Category Archives: lunch

Lunch ideas

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February 18, 2016

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bacon, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, sauces, syn free

butternut squash spaghetti sauce, plus weigh-in time!

Super quick post tonight because well, you’ve had plenty this week! I’M JUST ONE MAN 🙁 and Paul! Oops. First, let me get my cock out:

twochubbycubs

Ah, that’s better. We’ve lost 6.5lb of the 9lb we put on in New York, and the rest will be off next week. Our ankles thank us.

I also have a favour – a lot of you have bought our book, bless you. Could I trouble you for a moment more to leave a review for us? It’ll only help us and we ask for so little! You can find a link to the book right here – and for those who haven’t bought it yet, look at my sad face.

dawson-cryings

Pfft, I wish I had hair like that. 

Anyway, tonight’s recipe, yeah? Dead simple. Makes enough for four greedy chunkers!

butternut squash spaghetti sauce

to make butternut squash spaghetti sauce you will need:

  • 600g of butternut squash, cut into 2cm cubes
  • 6 bacon medallions, chopped
  • 1 red onion, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 250ml chicken stock
  • 1½ tsp dried sage
  • 1½ tsp dried thyme
  • 200ml skimmed milk (use some of your HEA allowance, but remember this makes enough for four)
  • 500g spaghetti

to make butternut squash spaghetti sauce you should:

  • heat a little bit of oil in large saucepan over a medium-high heat
  • add the onion and cook for about 1-2 minutes
  • add the garlic and stir for about thirty seconds, then add the butternut squash, stock, sage and them
  • stir well and cover, and leave to cook for about 15 minutes 
  • meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil and cook the spaghetti 
  • when the squash is softened (you should be able to poke a fork into it – oh you flirt – with a little resistance), pour the lot into a food processor, add the milk and 50ml of water and add a bit of salt or pepper and pulse until smooth
  • heat a small saucepan over a medium-high heat and add the chopped bacon – stir frequently until crispy
  • drain the pasta and pop it back into the large saucepan, add the butternut squash sauce and mix together
  • serve and top with the crispy bacon pieces

It’s plain and simple but bloody tasty and easy to customise – add in mushrooms, peppers or deep-fried Creme Eggs. You could leave out the bacon if you’re feeling all wan and disappointed with life.

J

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February 14, 2016

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american, breast, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, travel

buffalo chicken loaded potatoes

Looking for buffalo chicken loaded potatoes and don’t want any of my nonsense? Then scroll down to the picture, enjoy the recipe and all the best of luck to you.

Have they gone? GOOD. Didn’t they smell of foist and Muller yoghurts? Booooo! Anyway, with it being Valentines Day, are you expecting a romance filled, warm-hearted gaze at our love-life? Well, you’re shit out of luck! No, although we’ve had a lovely day (where I may have accidentally ruined someone’s marriage proposal – oops) (more on that another time), tonight’s entry is going to be the last post about Iceland, just to tie it off neatly. See, every time we’ve gone on holiday, I always forget to write up the last day for ages and then end up looking screw-eyed at my notes trying to remember what we did. That’s more difficult than you can imagine, because usually I’m in such a sulk about having to come home that my notes consist of ‘EATING BREAKFAST’ ‘MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD’ and ‘PAUL’S BEING A KNOB’. Bless him, he’s never a knob. Aside from when we’re engaging in gland to gland combat. Let’s get started then!

twochubbycubs go to Iceland: part six

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

If you’re a fan of our holiday writing, you can find previous entries and so, so much more in our book, available on Amazon now!

OK, confession. At this point, our holiday was lots of little snippets of activities, so I’ll cover them off briefly. I can’t remember the chronology but look, I don’t claim to be a travel writer, so don’t bust your buns getting in a flap about it.

First, the Phallological Museum. We made it on our second visit and it was…interesting. Essentially a few rooms filled with all sorts of knobs, from tiny little mouse knobs to big old American knobs holding giant cameras who think that they are the only ones interested in taking photos. Silly man, you’ll find the c*nt museum is next door. Yes, I’m asterisking that, because I can’t bear the thought of Mags clutching her pearls and choking on her pint of Gordons.

It’s no secret that Paul and I are both committed fans of the penis, but even so, there’s only so many you can see in one place before they all start blending into one. There’s precious little in the way of human willies, although there is a fine metal casting of all of the knobs of the Icelandic ice hockey team, covering everything from the goalie to the puck, who seemingly had enough foreskin for the rest of the team. The whole display would make for a unique present for a lady to hang her necklaces, that’s for sure. We learned that the biggest penis in all of the world belongs to the blue whale, measuring over 16ft long. Gosh! The biggest cock I’ve ever seen was 6ft 3″, but I stopped dating him after a couple of weeks. Boom boom. After twenty minutes of stroking our chins and various wooden willies, we hastened to the gift shop where, out of a mixture of British politeness and a love of tat, we bought an wooden ashtray shaped like a giant willy. We don’t even smoke. It’s currently sat in our games room, where doubtless when our house burns down it’ll be dragged from the rubble and held aloft for the papers as a sign of our deviant lifestyle. 

Second, we went out drinking one night, which was great fun though FUCK ME was it expensive. I’m by no means an expensive date but hell, we ended up emptying my wallet twice over and all we were drinking was their local beer and vodka. We found a bar which gave us flights of beer, essentially four different third-pints and a shot of vodka in order to “try them out”. Well, we were absolutely wankered in no time at all. At some point in the evening we ended up in a sports bar hollering at the TV with all of the locals at some sport of the TV that even now, with a sober mind, I can’t tell you what they were playing. We bumped into another couple of blokes who recognised us from the hotel (presumably we flashed up on their radar as the fat fuckers who kept eating all the bread at breakfast), immediately agreed we’d join in with their pub-crawl, and then almost as immediately Paul and I buggered off around the corner and lost them. We stopped for a crêpe from one of the many food trucks scattered around (because, let’s be honest, adding cream, eggs and chocolate onto a belly full of dark beer and vodka is always a clever idea) and Paul asked to use her toilet. It took almost five minutes of her explaining that there was no toilet in her tiny food-truck before Paul stopped looking at her owlishly and staggered off to find one of the many loos scattered around the streets, a big chocolate smear halfway up his face. I apologised for us, called us typical Brits, and hastened off after him.

