Category Archives: lunch

Lunch ideas

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August 2, 2016

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lunch, mince, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free

syn free sweet potato and turkey layered casserole

Turned up for the sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, that’s syn-free and awash with taste? Well, don’t hasten along just yet. A word please, but for once, I’ll make it a quick one.

How do people keep falling for Facebook scams? It’s beyond me. I get it, people are keen for a bargain and would snatch the skin off your face if it meant getting 25% discount at Aldi, but please, exercise just a modicum of common sense. Tesco aren’t giving away 500 gift-cards with £500 quid on them because they’ve turned 50. You can tell that because a) Tesco wouldn’t give away a quarter of a million quid via stay-at-home-mums on facebook ‘buy ‘n’ sell’ pages (the ‘n’ stands for not having THAT in my house because it’s fucking gopping) and b) Tesco wouldn’t give you the steam off its piss.

I only mention it because Alton Towers have had to issue a statement explicitly stating that they’re not running a promotion for five free tickets for each person who shares some crappy low-res and clearly photoshopped picture of a ticket. I just find it perplexing that people get suckered in by crap like that. Surely at some point during the ‘complete X surveys’ and ‘submit your Paypal account details here’ an alarm bell must ring, and presumably that bell is going to be bloody loud because it’s got no brain to muffle the sound? Pfft. If I was in charge of Alton Towers, I’d honour the crummy tickets and put all the people most vocal about it straight on The Smiler – and I’d put the work experience kid in front of the controls. I mean HONESTLY.

This wouldn’t have caused me so much ire if Alton Tower’s official status on Facebook wasn’t awash with people who immediately started twisting their gobs about how Alton Towers had a duty to provide free tickets as compensation. Com-pen-bloody-sation! Listen, you should get compensation if you have your legs blown off by faulty wiring or your eyes smacked from your skull from a falling crane, you don’t deserve compensation just because you got your juicebox in a froth thinking you’d get a free ticket because of some barely literate sharing on Facebook.

Anyway, the last time I went to Alton Towers I had a very reasonable time. Make of that what you will. I enjoyed waiting in the queues for a one minute ride, I loved looking at the delicate displays of litter and wasps and found the experience of applying for a loan just to buy a small fries and hotdog to be remarkably thrilling. I love theme parks but I’ve been utterly spoiled by spending a month in Florida, with the added bonus of not being the fattest person in the park.

My mind boggles.

Speaking of mind boggling, you need to give Stranger Things a go. It was recommended by a friend, who, to her credit, is normally fairly spot-on with her recommendations and tea-making. It’s sublime. Wonderfully shot, gorgeously scored, tightly plotted and just something so unusual on TV these days – a real rare treat. It’s on Netflix and I can’t, in turn, recommend it highly enough. Who knew Winona Ryder (Ryder? I barely knew her!) could act? She’s a revelation. Even the kids can act! How comes whenever we see children on UK television they’re always that unique breed of smug, breathy annoyances with a know-it-all attitude and a name like an old Victoria affliction. OH LITTLE DROPSY, DO COME ALONG, YOU’LL BE LATE FOR YOUR MANDARIN CLASS. That kind of shite.

If it helps sweeten the deal, there’s a policeman in there with a strong jaw and a mean attitude, so at least you’re guaranteed a bit of rain at Fort Bushy.

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Eh?

Let’s get to the bloody casserole, eh, before I give you a nosebleed.

Look, it doesn’t look great, but it’s a good way of getting some speed veg in, it freezes well and you know, you could do worse!

sweet potato and turkey layered casserole

to make sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, you’ll need:

  • 2 large sweet potatoes
  • 500g turkey mince (or use beef mince, and yeah, you’ll get plenty in our box below)
  • 250g bacon medallions (you’ll get some in any of our musclefood deals!)
  • 1 cauliflower, cut into florets
  • 50ml almond milk (this works out at less than 1/3rd of a syn – I didn’t count it but you can if you like)
  • 4 tbsp quark
  • 1 onion, finely diced
  • 150g mushrooms, chopped
  • salt
  • pepper

to make sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, you should:

  • begin by peeling the sweet potatoes and cut into chunks, and add to a pan of boiling water, cook until tender and drain
  • in another pan meanwhile, cook the bacon under a hot grill until crispy – when done, remove from the under the grill and set aside
  • great – now preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the cauliflower florets in a pan of boiling water, for about 7 minutes (or until tender)
  • over a sink, drain the cauliflower and put into a food processor (or blender)
  • completely blend with half of the almond milk, a load of black pepper and half of the quark – blend until smooth and set aside
  • kindly do exactly the same with the sweet potato, but add parmesan if you want rather than peppers
  • in a large frying pan, add a little oil and cook the turkey mince
  • now, once the mince starts to brown, add the onions and mushrooms to the pan and keep stirring every now and again
  • mainly a job of layering now – in a large ovenproof dish (pyrex is best!) spoon half of the mince mixture and spread out to a thin layer
  • yes, add all of the cauliflower mix and spread out, then add the remaining meat mixture followed by the sweet potato
  • bake in the oven for 30 minutes
  • usually, we chop or crumble the bacon into little pieces and spread over the dish when cooked
  • masses of casserole for everyone – serve!

Looking for even more recipes? Good lord woman, steady on, you’ll snap it off. Click the buttons below for even more!

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Hope that left you satisfied and smiling.

J

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August 1, 2016

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american, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, mince, panko, poultry, recipe card, sandwiches, speciality ingredients

delicious buffalo turkey meatball subs

Are you dripping from both ends at the thought of these delicious buffalo turkey meatball subs? Well, I’ll get to them. I will, honest, but first, something awful happened yesterday.

I say yesterday, but it was a few weeks ago – I just didn’t want to write about it because I felt so bad. I’m not a man who easily shames – I’d need the priest to cancel his summer if I ever went into a confessions box – and I’m very much a ‘meh’ person when it comes to morality and decency, but sometimes even I feel penitent. I need to apologise genuinely to everyone out there who thought I was a decent person. Let me explain, OK?

Naturally, because I’m a gobshite, I’ll need to set the scene. It was a glorious summer day – the type of Sunday afternoon that is just fizzing with possibility – do you spend all day watching Four in a Bed re-runs on More 4 or the Come Dine With Me omnibus on 40D? Due to the weather being so damn warm we were at serious risk of bonding directly with our leather sofa so we decided, after peeling ourselves off the leather with a loud, wet fart, to ‘go for a drive’. My parents used to take me and my sister out to go ‘there and back to see how far it is’, and that’s exactly what we planned to do. An amble out in the car to shout loudly at the back of caravans and the front of BMWs.

As you may or may not know, we live near the Northumbrian coast, and it was a matter of minutes before we were beetling up the coast road, with Paul’s terrible taste in music playing loudly through the speakers of my car. That’s the deal. If we take my (better) car he gets to choose the music, meaning eight hours of Tracy Chapman Sucks The Joy Out Of Every Conceivable Situation. Meh, I like doing the driving so I let it slide. Anyway, we had only been going for about fifteen minutes when he turned the music off and turned to me, mischief writ large on his already burning, doughy moon-face, and suggested we go and look at caravans.

Well, I was shocked, let me tell you – Paul has all of his own teeth and isn’t unemployed, so why suggest a caravan? He explained that he didn’t want to buy a caravan, rather just have a nosey around, and that he had seen a sign for an ‘open day’ at a nearby caravan park but a few moments ago. I can’t say no to Paul – one look at his rheumy, beady eyes and I’ll give him the world.  Caravans have never appealed to me – I don’t see the joy in dashing away on holiday to look at the same four walls you’ve previously looked at for a long wet week. The ones I have been in always start of smelling of foist and sex and end up smelling of farts and shame, which perhaps says more about me. I’m not a snob, I’m sure there are some lovely models out there that don’t come in discharge-beige, but they’re just not my scene.

Nevertheless, I turned the car around under the guise of humouring Paul but really wanting to have a nose myself. I’ve always wanted to see how someone could find sweating in a plastic box so inviting. We pulled in at around 1pm with the idea that we would have a gander around a couple of caravans, maybe swear at some children in the bar and buy some cinder toffee for the drive home.

WE WERE THERE FOUR FUCKING HOURS. FOUR! Why? Well, this is the bit I feel I have to apologise for. We had no sooner walked in when some wonderful, charming, effortlessly polite young man hustled over in a veritable cloud of Lynx Africa and sat us down in a comfy chair. I immediately started mouthing DON’T SAY ANYTHING to Paul but he had his eyes on both ends of an eight-berth caravan with balcony and when asked if we’d like a coffee, said yes please. I could see at this point we’d be there a while NOW MY HUSBAND HAS COMMITTED US. Yep.

The guy was charm himself and I didn’t want to feel like we were wasting his time so when asked whether we were thinking about buying, I issued a vague ‘we’ve come into a bit of money but can’t commit today’ in the hope of appeasing him and getting away sharp. No. No, he couldn’t have had a firmer grip on me if he’d sunk his teeth into my scrotum. He promised us a look around, asked a few questions which Paul, lost in a reverie thanks to his machine-brewed cappucino, left me to deal with. I floundered but still the salesman pressed on. He asked us how often we would be visiting (never), what attracted us to caravans (nothing) (perhaps maybe the swinging), how long we’d been together, who held the purse-strings…

advert - freezer-01

Speaking of purse strings, feel free to blow the dust off your purse and buy some meat. Look at everything you get in our freezer filler – buy it and live like a meat-filled queen. I do.

Out we went. We were treated to an almost two hour tour of the facilities. As caravan parks go I’m sure it was lovely, but I just can’t relax when a good half of the men walking about look like they’re going to kick your teeth out through your arsehole and their wives have more writing on their knuckles than on the work experience bit of their CVs. We wandered down to the beach which afforded us wonderful views – and that part is true, I’ve never seen an aluminium smelter glint in the sunlight with such beauty – but listen, I know what gets discharged into the North Sea (hell, I’m responsible for the worst of it) and I don’t fancy bobbing out of the water with a turd-cigar in my mouth.

