment. Looking on there right now, William Hill Bingo is offering £30 back for new customers who spend £10. Obviously they want you to spend more than £10 but don’t. If you go for the offer and only spend £10, you’ll eventually get £30 back from Quidco, and you’ve made £20 right there. It takes a few weeks for things to track but there you go.

Of course, if when you spend the £10 on William Hill, you actually manage to win some money, that’s even more profit right there, but DON’T accept any of the introductory bonuses or little catches – just play with your own money, and stop the very second you’ve gambled whatever it is they ask you to gamble on Quidco. Remember, this only works if you:

  • you are controlled and never bet more than the minimum requirement set by Quidco
  • you ensure the cashback is more than the amount spent
  • you meet all the requirements set by Quidco, though they’re never especially onerous
  • stop, especially if you lose your money – remember to spend only what you have to!

If you want to join Quidco, feel free to go via my referral link!

BORING SENSIBLE BIT ENDS HERE

ANYWAY enough about that shite. Here’s tonight’s recipe – bloody lovely macaroni cheese!

macaroni cheese

to make butternut squash macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

ingredients: 1300g butternut squash, 300ml chicken stock, 250ml almond milk (1 syn or HEA). 200g macaroni, 
2 teaspoons garlic salt, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, 115g grated cheddar cheese (4.5 syns or HEA – remember this serves four). 

to make butternut squash macaroni cheese, you should:

recipe: cut up the butternut squash into cubes, add the stock and almond milk into a nice big pan, and chuck the squash in. Bring it to a boil and then reduce to a simmer under the squash is tender (about fifteen minutes). Blend this mixture in a decent processor or use a stick blender and really go at it – the smoother the better. Add the garlic salt and Worcestershire sauce. Add the cheese to the sauce and put it back onto the heat on a medium heat. Now you have a choice – you can cook the macaroni in a separate pan, drain and add to the sauce, or just chuck the macaroni into the sauce and cook it all in the same pan – this will help thicken the sauce because of all that tasty starch! Once the sauce is thickened, serve hot!

extra-easy: yep! here, you’re either using your cheese or your milk as your HEA on your serving. All that butternut squash makes this VERY high in superfree food and it just tastes wonderful, trust me. You can use up the rest of your HEA allowance (if you chose milk) throughout the day, you can have a fair bit on EE!

TASTY.

J