Category Archives: pork

Pork recipes

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January 17, 2018

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british, diced pork, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, one-pot, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, slow cooker, snacks

slow cooker pork and apple stew

We’re all about the slow cooker pork and apple stew and we’re going to get that out to you in a moment, but first, a clarification from Paul.

Well, Cubettes, I am FUMMIN hun x (it’s Paul here, by the way). After reading yesterday’s blog entry written by James, I’m going to have to put a few things straight. Namely:

Here’s how every single holiday of ours gets planned: I suggest somewhere, Paul sucks air in over his teeth and say ‘oooh’ with that look a roofer gives you when he’s going to need to take your tiles off, I suggest somewhere else, he grimaces like he’s shitting an acorn. 

I’d just like to say this is a total lie and in fact it’s bloody James that does this! I’m totally amenable to going anywhere (as long as it’s not a shithole). In fact, I can think of at least ten places I suggested that were kicked off the list for daft reasons; “too hot”, “too cold”, “we’ve done a city break already”, “they won’t like fat people”, “that’s the kind of place your mum would go”. My suggestion initially for the ‘big holiday’ was Las Vegas but that was knocked back because it was too ‘gambly’.

Honestly. I bit my tongue so hard that it gave me piles. But then, James has always been the neurotic one – we’ve written before about how he is convinced that every electrical appliance in the house is waiting for us to leave so each one can spontaneously combust into flames. Even the smoke alarm is in on the act. Have you ever known someone take out the batteries when they go away on holiday?! He will however happily leave the Mac running 24 hours a day so now those two little bald men at the top are actually burned into the screen.

So that, dear readers, is the truth. And you can rely on it being the truth because I’d never lie to you. Unlike Fatty McFat-tits. Now that’s out the way, let’s move back onto marital bliss, and this absolute belter. slow cooker pork and apple stew

slow cooker pork and apple stew

to make slow cooker pork and apple stew you will need:

  • 500g diced pork
  • 300g baby carrots
  • 1 tbsp gravy granules (2½ syns)
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 2 sticks of celery, finely sliced
  • 175ml apple juice (3½ syns)
  • 150ml chicken stock
  • 2 tsp thyme

We found this recipe on daisiesandpie – thoroughly recommend you take a wee look!

A slow cooker is essential if you’re following Slimming World! You don’t even need to spend much money, a cheap one will do the job just as well! You can pick one up from Amazon for peanuts and help to send a few pennies our way!

to make slow cooker pork and apple stew you should:

  • switch on the slow cooker to the LOW setting
  • spray a little oil into the bottom of the dish (Fry Light tastes shite. Get this instead!)
  • chuck everything (bar the gravy powder) into the slow cooker, pop on the lid and leave to cook for 8-9 hours
  • once you’re ready, take everything out with a slotted spoon and slop the sauce into a pan – add the gravy powder, whack the heat up and thicken that sauce
  • serve with a bit of mash for perfection

See now come on, how easy is that – and cheap too! Perfect winter warmer!

Want more slow cooker recipes? Have a look at these!

Enjoy!

J

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January 16, 2018

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bacon, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, travel

syn free cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake

Here for the cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake? WITH NO BLOODY QUARK? But of course you are, my love – the recipe awaits you at the bottom of this page. But before we get to the cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake, we have part one of our holiday entry for our Christmas trip to Sweden and Norway! Newcomers to the blog may not know this, but we’re also a ‘travel’ blog in that when we go away, we like to post the stories of what we get up to. Admittedly, this can lead to a long post, so to help you – if you’re here solely for the food, click the button below to go straight to it! I promise not to cry too much.

The rest of you settle back – this is a long one! And look, to celebrate, I’ve even tidied up the banners – I was sick of that awful messy looking banner template I had. This looks altogether more…Swedish, ja? Let’s go!

