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August 26, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

chicken and pepper pizza vs goat cheese, spinach and mushroom pizza

Before I get started with my quick tale of two pizzas, I just want make a quick plea. Listen carefully. If you’re on facebook and your finger is about to click the mouse button to share a picture with some trite homespun bit of wisdom, take a moment. Think about what you’re posting. If it’s in Comic Sans, it’ll be bollocks. If it ends ‘97% of my friends won’t share it but TRUE FRIENDS WILL’ then don’t do it. If you actually think there’s some poor little bugger sat in a cancer ward somewhere with doctors standing busily counting likes on a facebook status, with the chemotherapy drugs collecting dust in the corner until a post gets over one million likes, then you’re an actual moron and should be shot with shitty shite.

I raise this because I logged onto facebook before and was confronted with a picture of what looked like a xylophone with a dog’s head on it and turned out to be something even worse – a starved and beaten dog. It was horrific and upsetting and I reacted the same way any decent human being would do by recoiling in disgust. The accompanying caption read ‘SHARE IF YOU ARE AGAINST ANIMAL CRULTY (sic) OR IGNORE IF YOU LOVE IT’.

I mean, what a bloody thing to come out with. First of all, if I was a lover of animal abuse, I don’t think I’d nail my colours to the mast (probably using a dog to bang the nails in) by announcing it on Facebook by actively deciding not to share something. Secondly, it’s an abhorrent thing to use such a shocking photo just to get more likes on a status. It’s like those chain letters that people used to get their clappers in a froth over way back when, only more sinister. Consider that before you share dross and put your friends in a difficult position.

Oh and whilst we’re on the topic of facebook again, if you happen to notice that your profile name contains anything other than your own bloody name, then send yourself to the foot of the stairs and have a think about what you’ve done.

Tonight’s recipe is a comparison – we were given a Musclefood pizza to try (chicken and pepper) as part of our smorgasbord of treats to take for a spin. The idea of pizza on Slimming World is enough to make anyone’s legs quiver, but realistically, you can’t have a ‘decent’ pizza unless you really blow your syns. However, this comes close to being acceptable and I’ll tell you why in a moment. But fear not: because I’m an impartial, generous guy – and also because I didn’t want to share my pizza with Paul, I made an alternative pizza-esque creation which is syn free and equally delicious. So you can make your mind up!

This is the Musclefood pizza, available here. It’s 10.5 syns for the whole pizza and actually isn’t bad! I was expecting something akin to sucking on a square of carpet but no, it tasted like a decent, thin-crust pizza. I’d cheerfully recommend hoying a couple in the freezer and then when you’re desperate for a bit of fast food, give them a whirl. They weren’t cheap with the meat, either. You need to understand that isn’t going to be the same as Dominos, and if you’re like us and when the pizza craving hits you need a pizza the size of a combine harvester’s tyre and more cheese on it than a tramp’s toe, this isn’t going to completely satisfy that itch. But if the ten syns stops you spending forty…

Remember, Musclefood are running a promotion for £144 worth of lean meat for £75. Can’t get vexed at that!

Of course, you can make your own – and I’ve come up with a syn-free version that you can wrap your bristly lips around. See?

to make our syn-free pizza, you’ll need:

one WW (boo hiss) Love Fibre wholemeal wraps (look for the purple and blue packaging, as you can use this wrap as a HEB)
a good handful of spinach
a good handful of baby mushrooms
30g of goats cheese
half a freshly grated clove of garlic
quark
caramelised onions (you’ll find my recipe for those right here!) or, if you can’t be fucked on making those (although it’s totally worth it), just some thinly sliced red onion

to put it all together:

thinly slice the mushrooms and drop them into a dry frying pan to let them sweat down
add the spinach towards the end and wilt it down
take enough quark to cover the wrap and add grated garlic, then spread it over the wrap
add dollops of the jam or the red onion, small cubes of the goats cheese, then the spinach, then the mushrooms
pop under the grill until the cheese has melted
stuff it down your gob

Listen, you can chuck any old tut onto this pizza. Don’t like mushrooms? FINE. Use chicken. It’s just that easy.

I’m off to watch Bake Off and feel sad that I can’t EAT EVERYTHING.

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chubbycubs

Posted on

August 23, 2015

Posted under

budget, lunch, mince, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free

budget week: loaded turkey chilli jacket potatoes

Today, we ended up in a sex shop, thanks in no small part to my dear mother. If you’re prudish, scroll down to the recipe.

See, you may recall me whingeing that our ongoing hunt for garden furniture was bearing no fruit? The situation remains the same, so my mum helpfully pointed out a place she’d found in an industrial estate by the banks of the Tyne which ‘might have’ sold charming garden furniture. Paul and I duly set off after a quick stop to IKEA to have an argument and walk around in a HÜFF like 95% of the other couples there. Hell, we didn’t even stop to buy a hotdog, that’s how severe the argument was. All was forgotten by the time we got back to the car, of course. I reckon they pump testosterone through the vents at IKEA to cause all the discord. So off we went to find the garden furniture place.

Well honestly. We ended up on a bleak, wind-swept, pretty much derelict industrial estate – the very type of place where someone is taken on TV to get shot in the back of the head by a bent copper. I didn’t dare stop the car in case a load of chavs came dashing out of the river to steal my tyres. We drove around and around until we eventually found the place but given a) it was closed and b) there were three balding, shirtless old men smacking an old fridge with a wrench in the courtyard, we sharp left. It was only after four or so miles of air-conditioning and Radio 4 that I stopped talking like I was an extra from Kes.

But listen, we at twochubbycubs don’t like to miss an opportunity for shenanigans, and we soon spotted a way to liven up our afternoon – a visit to a sex-shop. Yes, this dystopian wilderness offered up the opportunity to peruse all sorts of erotica and, following the tasteful roadsign signs promising cocktails and sex-toys, we were in. Previous visits to sex shops have always been awful – Paul was once served (not serviced) by someone who had his cock slapped on the counter like a discarded buffet sausage roll the whole time, and I got stuck behind someone roughly the size and shape of a reversing coach loudly bellowing about her desire for a ‘clit ring’. I almost blurted out ‘have you tried a hula-hoop, you brash beast’ but instead chewed my lips in restraint.

Now, neither of us are prudish about sex. I think it’s absolutely smashing and can heartily recommend it. But some of the things on show in there made my eyes water (and only the top two, mind). A 20″ latex fist to pop up your bottom? 20″! What are you hoping to do, scratch the back of your teeth with the fucker? What if you’re too rough and a giant black rubber cock comes bursting out of your stomach like that scene with John Hurt in Alien? There was also the terrifying named ‘arse-lock’ which was essentially something that looked like a trainspotter’s flask made out of rubber combined with a stretchy rubber hoop, the idea being that it keeps ‘everything locked down from bumhole to ballsack. SOME MIGHT CALL THAT MARRIAGE, AM I RIGHT? I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure it out until I realised how pervy it looked and quickly backed away to look at mouth-gags.

The whole experience wasn’t helped by being stared at the whole time by two middle-aged ladies who I thought I faintly recognised from my school-dinner days. What did they think I was going to steal? It’s not like you can make a quick getaway with a dildo the size of a roll of carpet hidden in/on your person, is it? I did try cracking a joke – pointing to a fire extinguisher on the wall and asking how much it would be for that model – but their stony faces sharp put paid to my ribald humour.