After many more drinks we decided to stagger back to the hotel along the seafront (a 50 minute walk when sober) and, on the way, spotted a Dominos pizza. Well, we had to try an Icelandic Dominos, surely, so in we went, ordering two large pizzas with the strict instruction that they couldn’t deliver back to the hotel until after forty minutes had passed, giving us enough time to saunter back cool and collected. Nope. No, realising that the walk was altogether much further than we had anticipated (not least because we were both careering around drunk), we had to really pick up the pace, and that’s how the good folk of Reykjavik were treated to the sight of two large, fat blokes, drunk as all outdoors, staggering, sliding and powermincing along the icy roads. I tumbled into a grass verge at one point and Paul might have been sick in a bin. What can I say, we ooze class. Once we stumbled into the hotel lobby, the pizza guy was waiting with a scowl – clearly the sight of us wheezing and lolling about didn’t amuse him. Poor sport. I slipped some notes into his pocket like he was a ten-quid prossie, apologised profusely in that earnest drunken voice that we all hate, and retrieved Paul from the concierge office, which he’d mistaken for a lift.

Oh, and those two pizzas? Cost us £70 by the time we’d tipped the poor bloke standing in the lobby. But they tasted delicious.

We spent our final day shopping, eating chips, walking around and just soaking in the place. It’s truly remarkable. A slightly bizarre moment in a tiny little coffee shop where I witnessed a young, buxom lady having a coffee with what I presumed to be her father until she stood up, almost straddled him and gave him the wettest, longest, most committed French kiss I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if she had a real thing for the taste of Steradent but it was so unexpected and bizarre that I barely had time to pull my phone out. Good on the old chap for getting some, I suppose, but it sounded like someone had pulled a plug out of a bath filled with wet hair. We made a swift exit and carried on. Paul fell on his arse again into a large puddle and I knocked over a shop’s display of stuffed puffins (accidentally, naturally) but in no time at all it was time to walk back to the hotel to catch our bus to the airport. Naturally, we immediately got lost, and went on possibly the most convoluted trip ever, taking in their central motorway, what I’m sure was a red-light district, a park that looked like something out of Dangerous Minds and a car dealership. It took us almost three hours – with flat phones, no less – to get back to the hotel, twenty minutes before the bus departed. We did ask the one old man who didn’t look like he’d knife us as soon as look at us for directions, but he spoke no English (quite right) and we spoke no Icelandic, though I reckon if I’d started choking on a Strepsil at that very second he might have made sense of it. 

It was with a heavy heart that we boarded our bus back to the airport, after a minor panic after we were told that the front desk staff at the hotel hadn’t actually organised our transfer. They sorted it out after much raising of eyebrows and strangling sounds. Naturally, we both immediately fell asleep on the bus, but well, it’s only got one destination so you can’t go too wrong. Did have a moment of despair when I spotted that there were almost 50 wee Scottish schoolchildren ahead of us in the queue to check-in, but actually, they were very well behaved and a credit to their school. I was disappointed, I had a perfect 140-character passive aggressive tweet all set ready to go to their school when landing in the UK. Bah. There’s fuck all to do in the airport other than lose your passports and buy alcohol, although we did manage to cobble together two year’s worth of annual salary between us which allowed us to buy a burger that, if needed, could have been used as a landing wheel for our approaching plane. Who knew moisture was optional? 

The flight itself was uneventful, save for the captain coming on to say that if we were lucky, we’d see the Northern Lights through the window, which caused the wheezing behemoth in front of me to pitch her seat back pretty much into my lap. Apparently this afforded her a better view of the inky blackness and the engine lights, for she didn’t shift an inch for the rest of the flight. No, honestly, what I really want to look at for the duration of my flight are your split-ends and cheap home hair-dye job, you inconsiderate cow. 

We landed smoothly, picked up our car and made our way through the night back to Newcastle. It was a lovely drive, punctuated only by a midnight stop at McDonalds for sustenance and a hurried crap about forty minutes later to dispatch aforementioned McDonalds into the murky brown yonder. Now, let us take a quick dirty diversion here. Those of a prudish disposition might want to alight for a couple of paragraphs and join us later.

Toilets, namely public toilets, I don’t understand the sexual appeal. We stopped at some toilets in the middle of Fuck-All, Nowhere and every conceivable surface was covered in the type of graffiti that made even me blush. But this toilet wasn’t some plush outbuilding with comfortable ledges and a decent hand-drier for blowing the last drips off, no, this looked like something out of a Saw movie. There was more piss on the floor than there was in the sewer below, most of the lights were burnt out and three out of the four traps contained toilets that looked like someone had drawn an intricate map of the local A and B roads using faeces. Dirty doesn’t begin to describe them! So who is willingly getting down on their knees in a place like that? It doesn’t bear thinking about. For long. Brrr.

However, our practical reason for visiting these toilets couldn’t be avoided and I risked death and urine burns to ‘drop the kids off’, as quickly and as delicately as I could. Whilst hovering above the pan like I was riding an invisible magic carpet, a peculiar bit of graffiti caught my eye – a bold (admittedly in very nice handwriting) statement declaring that a gloryhole could be found in the ladies toilet. Hmm.

Anyway, I once heard of a chap who had his knob sliced with a knife when he put it through a gloryhole, like the world’s most budget circumcision, and another who had a cigarette put out on it. If I ever find myself in a lavatory and a knob that isn’t my own suddenly appears, I’ll be using it to hang the toilet roll on.

OK, prudish folk, come on back.

We made it home for around 3am, made a fuss out of our cats who, of course, totally ignored us and acted like we’d betrayed them in the worst possible way by daring to go away, and went straight to bed. Iceland done. Let’s sum up.

Pros

  • absolutely beautiful – now I know that almost goes without saying, but honestly, it’s so alien and unusual and unlike anywhere we’ve been before that we’d recommend it just for that experience alone;
  • so much to do – and even as two fat blokes, we never struggled with any of the activities, it’s all very accessible
  • tonnes of history, even if their museums are a smidge dry
  • amazing food, especially all of their snack stations and tiny little places to eat
  • the Northern Lights, I mean, come on
  • not rammed full of either trashy British tourists or massive touring groups

Cons

  • incredibly expensive, and it’s not even easy to get around this – snacks and drinks are expensive, meals and nights out even more so – be prepared to spend
  • if you’re not a fan of sitting on buses to get to places, you’ll struggle, but even then the buses are comfortable, WiFi enabled and warm, so it’s a hard one to ‘con’
  • the occasional standoffishness, but hell, you’re going to get that anywhere

Go. We can’t recommend it enough! If you don’t love it, we’ll be amazed!