I’ve been looking forward to typing up this holiday entry ever since we came back – why? Simple: it was amazing! It’s not as though we did anything out of the ordinary or unique – just our usual pottering about in cities getting lost and having a good time – but there was just something terrific about the whole experience. Every day was a happy memory – I haven’t been able to say that about any holiday since we went on that coach trip. I jest, that was Hell in a 57-seater. But before you join us on our Scandinavian adventure, we need to dip back in time a bit further to a wet October afternoon, where you would have found me slumped over my keyboard at the end of a very, very long email exchange with the other half. Here’s how every single holiday of ours gets planned: I suggest somewhere, Paul sucks air in over his teeth and say ‘oooh’ with that look a roofer gives you when he’s going to need to take your tiles off, I suggest somewhere else, he grimaces like he’s shitting an acorn. He then suggests somewhere wildly expensive and extravagant and pouts when I point out he’s trying to live a Waitrose lifestyle on a shoplifted-from-Lidl budget. We both then give up and stop talking until one of us cracks and we’re friends again, holiday completely forgotten about. Hence, on this October afternoon, conscious of the fact we’d need to book somewhere before all the parents and (shudder) their snotty-nosed litter booked up all the fun places, I sent a plaintive little email asking if we dare broach ‘booking the big holiday’. Paul, to his credit, was very agreeable, but then we immediately started arguing about where to go.

So, I did something I would never normally do because it’s altogether too much effort: I acted unilaterally. Straight onto hotels.com to book four nights in Stockholm, flights to Oslo, four nights in Oslo, a train journey to Bergen, three nights in Bergen and then the flights back to London then to Newcastle. For good measure, I booked the train to take us up to Edinburgh Airport for our Stockholm flight and a hotel for the night before. I parcelled all the reservations in one big PDF and sent them to Paul, triumphant. His reply? ‘Ah good, sounds nice‘

It’s lucky he works twenty miles away and I’m so fat and lazy that I couldn’t be arsed to get in the car to go and tan his arse because damn, was my excitement punctured. He only won me around later by explaining he was in a meeting and actually he was very much looking forward to our lovely holiday and indeed I was the best husband in the world and no, he’d never sin again. I can’t say his agreement was purely because I was pulling on his balls like a farmer milking a cow at the time. Who can say…

To day one, then. Our journey begins as so many of them often do: a taxi ride to the train station by a man so Geordie and hardcore that he explained he’d recently suffered a heart attack at the wheel of his car, chalked it down to indigestion and carried on driving passengers around. It was only after a whole day of chest pains and breathlessness that he went to A&E. Great! I imagine he took my endless staring into his rear-view mirror as rapt attention to his mildly-racist stories but actually, I was just making sure his lips hadn’t turned blue and he wasn’t going to career us into a lamp-post. We made it safely to the station and I left him a generous tip. Well, something had to pay for the funeral buffet. We were due to take the 14.30 Virgin Train to Edinburgh, but, to add a frisson of excitement to the start of our holiday, they elected to jumble all the trains around and delay our train by a full hour. Super, but have no fear, we’re Rockafella Skanks – we had first class advance tickets and thus the utopia that is the first class lounge awaited us – what a treat!

No. You may know this yourself but the first class lounge at Newcastle is fitted out like the waiting room of an NHS dentist – all pastel colours on the wall, hotel biscuits and furniture that looks as though it’s blown in from a storm. It really is dreadful. We comforted ourselves with the fact we could eat as many biscuits as humanely possible and entertain ourselves with our phones, able as we were to take full advantage of the charging points. Only the charging points didn’t work, they had run out of biscuits and the toilet was blocked and overflowing. We’d have had more luxury fighting the rats on the train-tracks for some discarded Greggs and somewhere to shit. To compound my misery I spotted my old HR director from a previous job who I absolutely despised. She was to fun what I am to a chaste heterosexual lifestyle. She was very much one of those type of people who would click ‘skip straight to recipe’ on this blog and then email me to tell me she was allergic to food and how insensitive I was being by posting a recipe. She hated me especially because I burst out laughing when she fell over in the middle of the office, having stumbled into an open floor socket, falling down like one of those cooling towers you sometimes see getting blown up on the telly. I couldn’t help it: I have a nervous laugh, and anyway, she deserved it. She was Miss Trunchbull in a Jigsaw-outlet suit. We clashed many, many times – she upheld a complaint that I laughed too much, for example, and that I didn’t take the job seriously because I wore trainers to work. Pfft. I never said anything about her homage-to-Robert-Winston moustache.