Tell you what hasn’t changed a bit though – pornography, though I was somewhat startled to see so many erect cocks winking at me from the shelves – I felt like I was operating a gloryhole in a hall of mirrors. It’s all so hilariously naff, especially the attempts at gay porn where the ‘lads’ are supposed to be straight / butch. I’ve certainly never known many ‘scallies fresh out of borstal’ who wear lipliner and purse their mouths whilst they’re getting bummed. And I’ve known a fair few.

However, the award for most awkward went to the DVD of porn that catered for those with a wheelchair fetish. Let me make something clear – I’m not ripping the piss out of the fact that disabled folk have sex, not one bit – it’s the fact that this DVD was so, so, so, so distasteful. The DVD had a big ‘blue badge’ on it like the one that gives you free parking and plastered on the middle was a randy old bugger who was the absolute double of the caretaker from the Harry Potter movies, with a full bonk-on and his hand on some passing girl’s clapper. It gets better – they’d mapped flames on the wheels of his wheelchair. But even that’s not it – it was the fact it was called The Handi Man. I love a bit of wordplay but I’m not convinced I’ll be sending that in to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Good lord.

We didn’t buy anything, by the way. Again, not because we’re prudish, but rather sensible folk buy their toys and kit from places like lovehoney.com. Honestly, the things that have come through our letterbox…

Now, back to the blog. I know budget week has been a bit hit and miss, but that’s really because of the bad timing – we’ve just got too much going on to really focus on costing up our recipes, so we’re going to re-run the budget week with a bit more vim later in the year. For now, we’re going back to basics, with good, decent diet food all synned up and lovely. That said, if we spot that one of our recipes can be done on the cheap (and, be fair, it’s not like we’re using caviar and steak in every meal), we’ll point it out. We’ve got three or four more ‘budget’ recipes to post first though, so you’re still getting plenty. Jesus.

Tonight’s recipe is a turkey chilli. The joy with chilli is simple – you can chuck anything into it veg wise that you have sitting in the fridge. You can bulk it out with more beans, lentils, butter beans, rice…so one small portion of meat can easily serve eight if you’re savvy.

This recipe made four big portions and we served them with jacket potatoes.

Apologies for the quality of the photo but the iPad was flat so we had to take it with Paul’s Game Boy Colour.

to make turkey chilli you’ll need:

250g of turkey mince (you can buy it at Tesco and it’s cheap)
one can of mixed beans
one can of baked beans
one can of red kidney beans
two onions
one stalk of celery
one grated carrot
couple of mushrooms
one carton of passata
one tin of chopped tomatoes
pinch of salt
good pinch of hot chilli powder
one beef stock cube

Like I said, add in any old shite.

to make turkey chilli you should:

chop up and sweat off the onion, celery and mushrooms
add the turkey mince and brown it off
add absolutely everything else and allow to simmer gently for a couple of hours – in fact, the longer you leave it to simmer the better. If you can make it the night before you want it, even better
serve with potatoes and your healthy extra of cheese

This isn’t the most exciting recipe, no, but it’s quick to make, cheap and very filling – exactly what you need on Slimming World! Get it down you.

Now if you don’t mind, we’re off to try out our new toys.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

August 18, 2015

Posted under

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

budget week: yellow ginger pickled eggs

Our carpet is down!

I can’t begin to tell you the satisfaction saying that brings me, not least because the house no longer looks like a knockoff Dignitas clinic. I’ve never known someone match their carpet to the interior of a used commode before. The carpet was fitted by a pair of carpet fitters who had clearly just finished a shift as runway models for Abercrombie and Fitch – one was so good-looking I almost told him to go outside as he was smoking inside the house. Boom. Not our type – Paul and I prefer a more rugged/lazy look, but Christ it must be nice to be blessed with natural good looks. That’s definitely not me, I’ve got a face that would make an onion cry, but eh, I get along in life.

Part of preparing the house ready for the carpet involved moving all of our furniture into the bathroom, like a game of Hoarders: Tetris Addition. I took the opportunity to get rid of the giant media unit we have which holds the TV and Sky box and all the usual technological accoutrements that litter a living room. Bear in mind that wasn’t some fag-burned bit of Formica, it was a decent, solid piece of furniture in excellent condition – well, one of the little knobs was a bit loose, but what more would you expect in our house? Overcome with a pique of philanthropy (and partly because there was no way we were going to get it into the DS3), I rang a local ‘community charity’ company who collect secondhand furniture to furnish the houses of the disadvantaged – people who’ve been smacked about or smacked up. Great cause.

They promptly turned up, ran their fingers over the wood and told me ‘it wasn’t appropriate for their clientele’. Seriously now, I’d understand if it had a giant plastic cock stuck on the side or spent condoms plastered on the underside like smutty papier-mâché, but no!

I asked him why and he wheezed out that ‘it would just sit in the shop collecting dust’. Well heaven forbid! I feel it had more to do with the fact he couldn’t be arsed to lift it. I sent him away with a flea in his ear, and, in a proper huff, took it outside and smashed it into matchsticks with a sledgehammer. I know I could have stuck it on freecycle but I find that whole business very stressful – I once put an advert in there for a Nintendo 64 to take away and I got so many illiterate emails in barely-legible English that I thought I’d been hacked by a Russian Johnny 5. The art of please and thank you are seemingly lost on those who are desperate ~~for stuff to fill up their car-boot sale table~~ for furniture. I did, somewhat meanly, follow that up with an advert for a spare Xbox 360 and then replied to each email who didn’t say thank you or please with a ‘you were the first to reply, but your lack of manners have cost you dear’. Oooh, what a sanctimonious arse. But I do so hate bad manners.

We once used freecycle to pick up a landline phone a few years ago – we went (on the bus, those were the days) to pick up a little answerphone machine only to find that when we got there that a) the tattooed wardrobe (who had clearly never used the phone to book a dentist appointment) who answered the door wanted twenty quid for it and b) it was so lacquered with years and years of nicotine that I didn’t dare dial a number longer than the speaking clock for fear of contracting emphysema.

Anyway, back to the carpet. It’s marvellous – the last big bit of DIY that we needed to do before we buy lots of nice things to fill the house up with. However, it’s not without problems. See, a new carpet needs a bloody good vacuum (yes it does, it’s an old myth that you don’t hoover a carpet) to get all the fluff off it. Grand, no problem, we’ve got a fancy Dyson Digital. Problem is, the Dyson Digital only lasts about six minutes on full suck (just like Paul) and needs emptying out after two minutes of vigorous vacuuming. I’d no sooner hoover one third of a room when it would turn off, needs emptying, switched back on and then beep – out of battery. You’ve never seen anyone hoover so fucking quickly – all I needed was Philip Schofield bellowing at me from behind a sheet of plexiglass and it would have felt like I was on The Cube.

But the carpet still looks lovely so it was worth it, right?