We travelled with easyJet from Edinburgh to Reykjavik, landing early in the evening. We stayed at the Edinburgh Airport (Newbridge) Premier Inn the night before and then the Grand Hotel in Reykjavik. We organised all of our excursions directly with Grey Line Excursions or Reykjavik Excursions, including our airport transfers. All wonderful to deal with!

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Right. So you lot want a recipe for buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, eh? Then shall we begin? This recipe makes enough for four large potatoes cut in half, with a person having two halves. Easy! Also, these sit well to eat the day after for a lunch and I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t be frozen, so get on that.

buffalo chicken loaded potatoes

to make buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, you’ll need:

Really, this is actually quarter of a syn for each serving of two potato halves, but we added on that extra quarter syn for the tiny bit of reduced fat feta. You can leave it off. Look, either way, you’re not going to be Ten Tonne Tessie from eating these, OK? These could be made syn free if you omitted the sauce, and indeed, if you’re not a fan of having an arsehole like the Japanese flag, why not try leaving it out?

to make buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, you should:

  • cook the potatoes as you would for a jacket potato
  • in a small jug, mix together the Buffalo sauce, white vinegar and tabasco sauce and set aside
  • cook the chicken breasts until done – under the grill, in the oven, in a pan, using the acid breath of a hated relative…however you prefer
  • when cooked, pull the chicken apart using two forks
  • when the potatoes are cooked, cut in half, allow to cool a little and scoop out all of the flesh into a separate bowl
  • add the chicken, cheddar cheese and Buffalo sauce mix to the potato flesh and mash until well combined
  • scoop the potato flesh back into the potato skins
  • cook under a hot grill for a few minutes until nicely browned
  • sprinkle on the feta (if you’re using) and enjoy!

It’s up to you if you want to serve this with some speed food or just beans like we did. I’m not the boss!

J

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December 3, 2015

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fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients

one-pot sausage gnocchi bake

Recipe for sausage gnocchi bake below. You’re going to love it.

OK, so only a quick one tonight – and I’m not entirely sure we haven’t already posted this. But look, it doesn’t matter. It was wonderful, and frankly you can forgive me any old shite when I’ve covered it in melted cheese. Half of  our dishes come out of the oven looking like a burnt knee, but through the wonders of careful photography and judicious cropping, you just never know. Perhaps if I presented it on one of those fancy Slimming World plates you can buy, where someone has scribbled all over a nice white plate with some felt-tips to show ‘what you should eat’ – a concept immediately defeated when you then proceed to cover the plate with your dinner, I presume. I don’t understand the concept of drawing out ‘what I should eat’ on my plate. It’s the foodie equivalent to scratching the TV guide into the glass of your television screen.

Actually, I saw one of these plates advertised on a facebook group the other day and asked what she meant by ‘for show only’, given I was envisioning someone having it on their mantlepiece like a decorative clock or one of those god-awful ‘jumping dolphins rendered in plaster of paris’ statues that everyone had in the nineties. She advised me that it meant it couldn’t be washed or indeed, eaten off. To me, that breaks the two fundamental rules of a plate. It’s definitely not something you’d keep for best. 

Before anyone starts, I’m not knocking the lass for being entrepreneurial and flogging a few plates – all the very best and good luck to her! Nothing but chipperness for those who make their own way in the world.

But honestly, Paul, if you’re reading this, I’m telling you now: if I get a decorated plate, bloody chalk-heart board or a food diary with a cupcake and twattish inspirational message on the front for Christmas, I’m going to bite your cock off and set it on fire.

Speaking of nonsense items that I’d sooner throw into the sun than have in my house, we seem to be locked in a battle of wills with our local Kleeneze distributor. Every few weeks he pushes a tatalogue of nonsense through our door with the passive aggressive note that he’ll be back within a few days to pick it up. We immediately put it somewhere out of sight so we don’t succumb to temptation and end up buying all manner of plastic shite for the kitchen or a portable urinal. A portable urinal for men. Haway. The WORLD is a portable urinal when you’re a guy. Fair enough a shewee allows a lady to have a dainty tinkle instead of grunting around a ditch squatting like a shitting rhino, but a male version? I once, in my more athletic and skinny days, pissed out of a moving car because we were late for a ferry. Don’t worry, we weren’t boarding the ferry at the time. And I wasn’t driving. Dangerous when I think about it – an errant branch whipping into my knob at seventy miles an hour could have really changed how my life turned out. 

Anyway, he always ends up knocking on the door and asking for his tatalogue back, and thus begins a hunt for the offending item and a request that he doesn’t deliver to us anymore. But he never listens. Each time we spend a bit longer looking for it, but he still doesn’t get the message. I’m not enough of a bastard to rip the catalogue up (plus our shredder is on the blink – I wonder if Kleeneze sell those awful scissors with four blades that ‘replace a shredder…maybe I should look…just once) – after all, it’s someone’s business, but I’m telling you now, if it continues, I’ll be putting a VERY passive aggressive terse note on their facebook page. It’s the very British thing to do. He needs to be careful – remember we’re always naked in this house (seriously, it’s like the video for Sweet Harmony by The Beloved viewed through a heat shimmer), next time he does it I’m going to put the offending tatalogue in my bumcrack and poke it around the door.

 

Ah well. Listen, here’s tonight’s recipe, before I get carried away. This makes enough for four if you’re serving it with a side, or two geet big fatties like us.

sausage gnocchi bake

to make sausage gnocchi bake you’ll need:

  • 6 sausages, casings removed (you can use the Slimming World sausages if you MUST, but why not save them for what they’re really for – sucking every last bit of moisture from the air and summoning evil? Bloody awful things. GO TO MUSCLEFOOD INSTEAD MAN)
  • 400g gnocchi (6 syns, so between four, 1.5 syns)
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tsp mixed herbs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 75g Quark
  • 140g light mozarella ball (HexA x 2)

to make sausage gnocchi bake you will need:

  • heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat, using a bit of oil or your Frylight
  • add the gnocchi and fry gently until the sides are golden – keep them moving though, they can catch easily. This will take about eight minutes or so, then remove from the pan and set aside 
  • in the same pan, add the garlic and the sausage meat and cook until browned – remember to keep breaking it up (a masher works well for this) and then remove from the pan and set aside – I like to put it in the same bowl/plate as the gnocchi to keep it warm
  • in the same pan again add the diced tomatoes, mixed herbs, salt and pepper and cook for about seven minutes, stirring occasionally until it’s thickened down
  • reduce the heat and add the quark to the pan, as well as the gnocchi and sausage meat and stir well to mix
  • scatter the mozzarella over the top and keep on the heat until it has melted – you can also put it under the grill for a little bit if your pan can handle it to get it nicely browned and bubbling
  • serve

DONE. If you’re a fan of gnocchi and you’re as surprised as we were that you can have it on Slimming World, why not give our amazing ham, cheese and pea gnocchi dish a go? OH YES.