Actually, that point was highlighted a little later with the appearance of a ‘secret beach’, a little sandy cove hidden out of sight by virtue of a bit of marshland and the flats of the dried-up river-bed. Nothing says ‘enjoy a summer picnic with me darling’ like watching two seagulls fighting in the carcass of a bloated cat and a rat trying to free itself from a spent condom.

All through the tour the sense of feeling shit for wasting this guy’s time was growing, but we thought he’d be finished in no time and then we could slip away before most of his afternoon was wasted. But he just kept going with his endless energy. I don’t know who his girlfriend is but I bet she walks around with a huge smile and two pairs of chapped lips.

So much time passed that we couldn’t in all good conscience tell him we had only wanted to look around a caravan and nothing more. He extolled the virtues of the site-wide WiFi (because we would definitely want to be on the same network as some of the guys we’d spotted looking mournfully from their caravan windows, yessir), the on-site entertainment and the swimming pool. Actually, the pool looked great – it’s been ages since I’d had a verruca to pick at. I’m not going to fib though – whether it was the heat of the day, my body expressing shock at moving more than 100 yards under my own steam or just his excellent sales patter, the idea of owning a caravan here was starting to look more tempting. If only so I could lie down and scratch my feet with a match-box.

We finished the afternoon with the most awkward hour of my life – looking someone in the eye who was so keen for a sale that he skipped over my obvious attempts at deflection – we’re gay, Paul’s an arsonist, I have bail conditions banning me from being near old folk – with that deft, assured mannerism that must come from months of getting people off the fence and into caravan ownership. He asked for a number to contact me on and in my haste to get away I gave him the right number – which he then called a day or two later – thus this being the first instance of me giving my number of a guy and him not immediately scribbling it on a toilet wall with the annotation ‘CAN TAKE THREE AT ONCE’. We discussed finance packages, we discussed carpet options, whether I’d bring my own gas from home (I always do, I chortled, and the crowd went mild), park rules (which essentially boiled down to not nicking the copper from the exchange box and not being a grass), whether my parents would be interested and whether we’d need a two double-bed set-up. I exclaimed that we weren’t that fat which finally seemed to kill the mood and, after many promises that we would be in touch, we were able to slink away.

Paul made to put his Tracy Chapman music back on once we were in the car but I slapped his hand away and reminded him that as his cappucino had almost cost us £30,000 in 6540 crippling monthly payments, I’d choose the music. Our salesman called us a few days later and we explained that my parents hadn’t quite died just yet and that we’d be in contact and do you know, he was so nice – said no worries, thanked us for a lovely afternoon and bid us goodbye. I was so stricken with guilt that I immediately called back and asked if I could send a letter in about his wonderful customer service (and it really was – fair enough he chewed my ears off but he was polite, courteous and charming to an absolute fault) but he said we didn’t need to, as long as we kept him in mind if we ever wanted a caravan. I felt like I’d kicked a begging dog to death.

So, my apology then. A big, heartfelt genuine apology to the poor lad who showed us around for an entire afternoon with the impression we were going to buy a caravan. We weren’t. We had gone in just to have a nose about and were too cowardly to say we were just nebbing. In our defence, we did try to make it obvious we couldn’t commit, but you were so impassioned by your job that we didn’t want to break your spirit. There comes a point a couple of hours in when it’s too late to back out and we hit that point around the time of the secret beach. But: you were great, you really were, and if we ever do decide that we want to give up on life and get a caravan, we’ll come to you. I hope we’re forgiven. I still think of you when I get stuck behind a Shitcabin Deluxe-3000 on the A69 and even now the remorse is raw. Goodbye, Mr Caravan Man.

Now, before anyone kicks off, let me reiterate one thing: this blog is written for comic effect. Of course the folk at the caravan park weren’t exceptionally rough and I’m sure it’s a charming place to stay with kids. It’s not our cup of tea, no, but I’m not genuinely taking the piss. If you enjoy them, go, and have a whale of a time. I’ll watch from the car. With the windows up. In the height of summer. I’ll take the risk.

Oh, as an aside, remember my dislike of caravans for a much later post, won’t you? We’re planning something fun in 2017 which might just revisit them…

I love a Subway sandwich, and see we’ve made a marinara sub before which you can find right here. I’ve said 2.5 syns per sub – it’s actually a fraction less – but you have to make sure you’re using a HEB bun! Or Mags herself will come and smack your ankles in with an iron bar. It’s the rules!

buffalo turkey meatball subs

to make buffalo turkey meatball subs you will need:

serves 6

to make buffalo turkey meatball subs you should:

  • in a large bowl, mix together the turkey mince, celery, carrots, garlic, chilli powder, paprika, panko, parmesan and egg, and roll into 18 meatballs
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and cook the meatballs until cooked through – turn them regularly!
  • when cooked, plop three into each bun and top with one tbsp of natural yoghurt, and 1 tbsp buffalo sauce
  • eat

Admittedly, it’s a sloppy eat and you’re going to end up looking like you’ve been the bullseye at a badly-gone-wrong bukkake party, but hey! Enjoy this fakeaway? Click the buttons below for more ideas on fakeaways, beef or poultry!

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Mwah!

J

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July 30, 2016

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, pork, pork mince, recipe card, rice, sauces, taster ideas

sticky soy glazed ginger meatballs with dark fried rice

Look, we’ll get to the sticky soy glazed ginger meatballs with dark fried rice, but wait just a second.

Who has been buying my book?! It normally sells a few copies a day, but yesterday I sold 86 copies – have I been mentioned somewhere? Probably in a police report. Anyway, if you want to join the others, I won’t complain – you can find it right here.

As I type, there are four people who, given they look as though they’ve been carved out of milk we can safely assume have never been outside before, fussing around at the bottom of our garden with their phones. I think we can safely rule out them being paparazzi, though if a slot-shot appears on the Daily Mail side-bar of my hairy arse-crack taken as I put the bins out in my Luigi dressing gown, I’ll take the credit. No, I think they’re playing Pokemon Go, and good luck to them – anything that gets young’uns out into the fresh air and away from the TV can’t be a bad thing. It’s not for me, though. That’s not to say that the idea of coming across a Jigglypuff in the woods doesn’t appeal to me – hell, that was my Facebook status for a good two years – but the whole thing is just too active and sociable. I’d be terrified of having to make small talk with someone.

Plus, on an entirely shallow note, I went along to a ‘gamers’ meet-up many moons ago (I’m big into video games, thought it would be good to meet up with some fellow players) and I’m barely exaggerating when I say you could have chewed the BO that hung in the air. Perhaps it’s a lazy stereotype but good lord, waft a stick of Mum under your pits and fuck the fuck off. Oh and brush your bloody teeth – there’s no excuse for teeth that look as though they’ve been whittled from margarine. I didn’t so much beat a retreat as swim away through the waves of stink.

Maybe I’m just being miserable. Remember my elation at the fact we’ve managed to source a wonderful garden table after two years of trying to find one we liked that a) wasn’t made of plastic and b) could withstand a couple of years of our giant arses pressing down on it? Well, whoop-de-whoo, too good to be true. First it was delayed, then delayed again, then delivered with a chunk missing, then the replacement bits didn’t turn up on time. As melodramatic as it might seem, I’m so pissed off with it that I’m returning the lot and it’s back to the drawing board. It’s only because their customer service people were so pleasant to deal with that I’m not naming the company, but it’s such a bloody shame! Our neighbours are doubtless thankful that their summer isn’t going to be full of images of Paul and I reclining in the sun like butter on a crumpet, but hey.

Anyway, that’s quite enough negativity. Let’s have some positivity!

You may remember a while ago we visited Mog on the Tyne and had a lovely time, surrounded by cats whilst we had our lunch? Well, I recently discovered that there’s another café down on the Quayside, and a good friend suggested we go for lunch. Actually, that’s a fib, she made some terrible joke about eating out and pussy, and when she’d brought me around with the smelling salts, we both agreed to would be an excellent way to spend a lunch hour. Certainly better than trying to wrest a meal-deal sandwich from the hands of other office-workers in our local Sainsbury’s. I’d kick someone to death for taking the last brie and grape sandwich, just saying.

Well, it was wonderful. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a cat café, they’re small rooms filled with cat furniture, cat scratching posts and lots of dogs. Obviously not. No, cats. No good if you’ve got allergies but if that’s the case, have a Piriton and suck it up. Whilst the cats at Mog on the Tyne are all sorts of rescue cats and gorgeous kitties, Catpawcino has rare breeds and unusual looking delights. The food is typical little café fare but done well – paninis, sandwiches, cupcakes, that sort of thing. Let’s be honest though, no-one goes to these places to critique the sandwiches. It was all about the cats, and just look at the photos:

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I mean, come on. If they don’t get you excited, then you’re clearly made of stone and/or pure evil.

One slight annoyance though, and something that is entirely not the fault of the café – parents with loud kids. Yes, I understand that your children are on holiday and it’s good to let them run around, but honestly, not everyone thinks they’re just darling. Our visit yesterday was marred a little by kids running around after the cats and the mothers sitting there with a smug look on their face. What can you say to that? It’s seemingly OK for little Crescendo and Wain-Bow to hurtle around getting in everyone’s way – I wanted to take a picture of a cat on a windowsill but some ‘adorable’ little charmer wouldn’t shift – apparently I’d be in the wrong if I picked her up and popped her in the litter tray, which I feel is a mite unfair

Anyway, that annoyance aside, it really was a lovely hour, and I’d definitely recommend both Catpawcino and Mog on the Tyne for a different lunchtime experience in the centre of Newcastle. Unless you don’t like cats. If that’s the case, stick to eating the souls of the undead, you cold-hearted monster.

OR, have a bash at our sticky soy glazed ginger meatballs instead, served on dark fried rice.