I made sure to give her the sickliest, fakest, cheesiest smile I could muster up – a smile that said ‘Damn, I honestly thought you’d be dead by now, but here’s to the good times, you vile husk of a woman’ and walked past her, making sure she saw I still wore the trainers that used to irk her so. It did mean, however, that I couldn’t relax, because every time I stood up for a fresh coffee or a newspaper she would give me 100% pure stink-eye. So, all in all, a rubbish experience. Luckily, the train journey made up for it, though I wish they’d do away with the pretence of unlimited tea and coffee – we had one member of staff come around with the hot drinks, leave us a gin and gave us a sandwich, and that was it, no more, goodnight nurse. We’d polished off our ‘dinner’ by the time the train was whooshing past the house we’d left only 90 minutes before. No matter – we arrived in Edinburgh in the pissing rain, jumped straight into a taxi (why oh why oh why do people stand and wait for taxis these days? Just use bloody Lyft or Uber for goodness sake – embrace technology!) who whisked us straight to the hotel, but not before regaling us for forty minutes about why electric cars were the future. Forty minutes is a long time to nod politely: my poor neck sounded like popcorn by the end of it. Paul and I have an agreed arrangement: I deal with taxi drivers, he deals with the people who bring room service to our hotel room whilst I hide in the bathroom. It works very well indeed simply because I’m good at making small talk and he’s very believable as a fat bastard who has ordered enough food to feed two people. He’s seen many a hotel worker cast him a pitying look as they put down the laden trays of food in front of him.

Don’t worry, that bedspread soon looked as though someone had spilled Marmite everywhere   

Our night at the Dakota was very pleasant indeed, even if the room service left a lot to be desired. It’s all a bit frou-frou – I like to see people buckle under the weight of my plate, not be able to frisbee it across the room because there’s a bit of cress and a hair of cheese on the plate. In fact, we were so unsatisfied by the volume of our food that we waited a discreet twenty minutes and ordered another round. Well, when you’re on holiday, these things don’t matter, though I could have done without the judgemental ‘oh, TWO rounds of room service, my mistake’ remark from the receptionist when we checked out. I don’t think she had warmed to me because, upon seeing that the reception was full of blokes all in black kilts, full Scottish regalia and beards you could lose a dog in, I remarked ‘but I didn’t order breakfast!‘ to her with a nudge-nudge-wink-wink leer. That’ll be us on the blacklist.

I won’t bore you with the 150 minutes we spent at Edinburgh Airport only to make two remarks:

  • can someone please persuade my husband that we absolutely do not need to be at the airport so far in advance of a flight, especially when the only thing we’re taking on board the aircraft is hand luggage and chewing gum – I swear that unless Paul’s at the airport the day before he’s an unbearable nervous wreck; and
  • massive thank you to the Scottish toilet cleaner who, having not realised I was sitting in the cubicle next to the one she’d just gone in to clean, exclaimed ‘now which fuckin’ dirty c*nt has gone and done that’ in a loud Scottish burr. Thank God I was sitting on the toilet at the time because I would have pissed myself outright – it was so loud and so disgusted that I almost wanted to climb on my toilet to peer over and take a look.