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December 1, 2015

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american, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, kebab shop, low syn, lunch, panko, pizza, recipe card, speciality ingredients

low syn meaty pizza fingers

Before we start and I get to the recipe for meaty pizza fingers, a message for the chap who found this blog by searching for “local herbs to bewitch and win local elections” – I’m sorry if my recipe for red lentil dahl wasn’t quite what you were looking for. But all the very best to you.

Gosh, all terribly exciting this morning in Newcastle. Looked out of my office window to see a big column of black smoke billowing into the air and my first thought was sheer stricken terror at the thought it might have been Paul’s mother arriving.

Just kidding, don’t strike me off the Christmas list yet.

No, a great fire was busy raging at one of a shop in Newcastle and it looks like it has completely gutted the building. An awful thing to happen, and they have been unable to account for the whereabouts of one chap. Hopefully he’ll be found. Watching the local press heralded such treats as ‘there is a smell of smoke in the air’ and ‘the firemen are putting water on the fire’. Really? Not petrol? Perhaps hurl a chip pan through the window and see if that’ll calm the flames? Christ.

It made me realise how cosseted and safe my job is, and how frightening it must be to be a fireman. Imagine having to enter a building where you can’t see, the structure is unsafe and IT’S ON BLOODY FIRE. I get nervous turning the thermostat up, let alone having to battle an inferno to rescue someone from being roasted alive. I just can’t imagine it. I used to be absolutely terrified of fire. No wonder, looking back, with three memories sticking in my mind like smouldering ashes.

Firstly, chip pans. To watch 999 and the like you’d think a chip pan – a proper one mind, full of fat and bubbling on the hob – was akin to a grenade sat there with the pin taken out. Because we were Northern and geet hard we’d have chips for nearly every meal, and my parents were forever putting the pan on and ‘having a lie down’ in front of Countdown, or taking the washing out, or driving over to the next village for a twenty deck of Lambert and Butler, leaving me sat in the living room just waiting for the invariable explosion and the feeling of my skin melting off my face. Clearly they knew what they were doing but good lord, I used to be terrified. Never quite put me off eating the chips afterwards, mind.

Next, anyone have a coal fire? For those who aren’t a fan of bringing coal in from the outdoors and developing COPD over the course of a childhood, you often needed to make the fire ‘blaze’ at the start – essentially you’d cover the fire up with a solid object / covering, which in turn caused the air from the chimney to pull through the fire and ‘get it going’ (or, indeed, to go all Tim Healy-haway-Pet on you, ‘take ahad’). One morning whilst we were playing at a friend’s house (I remember the board game, it was a knock-off version of Frustration where you had to shake the dice yourself instead of popping the dome – probably called Inconvenient or For Fuck’s Sake) and her mother decided to light the fire. Being a proper countrywoman that took no time at all and she decided that instead of using something sensible to make the fire blaze, she covered it up with A SHEET OF NEWSPAPER. She couldn’t have chosen a more stupid material if she tried – I’m surprised she didn’t swap out the logs for canisters of Elnett. To put the cherry on the massive third-degree burns, the child-hating witch then left the house to go up the street to make a phonecall, presumably to her lover. Of course, simple physics took place, the newspaper set alight and promptly fell apart, scattering little burning embers into the air, onto chairs, in my hair, all over the living room, leaving us children to try and stamp them all out. We did, but that made my heart race faster than any game of bloody Frustration.

Finally, anyone who has grown up in the countryside will remember the colossal pyramids of round hay bales that used to be scattered around. Well, my sister and I were cheerfully ignoring my mother’s stern-faced admonishments about playing on the bales and sitting atop a gigantic pile when we heard a terribly loud WHOOMPH and the whole pile went up in flames. Well, you’ve never seen two pairs of Naf-Naf trainers move so quickly. Turns out that tightly-packed hay holds a LOT of heat and only needs the slightest encouragement to burst into flames. Who knew? We certainly didn’t – we were only ever worried about being crushed under the weight of the bales, and well, that never stopped us rolling them down the field and crashing them through the fences at the bottom and into the stream. Oops. Turns out that it was a small broken bottle focussing the sun’s rays onto the hay which started the fire. We were just the little dirty-faced urchins who just happened to be nearby.

I realise that my descriptive ways of talking about anything from my childhood makes it sound like we were the rough family from every single Catherine Cookson novel but of course, I always add that slight air of exaggeration into my description. My dad wasn’t Robson Green and I don’t think I ever had pleurisy from working down t’pit. Here’s a little fact though – up until the age of…I dunno, whenever I discovered masturbation and thus had something else to occupy my thoughts alone in the night, I used to have a ‘procedure’ I had to do before I went to sleep to make sure the house didn’t burn down – blink eight times in a row, whirl my eyes around in my head and then shut my eyes and go to sleep. Interesting how a child’s mind works.

Anyway, enough puff and nonsense from me. Here’s tonight’s recipe. I agonised for ages over what on earth to call them – ‘twochubbycubs’ meaty fingers’ sounds like a sex toy, whereas bolognese burgers just sounds awful and like something you’d get in a Wetherspoons between your second pint and having your teeth kicked out by a walking collection of steroids and inadequacies. Confession – I found this recipe on the internet a while back and copied down the recipe but not the link, so if it’s yours, I apologise. I tweaked it for Slimming World though so I’ve done my bit. I put the word ‘longboy’ down on the page (I handwrite everything, I’m such a fusspot) which, upon further googling (googling which probably put me on some sort of Yewtree watchlist as soon as I typed “+longboy +meat +fingers” into google) sounds like the proper name. Who knows. 

This makes enough for four (two halves each).