That reminds me, don’t forget we’ve got a meat sale on. You could use the meatballs from the below package in this recipe and still thoroughly enjoy yourself!

advert - summer-01

Mahaha. No I know, but look, it’s an excellent deal and clearly it’s doing well as we’ve had more sales than ever. So don’t miss out. Think of the children! This makes enough for twenty small meatballs, so I’m assuming split between four, that’s 6.5 syns or 1.5 syns each. I know technically it’s a fraction more but come on.

soy glazed ginger meatballs

to make sticky soy glazed ginger meatballs with dark fried rice you will need:

  • 200g rice, any old shite will do
  • 500g minced pork
  • 1″ piece of ginger
  • 120g mushrooms, chopped
  • 2 spring onions, sliced
  • 1 courgette
  • 170g sugar snap peas
  • 2 separate tsps of sesame oil (4 syns)
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce (low salt)
  • 90ml soy sauce (low salt)
  • 1 tbsp honey (2.5 syns)
  • salt
  • pepper

to make sticky soy glazed ginger meatballs with dark fried rice you should:

  • cook the rice according to the instructions on the packet
  • meanwhile, prepare all the ingredients – it makes it easier! have lots of little bowls nearby and pretend you’re Nigella
  • first: peel and grate the ginger (this is perfect for the job!)
  • slice the spring onions thinly
  • slice the courgette along it’s length, and then cut each section again so it’s quartered, then slice
  • chop of the ends of the sugar snap peas and peel off the stringy bit that runs along the seam, then chop thinly lengthwise
  • mix together the 90ml soy sauce with the honey and set aside
  • in a large bowl, mix together the minced pork, ginger, and half of the sesame oil with a pinch of salt and pepper and roll into about 20 meatballs
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat with whatever spray oil / frylight you use and add the meatballs, turn regularly until they are browned and cook through
  • remove from the pan and onto a plate
  • in the same pan, add the chopped mushrooms and cook for about 4-5 minutes, scraping up any bits in the pan
  • add half of the spring onions and the rest of the sesame oil and cook for another 1 minute
  • add the cooked rice, sugarsnap peas and courgette to the pan and stir, until the rice is browned and the courgette tender – this will take about 5 minutes
  • add 2 tbsp soy sauce and mix until well combined, then plate up
  • add the meatballs back to the pan and pour over the soy sauce and honey mixture – spoon the mixture over the meatballs regularly until the mix and reduced by half
  • serve the meatballs on top of the rice and spoon over any remaining glaze
  • sprinkle on the rest of the spring onions and eat!

Looking for more ideas for what to do with pork or other fakeaway takeaway suggestions? Well click that blasted buttons!

porksmall fakeawayssmall

Enjoy! We’re off to watch Preacher. And Stranger Things. And Mr Robot. OR ARE WE?

J

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July 26, 2016

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barbecue, burgers, drinks, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, panko, recipe card, salad, sauces, seafood, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

slimming world bbq: zesty salmon burgers and a radish and pea salad

Goodness me, we’re still flogging this dead horse of Slimming World BBQ, are we? You have no idea how many times I’ve trundled the Weber out of the shed only for the skies to immediately blacken, the thunder start-up and the rain to come down so hard that I have to front-crawl past the recycling bins just to get back to the kitchen. Listen, when even God himself doesn’t want you to tearfully chew your way through the taste-explosion that is a Slimming World burger, you know it’s not a good idea.

Now, long time readers may remember I did an article way back in February of last year called james vs paul and it consisted of five things that annoyed him about me and five things that annoyed me about him. If you haven’t committed our various faults to memory – and if not, why not – you can find it here, together with a delicious recipe for chicken chow mein. Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, it’s due a sequel. You’ll be glad to know that we both still do every single thing that previously annoyed the other, but hey, fuck it, that’s marriage. Here’s five more – and, just like before, I’ve got right to reply on Paul’s critiques of me. Why? Because I have no gag reflex, and frankly if he wants to take advantage of that going forward, he has to let me reply…mahaha! Plus, I get the right to expand on my annoyances too. What a cad!

Paul’s five things that rile him about me:

  • there’s always coat hangers in our bed
    • aye, it’s a fair cop this one. See, I get ready for work about ten minutes after Paul, because bless, he has to get up and put the coffee on and turn the shower on for me. My reward for his wonderful kindness is to litter his side of the bed with coat-hangers from where I’m trying to decide what shirt to wear in the morning – the shirts then get put over the top of the door rather than hung up. I think Paul’s getting a complex that I’m trying to do him a mischief when every time he climbs into bed he gets prodded with the coat-hanger, but in my defence, they’re velvet
  • james never put liners in the tiny kitchen bin
    • meh. I can see Paul’s point, no-one wants smears of cat-food and whatnot on the inside of the bin. Fair enough. But Paul insists on buying a) tiny bins and b) massive bin liners. I wanted a lovely massive Brabantia bin but Paul knocked that idea on the head saying that we’d never empty it and we’d have what amounted to a vertical skip in the kitchen. Hmm. But then see he buys bin liners that you could drive a car through, meaning I’ve got to spend ten minutes flapping them out and trying to get them to sit in the tiny bin without just filling up the bloody container in the first place. It’s an ongoing, very middle-class problem, and it threatens to tear us apart at times
  • everything electrical is going to burst into flames unless it’s unplugged when not in use
    • again, I think this is unfair! I grew up on a diet of 999 and with parents who had a very casual attitude to fire safety and thus I think my fears are entirely reasonable. I’m a catastrophic thinker – if I leave a box of matches on the side, I’ll spend the day envisioning various ways that the cats will knock them to the floor, followed by them knocking on the gas-oven in fear, followed by spiders skittering around on the sulphur of the scattered matches, igniting and destroying my home. That sounds fair enough until you realise we don’t have a gas oven
  • socks, socks everywhere, as far as the eye can see
    • not fair: they’re not just my socks. For two tidy, professional men, we don’t half have a habit of leaving our socks scattered about in unusual places, and not just because they’re the wanksocks, we’re not 14 anymore. I don’t think I owned a pair of socks that didn’t crunch and crackle between the age of 12 and 19. But see in my haste to have my feet rubbed and squeezed (despite Paul’s entirely baseless remonstrations that it makes his hands smell like Roquefort), my socks will often just get discarded and forgotten until either Paul or the cleaner finds them
  • james’ genuine concern and worry whenever I hurt myself in a clumsy, hilarious manner
    • I may have reworded that a little. Paul is taking umbrage at the fact that when he hurts himself by a) tumbling over in that way only fat men can, b) burning his mouth because he’s so keen to eat he doesn’t let his food cool down or c) cuts himself on his edgy political analysis, I immediately respond by fussing over him and saying ‘what’s the matter’ eighteen times a second. Hmph. I think that shows only love and concern for my precious, gorgeous husband, frankly.

Hmm. Seems fair. Now it’s my turn. Because I’m the writer, I get to say what annoys me about Paul AND expand on it too. What annoys me about Paul?

WELL.

  • he can’t hoover to save his life
    • let me explain, as that seems a trifle extreme – we’ve got one of those fancy-dan digital Dyson vacuums that sit on the wall charging up until it’s needed, then you have exactly six minutes to flounce around the house shrieking whilst it vacuums at full power. That in itself is a mere inconvenience. No, it only becomes a problem because Paul vacuums up every single fucking thing on the floor rather than picking up the bigger bits – whole pasta twists, cable ties, shoes, you name it Paul’s tried to suck it up into the tiny drum and then spent 5 minutes gawping and swearing at the vacuum whilst it chugs and splutters because the tube is blocked. I swear, I spend more time poking around in the drum with a chopstick trying to dislodge errant nonsense than I do breathing in and out. I half expect to walk into our utility room to find our full-sized tom cat squeezed into the tiny plastic drum of the vacuum, mewing pitifully through a mouthful of dust and ped-egged-foot-skin
  • he always wants his back scratched
    • doesn’t matter where we are, I can blink and when I open my eyes, his shirt will be hoisted up over his tits and his back will be looming towards me with his plaintive cries of ‘up a bit down a bit go mad NO NOT THAT HARD’ filling the air – if I had the money, I’d get a HappyCow machine installed

Actually, balls to the list, let me just show you a HappyCow machine and tell me it doesn’t fill your heart with joy!

Look at that happy cow! It’s a video, so click play to see those eyes light up with life and joy.

That reminds me, don’t forget we’ve got a meat sale on:

What can I say, I’m an opportunistic bugger.

  • he can’t handle Sky Digital
    • we’ve been together nine years and still whenever we’re recording and watching Jeremy Kyle The Today Show and recording The Man With The 10 Stone Testicles Panorama, he’ll attempt to turn the telly over onto a third channel and then act perplexed when the TV says no. He also can’t fast-forward through breaks – it’s like he has a tremor when he presses the button during Hotel Inspector and suddenly everything is 30x the speed and unpaused just as Alex Polizzi’s giant smile is filling the screen and she’s climbing back into her Audi
  • he maintains that his Smart car is a sensible choice despite massive evidence to the contrary
    • I go to this well a lot and I don’t care. Going to buy anything bigger than a Rubik’s cube? Paul will spend ten minutes assuring me it’ll fit despite me advising him that the rules of physics still apply even if his car is the colour of a baked bean. Of course, once we’ve bought the BBQ / new SONOS soundbar / sack of potatoes and made our way back to the car park, he’ll realise that, whilst it does fit – just – there’s no space for me, leaving me standing in the car park cursing his name whilst he races home in the car at its top speed of 32mph before returning to pick me up not even a little bit contrite. We’ve had many a terse conversation whilst making our way slowly and uncomfortably back home, I can assure you
  • he wakes me up by farting, but not in the way you might expect
    • we both find farting absolutely hilarious – there’s few things funnier to our juvenile minds than a good taint-stainer, plea for help from Sir Knobbly-Brown, misguided burp, creeping hisser, floorboard troubler or an extended moment of steam-pressing your knickers, so that doesn’t trouble me in the slightest. No, if I’m woken up by a loud fart, I’ll spend the day chuckling. It only becomes a problem because we tend to spoon when we’re asleep in the morning and Paul manages to turn whatever food he’s had the night before – no matter how fine the ingredients, no matter how dainty the amounts – into concentrated pure death. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been woken up in the morning by what smells like concentrated hate not so much filling my nostrils as filing them, peeling off skin and various bits of my olfactory system. It’s a bad job when you wake up gagging and reminiscing with longing for the smell of burning cows from the Foot and Mouth days. I grew up right next door to the farm that started it all and they said it could never happen again. Well it is – in Paul’s arse at 5.45am.