Now, because we’re pushed for time, I’m going to post a recipe for a budget snack idea – you might boke at the idea of a pickled egg, but trust me, when combined with a raft of fancy spices, you’ll be laughing. BUT THAT’S NOT BUDGET. Perhaps. But since joining Slimming World, we’ve got more jars of spices than we do individual atoms in our bodies, and I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re the same. I found this recipe ages ago and put it down in my notes, but not the actual source – so in the interest of full disclosure, this is someone else’s recipe and I thank him/her for it, but hell, it’s a pickled egg.

Three things first:

buy your spices at Asian supermarkets – so, so much cheaper. Even if you can’t find an Asian supermarket near you, the ‘world foods’ aisle in Tesco generally has the spices there as well as the usual spice place, so look in that aisle and SAVE’;
you don’t NEED a fancy ferris wheel spice rack…but if you want one like mine, you can find it on Amazon…I’ve helpfully made this sexy picture a link if you want to go find one…
this is an excellent way of using up eggs that are about to go on the turn; and
no lies – these taste and look amazing, but they’ll give you farts that could skin an elephant from half a mile away. I’ve never had a fart physically climb out of my bum before, but these were that powerful. Enjoy!

This is going to sound so pretentious but fuck it. I served the eggs with shredded chicken, homegrown tomatoes and rocket and podded peas. All from the garden! I had the gardener pick only the best.

to make yellow ginger pickled eggs, you’ll need:

175ml of white wine vinegar (80p in Tesco and you use half a bottle – 40p)
150ml of water
five thin slices of ginger (remember: you should be freezing your knob of ginger, or if you will, a ‘Sheeran’ of ginger – do this and it’ll last bloody ages) – 4p
a tsp of sugar (any, but brown will do) (don’t use sweetener – better doing without)
1 tsp of turmeric (85p in Tesco, use 5p worth)
1 tsp of mustard seeds (85p in Tesco, use 5p worth)
1/2 tsp ground cardamom (85p in Tesco, use 5p worth, just smash them with a rolling pin or your husband’s face if you can’t find ground)
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper
you’ll also need a jar (sterilise it)
however many spare eggs you have (I’m not counting these, but you can buy 12 for £1.75, so go mad)

To sterilise jars, the BBC say:

Heat oven to 140C/120C fan/gas 1. Wash the jars in hot, soapy water, then rinse well. Place the jars on a baking sheet and put them in the oven to dry completely. If using Kilner jars, boil the rubber seals, as dry heat damages them.

then to make yellow ginger pickled eggs, you should:

set your eggs away boiling – ten minutes or so normally does it, and when cooked, plunge into cold water (the eggs) and when cold, shell the buggers
tip all of the above into a pan and bring to the boil
reduce, and allow to simmer for around six minutes
place a couple of eggs into your jar, add a bit of the liquid, and carry on until the jar is filled up
you’ll need around five days for the colour and the flavour to really sink in, but these are delicious and plus, they’re eggs – they’ll fill you right up!

to gussy it up:

use quail eggs
have jeeves boil the eggs for you
add chilli

to cheapen the deal:

you can buy a jar of pickling spices from most shops – cheaper than buying the individual spices, but you’ll get the use out of most of the above so it’s a worthwhile investment

Enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

August 16, 2015

Posted under

budget, burgers, fakeaways, lunch, pulses and grains, recipe card, syn free, vegetarian

black bean and quinoa burgers

I managed to make a tit of myself today in a garden centre, and not just because I’m a 30 year old lad who’ll actively choose to go to a garden centre on a Sunday afternoon. What can I say, I like the variety – where else can you go and buy a new connector for a hosepipe, a double DVD box set of Das Boot and Last of the Summer Wine and a white chocolate florentine? Years ago I would have rather ran a power-sander over the tip of my cock than schlep around sniffing flowers and Yankee Candles, but I’m getting old now.

Can we take a moment to discuss Yankee Candles? Now, and this will come as no surprise to anyone, I don’t mind a scented candle, but can someone explain to me how they come up with the names for their ‘scents’? Red Raspberry I can understand, but who decides what a ‘Wedding Day’ smells like (disappointing sausage rolls and regretful sex?) or indeed, what the hell ‘New Born’ is? To me a ‘New Born’ candle should smell like placenta, chyme and the crushing realisation you’ll never have your life to yourself again, but the good folk at Yankee Candle seem to think it smells like a urinal cake. Ah well.

We were there trying to find some suitable garden furniture for the new patio we’ve had built in the back garden. This is proving tricky in itself. All we want is a decent hardwood table and chairs. There’s no point in getting anything that needs to be brought in over the winter because we’re simply far too lazy and it’ll just to be left to rot. We had three pairs of boxer shorts hanging on our rotary drier all though Christmas last year because we kept meaning to bring them in. It was only when a particularly strong January wind blew one pair onto next door’s greenhouse roof that we took action.

There’s no point in getting anything plastic either, because it looks absolutely awful, and you just know the very second our arse touches the seat it’ll splinter into individual atoms with a loud enough crack to blow the windows in over the road and rattan isn’t going to work either because it’ll give too much under our weight and end up looking like a knackered shopping bag after three or four lazy Sundays.

So yes: hardwood, oak preferably. The garden centre didn’t cater for such a ridiculous notion as decent garden furniture but it did have a very comfortable little fabric sun-lounger on show. Of course, me being me, I had to have a go, and I poured myself in like one might tip a jelly out of a mould. It was grand, save for the fact that, thanks to my weight, the fabric pretty much ensconced me like a venus-fly-trap and it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get back out unassisted. Bearing in mind it was fairly busy and Paul was busy in the candles bit trying to figure out what the fuck ‘A Child’s Wish’ smells like, I had to free myself using only my own steam, especially as I couldn’t swing my legs out as the crotch on the jeans I was wearing had split a few weeks ago and I wasn’t entirely confident I was wearing underwear that wouldn’t have shown my balls to the world.

So – turns out the easiest way is simply to swing to one side and tip the whole lounger over until I was wearing it on my back like a turtle and then throw it off. The whole process was over in less than ten seconds but my face was burning so brightly that I’m surprised Paul’s ‘Felching Remains’ Yankle Candle didn’t set itself away and take out his nosehair. We left immediately, hurtling out of the entrance hiding our faces like a disgraced politician entering court. So that was that.

I’ll need to crack on with the recipe now as the rest of the evening is going to be spent pulling up the god-awful carpet that haunts this house in anticipation of our fabulous new carpet that arrives tomorrow. I genuinely can’t wait. Words cannot describe how god-awful the current one is, it’s no wonder the previous occupant chose to die on the toilet in the bathroom rather than face-down in this shag, you’d never find a body.