IMG_2311

to make meaty pizza fingers, you’ll need:

  • 4 wholemeal sub rolls (60g – HeA)
  • 50g panko (9 syns) – optional but dead tasty (before you ask: panko is a dried breadcrumb available from most supermarkets, you don’t NEED it, and if you don’t use it, drop the syns down to half a syn!)
  • 400g lean minced beef (we used a pack from our twochubbycubs’ meat hamper – just one pack, and it’s amazing meat)
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 2 tbsp tomato sauce (2 syns)
  • handful of chopped chillis
  • 30g low-fat cheese, grated (HeB)

Here’s the thing. We used mini submarine rolls instead of a ‘bun’. They’re exactly the same thing and ours weighed 64g instead of 60g. I refuse to syn them, and I’m using one as a healthy extra. If you’re going to be Captain Anal about it, use a normal wholemeal bun. No need to shit the bed. You get two ‘fingers’ each for 3 syns, or 0.5 syn if you don’t use panko.

to make meaty pizza fingers, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 230 degrees celsius
  • slice the rolls in half and place on a baking sheet, cut side up
  • bake in the oven for about 5 minutes – when finished, reduce the heat of the oven to 190 degrees whilst you complete the next step
  • meanwhile, mix together the minced beef, panko, onion, worcestershire sauce, thyme, garlic, egg, salt and pepper in a large bowl
  • spread the mixture onto the bread rolls – make sure it goes all the way to the edge to stop the bread from burning
  • mix together 2 tbsp of tomato sauce with 2 tbsp of water and brush over the meat
  • bake in the oven at 190 degrees for about 20-25 minutes
  • remove from the oven and scatter over the sliced chillis and cheese, and bake for another five minutes
  • finish under the grill for a few minutes to brown it all off
  • serve and enjoy!

If you enjoyed this, can I recommend another pizza recipe? For mature cheddar, leeks and pulled pork pizza? You’ll adore it. Promise.

Remember to share.

J

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November 25, 2015

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american, breast, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, pasta, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese

That awkward moment when you’re about to start a blog post, you open your blinds for inspiration and just over the road is the sight of a neighbour getting changed with his curtains open. I hope he doesn’t think I was peeking – I’d get more sexual gratification from reading the ingredients list on a Rustlers burger. It’s only fair, they’ve seen Paul and I in the altogether enough time to draw a timelapse of our bodies from memory, like a particularly gruesome version of the Take on Me video. They’d certainly need a big pencil. Fnar fnar.

I’m somewhat tetchy as sleep hasn’t been especially forthcoming lately. No dramatic reason – Monday night I was awoken by Paul farting so loudly I thought someone had been shot. I couldn’t decide whether my heart was beating so quickly due to the shock or because my body was trying desperately to dilate my nostrils as quick as possible in the hope of getting some fresh air. I appreciate that’s crass but honestly, I couldn’t drift off for another four hours. I had to get up and wash the dishes.

Last night was the worst, though. Went to bed full of good intentions and Chinese food at an entirely appropriate midnight. The blinds were drawn, our ceiling awash with stars from the little projector we have. All very serene. I was asleep before you could say ‘Oh I wouldn’t love, it’s like a ploughed field back there’.

Woke up at 1am by the heating. Yes, the heating. Our house is now controlled by a tiny Nest thermostat which is apparently learning when we’d like the house to be warm and when we want it colder than a mother in law’s kiss. For whatever reason, it decided that at 1am on a Wednesday morning I’d like to be cremated, because, not kidding, I woke up so hot I almost set off the smoke alarm. If Paul had hurled a pan of boiling sugar in my face I’d have been refreshed. I didn’t even know our house could get to that temperature but somehow it managed it. I went to shake Paul awake because well, I wasn’t going to get up, but touching him was like trying to catch a fish in a barrel full of lube, he was so slick with sweat. He’s lucky, he could sleep through a plane crash. I wandered into the hallway to be bathed in light from our ‘reassuring’ smoke alarm (seriously, it lights up the hallway when you go for a piss so you don’t stub your toe, how thoughtful), clocked the cat having a Solero to cool down, and adjusted the heating from ‘Magma’. Perhaps it’s trying to kill us.

I retired back to bed, after bailing all of Paul’s sweat out of the bed and onto the floor, and drifted back off, comforted by the sound of my skin blistering as I slept.

At 1.45am, the cat, clearly refreshed, thought it was altogether too unfair that I had briefly teased him an hour ago, and proceeded to climb onto my pillow and start doing that ‘knead-knead-purr’ thing that cats do when they want your attention / want feeding. He was immediately (delicately) shot-putted out of the window (we live in a bungalow, it’s fine, he bounces) and I tried to return to the Land of Nod.

Nope.

At around 2.30am, the cat came back through the cat-flap with such ferocity that he must have nudged the sensor on the back door just enough to set the house alarm caterwauling. Paul slept on, I stumbled out of bed calling the world a c*nt, turned the alarm off and then furiously made myself a cup of tea. It’s amazing how much rage you can funnel into boiling a kettle, honestly. At this point, after my tea, there was little chance of sleeping, not least because I wasn’t entirely unconvinced I wasn’t being pranked by the Big Man Upstairs (God, not some gimp we keep in the attic – though I don’t believe in either). I had the impression that had I gone to sleep, the bed would have burst ‘hilariously’ into flames or someone would have driven a car through the window. I lay in bed, reached for my iPad, clicked it on and was immediately castigated by Paul who claimed the tiny ‘tick’ noise had woken him up ‘AND IT’S NO BLOODY WONDER YOU DON’T SLEEP WITH THAT THING BLARING AWAY’. Blaring away! This from a man who would cheerfully sleep through someone cutting off his leg with a fucking butter knife. So naturally I stabbed him to death and buried him in the garden. 

I lay in bed some more, contemplating death and/or sleep. Neither came. I read somewhere that masturbation is nature’s sedative but given Paul was on HIGH ALERT from the sound of one finger hitting a glass screen, ten minutes of my wrist fwapping away wouldn’t have helped. It might have been worth it just to get revenge of Paul and give him a face mask for the morning, but no.  I got my headphones, put on a podcast about funfairs in the vain hope that the polite chatter would lull me away, but no, ten minutes in and I was awaken by the sound of screaming kids on a rollercoaster channeled directly into my ear. At this point, I gave up entirely, had a bath for two hours, stared at Paul in the darkness and watched Jeremy Kyle with the subtitles on and someone gurning away in the corner. A signer, not Graham. I’ve never been so sick of my life as I was this morning, with dawn creeping in.

Still, other people have it worse, don’t they?

Tonight’s recipe is simple enough to make – it’s macaroni cheese, but poshed up a bit with the addition of roasted garlic and a sauce made from goat cheese and Quark. Oh and there’s rosemary, for that ostentatious-bastard look.