That reminds me, don’t forget we’ve got a meat sale on:

advert - summer-01

Mahaha. Hey, listen, those are his faults. But for all of those minor things, he’s still the man who I’ve only spent 6 nights away from and who makes me laugh right from the get-go as soon as I come through the door. There’s no regrets here and there’s not many couples who can say that!

Right, let’s get to the BBQ recipes before I well up like the big old pansy that I am.

Salmon burgers, eh? You know people say if it swims, it slims? Well pffft. Load of crap. I’ve been swallowing swimmers for years and I still chaff when I run. But we do need more fish recipes, so…

We found the recipe for the below from this blog and we’ve made it Slimming World friendly. I know, we’re heroes.

slimming world bbq

to make zesty salmon burgers you will need:

this is enough to make one – if you want more, just multiply the recipe

  • 1 wholemeal roll (HeB)
  • 15g panko (or use breadcrumbs, but panko is nicer) (4.5 syns for 25g, so we’ll say about 2.5 syns for 15g, just before I get angry letters and panko covered turds pushed through my letterbox from the more fervent of you)
  • 1 spring onion, sliced
  • 1 tsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp lime zest
  • 140g salmon fillet (skinless and boneless)
  • 4 slices picked gherkins

to make the sriracha mayonnaise:

  • 1 tbsp Morrisons NuMe mayonnaise (or use any low-fat mayo – just check the syns) (1 syn)
  • 1 tsp hoisin sauce (½ syn)
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp sriracha (if you can’t find sriracha, any ‘hot sauce’ will do – Cholula is a good alternative!)

to make zesty salmon burgers you should:

  • add all of the sriracha mayonnaise ingredients into a bowl and mix well – plonk in the fridge whilst you do the rest
  • next, add all of the burger ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth, except for the bun and gherkins – if you haven’t got a food processor, chop everything up and mix by hand – extra body magic!
  • shape into a burger shape – it only needs to be about 1½cm thick to cook evenly
  • add onto the hot grill of the BBQ and cook for about four minutes a side, or until it’s how you like it
  • spread half of the mayonnaise mixture onto each half of the bun and lay on the pickled gherkins
  • add the burger on top, and enjoy!

Before you start up – remember:

IDShot_540x540

This is panko. Dried, crunchy breadcrumbs.

10376317_999909273416009_6394605074995868893_n

This is not panko. This is pan k.o.

Easy!

Right, here’s a side suggestion. Because we’re super jolly hockey-sticks and what-ho, we’ve grown so many wonderful things in our garden this year, including a tonne of radishes and peas. If you’re not keeping up with the Jones, feel free to buy these items in a shop. I present our radish and pea salad! It’s really basic, but full of crunch and taste and hell, that’s probably a lot of speed food. This makes enough for four.

slimming world bbq

to make radish and pea salad, you’ll need:

  • a big handful of radishes – there’s no need to be precise, use as many or as much as you need
  • a big handful of fresh peas in their pods – you don’t want giant peas but rather baby peas
  • 3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar – or apple vinegar, or raspberry vinegar, or vinegar-tits
  • four or five spring onions
  • a tablespoon of rapeseed or olive oil (6 syns)
  • a nice sprig of fresh mint, chopped finely
  • a pinch of salt
  • a pinch of pepper

to make radish and pea salad, you should:

  • get a pan of boiling water, throw your peas (in their pods) into the water for a minute, then take them out and put them in iced water to stop them cooking through
  • the boring bit, sorry – julienne your radishes and pea pods – basically, cut the radishes into slices, and then the slices into matchsticks – this isn’t an exact science, so don’t sweat it – if there are big peas, pop them out into the serving bowl as you chop
  • you can use a mandoline slicer for your radishes, it’ll speed things up – and the one we use is only £7.99 – but BE CAREFUL, they’re dangerous bloody things if you don’t use the guard
  • very finely chop your mint and spring onions, including the green stalk
  • mix the oil and vinegar, pepper, salt and mint together – add maybe a pinch of sugar if you really want (neglible syns given this serves four)
  • put everything into a dish, mix with the ‘sauce’ and serve immediately

It’s a really easy salad but worth the time spent making it, trust me.

Finally, let’s go for a cocktail in the form of a Blue Hawaiian. I had a blue Hawaiian. This one is from Jamie Oliver, a man I rather enjoy despite his best efforts.

slimming world bbq

to make a blue hawaiian, you’ll need:

  • 35ml of decent white rum (3.5 syns)
  • 35ml blue curaçao (5.5 syns)
  • a couple of drops of coconut essence
  • 100ml pineapple juice (2.5 syns – Del Monte)

to make a blue hawaiian, you should:

  • get a cocktail shaker, throw everything in with a load of ice and shake it, shake it good
  • serve up on a load of crushed ice
  • serve it in a hollowed-out pineapple for that true access-day-visit-to-TGI-Fridays feel

Enjoy! I know it’s a lot of syns, but hey, it’s summer. If you can’t let your hair down and your boobs cool in this heat, when can you?

If you’re looking for more recipes for fish then you’re shit out of luck. There’s no many. But look, as a compromise, here’s a link to all of our beef and chicken recipes too.

beefsmallpoultrysmallseafoodsmall

J

 

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July 24, 2016

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american, bacon, barbecue, breast, drinks, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

slimming world bbq: chimichurri turkey skewers and an amazing loaded potato salad

Here for the next installment of our Slimming World BBQ series? Well don’t worry, we’ll get to it. But first, indulge me a little time to ramble on…

Today has been a day of getting shit done. I know, a profanity right off the bat, but there’s a good reason for that – I’ve noticed another telling off comment on one of my articles. Please understand: this is a coarse blog about the gay-to-gay lifestyle of two fat blokes with no airs nor graces. There will be swearing. There will be frank and numerous references to sex and knobs and bumholes and slutmanship because well, you write about what you know. There’s a reason this blog isn’t called james’n’paul’n’catz and decorated wth frou-frou hearts and whimsical tales of picnics and cricket and buying peppers in a market. It’s just not us. We’re both about as classy as two seagulls fighting over a discarded packet of chips in somewhere like…oooh, Chelmsford, and we’re quite happy with that. Most of the time I’ll let the little digs wash over me with good grace and a little fart but today I thought I’d reply because, as I said, we’re getting shit done:

slimming world bbq

Oh I’m a stinker, aren’t I? To be fair, I don’t actually think I swear that much anyway. I certainly don’t use the C-word on here because it’s not worth the terse phone call from my mother telling me off for using that word on the Internet. I know, it’s warm under the thumb, but hey, you don’t upset the Keeper of the Inheritance. Though for the record, that works both ways, as Keeper of the Care Home Decision…

So what have we managed to get done today? Well, I pressure washed everything we owned that was looking a little bit grubby: outdoor furniture, fence panels, the blood stains on the front of my car, the hair and scalp in the tyre-wells, the paving slabs and the gate. There’s something amazingly satisfying about watching a tiny jet of water blast away years of accumulated dirt and filth. If I didn’t think it would tear straight through his small intestine I’d have a crack at blasting Paul’s out-pipe. It’d be like pressure-washing a hot Malteser. It goes without saying that I blasted several choice swearwords into the path but Paul made me remove them – apparently it doesn’t do for folks who visit to be greeted by an increasingly-vile set of phrases culminating in mingetacular. Pffft.

When I was putting away the pressure washer into the let’s-tell-Paul-I’ll-use-it-all-the-time-but-then-never-use-it-again pile in our shed, I realised that one of our cats had disappeared under the various detritus on the shed floor and was mewing pitifully. After digging through and locating her and putting her outside the shed (to which point she immediately came back in through the cat-flap to get lost again) (I was all, alright love, you’re not on fucking Fun House here, I haven’t just tagged you back in), I realised it was time to clear out the shed. I know, this is truly riveting reading, but please, bear with me. See, I’ve mentioned before that we turned our giant outdoor shed into a Cat Hotel / stockpile room (hence the cat-flap on a shed, see – it gives them somewhere to go when it’s raining and they can sleep on the cat tree in there). Recently the shed has become a depository for remnants of abandoned hobbies (GPS units from geocaching, walking boots, an unused tent, lightshade made of human skin), stuff from the kitchen which we’re keeping in case we need it (Nutribullet box, ice-cream maker, pickled knees) and well, all sort of other shite. It was chaos, but after two hours and several trips to the tip (mainly because Paul insisted on taking his Smart car rather than my car, limiting us to taking two Rizla papers and a discarded screw at a time), we could see the carpet again.

Yeah, carpet, we can’t have the cats getting cold feet.

As an aside, the men at our nearest tip are a delight, and I’m not just saying that because they wear those fancy hi-vis boiler-suits and I want to be roughly groped behind the oil-disposal drums (though it would be fitting). It’s rare to find folks who seem happy in their job and who are keen to help, pointing us in the direction of the appropriate skip and masking their disapproval of the fact we couldn’t be arsed to separate our garden waste from our general waste. I know, we deserve to be bricked up in a tomb somewhere for killing the Earth, but honestly, Paul’s arse does more damage to the environment and I don’t run the risk of pricking my fingers when I handle that. It’s a far cry from the roughly-hewn grunters at our previous Newcastle tip. I honestly thought I was going to have my face slashed with a shard of a broken Pyrex dish for having the temerity to ask which bin to put hedge clippings in. I mean, I apologised for interrupting their blistering chatter about which bird (sorry: boord) they’d fuck out of the Daily Sport. Pfft.