So, black bean and quinoa burgers then…

to make the black bean and quinoa burgers you need (makes six burgers):

1 tin of black eyed beans (drained) (Tesco, 55p)
65g quinoa (£2.35 for 300g in Tesco, so I’m calling 50p)
½ red onion (7p)
½ wholemeal roll, made into breadcrumbs (use one from a pack of six and the remainder of the six to put your burgers (65p)
2 cloves of garlic, minced (10p from the bulb you’ve been using for the rest of the recipes)
50ml of lime juice (you can buy a 250ml bottle for 85 – 17p used)
1 egg, whisked
½ tsp cumin (if you’ve got it)
½ tsp chilli flakes (if you’ve got it)
¼ tsp black pepper (if you’ve got it)

34p a burger!

to make the black bean and quinoa burgers , you should:

add the quinoa and 250ml water to a small saucepan and cook over a medium heat for about fifteen minutes (or until nearly all the water is absorbed)
meanwhile, add a tsp of oil to a frying pan over a medium heat and gently sweat the chopped onion until softened
in a large bowl, mix together the quinoa, onion and black beans, egg, breadcrumbs, garlic, lime juice and seasonings
mix by hand, gently mashing the beans with your hands slightly
when mixed, divide the portion into six and shape into burgers – if it feels a little wet you can add more breadcrumbs (though watch the syns!)
heat a large pan over a medium-high heat and add one tbsp of olive oil or squirt your frylight like a boss
cook the burgers for about 4 minutes each side
assemble!

Syn-free as long as you HEB the breadbun. Up to you if you think half a bun between six for the breadcrumbs is worth synning but we’re talking half a syn at most.

to gussy it up:

de-vegetarian the meal – make it with chicken, bacon and dashed hopes
add rocket
add a range of tomatoes

to cheapen it further:

the spices add flavour, but you can make do with a bit of salt and pepper
hmmm…

Enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

August 14, 2015

Posted under

budget, lunch, mince, poultry, recipe card, syn free

budget week: sweet potato, turkey and leek bake

I’m in an awful mood because it took me ninety minutes to get home instead of the usual twenty-five, thanks to all the braying hoo-rays spilling out of Newcastle Racecourse and blocking the road with their shitty Audis. So, instead of my usual pleasantries, I’m going to rattle off a list of random things that piss me off. WARNING: COARSE LANGUAGE. Of course!

sour sweets – they’re never quite sour enough for me. Seriously – if I buy a packet of sour sweets, I want my mouth to resemble the arsehole of someone who’s trying to hold back a fart at a funeral. I want to wince and tremble every time I put one on my tongue, not crash my car because my eyes have rolled to the back of my head with disappointment. Take a note Haribo, you lying bastards;

hun – I know it’s an obvious one but it drives me up the fucking wall quicker than Princess Di’s driver. Out of all the facebook platitudes, this has to be the most vapid and inane – there’s simply no excuse;

hairflickers – I went four years with hair past my shoulderblades and at no point did I feel the need to swoosh my hair like a horse being bothered by a fly – it’s an affected, fey little move and I don’t think I’m especially irrational for hoping it snaps your spinal cord;

bingo websites – since I signed up to a few bingo sites a while back (read here for my guide to making some easy money from them), we have been inundated with shitty little pieces of junk-mail through our letterbox, and they’re all the same – horrible balloon font (the type of font you’d use for warning signs in a special school), some actress who was last seen in Crossroads with badly whitened teeth, a few rainbows and a shit name – rehabbingo.com, spunkgarglerbingo.com, punchmyclitbingo.com and so on;

mincers – that stupid affected little mince that certain ladies do on the way to the car at the supermarket, with their knock-off handbag in the crook of an elbow and a bunch of keys to the other. We get it, you can drive, but I’d bet my house you’ve got ‘SPEED BITCH’ on your bumper and think your indicators are for resting your ankles on during coitus;

scratchers – people who buy scratchcards and can’t even wait until they’re out of the shop before losing all dignity and going at them – there’s someone in our local newsagent who is a bugger for this – he’s got a permanently silver fingertip. Use a coin, you sweaty-faced titrash;

straight men – well, not all straight men, only those who think that because I love a bit of cock that I must want theirs. I don’t. And just as an aside, if you’re a straight man who enjoys a bit of lavender action behind your wife’s back, then YOU’RE NOT FUCKING 100% STRAIGHT. The whole thing about it ‘not being gay if you don’t push back’ definitely, absolutely does not apply. There’s a simple enough test for blokes: if you have a cock between your legs, that’s reasonable. But if you have one pistoning away between your bumcheeks, then you’re not straight – and that’s cool, everyone has different degrees of sexuality, but stop with the 100% bollocks;

readers – people who read communal newspapers and don’t put them back in any sensible order, instead leaving all the pages out of sync and the entire paper looking like it’s blown down the street by a force 9 gale;

Paul – that I can’t find a good word to describe Paul – I don’t like husband because it sounds like I’m trying to make a political point, I don’t like partner because it makes it sound like we’ve only been together for a few months and are just testing the water, I don’t like ‘boyfriend’ because I actually have hair on my arse and my voice is broken so it’s not relevant, I don’t like life partner because just fuck off, I don’t like other half because that’s how thick chancers on game shows refer to their wives and apparently referring to him as Fatty or Shitty McGee is insulting;

‘s – it’s Tesco, not Tescos. It’s ASDA, not ASDAs. It’s especially NOT Marks and fucking Spencers;

drawn on eyebrows – why lighten your hair and then shave off your eyebrows and then draw them on with a Midnight Black Crayola? It’s even worse when they use a tin of Impulse as a drawing guide and put those half-moon shapes on above their eyes, giving them the look of someone who’s just been shot right on the sphincter with a pellet gun;

my face – I don’t like being told to cheer up. Look, I’m a genuinely cheerful guy most of the time, it just so happens that years of being cripplingly obese has left my face looking like an elderly pug being given bad news. I appreciate the concern, but equally, fuck off; and

phantom shitters – I’m not coy about dropping the kids off as and when I need to, so public toilets hold no fear for me. That said, it absolutely boils my piss when I nip into the gents only to find someone has sand-blasted the bowl or left something that could resink the Titanic floating around for everyone to look at. It’s not that bloody hard to flush a toilet and, if you’ve left the pan looking like someone wearing heavy boots has stepped on a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, fucking clean it up! The brush next to the toilet isn’t a bloody ornament.

CHRIST.

So yeah, the recipe! Look it looks like a proper school dinner. It’s not fancy-dan, but it’s stodge, syn-free and cheap to make (and you can make it even cheaper if you try). Give it a go! Syn-free if you use a spray olive oil and HEA the cheese easily between six.

to make the sweet potato, turkey and leek bake, you need:

1 large turkey fillet (£3 from Tesco)
200g mushrooms, chopped (Tesco Value – 45p)
2 leeks, sliced (40p)
2 celery stalks, chopped (69p, used 40p)
2 cloves of garlic, minced (use up some of the cloves from previous meals)
sprig of thyme (grown in the garden, or nick a sprig from the shop!)
300g fat free cottage cheese (Tesco Value, syn free – 64p)
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (63p, Tesco)
1 ball of mozzarella, shredded (47p – Tesco Everyday Value mozzarella)