Now here’s a new thing: we weren’t flying easyJet! I know! I want some reassurance from you all though – am I the only one who likes to fly with an airline they’ve flown with before? I think I rationalise it in my mind that they didn’t crash before, so it must be safe. Nevertheless, the lure of a cheaper flight won me over and so it was that we boarded an SAS flight to Stockholm. Well: what a revelation! Lovely new plane, free tea and coffee, USB sockets in the back of the seats – even the bog didn’t smell like a foot and mouth crisis in an open sewer like they normally do. I was very impressed, and even more so when they landed us safely in Stockholm without ditching us into the North Sea. Don’t get me wrong, my heart will always be with the tangerine-trolleys of easyJet, but I might use SAS on the side like the plane-hopping slag that I am.

Byeeeeeeeeeeee

Before we continue, I want to give praise where it’s due: to Paul. We’ve flown twenty times this year and each time he lets me sit by the window because he knows I like to be able to look at the engine and the wing to make sure everything is OK. I mean, I know the captain has a fair idea, but I’m sure it’s a comfort to him (or her) to know that I’m keeping an eye on the flaps from the back. Story of my life, that. Anyway, I always offer to sit in the aisle but Paul always gives me the window seat and for that he gets a gold star, or a go on my brown star, whichever he prefers. It makes the flight better for me so I want to say a big thank you to my gorgeous and lovely Shitty McGee.

I love this woman’s face. It’s like she’s being asked to blow into a smeggy knob.

We landed on time and were ushered through immigration in a wonderful Swedish efficient manner. I was pleased to see that the lady looked the spit of Agnetha from ABBA – exactly as I expected. We sloshed our way to the train station, took the airport express straight into Stockholm Central and then made our way on foot to our base of operations for the next few days: the Hobo Hotel on Brunkebergstorg. I chose the hotel simply because of the name and the fact it looked so cool and hip on the website. I wanted to see how they’d deal with two fat blokes whose idea of high fashion is a Cotton Traders. To their absolute credit, the staff – though they all looked like they were part of a really shit/unknown yah-yah electrosynth band – were unfailingly lovely and helpful.

Our room – we could watch the office workers over the road. No doubt my fat hairy arse has appeared in their company newsletter.

Our room was gorgeous too – massive bed, good steamy shower, television with Discovery on it (thank heavens – Paul was almost at 24 full hours without watching a How It’s Made) and lots of neat little touches. For example, there was a water pistol – imagine Paul’s delight when he’d just settled down for his ‘Welcome to Stockholm’ crap and I opened the door and squirted him right in the ear. How we laughed as he almost wrenched the toilet away from the wall in sheer fright. Ah, we’d arrived.

All I wanted was one nice picture.

Now, I’ve done the classic twochubbycubs holiday report opening and spent 2000 words getting us to the hotel. I did it with Copenhagen, Paris, Geneva…at this point, it would be rude not to. But let’s close part one here and get to the recipe.

Remember, folks – if you enjoy our holiday entries, please do let us know. I know they’re a longer read but we like to make it interesting. Feedback always welcomed!

Gosh, I’m spent – and now I need to do a full recipe for the cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake that you’re all actually here for! This makes a giant dish of pasta – easily enough for six – but it freezes well and tastes bloody amazing. Let’s go! This uses six HEAs but makes enough for six – so I count it as one HEA per portion as you’re using a sixth of each. Yes, we’re splitting HEAs, but hey, let’s live a little. This is a heavy, rich dish so you’ll not be eating loads in one go. YEAH RIGHT. You could knock down the HEAs by using Quark instead of Philadelphia, but it won’t be nearly as nice.

pasta bake

pasta bake

to make a cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake, you’ll need:

  • 500g of pasta – any type will do, I promise
  • two fat leeks (use onion if you prefer)
  • a pack of bacon medallions
  • optional: 200g button mushrooms, chopped
  • two cloves of garlic
  • 120g of extra mature lighter cheese (3 x HEA)
  • 220g of Philadelphia Lightest (2 x HEA)
  • 250ml of semi-skimmed milk (1 x HEA)

top tips:

to make a cheesy leek and bacon pasta bake, you should:

  • preheat your oven to 200 degrees
  • cook your pasta – boiling water, salty as Paul in the morning, remove when there’s still a bit of give in the pasta
  • thinly slice your leek and chop your bacon (and add the mushrooms, if using) and gently fry it off in a pan with a few squirts of oil from your sprayer – as they soften, add the minced garlic
  • meanwhile, make the sauce by tipping your Philadelphia and milk into a pan, put it on a low heat and gently whisk until it’s all mixed together – it’ll be quite runny – at this point, add 100g of the cheese and keep whisking – you’ll end up with a nice thick cheesy sauce – season it with plenty of salt and pepper
  • tip everything together in the pasta pan, give everything a bloody good mix, slop it into an ovenproof dish, top with the remainder of the cheese, some chopped spring onion or leek if you’re feeling fancy, and pop it in the oven for about thirty minutes until the cheese is golden and everything is delicious
  • serve with a side salad which you studiously ignore

Gorgeous! Of course, if you’re looking for more delicious pasta ideas, we’ve got you covered:

Enjoy!

J

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January 15, 2018

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airfryer, american, bacon, beef, beef mince, burgers, chip shop, cured meats, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free

the dirty threesome burger with the twochubbycubs!

A dirty threesome burger? Bet that got your attention, you saucy minx! You know sometimes you see something on the Internet, you long for it, you lust for it – it pervades your thoughts, wears you down and ultimately you NEED IT. You HAVE to have it. So you just do it? Well, this burger is that thought process brought to life. It seems I was in an especially suggestible mood yesterday because I only saw a picture of this sexy monstrosity yesterday and there I am, not 24 hours later, toiling in the kitchen. So easily persuaded. It’s lucky my postman didn’t offer to take my package round the back this morning – I’d have put on a condom and reached for the Flora Buttery before he had a chance to take off his satchel.

So, because something like this needs no introduction, I won’t go on and on with my usual spiel. I did want to point out that we’ve developed a new page however:

Go ahead and click – it’ll open in a new tab so you won’t lose this page. We’re just pig sick of people buying a £3.99 rotating candle from Wilkos and saying they’ve got an Actifry and they’re shit because they can’t cook chips in it. It doesn’t help that the halogen oven markets itself as an airfryer when it’s bloody well not – it’s a lightbulb in Darth Vader drag. Anyway, click the link and let me know what you think.

So what is a dirty threesome burger? Easy! It’s for when you can’t decide what you want in your mouth and thus combines pizza, burger, bacon and chips in one unholy, terrifying, WONDERFUL alliance. Shall we begin? You might want to pop a towel down to catch the sloshing. This makes enough for two BEASTS.

dirty threesome burger

dirty threesome burger

dirty threesome burger

to make a dirty threesome burger, you’ll need:

  • 500g of extra lean beef mince
  • one chopped onion
  • a good pinch of salt and pepper
  • your healthy extra breadbun – or any bun you like, as long as you syn it (cough)
  • six thick rashers of bacon
  • a little carton of passata
  • whatever you want for your pizza topping: we used peppers and a bit of chopped chorizo – a tiny amount of 5g, which is about half a syn – but you know what, who is counting
  • potatoes for chips
  • tomato sauce (tbsp – which is what we used – is a syn)
  • 40g of lighter  mature cheddar for the burger (1 x HEA)
  • 40g of lighter red leicester for the top (1 x HEA)

Wondering about the two HEAs? Remember, this makes enough for two – so you get half of each – which is one healthy extra. Simple!

Also, you can get decent mince AND bacon (plus loads more!) in our fantastic Musclefood packs! Just click here to find out what deals we’ve got on!