IMG_2277

Look, it’s really hard to make a white dish on a white plate look attractive. It did taste good though! This serves four. There’s a lot of garlic in there but it adds so much flavour, and garlic cooked slowly loses a lot of potency, You could leave it out if you don’t want to be Stinky McGee though.

so to make rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

  • 400g pasta
  • 100g soft goats cheese (14 syns between four)
  • 4 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks
  • 115g quark
  • 3 tbs dried rosemary
  • a head of garlic

so to make rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese, you should:

  • cut a head of garlic in half horizontally, rub on a bit of oil, put on a tray and put in the oven on a low heat for an hour or so, then scoop out all the sugary, sticky garlic and put to one side
  • heat a large pan of boiling water and cook the pasta according to instructions – reserving about 200ml of the pasta water, and drain and set aside
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the chicken, cooking until golden
  • reduce the heat to low and add the cheese, quark and rosemary and stir well to combine, adding in the soft sticky garlic flesh from earlier
  • add the mixture to the drained pasta, adding a little pasta water as necessary to loosen the sauce and serve

 

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November 14, 2015

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american, burgers, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, pork, pork joints, recipe card, slow cooker

slow cooker: sticky fruity pulled pork burger

Have to be quick tonight, as we’re going out to a drive-in to watch Inside Out. I’m not going to lie, it’ll be unusual for Paul and I to be parked by the seafront at night without a lorry driver poking his knob through the passenger side window, but we’ll give it a go. I’m kidding, we don’t do that. We found a deal for said drive-in on LivingSocial and thought, well why not. We wanted to see Grease but apparently the good people in South Shields beat us to it, which is surprising as I genuinely didn’t think you could drive a car with webbed fingers.

My facebook woes continue – I’ve just been deleted from the Newcastle ‘Pick Up My Tat’ (swapping) page for pointing out that someone’s light-up, flashing, disco headboard is one of the tackiest things I’ve ever seen. Someone with a name that sounds like a company that manufactures t-shirts for a market stall (Demi-Marie?) kicked off, said I had no right ‘dissing her bed’ and blocked me. You can just imagine how devastated I am.

Seriously mind, who orders a bed with a flashing headboard? Humans do two things in bed – sleep and shag. Neither of those activities are helped by a bed that looks like the world’s shittest nightclub. Either you’re going to be kept awake by a bed that resembles the back of a lorry making a three-point-turn on a country lane or you’re going to be held off your vinegar strokes by a seizure. 

Let’s quickly discuss that John Lewis advert, shall we? This one?

Yeah yeah. I’m sure your facebook walls have been awash with emoticons of crying faces and people posting statuses like ‘OMG!!!Q1 TEURS STREEMING DOWN MY ARSE SO SAD’ and the noise of thousands upon thousands of mooing cattle trying to outdo themselves with sentimental guff and tearful reactions. Well honestly. Have a Mars Bar and man the fuck up. I don’t understand the fuss and frothing over the various John Lewis adverts, truly I don’t, and I’m not just saying that to be wicked-cool. They’re pretty to look at, yes, but so is a rainbow, and that doesn’t mawkishly yank on my heartstrings like a coked up campanologist. This advert, featuring a dirty old bugger sitting on the moon lamenting his bail conditions and spying on a wee lass in her pyjamas…well, it doesn’t scream Christmas, does it? Aside from that bit where Alexis and Alexander sit down in their Farrow & Ball coated dining room for a split-second of sprout-eating before letting their child get back to hurling paper out of the window, it’s about as Christmassy as an Easter egg. And that bloody song – is there a piece of software that takes any decent piece of music and runs it through a filter so it sounds like the dying gasp of a sparrow? Pfft. 

Mind, I’m a massive hypocrite, because I love the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert. I do! But there is a giant cat in it, so you know, I can be excused. I laugh at the sentiment though – I can tell you now that if we had a house fire, some of our neighbours wouldn’t be coming around with plates of food and beaming faces. No, we’d get them traipsing across our lawn moaning that there was ash blowing on their washing and could we please do something about the smoke because poor Colin’s asthmatic and he’s two puffs from running out of Ventolin. 

Anyway, tonight’s recipes makes enough for eight. I know we said we’d try and stay away from pulled pork, but well, we had to do it once, and put into burgers…well, it’s amazing.  Plus, if you have any meat left over, you can cook it down with pasta and tomatoes and make a very quick lunch. So there.

FRUITY BUNS

Come on, admit it. You want to push your face into that and shake it all about. Before anyone asks, the chips are from our perfect roasties recipe, found here.

to make fruity pulled pork burgers, you’ll need:

to make fruity pulled pork burgers, you should:

  • mince your garlic, chop your onion, tip everything bar the coleslaw and bun into a slow cooker and cook for nine hours on low
  • remove the pork, put on a plate and pull apart with two forks
  • tip the sauce into a frying pan and heat it on high to reduce it right down
  • tip in the pork and stir, getting everything nice and sticky and thick
  • serve!

The breadbun is your HEB – if you have two, don’t forget to syn the extra bun.

Any leftover pork can be turned into this:

IMG_2238

Just make a sauce of tomatoes, chopped artichoke, onion and garlic and add the meat in. Heat through and serve with pasta! 

DONE.

J

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November 11, 2015

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american, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, soup, taster ideas

slow cooker: cheeseburger soup (really)

I’m in a bit of a huff, so if you’re old-fashioned about swearing, skip to the recipe. Swearing follows.

Yes, cheeseburger soup. I’m putting this up on here as a rare example of when our food doesn’t look very good! As it was bubbling away in the slow cooker all I could think was that it looked like someone had already eaten it, half-digested it and then brought it back up. It looks vile. But, just to be contrary, it tasted pretty good. So: perhaps give it a go.

Can we talk about this stupid voice that young ladies seem to have decided is just right-and-dandy for this modern world? I know it’s been discussed to death but it drives me so far up the wall I have to stop and fill up at Vertical Petrol on the way. I’ll give you an example. Tonight in Tesco I was in that unhappy situation where everywhere I went, the same shopper and her melt of a boyfriend went. I had to buy peas, there she was, I had to buy KY jelly, there she was again, speaking like thiiiiiiiiisssss and draaaaaawing out raaaaaandaaaam syllaaaaables for god knows why. I just can’t bear it. Things came to a head, as they so often do, in the reduced vegetables bit, where she picked up every fucking item and croaked what she thought was a witty rejoinder to everything – ‘OMG who even (EVAN) needs a baaaaaaay-bee sweet potaaaaahto‘ ‘OMG look at these taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangerines they’re like 8p‘ ‘jeeeeesus what’s a squaaash LOL’ (and she SAID LOL) – to which I threw down the peas that had been turning into puree in my hands and stalked off with a loud OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

I know, not big nor clever, and probably made me look like an arse on reflection, but I think I’d genuinely rather have my ears pissed in by a horse than have to deal with that. Not everything needs schtick. Why do people pretend so? You’re from Kingston Park lover, not Sweet Valley fucking High. It did cross my mind that her cotton-bud shaped boyfriend might have caught up with me to rough me up in the yoghurt aisle but frankly he looked the sort who couldn’t direct a shit into a toilet bowl, so my fears were groundless.