This serves six, so by my estimation, this costs around £1 a serving – if you’re on a budget, just use the rest of the pack of mushrooms you buy instead of turkey and sweat it down a bit longer – that reduces the cost per serving by 50p and makes it veggie friendly. That’ll put a smile on your grey, ashen, meat-deprived face. Just kidding, before you write your complaints…

to make the sweet potato, turkey and leek bake, you should:

place the sweet potato in a large pan of boiling water and cook until soft, mash and set aside
flatten the turkey (if needed) using a rolling pin so that it is about 2cm thick, just imagine it’s someone you hate and you’re trying to kill them;
using a pan with a lid, heat one teaspoon of oil over a medium heat and add the turkey (syn the oil if you’re feeling anal, but haway);
allow the turkey to cook for ten minutes with the lid on;
after ten minutes, turn off the heat – keep the lid on and allow it to continue cooking in the leftover heat;
remove the lid from the pan and leave for another 5-10 minutes just to cool down;
check the turkey is cooked throughout and there is no pink meat remaining – if there is, cook for another five minutes over a medium heat until you’ve really beaten your pink meat;
when the turkey is cooked, shred it using two forks to pull the meat apart and set aside;
heat a large saucepan over a medium-high heat and add another teaspoon of oil (or Frylight);
add the garlic and cook until it’s sizzling and lovely, stirring occasionally;
add the mushrooms, leek and celery and stir until softened and the creepy mushroom juice has reduced;
remove from the heat, add the cottage cheese and turkey, and mix well;
spoon the turkey mixture into a casserole dish, or individual dishes;
top with the sweet potato and shredded mozarella and bake in the oven at 190 until the cheese is browned
serve with a flourish, you big fairy.

to gussy it up:

use chicken (we did, but turkey is cheaper)
add bacon (fat off, mind)
pipe your sweet potato on so it looks prettier – Paul flung the mash on ours with all the grace of a distressed chimp in a zoo flinging his faeces around

to reduce the cost:

take out the meat and replace with mushrooms
take out the leeks and use bog standard onion
go to ALDI or t’market
seriously, if you need thyme, you could just break off a bit as you schlep around the supermarket. Naughty…or, leave it out, it adds a nice flavour but it could sit without it just as well.

One thing: Tesco Everyday Value low-fat cottage cheese is syn-free and a lot cheaper than their healthy living cottage cheese. So there’s that.

Eee, I’m sorry for the rant before…it’s just not like me!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

August 12, 2015

Posted under

budget, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, vegetarian

budget week: dressed spaghetti with eggs

Only a quick post tonight as we’re out shopping, so I’m reposting a particularly relevant part of the blog that I typed out a while back – seems perfect for budget week! Enjoy. The recipe could not be simpler, it’s just dressed spaghetti with fried eggs. Sounds dull, but really, the combinations of flavours combined with a runny yolk makes it almost like a meatless carbonara, and it’s worth giving it a go. Without further delay then…

Bulk buy the staples

Long time readers may remember The Cat Hotel – we cleared out our shed, fitted shelving and use it to store bulk purchases of anything that is either on a considerable discount or cheaper to buy in bulk. So to this end we always have masses and masses of Slimming World staples – chopped tomatoes, beans, pasta, spaghetti, chickpeas, tinned veg, stock cubes, salt, vinegar, sauces, rice. We generally buy these in bulk from Costco – to give you an example of savings here, you can pick up 24 tins of excellent quality chopped tomatoes for around £7, or 28p a tin. Yes, you can buy them cheaper in Tesco if you go down to the ‘Aren’t I a cheapskate’ range, but you’re getting red piss in a tin with a tomato crust. There would be more tomato flavour if you sucked the tomato on the tin wrapper. Bulk buying nearly always pays for itself in the end plus you’ve always got something in – many a time Paul and I will just have a tin of beans for dinner because we’re too busy illegally downloading TV shows and living the life of Riley. By the way, our cats don’t bother with it, and why would they? Yes it’s warm, safe and dry, but they’d much rather crap in my flowerbeds and track their muddy paws across our white tiles.

Cook twice, freeze once!

Most of our recipes can easily be doubled or halved – but if I say it serves four, then cook for four and freeze two portions – or serve three portions and take one for lunch the next day as we normally do. You’re cooking the meal anyway so it’s no hardship at all to freeze a bit up.

ALDI/LIDL

You can save money in these shops, but I don’t like them. I have tried, I swear I have. We went to an Aldi once and it was just too stressful – I don’t like a shop that puts garden shears next to petit pois tins and tumble drier balls next to the Daily Malk chocolate. I find it too confusing, with all the off-brand rip-offs and impossible layout – it’s like an Escher puzzle of abject poverty. Plus when you go to pay for your items the cashier throws them through the checkout like she’s going for gold for Great Britain’s curling team. I like small talk and chit-chat, not fucking carpet burns from a pack of floor wipes swishing past my hand at the speed of light. If you can deal with the above, all the very best to you, you’ll definitely save – but if not…

Don’t be afraid to scrabble in the bargain bin

Listen, I used to avoid the bargain bin like the best of them, but since I discovered that my local Tesco actually do decent meat reductions, I’ll happily get in there and elbow an old biddy in the face for £2 off a pork shoulder. You’ve got to be savvy though – get what you need, rather than what you think is a decent deal. If you weren’t going to buy that six pack of yoghurt reduced to 8p because the fork-lift ran over it and a fox shagged the strawberry crunch, it’s not a bargain. But the flipside of this is – don’t be one of those fucking awful people who grab items as soon as the poor supermarket worker has stuck the reduced sticker on it. Have a touch of class. Yes, you might have a trolley so full of reduced bread that you could use it to stop a raging river, but what price dignity? I’ve mentioned before that I’ve seen people actually fighting and nothing is worth that.

Get yourself a countdown

Clearly not a countdown as in the game-show for the piss-flow challenged, but rather where you bulk buy Slimming World entry costs and get 12 weeks for the cost of ten, plus if you time it right you’ll normally get given a free book that you can immediately ~~sell on ebay for further profit~~ read and enjoy. Mind, this is good for two reasons – yes, you’ll save money, but if you’re as tight as a tick’s bumhole like I am, the idea of wasting already spent money will make you go to class! WIN WIN.

for dressed spaghetti with eggs, you’ll need (serves 6)…

500g of spaghetti – 500g is only 20p at Tesco, so go mad – you don’t need expensive spaghetti
1 tablespoon of olive oil – 6 syns – £1.20 for 200ml so let’s say 6p for a tbsp
8 large cloves of garlic, peeled and minced, not hard for a mincer like me – 30p at Tesco
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes – £1.99 in Tesco but they’ll last you an age, so I’m going to say 6p here
3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley, more for garnish if desired (£1.25 for a plant in Tesco, you use 10p worth, see my note below)
juice of half a lemon (30p, 15p used)
optional – use parmesan on the top (30g HEA for one person) (block I use is £4 a pop, but you don’t need to use it – I reckon around 40p used here)
4 tablespoons of the pasta water
fried eggs dry-fried (2 eggs each, 12 eggs in total – £1.75)
salt, naturally

to make dressed spaghetti with eggs, you should…

cook the spaghetti in boiling water until cooked, then drain – keeping aside a small cup of the pasta water
finely mince your garlic and sweat it down in the oil on a nice hot pan (save about a sixth to add later)
cooked slowly, the garlic will golden nicely
once the garlic is golden, add the chopped parsley, chilli flakes, pasta water and the lemon juice together with a pinch of salt and allow to mingle together like awkward teens at a disco
mix it through the cooked spaghetti, adding a little extra water to loosen it
whilst this is happening, cook your eggs – don’t let the yolk set, as you want to pop the yolk when the eggs are on top of your pasta!
serve the pasta with eggs on top and parmesan if you fancy

Look, I know this looks bland, but the pasta is delicious and the eggs add a nice creaminess. Plus, it takes about fifteen minutes from looking at the freezer crying to getting it on the plate.

a note about herbs

Fresh herbs always, always taste better. You’re better off buying a couple of those living plants from the supermarket and looking after them – we’ve got a basil and a parsley plant in the kitchen on the windowsill that’s been going strong since May, despite Paul’s attempts to kill them with his toxic farts. We simply popped the plant, still inside its plantpot, inside an old loaf tin, which we top up with water every now and then. Easy! It takes the water it needs and keep you going for ages!

to gussy it up

add bacon strips
more cheese!

to cheapen the deal

switch to Frylight (you’ll save syns too)
one egg each rather than two

Easy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

August 11, 2015

Posted under

budget, lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, seafood, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

budget week: tuna frittata with a boob of couscous

Who doesn’t love a boob of couscous? Eh? I’ve normally got some degree of couscous caught up in my chest hair since we’ve taken to buying the industrial-sized catering tubs from Costco and eating couscous for every meal where we can’t be arsed to cook. Seriously, it’s hard work being so hairy.