After clearing the shelves and vacuuming about half a tonne of dried rosemary out of the carpet (hang it in the shed he said…we’ll use it all the time he said…) we had a clear shed and a clear mind. This meant only one thing: time to restock. See, Slimming World and life in general can be expensive but if you buy the staples you use in bulk, you’ll save cold hard cash, and that’s good for everyone, not least because it means you can buy a few more raffle tickets in class and keep Queen Mags in Cheeky Vimtos and Cutter’s Choice. We buy food like beans, chopped tomatoes, passata, pasta and rice in massive bags and store it in the shed, meaning if we’re ever stuck we can throw something together in the blink of an eye. Off we went to B&Ms to replenish.

Now listen, I know B&Ms is like Mecca to some folk, but I just can’t bear it. It’s full of people who dawdle and who hold up a jar of Nescafe in one hand and a jar of Blue Mountain in the other, looking dead behind the eyes whilst their spittle pools around their feet. The aisles are littered with ladies who look like they could punch an articulated lorry to death. It’s awash with screaming children and bright lights and too many not-quite products to bear. We filled our trolley with dishwasher tablets, coal tar soap and oops-sorry-Mags a box of Lucky Charms and hurtled through the checkout. The charming lass behind the counter carried on a conversation with her co-worker the entire time and spoke only to spit the price out at us. Never again. I never learn, I always think ‘let’s save some money’ but then I end up stuck in an aisle with mirrors with the Playboy logo on them whilst Paul holds himself up crying next to the locked display of perfumes featuring classics such as I’ve Just Come by Mark Wright or Gonorrhoea by someone who came second in I’m a Celebrity in 2009.

Celebrity scents confuse me at the best of times – I’ve never in my entire life looked at someone famous and thought by Christ I wish I smelled like them – but even more so when it’s a non-entity from a reality show on ITV Be (Thankful You Can Turn It Over, presumably). I imagine that smells like pure shame.

The good news is the shed is all stocked up. The bad news, if you’re a picker at the Tesco in Kingston Park, I’ve just put an order in for 96 bottles of various mixers to fill up our mixer shelves. If you want, crack open a bottle of the diet ginger ale because that belongs to Paul and I know he’ll spare it. Touch my tonic with a hint of cucumber and I’ll turn your delivery truck over. Obviously I’m kidding, but seriously now. Paul did suggest we go and pick up the drinks ourselves but frankly, if we took his car, we’d only have enough for one of those tiny tins of Coke you used to steal buy from Woolworths. The jokes about his Smart car will never, ever end, you realise. Even he’s accepted that, answering me with a chuckle that says ‘oh my’ and eyes that say ‘fuck you’. Ah well.

The other thing I managed to get done today was to finally open and put to use the copy of Adobe Illustrator that I’ve been paying £30 a month for since January, when I downloaded it in order to design a new front cover for our book. Did I mention we have a book? We do! Yes, click here to have a read. If you’ve read it, leave a review and buy ten copies of your friends. The reason for my dip into Illustrator was to design a little advert I could put into these blog entries to sell our Musclefood boxes – it gets difficult trying to shoehorn in reference to meat, especially when the topics are stuff like online bullying or my nana dying. Some might call me tactless but at least I didn’t put a sponsored ad in the funeral readings. So, you might see something like this on a post, but I’ll keep them discreet and not hammer home the advertising:

advert - summer-01

By the way, that’s an absolutely stonking deal – it’s what is fuelling our current BBQ week and the meat is delicious. We do also have three other deals and you can view them by clicking on our special, updated Musclefood page – even if you’re not wanting the meat, pass it to a friend by sending them a link. Cheers, big-ears.

I really have ummed and aahed about adding adverts – I bet you’ve hardly noticed our current level of advertising because we only have one on a page as a rule, and they’re tiny. Advertising is what keeps the blog going so we do have to have it, but I’m loathe to become one of those blogs where you get ten ads on a page, a newsletter sign-up shaking away at you every few minutes and constant plugging of various products that you know the owner is only saying because they’re getting paid to do so. Everything we recommend is something that we genuinely use, I promise. We do try and strike a balance of user friendliness vs advertising and I reckon – based on feedback I’ve requested in our group – we’ve got it right. Please do tell us if that isn’t the case! We want you to come here for either:

  • the delicious food;
  • the attempts at funny chatter; or
  • the hope of seeing my genitals in a blurred reflection of a polished curry bowl.

We’ll take whatever we can!

Right, right, goodness me, we have to do the recipes, don’t we? Sometimes when I sit down I can think of nothing to type and other times, nothing will have happened but I’ll still be able to spin 1800 words out of it. If you’re not a fan of my verbosity, you can always scroll straight to the recipes. If you are a fan, do me a favour and recommend us in your slimming groups or to mates. Build us and watch us flower.

Tonight we have three recipes – one for marinated turkey chimichurri skewers, another for a genuinely delicious loaded potato salad that tastes like it would be full of syns and nastiness but is actually low in syns and keeps well for lunches the next day, and oh, a seabreeze. We’re really getting into the cocktails thing. I know, just when you thought we couldn’t get any gayer. Ah well. To the food…

slimming world bbq

to make slimming world bbq: turkey chimichurri skewers, you’ll need:

  • 2 garlic cloves, minced finely (hey guess what, I’m not going to recommend…ah fuck it, you know I am: here, use this!)
  • a big handful of parsley and a big handful of coriander

Listen, it’s always better to use fresh herbs. Buy a plant from the supermarket, stick it in water on your windowsill and it’ll grow all summer. But if you’re pushed for time, use dried

  • 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons of water
  • a pack of diced turkey – and what do you know, our Musclefood deal has the perfect pack in it – click here for that – you could also use a couple of diced up chicken breasts from the same box, we won’t tell
  • pinch of salt
  • pinch of pepper

Normally proper chimichurri is made with oil – so if you want to be a decadent bitch, get rid of the water and use four tablespoons of oil (24 syns) – this makes enough for eight skewers so that’s still only 6 syns per serving, assuming you have two skewers. If you use the above recipe, it’ll be 1.5 syns for two skewers.

to make slimming world bbq: turkey chimichurri skewers, you should:

  • dice the turkey or chicken if not already done
  • blend in a food processor all the other ingredients – taste with your fingers – you want to get it to a runny paste with some herbs left intact, not a perfectly blended mush
  • tip the turkey/chicken into a food bag and top with the chimichurri – really moosh it in with your fingers to get it pushed into the meat
  • leave for as long as you see fit, but, just like a lot of things, the longer the better
  • actually, that’s a lie, girth is more important, apologies if you’re a guy with a knob like one of those novelty giant pencils you buy in Scottish gift shops, but it’s true
  • when you’re ready to cook and the BBQ is up to temperature, thread the meat onto soaked wooden skewers or, better, metal skewers, together with whatever vegetables you have lying around in the house and place onto the grill
  • turn these a couple of times and for god’s sake, like everything else, make sure it’s all cooked before you eat it

You can also see in the picture there the hickory BBQ steaks and the drumsticks from our Musclefood deal. Just saying. They were delicious.

OK, now the potato salad. This was genuinely amazing, and well worth making! You can gussy it up however you want. This makes enough for four, though it was all Paul could do to stop me mashing my face into the bowl and eating the lot.

slimming world bbq

to make amazing loaded potato salad, you’ll need:

  • 1kg baby potatoes
  • 2 teaspoons salt, for the boiling water
  • 350g bacon medallions
  • 1 red onion, finely diced
  • 2 cloves of darlic, finely chopped
  • 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons dijon mustard (1½ syns)
  • 2 tbsp Morrison’s NuMe Reduced Fat Mayonnaise (2 syns) – or use any alternative reduced fat mayonnaise but check the syn values as they vary
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (obvs)
  • 2 big handfuls of baby spinach

to make amazing loaded potato salad, you should:

  • boil a big pan of water and throw in the potatoes, whole and with the skins on – cook until they’re done and they fall off when stabbed with a fork (about 15 minutes or so)
  • when done, drain and then rinse the potatoes under cold water to stop them from cooking. drain again and set aside
  • cook the bacon in a frying pan on a medium-high heat until crispy, then remove from the pan and onto a plate to cool
  • in the same pan add the chopped onion and cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally
  • then, add the garlic and cook for another minute or so, then remove the pan from the heat
  • in a small bowl whisk together the red wine vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper
  • cut the potatoes into chunks – either halves or quarters, depending how you like them and place into a large bowl
  • crumble the bacon into small pieces and add to the potatoes, along with the onion and garlic
  • then add the sweetcorn, spinach and mustard sauce and mix well to combine
  • serve!

Perfect, right? Now let’s end with a cocktail. We’re keeping it easy with these cocktails, nice and strong with the idea that you’re not going to down it in one. Frankly, if you’re that type of lady, we both know your BBQ is going to end with you with your knickers off face-down in the neighbours’ leylandii, you shameless hussy.

slimming world bbq

to make a slimming world bbq: seabreeze, you’ll need:

  • a chilled glass
  • 35ml of reasonable vodka – we used Absolut Grapevine, but that’s because we’re extravagant  (4 syns)
  • 50ml of cranberry juice (1.5 syns ish)
  • lots of ice
  • 50ml of grapefruit juice (1 syn)
  • slice of lime

to make a slimming world bbq: seabreeze, you should:

  • lots of ice in the glass
  • vodka in the bottom
  • then cranberry juice
  • then grapefruit juice
  • decorate with a lime

Drink lots and be merry, folks.

J

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July 17, 2016

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breast, lunch, mince, pasta, poultry, quark, recipe card, syn free

chicken and pea lasagne

Chicken and pea lasagne? Yes! Just scroll down if you don’t want to hear all my prattle.