This looks complicated but read the recipe first, it’s a genuine doddle.

to make a dirty threesome burger, you should:

  • first, turn your gold-framed photo of Mags away to face the wall, she doesn’t need to see this
  • cook your chips however you want them – but we have a definitive guide to cooking Slimming World chips right here, which will open in a new window – you’ll need a handful per burger
  • prepare your burger by taking 400g and keeping 100g of mince for later, then squash that mince with your hands – we don’t like to over-complicate things assuming you’ve got good beef – so just add good pinch of salt, a good pinch of pepper and perhaps some garlic powder – form into two rounds
  • grill your burger however you normally do it – we used our Optigrill for this recipe (heat up, press burger, go) and it worked a charm, but it can be done just as easy under the grill or on a George Foreman – no expensive kit needed with us, remember
  • once the burgers are almost done, stick your bacon on the grill to cook
  • whilst all that is sizzling away, chop up your onion, throw it in a pan with the leftover mince and cook it off with a little bit of passata – you don’t need much, just enough to make a small amount of basic bolognese – maybe add some garlic if you’re fancy – cook until really thick!
  • once that is thick, and the burgers and bacon are cooked, it’s time…
  • first, top your burgers with 20g of mature cheddar each – better to have a couple of slices rather than grated
  • next – cut your breadbun in half and then, using your fingers, push the top down so you create a well, pressing the bread down – imagine, of all things, you were making an ashtray out of clay – you don’t want to push through though
  • add the bolognese, grated red leicester and whatever pizza topping you want – then a bit more cheese
  • whack both the bolognese bun and the burger under the grill for two minutes to melt the cheese and then…
  • assemble! Bottom of the breadbun, chips, tomato sauce, burger with cheese on, bacon, then top with the top of the breadbun with the bolognese and cheese topping! Chips topped with burger topped with pizza.

I mean really. Listen, I don’t suggest you have one of these every night – clearly it’s an ‘excess’ meal, but goodness me what a fun treat!

Oh and if you liked our outrageous burger, DO SHARE using the buttons below, and even better, why not try our other burgers?

Phew!

J

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January 7, 2018

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bacon, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas

Hawaiian pizza pasta bake – no seriously, hear us out

Hawaiian pizza pasta if you please! I know what you’re thinking – years of my brain stem being nudged increasingly repeatedly from the front twice a day for ten minutes has left me addled. Well, you’re not wrong, but we’re actually making Hawaiian pizza pasta bake to celebrate the fact that Vera returns to the telly tonight. Don’t get the link? It’s simple: Hawaiian is how she tells people to enter a building in that “Geordie” “accent” of hers. “Hawaiian pet, there’s been a moorda”

See? It’s that easy. If you’re wondering what that snapping noise was, it was sound of a tortuous analogy breaking in two.

Actually, speaking of pet, did anyone see that storm in the teacup with Virgin Trains in the middle of the week? Someone complaining was told to ‘go right ahead, honey‘ and when she mentioned it on their Twitter that actually, when complaining, it doesn’t do to be overfamiliar in return, the customer service guy replied with ‘would you prefer darling or sweetheart, next time?‘

I have to admit, I was absolutely howling. That’s exactly why I couldn’t work in social media, I’d be putting my foot in my mouth that much I’d need to tie my shoelaces with my uvula. Everyone is kicking off as though she’s Millie Tant in human form but reading beyond the typically salacious PC-GONE-MAD headline, she only complained that the train guard had called her honey in a voice dripping with sarcasm. As someone who was told loudly that WE MUST SERVE EVERYONE ELSE BEFORE YOU GET SECONDS when I asked for a sandwich on their train, I can sympathise.

It did make me think, though – I give absolutely everyone a nickname and I can’t help it. Paul is shittyarse, Shitty McGee or sugartits, my mum is Boot, dad is Greengrass, even my bosses are Chief and Guv’nor respectively. I wouldn’t think twice about sticking a love or a pet or a flower on the end of my hello or thank you in a shop. Sex doesn’t come into it, unless they’re giving me the keen-eye and I’ve got time. In fact, this habit teamed with my booming voice in shops probably doesn’t endear me to about half the people I come across, but meh, fuck it – no malice is meant – but I ought to apologise on behalf of almost every Geordie in existing who use this over-familiar terms of endearment like Southern folks use full-stops.