Mild hysteria yesterday when, after both getting in from work and GASP, discovering the TV was covered in a dust blanket (which would have needed oooh…around 3 seconds to remove, but we were tired), we went straight to bed for a lie-down. As you do. I was winding Paul up by putting my finger in his belly button whilst he dozed only to pull out a finger covered in soft, brown, lumpy matter. I genuinely fell off the bed in horror thinking it was faeces. How and why didn’t cross my mind. Paul woke up with a start (he tends to when I start shrieking, I’m like the campest alarm clock you could think of), saw the mess and looked equally confused.

Turns out it was a big old chunk of chocolate muffin that had spilled down his shirt whilst he wolfed it down in the car on the way home so I wouldn’t know he’d cheated on his diet. See? Some people find out their husband is having an affair through errant text messages or boxer shorts that look like a painter’s radio – I find out Paul has been cheating on his diet because his belly-button filled with chocolate. The poor bastard never gets a break, does he?

I managed to mortify him in Homebase yesterday when I told the woman behind the counter that the scented candle she proffered me ‘smelled like my nana’s house, and she’s been dead for four months’, then wandered off chuckling whilst Paul fished about for the Nectar card. I do that a lot, make comments and roll out of shot – we were once in ASDA behind someone describing (I think) a car crash by saying ‘first he thrashed it over to the left, then the right, then it span out of control and four people got hurt’, when I jokingly said ‘Sounds like one hell of a smear test that’ and disappeared into the magazine aisle. Paul’s still got the burns from the glare he got off the poor lady. Ah well. It’s all fun until someone gets punched on the tit.

Our house is still an absolute bombsite but at least, thanks to our excellent painter, all the painting is finally done. Excellent. Our cats decided to celebrate by dragging a bird through our cat-flap and splattering blood all over our hallway wall (Dulux Urban Obsession, since you ask). They’re kind like that. How I chuckled and clutched at my sides as I pushed them back out the cat-flap with the toe of my Dr Martens and put the lock on. I think they knew they had upset me, they spent the next thirty minutes silently meowing at the living room window before giving up and resuming licking their arses with their back legs stuck up like a big fuck-you-finger to common decency.

The other bit of good news is that my absolute legend of a dad has finished building us our lovely patio outside in the back garden. Whilst that’s smashing news for us as it means we can lounge about on our fabulous oak outdoor furniture, it’s bad news for anyone walking down the street as it means we can lounge about on our fabulous oak outdoor furniture, and they’ll be sick with jealousy. Well, perhaps not jealousy, perhaps nausea. What kind of noise does a sweaty back peeling away from wood make? Like pulling the last rasher of bacon out of the packet I imagine. They’ve got that to look forward to.

Anyway, that’s quite enough nonsense, I’m getting a pain from my back from typing this on the computer whilst sitting on a set of decorating ladders. The things I do for you lot. Tonight’s recipe comes with a warning: it looks absolutely bloody revolting going into the oven. I thought Paul had taken up regurgitating my food for me and good lord, the smell. But persevere, because it actually made a tasty little dish with plenty left over for the morning! So, tuna frittata – this serves six easily!

to make tuna frittata, you’ll need:

1 tin of tuna in water (62p from Tesco) (added benefit of being pole and line caught)
2 shredded large carrots (Tesco Everyday Value bagged carrots – 53p – worked out about 10p)
1 chopped onion (9p from Tesco)
2 minced garlic cloves (30p for a whole bulb from Tesco, two cloves, let’s say 4p)
100ml of 1% milk (5p – 2l from Tesco being a quid)
two wholemeal breadbuns (12 for £1 in Tesco, so 16p)
8 eggs (12 free-range eggs are £1.75, so £1.15)
1 chicken stock cube (everyone has stock cubes)
salt and pepper to taste (ditto)
parmesan cheese – now, here’s something you don’t necessarily need but let me tell you something – you’re better off buying a block of it and using it sparingly rather than chucking it on with gay abandon – so we’re going to call it 50p, given the block I buy is normally around £4 and lasts forever
optional extras: served with two packets of Ainsley Harriott’s couscous (nearly always £1 for two) and a big bag of rocket (£1.50) (add an extra 45p for the sides or come up with something else)

This dish uses the HEB of two people for the bun and a portion of someone’s HEA for the milk and a HEA for the cheese, but really, split between six, it’s nothing. Up to you if you count it. No syns though!

and so…

stick the oven onto 190 degrees
sweat the onion like a bad-ass, then chop the garlic up and add into the onions
in a bowl, tear apart the breadbuns and soak them in the milk
after five minutes, add the onion, salt, pepper, chicken stock cube and eggs into the bowl and whisk everything together using a hand-whisk or just good old elbow grease
throw in the tuna and grated carrot and mix mix mix
grease a pyrex dish of your choosing and slop your dinner into it, then grate 30g of Parmesan on the top
try to see through your tears at the smell and look and put it in the oven to cook for around 50 minutes – keep an eye on it mind
take it out to cool and make up your sides – I cook the couscous simply by pouring boiling water on, no butter, putting it into a bowl and tipping it out – hence the boob!
enjoy

to gussy it up:

add frozen peas
more cheese
top the top with tomatoes
buy better tuna, though actually, the cheap tuna from Tesco is decent and fairly caught

to save even more:

spend a bit of money and buy a friggin’ microplane grater – it’ll make your garlic and parmesan go so much further, trust me. Get one here!
buy cheaper eggs – no guilt from me for suggesting this one – free range eggs are better, absolutely, but if you’re on the bones of your arse, meh. Free range doesn’t mean much these days, sadly;
more carrots to bulk it out!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

July 25, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breast, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free

chicken chopped salad – and buying a bloody sofa

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful things a couple can do – well, that’s bullshit. Listen, we moved the entire contents of our flat to our new home in a Citreon C2. You’ve never lived until you’ve hurtled down the A1 with the threat of a chest of drawers tumbling off the roof of the car and littering the road with boxer shorts and buttplugs.

No, moving house was easy. It’s decorating that’s really turning my teeth to dust as I grind them with impatience and anger. Today Paul and I went sofa shopping, see, and quite genuinely I’d rather spend the afternoon having various items of kitchenware roughly inserted into my anus in a display window in House of Fraser rather than repeat it. It was just awful, with each shop bringing a fresh horror.