Before we start: some good news. I’ve had a weird thing happening with my neck for ages where if I look to the right, there’s a click noise and a lot of pain. Very frustrating. But the good news: I was sniffing a flower and the pollen made me sneeze so hard that I’ve fixed whatever what was wrong with my neck. I’ve sneezed myself better! Let’s celebrate by being nice. No…

I’ve discovered a new past-time. Admittedly it’s one that shows off my mean, vexing side, but I don’t care. I <3 looking through and commenting on the Facebook ‘buy and sell’ groups in our local area. Honestly, the tat people try and sell is just beyond me. Plus, you get the bonus of looking at pictures of people’s houses and getting to suck air over my teeth at the state of the wallpaper or the “canvas art” littering every room. If I see another KEEP CALM AND DRINK PROSECCO poster I’m going to find a way to reach through the atoms on my iPad screen and torch their house.

As an aside, Paul used to know someone who drank from a cup that said ‘KEEP CALM AND GO MENTAL’ on the side. I rather think it remains to his credit that he didn’t smash it over her head.

I recently got into a spat with some orange harridan with a face like a rushed omelette who accused me of being a bald fat fuck because I accused her ‘100% NOT FAKE’ Calvin Klein dress as being fake. First of all, you can’t insult me by calling me a bald fat fuck because, if you remove the spaces from that and add slut, that’s my Grindr name, and secondly, I don’t think Calvin’s knocking out dresses under the name Calvan Kline. Calvan Kline sounds like a ski village in Norway, for one thing. Anyway, spluttering ill-conceived and predominately vowel-less insults at me has no effect. It rolls off me like gravy off a fat duck’s back.

Just an aside, I’m not always mean. I’ve bitten my tongue all weekend after seeing a PicCollage (it’s always a fucking PicCollage) recipe for ‘Hawiian BBQ chicken’. Hawiian? That’s how a Geordie mother calls her children in off the street.

Now, a lovely bit of news. You may remember from previous posts that we are part of something called the Reddit Gift Exchange? In short, you pick one of the monthly themes (for example, The Simpsons, or The 90s) and you’re matched with a complete stranger from somewhere else in the UK. You then buy this person a gift pertaining to the theme and send it to them. It’s a giant Secret Santa. You’re guaranteed a present in return from someone else and it’s all very jolly-hockey-sticks and amazing. We love it. In the twelve months we have been doing it we’ve had some genuinely brilliant gifts – homemade cookbooks, a massive box of ‘tourist’ paraphernalia from Scarborough, posters and gaming kit and plenty of others too numerous and marvellous to mention. I do love a Secret Santa, although I did once get my ex-boss a duck for her bath without realising it was a vibrator. That caused much embarrassment, especially when she tried it out in the office no-she-didn’t-don’t-worry. We didn’t have a bath!

So the theme this month was favourite decade and for both Paul and I this was definitely the 90s. It had it all – great TV in the shape of The Crystal Maze, 999 and dinnerladies, superb music (aside from Eiffel 65, fuck those guys) and proper morning-piss yellow Sunny Delight. Though for the record, remember we didn’t have much money and so branded radioactive drinks were out – the best we had was a bottle of Overcast Ennui in our lunchbox. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, our Secret Santa totally knocked it out of the park with their selection of 90s goods – just look at what we received!

bodacious-90s-gifts-1468606962-32659247819

Quite hard to see from Paul’s tiny photo which, in the spirit of the 90s, he seemingly took with a Game Boy camera, but there’s three CDs which I used to own and absolutely fucking love (especially the one on the right), a packet of Nintendo Playing Cards, two Tamagotchis, some Hot-Wheels and a proper little watch. There was also a lovely card. But good lord, what a perfect selection of 90s goodness – I had such a rush of nostalgia that my pubes disappeared and my voice unbroke. I know that’s not a word, squiggly-red-line, but it makes sense in this sentence.

I was always very lucky in that I didn’t go through the whole protracted stage of my voice breaking – I went to bed one night with a voice like Joe Pasquale and a scrotum like a tangerine, woke up the next morning sounding like Isaac Hayes and had a ballsack like a Bassett Hound’s ear. Perhaps it didn’t go quite as deep as Isaac but certainly I avoided all the squeaking and dropping that so many teenage lads seem to experience.

It was the Pogs that really sent us both whooshing back into memory land though. I absolutely loved them. God knows why, it’s just some natty coloured cardboard discs, but something about the simplicity really won me over. Paul and I tried to have a quick game only to send them tumbling all over the kitchen floor so god knows what has happened since, but back in the day, I was the King of Pogs. Well, perhaps the Queen of Pogs. I had the full set, a fluorescent green Pog holder and a slammer which was really just a massive, heavy-duty washer that my dad brought home from work. The Pogs epidemic swept through our school like the norovirus, with fights and scuffles leading to the outright ban of Pog battles in the playground. Didn’t stop us – we used to just play out of the sight of teachers. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the amount of lads I beat off behind the sheds when no-one was looking. Some things never change, eh.

I reckon Pogs was also the first flirtation with crime for both me and my sister. We had been dragged along to a car-boot sale somewhere inexplicable and indoors and were bored shitless. Parents, don’t take your kids to car boot sales. They’re full of things other people don’t need or want and anything interesting a kid finds is always met with a ‘WE DON’T NEED THAT’ from the parents. Oh, but we do need a VHS of Beverley Callard’s Fitness First and a giant glass ashtray, apparently.

We had spotted a Pog stand full of slammers that looked like something out of Saw and not-quite-Pogs that were possibly printed at home. Didn’t matter. All about volume in those days, see. Anyway, I distracted the lady behind the decorating table by commenting on how fine her moustache was or something whilst my sister proceeded to fill her trousers with Pogs, all held in by virtue of her Adidas Poppers had been tucked into her socks. Genius right? We were like the Krays of South Northumberland.

Don’t judge us too keenly, we were young and bored. Karma got us back anyway because the Pogs were of such bad quality that the ink ran and they were ruined by the heat of a rustling shellsuit. I’m sure my sister probably has a faint imprint of a Tazmanian Devil somewhere on her ankle even now.

Mind, as an aside, Pogs were nothing compared to the thrill of completing a Panini Premiership sticker book. Seeing Alan Shearer’s smug, insufferable face sliding out of the packet on a shiny backing meant being King of All Things, if only for a day. Nevermind the arguments that Pogs caused, I’ve seen fights that looked like when The Bride battles the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill 1 over a four inch by two inch sticker of Tino Asprilla. No amount of trading Paul-Furlong-for-Kevin-Pressman-and-the-Nottingham-Forest-logo is worth having your first adult tooth kicked clean out of your mouth for.

Dangerous times indeed!

Speaking of teeth, you’ll need them to chew the next recipe. I know right, a flawless segue. Now listen, I can’t claim any credit for the idea of this recipe, I found it on another site (Every Nook and Cranny) and thought it looked delicious. Naturally, ours came out looking like someone had driven a car over it before serving, but hell, who cares. It tasted fine and I’ve adapted it for Slimming World. So let’s do this.

chicken and pea lasagne chicken and pea lasagne

to make chicken and pea lasagne you will need:

  • 2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (three if you’re using supermarket ones) OR 500g chicken mince

Here’s the thing. Chicken breasts from our big Musclefood deal – you only need two because they’re so large and don’t shrivel away to nowt like the supermarket ones do. Click here to have a look – it’s definitely a good deal!

  • 2 leeks, finely sliced (save your fingers and time by using a mandolin slicer, not least because they’ll be uniform and so skinny it’ll make the other vegetables jealous) (also that’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen this slicer)
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced (use a mincer – garlic powder is fine, but a mincer makes short work of this and takes no time at all – buy one here and I promise you you’ll never look back)
  • 8 to 12 lasagne sheets (it depends on what size dish you use, see, I’m not just being awkward) (totally am)
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp sage
  • 3 tbsp passata
  • 2 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 200g peas
  • 250g quark
  • 30g grated parmesan (HeA)
  • 70g reduced fat mozzarella ball (HeA)
  • 12 cherry tomatoes (because I’m an ostentatious sod, I’m using ones grown in our greenhouse – next year raise a tomato plant and you’ll be amazed by the difference in flavour – because home-grown tomatoes actually taste of something, see)
  • salt
  • pepper
  • worcestershire sauce

If you can’t get chicken mince and don’t have a food processor to make your own, don’t panic – use turkey mince instead. Perfectly acceptable swap and very easy to buy in supermarkets. Chicken is tastier, though.

to make chicken and pea lasagne you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • if you’re using chicken breasts you will need to mince it – if you don’t have a fancy mincer (who does?!) then you can use a food processor with a grating blade, or use a cheese grater. Either way it’s a clart on so use chicken/turkey mince when you can!

Because we’re super fancy, we have one of these wonderful Magimix mixers. We threw the chicken breasts in there, pulsed them for a few seconds and that was that. If you cook a lot and have some spare moolah, I can genuinely and heartily recommend it. If you’re someone whose refrain to anything is ‘I CAN GET IT CHEAPER IN ALDI’, perhaps don’t even look.