WE JUST DURNT KNOW ANY BETTA PETUL!

Right, to the recipe. Hawaiian pizza pasta bake! Just trust me. After all this time? Always. This makes four big portions. Cook it, freeze it, keep some extra! Lovely. If you’re after a carb hit, I just happen to have got what you need, just exactly what you need…

Hawaiian pizza pasta bake

Hawaiian pizza pasta bake

to make Hawaiian pizza pasta bake, you’ll need:

  • 250g pasta
  • 750ml passata
  • 4 slices of thick ham, chopped
  • 300g bacon medallions
  • 230g pineapple chunks (fresh is better, just buy a pre-cut pack in the supermarket if you can’t be arsed)
  • 140g reduced-fat mozzarella, diced or grated (2x HeA)
  • if you’re feeling extra sluttish, add 80g of extra mature lighter cheddar on top – I know, I’m pure filth

Get proper tasty bacon in our Musclefood deal! Make your own hamper so it’s full with only the stuff you love! Click here to find out more.

Top tip: use your microplane grater, the one I always recommend, to make your cheddar go that much further – nice and fine creates a proper crunchy top!

Up to you if you syn the pineapple. We don’t, because it’s a bollocks rule.

to make Hawaiian pizza pasta bake, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180°c
  • bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions
  • meanwhile cook the bacon under the grill, and then roughly chop
  • add the passata to a saucepan and heat gently
  • spray a large frying pan with a little oil and place over a medium-high heat
  • add the chopped ham and pineapple and cook for a few minutes
  • add the passata, bacon, ham and pineapple to the drained pasta and stir well
  • stir through half of the mozzarella and tip into a large pyrex dish
  • sprinkle over the remaining cheese and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes
  • finish under the grill for a few minutes to brown the cheese
  • serve!

Love pasta bakes? You’re not the only one! You’ll find more ideas below!

Mwah! Don’t forget to share our stuff by simply clicking the buttons below!

J

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January 5, 2018

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bacon, british, cured meats, fakeaways, lunch, panko, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas

cheesy potato cake – goodness me, it’s good

Do you know, I very nearly called this post Potato Cakes (I Just Don’t Know Know) but had I typed that out, the song Baby Cakes would enter my head. Should this happen, the only reasonable course of action would have been to step outside, nip into our garden shed, tip the lawn mower on its side, douse myself in the petrol that runs out and set myself on fire because I ABSOLUTELY HATE THAT SONG. I hate it! Not just in a ho-ho-how-silly way like most people hated on that Crazy Frog song but in a ‘whoops, there goes the skin on my back, cascading over my skull as I cringe in on myself like an alarmed tortoise’ fashion.

You know what’s the real icing on this particular shitcake though?

The stupid head-bobbing action of the frosted-tipped Matalan-shirted, pouting primadonna on the right, pursing his lips throughout the whole thing.  You’ve got no idea what black, boiling rage he stirs up inside me. Everyone has their Moriarty – I didn’t expect mine to be dressed like an fired ice-cream salesman.

Anyway, that’s all entirely by the by – I have every intention of this post being a quick recipe post, so let’s get straight to it. I happened across this recipe in a book by Antonio Carluccio – naturally his recipe calls for all sorts of butters and cheese so we’ve had to dial it back, but this is still a bloody taster dinner or, even better, leftovers-the-next-day meal. It sounds interesting, but honestly, make it and you’ll never look back. I do like Antonio Carluccio and it’s-sad-that-he’s-died-isn’t-it-mate – I love men with those big bushy eyebrows. I feel he’s what I’ll eventually end up looking like, although my eyebrows are already doing that awful thing where a couple of hairs on each side branch out looking for independence from the rest, pointing straight out in front of me just enough to get in my field of vision. Bastards.