We made the mistake of starting in DFS, where we were immediately accosted by someone fresh out of nappies and with more product in his hair than there is on our freshly plastered ceilings. I reckon he took longer on his hair that morning than I’ve spent cumulatively on mine my entire life. And I used to have long, luscious hair, like a fruity Meat Loaf. His opening gambit was ‘So are you thinking of buying a sofa?’. I resisted the urge to throw my hand to my mouth in mock surprise and go ‘Heavens no, I’ve come to have the car’s tyres realigned and my brake fluid changed, how DID I end up in here?’.

I can’t bear nonsense questions like that (and I’m never rude to shopworkers, mind, they’re just doing what they’re told) – I’m hardly going to be renting a sofa for a weekend, am I? We shuffled around the store until his Lynx Africa got too much for my sensitive nose and we bid him goodbye, promising to ‘come back later’. Honestly there’s more chance of Princess Diana ‘coming back later’ than me.

Next was Barker and Stonehouse, which is pretty much the antithesis of DFS in terms of ‘style’ but I found it ghastly, not least because I immediately felt incredibly out of place in my George jeans and painting hoodie. There are some beautiful pieces of furniture to be had, but it all felt a little bit overpriced, and the only assistance offered amounted to nothing more than such an angry glare from an bumptious oil-slick of a man that I actually thought I’d trod muck in on my shoes. Perhaps he was looking disdainfully at our B&M carrier bag full of hot chocolates, but what can I say, I like a bargain. I got a quick snipe in as I left that ‘perhaps if I was opening an upper-class brothel, I’d consider it’, but it fell a little flat.

The next shop was some ‘Sofa Warehouse’ or suchlike – the only thing I remember about it was that, when I enquired about leather sofas, he immediately showed us to this god-awful brown number that looked like the first turd after a bout of severe constipation…and had cupholders in it. I’m sorry but no, cupholders in a sofa is strictly the domain of people who put tomato ketchup on everything they eat and who breathe loudly through their mouth. I mean honestly, I don’t even have a tattoo of a loved one’s name in copperplate on my neck. I bet the same people who leave comments like ‘RESIPEE PLZ K THX HUN’ under my food pictures have cupholders. Is it so difficult to strain forward and pop your can of Monster down on a coffee table? We made our excuses there and then.

And so it went on. We visited almost ten different places and each one was absolutely rammed full of awful shapes, awful textures, awful colours and awful people. There was one settee that looked like it had been stitched together by Stevie Wonder at gunpoint – about eighty different textures and patterns all stretched horrendously over some cheap metal legs. It looked like a corrupted MPEG of a colonoscopy. Who buys stuff like that, seriously? I wouldn’t burn that in my garden.

We did eventually find a settee we like, but then being tight-arsed Geordies, we dashed home to see if we could find it cheaper online and via Quidco, which we’ve dutifully done, but no – it’s cheaper in store! So that means tomorrow we’re going to go back and haggle like we’ve never done before. The sales assistant looked hard-faced (although it was hard to tell under her fifteen inches of Max Factor – she sneezed at one point and I swear half her cheek fell onto her blazer) but I reckon I’ll be able to get £200 off the asking price and free delivery. That’s my goal.

Tell you what though, you couldn’t pay me to deal with the general public – we witnessed some appalling behaviour from families with children today, including one set of parents who let their litter tip a fucking settee over and ignored the somewhat plaintive cries of the poor assistant who clearly knew that a call to a claims solicitors was mere moments away. You also get arseholes coming in like me who fake-smile at you, take a free cup of coffee and then spend thirty minutes clumsily pawing their way through the fabric selection book before hurtling home to order it online and put a hammer in the nail of the coffin of your job security. In my defence: I’m always super-polite and I’m never, ever rude. Plus anyway, I’m going back tomorrow so she’ll be getting her commission.

Christ though, it’ll be ten weeks before delivery. Ten weeks! What are they doing, pulling it with their hair from Penzance? Bah! That leaves nearly no time at all for the cats to completely destroy it before Christmas comes and we have to host family.

Anyway. That was my day. When we came back, we threw together whatever shite we could find in the fridge and the cupboard and fashioned together a ‘chicken chopped salad’ of sorts, made up of various bits of nonsense. It was tasty, but does it require a recipe? I’m not sure. I’ll give you a picture though, so be happy.

our chicken chopped salad contains:

healthy extra amount of light mozzarella (65g each)
two chicken breasts, cooked on the grill and coated in lime juie
four boiled eggs, sliced
diced crunchy iceberg lettuce
two rashers of bacon which Paul dutifully turned into shoe-leather on the grill
sliced beef tomatoes
tin of black eyed beans
tin of sweetcorn
sliced red cabbage

You could make this veggie friendly by omitting the chicken and bacon and replacing it with peppers, mushrooms, sofa cushions, horse farts, anything. I don’t often cover salads but it did make for a nice photo and a quick dinner, so here we are. Enjoy!

Oh dressing: we just mixed some fat free yoghurt with mint from the garden. Easy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

July 17, 2015

Posted under

breast, fakeaways, greek, lunch, poultry, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free

gyros and roasted veg

‘ello ‘ello.

No post last night because I was quizzing it again with the rabble – after deciding that ‘Bender and the Jets‘ was a cursed name, we switched it up and called ourselves ‘Puff and Bluster‘. We came mid-table, which wasn’t very nice for the barmaid to clean up. Use a dab of bleach love, it’ll thin it out. The best name of the night goes to ‘Quizlamic State‘ followed by ‘The Mad Twatters‘.

Next week we’ll be ‘Bruce Jenner-talia’ (of course) and then the ‘Menstrual Cycle Display Team’. Apparently calling ourselves ‘I wish this microphone was a big throbbing cock’ isn’t allowed as it would make the Quizmaster blush when he was reading out the scores. He’s a poor sport, not least because he doesn’t get dressed up like the Quizmaster from Sabrina.

Damn, I miss Sabrina. We had a black cat when I was growing up called Salem, who managed to sleep through being on fire. We had a coal fire and it would spit out sparks all the time – one such spark landed in his fur as he dozed in front of the fire, and we only realised what had happened when a flame appeared on his back and the air was thick with the smell of burning cat. We hastily threw a cup of tea (warm) at him, dabbed him out, and he just went back to sleep happy as larry. Not quite as dramatic as the time I threw a packet of cheap cigarette lighters on ‘to see what happened’ – let me tell you, it was like Hiroshima. He went on to live a long, uneventful life save for when he went missing for three months and returned with his hair so matted around his arse that we had to use a set of hair-clippers to get rid of his shitty tagnuts. We threw out the clippers afterwards. Hey it was unending glamour in our household!

Remember me waffling on a while ago that we’re active members of the Reddit Gift Exchange, where you send a random stranger (well not entirely random, they sign up for the service) a themed gift and another random stranger sends you something? It’s like a global secret santa and it’s GREAT fun. Hell, even I’m happy to take part, and I’m tighter than a astronaut’s arsehole. Anyway, this month’s theme was cookbooks, and we sent some nice Thai cookbooks off to a lovely lady down in Dorset and today we came back home to find a nice parcel waiting on the side. I say on the side, the cat had clearly decided the best place for it was on the kitchen floor so he could sleep on it. Which he did.