  • heat a large saucepan over a medium heat and add some squirty olive oil, but not Frylight. Never Frylight, it scares me.
  • add the leeks, reduce the heat to low and cook until they soften, which will take about ten minutes
  • when the leeks are soft, add the garlic, stir, and then add the chicken
  • raise the heat to medium and stir well and cook until the chicken is no longer pink, because you don’t want to be revisiting the lasagne thirty minutes after eating as it thunders out of your arse
  • add the oregano and sage, stir, and then add the chopped tomatoes, passata and tomato puree with 60ml of water
  • stir the peas into the pan and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the sauce has reduced. If it looks too thick add more water
  • add salt, pepper and worcestershire to season however you like it
  • in a small saucepan add the quark and parmesan and heat over a low heat until it softens, then remove from the heat as soon as the mixture is well combined, adding salt and pepper if you like – I like a really peppery sauce so I always shoot for the moon at this point
  • in a deep dish assemble the lasagne however you like
  • spoon a third of the chicken mixture into the bottom of the dish, followed by a third of the cheese sauce and a layer of lasagne sheets. repeat for two more layers – if you don’t have enough, just do two layers – it’s all going to get turned into poo, it doesn’t matter how well you put it all together
  • top with torn chunks of mozzarella and pop on the cherry tomatoes
  • bake for 35 minutes or until everything looks delicious and the top looks like a burnt knee
  • serve with a side salad of speed food, or, do as I do, give a portion to your other half and then secretly eat all the crusty cheesy topping under the guise of going back to the kitchen for a drink
  • it’s no wonder my thighs smell of bacon, is it

See? Nice and summery and a bit lighter than your traditional hefty lasagne. You can adapt this recipe however you want. I got scolded last time for using two HEAs in my recipe on the basis that one person is only allowed one healthy extra. This is true. But, this also serves four folks easily and six people at a pinch, and frankly, if you’re eating enough lasagne in one sitting to feed six people, you’ve got more to worry about than an extra 30g of cheese.

We’ve made three other lasagne recipes, why not take a look?

If you’re looking for more pasta ideas or chicken recipes, click on the buttons below and be whisked away to a land of recipes and whimsy.

pastasmallpoultrysmall

Cheers!

J

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July 11, 2016

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low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, sausages

sun-dried tomato and sausage pasta

Here for the sundried tomato and sausage pasta? Well, you’ll have to wait. Adults are talking.

Actually, I’m not so much talking as effing and jeffing angrily under my breath. I’m fizzing with anger! Remember we traded in the tiny Micra way back in March for an even smaller Smart car (next year we’re trading the Smart car in for a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe and some magic beans)? Well, we did all of the paperwork to switch the ownership of the Micra only to receive a stern letter from the DVLA telling us that we were breaking the law because GASP the Micra was uninsured despite a) us not owning it anymore and b) I’m fairly sure it’s a fucking cube of metal the size of a box of Swan Vestas by now.

I had the joy of speaking to someone so thick she’d struggle to look through a ladder who, after much umming, aahing and dribbling into the microphone so it sounded like she was in a washing machine, told me to send a letter in proving we had indeed sold the car. I did this promptly, without delay, and with only minimum amount of swearing. Hell, I even used my full name on the letter because it sounds lovely and posh. Then I, comfortable in the knowledge that the good folk at the DVLA were sorting it, immediately forgot about it and moved on with my life, which has recently consisted of looking at and ruling out garden furniture for 23 hours a day.

Until today when lo and behold I get a fucking penalty in the post for having an uninsured bloody car! Great! I’d understand if the penalty was for reasons of bad taste because we bought an orange Smart car that looks like we’re driving around in a Fruitella but no! AARGH man. Now I’ve got to send another letter with further proof and I’ve been told, via another wonderful customer service adviser who was also knitting with one needle, that I’ll still need to pay the fine regardless. Honestly, I almost did a proper Jeremy Kyle punch through the wall, though knowing my current luck this would result in a penalty from More Than for unauthorised household alterations.

Why are these things so difficult? We live in a world where, if I wanted to, I could nip onto the Internet and show my button off in glorious 1080p to some pervy old masochist in Canberra, but we seemingly can’t invent a system where we can submit our documents online in a safe and secure fashion. No, I have to leave important financial documentation to the idiosyncrasies of the Royal Bloody Mail, who currently have a 0% success rate with me. Perhaps I had a dyslexic postman who thought I meant VLAD instead of DVLA and is currently hiking his way through deepest Transylvania with a furrowed brow and a garlic necklace. Who knows.

Samsung was another experience – product still in warranty, had to call six times before I got through to someone who dared break the script in front of them and even then, still got absolutely nowhere until I complained via Twitter and got you lovely folks to chip in. In the end we had our hob fixed for free and the chap dealing with it was lovely but why make me jump through so many hoops? I mean COME ON I’m morbidly obese, jumping through hoops makes my ankles splinter. PAH. Nevermind.

Just as an update on the garden furniture situation – because I know you lot will have been gasping awake in the night with fret and worry about whether we’ve got somewhere to bronze our bitch-titties this summer – we found the table we want only to discover we’d need to hire a bloody crane to get it into the garden. Paul and I both agreed that this would be fine only on the basis that the fat builder from the moneysupermarket adverts was the crane operator, and oopsy-daisy-let-me-get-that-wet-hi-vis-off-you-oh-goodness-me-my-cock-fell-out, but they couldn’t guarantee this., the unreasonable swines. So we’re back to square one.  Great!

Now, before I get to the sundried tomato and sausage pasta, a quick favour. Just a tiny one, I promise. It’s two clicks. A friend of mine has entered his dog in a competition. When I say entered his dog, I don’t mean it in perhaps the way you think, you dirty moo. She’s (hopefully) to be the star of all of the vet’s correspondence from ‘Spot needs his anal-glands draining‘ (don’t we all) to ‘Oops we’ve put Rex down LOL #YOLO‘ and she’s currently being beaten. And well, if you don’t help, that means you enjoy seeing animals being beaten and that makes you worse than Hitler. So, for the love of all things chubby, click here (it’ll open in a new window) and vote for Pearl. Let’s make her a star!

OK. Enough chitter chatter. To the recipe…

sundried tomato and sausage pasta

to make sundried tomato and sausage pasta you will need:

  • 250g pasta (we used farfalle) (because we’re just FARFALLE people, boom boom)
  • 4 sausages, fat free or low in fat then syn appropriately (why not use the ones in our Musclefood deal?)
  • 1 tin of cannellini beans, drained
  • 5 sundried tomatoes (use the dried kind, not the one in oil! and steep them in hot water for 30 minutes beforehand to plump them back up and chop finely) (2 syns, apparently)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced (come on, you know it’s coming, but haway, buy one of these, it’s genuinely brilliant!
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp chilli flakes
  • 3 handfuls of baby spinach
  • 2 handfuls of rocket
  • little bit of grated parmesan

to make sundried tomato and sausage pasta you should:

  • cook the pasta according to the instructions, drain (reserve 125ml of the water for use later) and set aside
  • meanwhile, heat a large, deep pan over a medium-high heat and add a little oil or frylight, listen, be your own person, make your own rules here
  • cook the sausages until brown on all sides and add the tin of beans, tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic and chilli flakes, and cook for about a minute – stirring frequently
  • add the pasta to the pan along with the spinach and rocket and stir well
  • cook for about 30 seconds or so, until the leaves have wilted, and add a little of the reserved pasta water if it starts to look too dry
  • serve and sprinkle over the parmesan

Enjoy. Tell everyone about it. If you’re looking for MORE recipes, you greedy slattern, you’ll find more sausage recipes and more pasta recipes right here by clicking the buttons!

sausagessmall pastasmall

Done. Now I’m off to attach a notice of new ownership to a carrier pigeon and hurl it at Wales.

J

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July 4, 2016

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budget, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

james’ any old shite salad

What an alluring name! But my any old shite salad is so called because I literally dice up and chuck in any old shite that I have lying in the back of the fridge. I’m on a bit of a drive to stop wasting so much food – something that is quite difficult when running a food blog given how many new recipes we have to come up with. Plus, I spend £3 a day on Subway for my lunch and thought this would be cheaper, plus I don’t have to stare angrily at the back of some poor lad’s head whilst he umms and aaars his way through the choices.

As an aside, do I win Pickiest Subway Salad award? I get double plain chicken, no cheese, half lettuce, cucumber, no onion or olives, double gherkins, double jalapeno, tomatoes (with a pinch of salt), honey and mustard dressing but the dressing has to go on before all the salad so the leaves are wet. I know, I’m a terror, but I think I get away with it because I’m so unfailingly polite and I bought them a box of Celebrations at Christmas. I’m not convinced the guy behind the till speaks a lick of English – and alas, my Latvian is a little rusty – so he could be calling me worse than muck under his breath and I wouldn’t know. Ah well, them’s the breaks. I prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

Oh, I once got thrown out of a Subway in Southend after getting steaming drunk in Colours in Basildon with my ex who looked like Granitarse from Knightmare and storming in demanding a chicken ticky-licky sandwich and crying when they didn’t understand what I meant. Look, it had been an emotional evening, my ex’s then-partner had caught us…what a slut. I’m not usually such an arsehole when I’m drunk, I hasten to add. I’m not.

Right, anyway, no diversions, we weren’t going to post tonight as we’re in the middle of decorating our bedroom and getting jizz off the ceiling takes a great deal of determination. So: the any old shite salad.

any old shite salad

I’m not going to treat you like a moron and tell you how to prepare any old shite salad, but here’s what is in mine:

  • sliced baby cucumber with the seeds cut out
  • a variety of cherry tomatoes, chopped, salted and drained
  • a handful of baby corn, sliced
  • a fistful of sugarsnap peas
  • a baby’s mitten of gherkins, sliced
  • a cat’s sneeze of new potatoes, diced
  • an extravagant wave of tiny soup pasta
  • a perfunctory sexual act of tiny pickled onions
  • a discarded cigarette packet of olives (which I don’t syn, not the pitted black ones, and that’s not because I’m racist)
  • a blushing smile of tiny pickled red peppers
  • a knee-slapping chortle of broccoli
  • an angry drunken confrontation of asparagus tips
  • a thought of mint leaves
  • a carpet sample of ham – leave out for a veggie option
  • an uprising of chopped red and green pepper
  • a don’t-tell-Margaret-HEA (X2) of crumbled feta cheese
  • an after-coitus-dribble of fat-free dressing (I make mine from balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of dijon mustard and some lemon juice – I don’t syn the mustard either, it’s a tiny amount, but you can go for it)

You can surely tell from my piss-take amounts that there’s no set rules when it comes to amounts. Make as much as you like, vary the ingredients, take out what you don’t like and add stuff you do. I like to cram as many different textures and tastes into each salad because it keeps things interesting. I make enough on a Monday night to fill four large lunchboxes and this carries me through to the end of the week. It keeps well in the fridge because you haven’t saturated it in dressing and actually, the less moisture in the salad, the fresher it seems to stay.