To be honest, I was just in a huff because yet again it took me an interminable amount of time getting home for the third night in a row. At least tonight I got a bit of satisfaction from sending some douchebag in an Audi down onto the Central Motorway rather than letting him cut in at the lights. I was late yesterday due to someone breaking down right in front of me and blocking the way (fair enough, not like I could help, I know less about mechanics than I do about the female orgasm) and I was late getting home on Monday due to being caught up in a protest by our local taxi drivers. They had decided to go on a ‘go-slow’ protest of driving their cars very carefully around Newcastle, blocking the roads and delaying people in protest of Newcastle City Council scrapping the ‘knowledge’ test that’s usually mandatory for taxi drivers up here. I hadn’t realised anything was different with cars going around Newcastle at 3mph until I heard Carol on Look North explain it whilst I scraped yesterday’s dinner out of the slow cooker. They’ve got a point, though. I hate taxis at the best of time because I like driving and don’t enjoy strained conversation about football and tits, but I can tolerate them if the driver is decent and they know where they’re going. But, more often than not, they don’t – and it’s not like I live in some far-off utopia, I’m just off the A1. I recently had a taxi driver who not only wanted me to instruct him, he also made me sit in the front because he was a ‘bit muff and jeff’. I almost asked if he didn’t just want to go the whole hog and have us switch seats and for me to drive him home, bit was dark and there are a lot of country fields that I could be rolled into a carpet and dumped into, so I didn’t.

There was a taxi driver in Orlando who comes to mind – he took us from Disney to Orlando International Airport. All very pleasant, bar for the fact he was a) off his face and b) on the game. He kept turning around to talk to us, letting his car veer across the road whilst he did so, and went from gentle conversation about Cher to offering us hardcore gay sex and free crystal meth. You don’t get that offer with Blueline Taxis. I remember him tossing us a cigar tube and telling us to take a sniff, which naively I did, before realising it was weed, which pretty much guaranteed me getting fingered for drugs by a swarthy security guard later at the airport. Ah fun times. He did tell us he was going to take his mother to see Cher before she died (his mother, not Cher, I♫ BE-LEE-IEVE ♫ she died many years ago and is just a corpse on strings now) (ah that’s mean, I like Cher)…I wonder if he ever got there. Probably not. 

I’d love to be a taxi driver, although I reckon most of my passengers would be putting in claims for tinnitus because I’m always shouting and bawling away inside my car. It’s stress relief. I can talk to people quite freely when I’m in control of the situation so the social side of things would be fine – essentially if they ever started a sentence with ‘I’M NOT RACIST BUT‘ I could just speed round a corner, open their door and tumble them out under a passing lorry. I’d struggle with people who smell like sour milk or those people who put out their cigarette and stick the remainder back in the packet because you have no idea how bad that makes you smell, but generally, I’d be good.  

I’d definitely be good. ANYWAY look, The Apprentice is on soon and I’m still hooked. So here’s the recipe, which serves 6:

cheeseburger soup

to make cheeseburger soup you will need:

to make cheeseburger soup you will need to:

  • heat a large saucepan over a medium-high heat and cook the onions and mince until no pink remains
  • add the all of the ingredients except for the milk and cheese into the slow cooker and cook over a low heat for six hours
  • when cooked, add the milk and cheese to the slow cooker and stir well to combine – allow to cook for another five minutes or so
  • serve – reassure your guests that this isn’t vomit and enjoy! Decorate with a few bits of cheese, a couple of chunks of carrot maybe…
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October 22, 2015

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bacon, breast, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, pork, poultry, recipe card, syn free

garlic, bacon and chicken pasta

We’re both feeling quite melancholy as we witnessed something pretty awful today – a bloke having a massive seizure in the middle of IKEA and then screaming and thrashing as he came around. We’re both first-aid trained but when we got there, the staff were doing everything right and were bloody marvellous. What annoyed us more than anything, though, was the table full of old people practically snapping their necks to get a good look at the poor prone man on the floor. Not affording him any dignity or discretion, it was like they were waiting for the last number on their bingo cards. Vultures the bloody lot of them. Hopefully they were found face-down amongst the ANÖOS toys later on. Why are people so shitty?

So it brings me to two things, two pleas, really. And yes, it’s not the usual fun and games and piss-take that we normally bust out, but it’s so important. First – learn basic first aid. Take an hour to watch a few Youtube videos – you’ll find a whole raft of videos by the marvellous St John’s Ambulance right here. No-one is expecting you to give someone a tracheotomy or put in a catheter, but basic first aid makes all the difference. Would you genuinely know what to do if that bloke had been in a room with you and you alone and he had started having a seizure? What if a baby started choking or a kid came to you with a broken arm? We’re lucky – we’ve both been trained because of our jobs – but it’s such a frightening position to be in that I’d hate to have to do it without the facts. If you’re in employment, why not ask your HR if they’ll get you on a training course? You just don’t know when you’ll need it. As a moment of sweet relief, here’s a post about the last time James went for first aid training.

Second short plea? Get yourself on the organ donation register. If you’ve got strong, sensible views against it then all the best to you and we’ll say no more – it’s personal choice. But if you’re not on it as an oversight or because you haven’t got round to doing it, here, sign up now. It’s odd – the issue has come to our attention via the same disease – cystic fibrosis, with a friend of mine losing a good friend to it and one of our lovely lasses in our group posting on behalf of her friend who is slowly losing her lungs. I’d love to think that when I die, they take whatever they need from me. My eyes are fucked, so there’s no point there. Heart is probably shot and doesn’t beat so well, and lungs have been blackened by years of parents who thought nicotine was a suitable replacement for fresh air (I kid. Sometimes they used to wind the window down in the car). My skin is good, though, so graft away, and my brain – assuming it’s not being turned to sponge by some dastardly CJD prions (I ate a lot of cheap beef back in the day), is fairly sharp. They could take my balls if they wanted, they’re in decent shape, and hell if you want my willy, it’s there, though years of growing up alone in the country with nothing to do means it’s like a well-worn tyre now. I jest I jest. Trying to inject some levity. Go on. Sign up on the register. I promise you that if I die before you, and given my calorie intake and sloth levels of exercise, it’ll probably happen, you can take what you want.