Turns out not only did we receive a charming Ching Chinese cookbook (her name, not me being all Bernard Manning) and a guide to Mexican food, but also – and I really think this is brilliant – a load of personal recipes that our Gifter had typed out and put in a binder for us! A mix of Scandinavian recipes that they’d found and even better, a collection of their own personal recipes! On top of that, a handwritten note saying how much they loved our blog (oh you!). I genuinely adore it – you all know how cynical I am – someone could give me a bunch of flowers and a cuddle and I’d be thinking is that they were trying to set off my hay-fever and/or bugger me – but this really touched me! IN MY SPECIAL PLACE. Thank you – massively – Jenny and Fox! We’re going to plan a Scandinavian themed week using your recipes as a thanks! 😀

GASP I’m all emotional. Let’s get some bloody dinner down wor pie-holes shall we. We were going to make pizza pies just to continue the theme of trying out what every fucker else is making but after the ‘sumptious’ steak bakes I really can’t be persuaded to try it. Perhaps I’m a little jaundiced by seeing 856 badly-focused photos of the bloody cheesy crusty things littering my facebook feed. Seriously my wall looks like a Google Streetview-tour of a burns unit.

So, Paul’s made gyros and roasted veg!

you’ll need these (makes easily chicken gyros enough for four)…

chicken gyros

1kg diced chicken
3 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp fat free greek yoghurt
1½ tbsp oregano
1 tsp salt
½ pepper
4 BFree Multi-grain gluten-free wraps (HexB for one)

roasted mediterranean vegetables

800g potatoes, cut into chunks
1 aubergine, sliced and quartered
1 red pepper and 1 orange pepper, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 red onion, cut into chunks
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp mixed herbs
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

tzatziki

½ cucumber
250g fat-free natural yoghurt
1 tsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt
pinch of black pepper

salad

3 tomatoes, diced
1 cucumber, diced
1 red onion, diced
handful of mint leaves, chopped

and you’ll need to do this…

firstly combine all of the ingredients for the gyros (minus the wraps) into a large bowl
cover and leave to marinate for at least two hours
next, prepare the tzatziki – cut the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds
grate the flesh into a bowl and discard the skin
add the rest of the ingredients and leave to rest for at least twenty minutes
next, prepare the mediterranean vegetables by mixing together all of the ingredients
spread out onto a single layer in a roasting tray, spray with a bit of oil and place in the oven at 190 degrees for around forty-five minutes
whilst that’s cooking, mix together the salad ingredients and set aside
when you’re ready, spread out the chicken onto a single layer and cook under a medium-high grill until well cooked, turning regularly
finally, assemble your gyros by spreading the chicken, tzatziki and salad onto a wrap and roll

SEE IT’S THAT EASY.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

July 15, 2015

Posted under

beef, british, classics, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, lunch, recipe card, sandwiches, savoury snacks, snacks, steak, syn free, taster ideas

the steak bake

For most blokes, the idea of having a soaking wet bird angrily thrashing around on their face first thing in the morning would be an entirely wonderful way to wake up. Well, admittedly, we’re not “most blokes” but let me tell you, it’s not all that. Nevertheless, that’s how we started the day, with my cat bringing a bird in through our bedroom window and throwing it against my face. Normally we’re woken very gently by our fancy alarm clock that fades unnatural light into the room like a sunrise but clearly Bowser thought that was far too decadent and we needed a new alternative.

There was a LOT of screaming. I screamed, Paul screamed, the bird was screaming and the cat got such a fright at our apparently ungratefulness that he puffed up into Giant Cat Form, picked up his prey and took off with the bird in his teeth into the living room, leaving a lovely smear of blood across the floor from where it’s wing was hanging off. We spent the next ten minutes trying to remove Bowser from the room and rescue the bird and, after much flapping around (by all of us) and some judicious use of a tea-towel, I slingshotted the poor bugger out of the living room window. He survived for all of about ten seconds before Sola, our other cat, jumped from the roof (we live in a bungalow remember, she’s not THAT good) and tore his head off. In all, we’d gone from sleeping peacefully in our beds to watching a violent murder on our front lawn, with all the screaming and dramatics that entails, within fifteen minutes.

My heart was still racing as I backed the DS3 off the drive.

Of course, the fun didn’t stop there, as when Paul posted a dramatic recollection of the encounter on Facebook, he was immediately set about by someone telling him off for not taking the bird to an animal hospital. Paul was being terribly polite and British about the whole thing but I immediately weighed in on the argument to point out that ‘the Sparrow Ambulance was tied up attending to a coal tit with hurt feelings’ and that I lamented the fact I hadn’t had the foresight to fashion the poor bugger ‘a tiny sling from a spent match and a doll’s shoelace’.

I think we can agree that I won the argument.

Anyway, that’s America week over – what fun! To recap, we covered:

That’s a lot of decent dishes! Give one a try and report back. Our next theme will be budget week – we’re going to try and map out a whole week for around £40/£50, which is half our normal shopping budget for the week. That’ll be in a couple of weeks and I’ll break with tradition by putting a meal planner on here before it starts. You know, because I’m nice like that.

Anyway, tonight’s recipe is interesting and tasty, if you’re a fan of cat-food pressed into a bit of fake-bread. This isn’t one of our own recipes – we’ll gingerly call it a Slimming World classic – but people have been foaming at the gash over these “steak bakes” which tastes “just like the ones from Greggs”. Well, really. The only thing I get from Greggs is overcome with static electricity from all the bustling masses of polyester leisure suits. Remember, I’m from Newcastle – we’ve got more Greggs than we do bus-stops. A romantic day out here is a sausage roll from Greggs and a quick fingering in the cinema. Nevertheless, it’s the new ‘in thing’ amongst all the big groups so you know, I thought we’d take our foot off the gas and relax a little, and let someone else do the thinking. So this isn’t our recipe, no no, but you might enjoy it.

Mmm. Appetising. Paul enjoyed it, but it felt like mush in my mouth – like someone had already had a bash at eating it. Look, I’m not fussy about what goes in my mouth (fact: I don’t have a gag reflex, and god knows many have tried to find it), but the meat in this stewing steak had all the structural integrity of a licked stamp. Plus the pattern on the thins reminds me of pitted keratolysis. Did it fill me up? Perhaps, but we served them with new potatoes out of the garden and peas, so I reckon it was probably those that filled me with goodness.

for a steak bake then, you’re going to need:

a tin of ASDA stewed steak (syn free, but you can find plenty others that are low in syns)
Kingsmill wholemeal thins (one ‘sandwich’ is a HEB)
an onion
an egg
tip: add worcestershire or chilli sauce

and you’ll need to:

warm through the delicious looking tin of Whiskas stewed steak
add in the chopped onion (cooked if you prefer)
spread over the thins
press down and secure the edges by pressing with your finger
wash the top with a bit of beaten egg
cook for around fifteen minutes.

Enjoy. It’s free for one. That’s one thin, not one packet of thins. Or: alternatively, go cook something…healthy. I dunno. I’m not your Master.