Lunchboxes? Sistema all the way. Cheap but reliable and next to nothing on Amazon – see!

any old shite salad

See, I might have called it any old shite, but it’s a bloody good idea for lunch!

Oh, as a little extra, I made some pickled red onion slices a couple of weeks ago when I made those fancy eggs – nothing special, just a load of very thinly sliced red onion (this is where one of these comes in handy – and ooh, it’s almost half price on Amazon – buy one and you’ll use it lots, I promise), stick them in a sterilised Kilner jar, top up with rice vinegar with a teaspoon of sugar added (heat the vinegar, add the sugar so it dissolves, then take off the heat), throw in some black peppercorns and leave in the jar in the fridge for as long as you need them. Everything goes a pretty colour, as you can see. Up to you whether you syn the sugar – if you do, it’s 1 syn per tsp, but really, it goes into the vinegar and well, you’re not going to eat all the onion in one go). This is lovely on a burger but even better mixed into your any old shite salad!

any old shite salad

Enjoy. If you want more ideas for vegetarian recipes or snacks, click on the buttons below!

vegetariansmallsnackssmall

Thanks!

J

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June 26, 2016

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lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

caprese frittata – syn free

I was going to post this caprese frittata yesterday, but I couldn’t be fucked on typing it all up after spending the day smacking my head against various walls at the result. We’re already looking at moving to Iceland, so I hope you’re ready for recipes of súrir hrútspungar (sour ram testicles) and delicious gellur (cod tongues). Anyway, busy day ahead, so let’s bang out a breakfast recipe. Due to our lack of hob we had to use a wee little camping hob which was an absolute comedy of errors, I can assure you.

Before I get to that though, remember: our Musclefood deal runs for another couple of days only – 10% off our already amazing value freezer box! It’s a delivered chilled box of wonder – with 24/26 big fat chicken breasts, 800g of extra lean beef chunks, 2kg of extra lean beef mince and lots and lots of bacon. It’s usually £50 – which is cheap when compared to what you’d pay in the shop – but we’ve knocked off 10% for ONE WEEK ONLY. This brings it down to £45 – the cheapest it has ever been. Remember you can choose the date of delivery and payment doesn’t come out until your chosen date, so you can order in advance. To order, just click this link, add to basket, add the code TCCFREEZER and choose standard delivery – £45! Easy! But this is for ONE WEEK ONLY.

I have to confess, I’m not a huge fan of anything omelette/frittata – I don’t like the way eggs squeak when they are cooked, but I saw this recipe online and thought it would be worth a go. It was delicious. Plus, my parents are now keeping chickens so every time I go over I’m gifted eighteen eggs, and well, our arms hurt from hurling them off our exes’ windows. I joke. We just shit in their flowerbeds. Right no time for words, recipe!

caprese frittata

to make caprese frittata you will need:

  • 8 eggs
  • 250g cherry tomatoes, sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced (yes, using one of these...)
  • handful of basil leaves
  • 60ml skimmed milk (that equates to a tbsp of milk per person – syn it if you want to, but we didn’t!)
  • 170g baby spinach
  • 90g ball of reduced fat mozarella, sliced (HeA)

Remember, if you buy a basil plant from the supermarket, keep it in its pot and stand it in water, it’ll last all summer long. UNLIKE OUR ECONOMY AM I RIGHT OR AM I RIGHT.

to make caprese frittata you should:

  • preheat the grill to medium-high
  • heat a large oven-safe pan over a medium-high heat and add a little oil or Frylight – if you’ve got a decent pan, use it, if not, be a bit liberal with the spray oil
  • add the garlic and cook until golden brown, texture like sun
  • add the tomatoes and basil to the pan and continue cooking until the tomatoes become mushy and blistered
  • meanwhile, whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk and a pinch of salt and set aside
  • when the tomatoes are ready, remove half from the pan and set aside on a plate
  • pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir around the tomatoes to get it all mixed together
  • reduce the heat to medium-low and add the spinach and lay on the mozzarella slices
  • cook in the pan until the eggs are almost set – it’ll take about ten minutes, but don’t rush it
  • remove the pan from the hob and place under the grill and cook until the top has browned and it has puffed up
  • remove from the grill and spread the reserved tomatoes and basil mixture on the top

You can add any old shite into this – peppers, mushrooms, bacon, car engines, I don’t care. It tastes good with the trio of basil, mozzarella and tomato, though. This will freeze well and can be eaten cold the next day. If you’re looking for more breakfast ideas, click on the icon below.

breakfastsmall

I’m off to look into growing a beard and becoming a lumberjack in Canada. Hell, I’ve certainly got years of experience dealing with cut wood.

J

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June 18, 2016

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, rice, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

sticky apricot chicken skewers

Here for the sticky apricot chicken skewers? Scroll on down, because first…

’tis a lovely day. Now see, whenever Saturday comes around, I always think we should fill it with fun activities and marvellous days out because within the blink of an eye it’ll be Monday again and I’ll be sick of my life. There’s only so much enthusiasm one can fake for getting into a car and looking at the back of some cockknocker in an Audi for forty five minutes on a Monday morning. But invariably it’ll get to noon, Paul will peel himself out of the soggy patch, make the bacon sandwiches and we’ll spend two hours farting about doing fuck all. Then really it’s getting on for being too late to go out and make a day of it, so instead we end up watching X-Files and turning pale from the lack of sunlight. In my defence, I was going to spend the day weeding the flower-beds but one of the litters of flimflam up the street are having a BBQ and I can’t concentrate for the smell of Iceland sausages not being cooked correctly and the tinny sound of Now That’s What I Call Inevitable Domestic Violence playing over cheap speakers. I stepped outside to hang out some shirts and someone was loudly discussing Crocs as if they were anything other than fit for a bonfire so I came straight back in. Pfft.

I suppose I could entertain myself by watching the football but really, no. I can’t see the appeal. I see grown men crying (possibly because of the tear gas) on the television and feel nothing but cold embarrassment. I’m not afraid to show my emotions but I can’t leak over someone not kicking something else into a football net. I don’t feel national pride stirring when Rooney lumbers out looking like someone shaved Susan Boyle and spun her through Sports Direct and it annoys me more than avocado being synned that none of the players sing the national anthem properly, instead choosing to mouth the approximate sounds and keep their heads buried into their dandruff-free shoulders. I come from Newcastle, a city known for its enthusiastic football supporters, but I confess the only reason I own a football shirt is because my ex used to like using it for role play. I still don’t know who Jimmy Five Bellies is.

And it’s not as if many people haven’t tried to get me into football. My parents used to have loads of people around to watch the matches back in the day when Newcastle United were half-decent. I used to watch every other match that I could but it wasn’t out of interest or passion, oh no, it was more for the opportunity to try name-brand buffet food – Pringles instead of Stackers and Diet Coke instead of Påpsi Mild. The luxury! This was when football would be faintly interesting, too – when Newcastle beat Manchester United 5-1 or when Kevin Keegan was blowing spittle into the camera on Sky Sports. I could name you more players from 1996-1999 than I could modern day footballers, but I suppose that’s because you rarely see their faces given they’re always rolling around on the grass clutching their ankles.

Darren Peacock used to have a lovely home in the village that I grew up in, and he’ll remain my favourite player ever simply by virtue of giving us all a tin of Quality Street each for Hallowe’en – and this was before the tin was the size of an engagement ring box. I’ve met Alan Shearer twice in my career and each time he’s been nothing short of an arse – entitled, self-aggrandising and absolutely in love with himself. Honestly, if you’re going to pick a Geordie to make you wet, don’t make it him with his baldy heed and face that looks like he’s always trying to remember if he’s switched the iron off. I appreciate that there aren’t many other Geordies to choose from that’ll make your Birth Cannon tingle. Jimmy Nail looks like a donkey being told bad news. Robson Green is 2ft tall and apparently suffers from the same arse-ache as Shearer. Sting would be too busy cooing at his own reflection to satisfy you and well, you can’t have Ant without Dec.

We did give the world Charlie Hunnam though, so you can thank us later for that. Speaking of thanking us for a slab of tasty meat, you’ll be grateful for our recommendation once you’ve tried our sticky apricot chick skewers. Served with rice and a HEB pitta, they make a perfect summer dinner.

sticky apricot chicken skewers

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you will need:

  • 4 chicken breasts, diced
  • 4 peppers, cut into big chunks

You get about 24/26 chicken breasts, along with extra lean mince, lean bacon and beef chunks, in our fabulous Freezer Filler! Treat yourself – and us via commission – right now!

for the marinade

  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 4 tsp onion powder
  • pinch of salt and pepper

for the sauce

  • 8 tbsp no added sugar apricot jam (12 syns)
  • 10 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 3 tsp fresh minced ginger
  • 6 tsp soy sauce
  • 4 tbsp cider vinegar

I know I bang on about this all the time, but if you haven’t already, buy yourself a microplane grater. It’ll mince your garlic and ginger in no time at all, and it’s less than a tenner. Easy! Click here for our recommended mincer.

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you should:

  • place the diced chicken in a freezer bag, sprinkle in all the marinade ingredients, shake, and leave for at least two hours if possible (overnight is best)
  • when ready to cook, add all of the sauce ingredients to a saucepan and heat over a medium-low heat
  • stir until well blended and keep over a low heat
  • thread the chicken and peppers onto the skewers – you should have enough for eight
  • cook the chicken under a hot grill, turning after about 3 minutes or until the chicken is cooked
  • remove the skewers from the grill and spoon the sauce over the skewers
  • put them back under the grill for a minute or two just to make the sauce sticky
  • serve with your rice and pitta – easy!

How easy was that? Want more chicken or takeaway recipes? Click the links below!

fakeawayssmall poultrysmall

Done!

J