OK. So let’s do the recipe.

chicken and bacon pasta

 

to make the garlic, bacon and chicken pasta, you’ll need:

  • 400g pasta of your choice
  • 1 red onion, finely chopped
  • 4 bacon medallions
  • 2 chicken breasts
  • 6 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 50oml passata
  • ½ tsp paprika

 

to make the garlic, bacon and chicken pasta, you should:

  • cook the pasta according to the instructions – drain and rinse with cold water and set aside (this is a trick I learnt recently – works a treat!)
  • in a large frying pan heat some oil over a medium-high heat, add the onions and cook until softened, stirring frequently
  • meanwhile, chop the bacon and chicken into small pieces and add to the pan, reduce the heat slightly and cook until they meat is browned all over
  • add the paprika and garlic to the pan and cook for about thirty seconds, stirring constantly
  • add the passata to the pan, stir and cook for about fifteen minutes until the mixture has thickened
  • add the pasta back to the pan, stir through and heat for about three minutes
  • serve!
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October 20, 2015

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, noodles, recipe card, sauces, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

stir fried greens with plum sauce

Man, I feel rough as a badger’s arse this evening. So you’ll forgive me if I go and tip every potion and lotion into the bath and go baste for a good hour.  I have a lengthy Corsica entry typed up but it needs proofing and oh god, I am boring myself. So, here is a recipe to go with the delicious garlic beef we served yesterday. PRAY FOR MOJO. Can’t claim credit for this one – well, we can, we made it suitable for Slimming World, but it’s actually bastardised from a Wagamama recipe. Oh my.

stir fried greens with plum sauce

to make stir fried greens with plum sauce, you’ll need:

  • 200g dried noodles
  • 150g broccoli florets
  • 1 onion, sliced thickly
  • 3cm piece of ginger, grated
  • 1 pak choi (or 2 baby pak choi), chopped roughly
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 2 tbsp plum sauce (3 syns)
  • 1 red chilli, chopped finely
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 100ml chicken (or vegetable) stock
  • 2 tsp cornflour (1 syn), dissolved in 2 tbsp chicken stock

to make stir fried greens with plum sauce, you should:

  • prepare all of your ingredients beforehand- trust me, it makes things MUCH easier
  • cook the noodles according to the instructions – drain and set aside
  • heat a large frying pan or wok over a medium-high heat and add a little oil
  • stir fry the broccoli and onion for about two minutes
  • add the ginger, garlic and pa choi and stir fry for another 2-3 minutes
  • add the plum sauce, soy sauce and chilli and cook for another two minutes
  • add the stock and the dissolved corn flour and stir for about half a minute until it all thickens up
  • add the noodles to the pan and stir to combine everything
  • serve!

Easy!

J

 

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October 18, 2015

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bacon, breakfast, budget, classics, lunch, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

slimming world breakfast muffins

No, sadly not breakfast muffins that are full of blueberries or chocolate that you already slick around your mouth, causing embarrassment. Honestly, have a word. These breakfast muffins are savoury and apparently perfect for breakfast on the go. That’s an alien concept to me, not least because I’d hate to get into the lift at work with parmesan in my beard and four eggs on my breath. It’s one thing I’m always paranoid about – being smelly. There’s so little excuse to honk of BO or to have breath that can bleach hair, and I’m always going to great lengths to avoid that. I’ve got mouthwash in the car for example so after lunch, I give myself a quick rinse and let everyone on the office think I’m a secret alcoholic. But, if perhaps you’ve got your breakfast routine down pat, you’ll enjoy these muffins.

Posting very early today as we’re about to go out and deliver leaflets, after I somewhat rashly promised my consultant that we’d deliver 400, forgetting that on a weekend the amount of exercise Paul and I do amounts to exactly diddily-fucking-squat. I only said I’d deliver them because a) I like my consultant and b) I absolutely love nebbing in people’s windows and gardens. I drove past our old house in Gosforth just a couple of days ago and I was pleased to see that the shit landlord had yet to fix the drainpipe that hung over the window or even taken the space invader that we stencilled onto the front door. To be fair, we got revenge for his absolutely abysmal upkeep of the property and taking advantage of two young, naïve lads – we always used to put our cigarettes down the drain by the back window. By my calculations, given we were both on twenty a day, I reckon that’s at least four thousand little Swan filters blocking his pipes and tainting the water supply. No wonder the water used to run brown. I’ve given up now, mind. What-am-I-like. Don’t feel too bad for him, he was an absolute monster and a fibber who didn’t look after his properties. I had never seen load-bearing black mould until then.

So yes, the recipe!

slimming world breakfast muffins

to make breakfast muffins, you’ll need:

  • four large eggs
  • your HEA of any cheese you like, but the stronger the better
  • 300g of fat-free cottage cheese
  • good pinch of salt and pepper

That will make the basic muffin mixture – it’s not an exact science, either, just combine a bit more cottage cheese if it’s looking slack or crack another egg into it. You can chuck anything into these, so just use what you have – I added:

  • chopped baby leeks
  • chopped peppers
  • chopped bacon (leave out for veggie)
  • chopped tomatoes (if you’re using tomatoes, squeeze out the seeds first – just use the flesh)
  • chopped enokitake mushrooms

Really though, this is a good opportunity to use up all that shite cluttering the bottom of the fridge. I can’t really do a recipe because it’s genuinely just mix everything into a bowl, put into muffin cases and cook until they’re nice and firm and brown. I often find that with Slimming World muffins/quiches they come out as though someone’s cooked them in the sea – over-salted and wetter than Jordan checking into a Premier Inn with a footballer. If you cook off anything with a lot of moisture, like mushrooms or leeks, you’ll be OK. I cooked mine for around forty minutes on 180 degrees, just keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t catch. Also, if you’re using muffin cases, you’ll need to give them a spray first with Frylight or olive oil. If the egg leaks, it’ll dry like cement. They’ll cheerfully keep for a couple of days and they freeze well.

Enjoy! And if you’re in the Gosforth area, keep an eye open for two smartly-dressed fat blokes nosing around your garden and tutting at your poor choice of hallway wallpaper. 

J