The cheesy potato cake then. This is a load of carbs and cheese, but listen, that’s OK sometimes. Sometimes you need something heavy to sit on your stomach, and I’m not always available. This serves six very generously, so don’t balk at the amount of cheese. Trust me: I shagged a doctor once.

cheesy potato cake

cheesy potato cake

cheesy potato cake

to make a cheesy potato cake, you’re going to need:

  • about 900g of potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed – or use leftover mash
  • 200g of mozzarella – we actually used a smoked mozzarella from Tesco called Scamorza, which was tasty, but any will do (4 x HEA)
  • 80g of extra mature lighter cheese (2 x HEA)
  • I used about 250g of chopped wafer ham, but you could use bacon, boiled ham, chicken, anything you want
  • three eggs
  • a good pinch of salt and pepper
  • a bag of rocket, chopped nice and fine – use spinach if you want
  • one whole leek

top tips for a perfect cheesy potato cake

  • this is a good recipe if you’re making the creamy green veg medley that I posted yesterday – any leftover leek, chuck it in here
  • this recipe isn’t an exact science by any stretch – you can add anything you like into this – think of it as a ‘leftovers’ cake
  • get a potato ricer, for the love of God – mashing potatoes is a ballache and you invariably end up with lumpy mash – not with a ricer. Pop the cooked potato in, push it through and you’ll have perfect creamy mash (oh, and if you want to be super fancy, throw in an egg when you beat the mash together – lovely)! You can pick up a ricer from Amazon for just over a tenner and it really will change your life
  • we topped our cake with 25g of panko (dried breadcrumbs) (4.5 syns) for a bit of crunch – I’m trying to re-use ingredients in our recipes so you’re not left with any waste! You could just blitz a breadbun but honestly, worth getting some panko – most major supermarkets stock it
  • if you’re not planning on getting intercourse for a week, you could roast a whole garlic bulb and mash that in with the potato – oh I say!
  • the cheese is the thing that’ll make this dish – go for strong, bold flavours – trust me

to make a cheesy potato cake, you should:

  • if you haven’t already, peel, boil and mash your potatoes (preferably using a ricer, but I won’t shit the bed if you want to do it by hand)
  • heat the oven up to 185 degrees and get a cake tin out of the cupboard, lamenting that you’re not making something with butter, flour and sugar – I know babes, fkn snakes the lot of them
  • chopped up your cheese into little tiny cubes, chop up the ham into rags, chop up the rocket, thinly slice that leek – throw all of this into the pan with the mash, add the three eggs, a really good pinch of salt and pepper and stir
  • stir it like buggery! Stir it with all your might!
  • slop it into the cake tin with all the style and grace you’d ordinarily reserve for a crap behind your car door by the side of the road
  • smooth out the top, coat with breadcrumbs if you want, add more grated cheese if you dare
  • cook for a good forty minutes – though watch the top doesn’t burn
  • once it’s solid (it’ll not be rock solid when it’s hot mind, so use your common sense) take out of the oven and allow to cool
  • once cool, slice and serve – and this is lovely the next day

We just served ours with a simple green salad and Dynorod on standby to handle the inevitable carb-drop.

Want more lunch ideas? Goodness me, you’re keen, but here we go:

Enjoy!

J

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January 1, 2018

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american, bacon, beef, beef mince, burgers, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, lunch, panko, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, taster ideas

bacon cheeseburger bites and a happy new year!

Bacon cheeseburger bites, if you don’t mind! Scroll down to the pretty pictures if reading gives you a nosebleed.

Happy New Year! Gosh, that was a slog wasn’t it? Feels like Christmas has been hanging around like a winnit on your knickers for absolutely bloody ages. I’m not a fan of Christmas – all that joviality, child’s laughter and general happiness leaves me gagging into a handkerchief. Everywhere is full of people walking entirely too slowly, breathing too loudly, snotting and sniffing and hacking away. Even the supermarkets offer no relief – people who wouldn’t usually be allowed unsupervised access to a box of crayons are suddenly flush with cash and put in charge of a trolley full of turkeys. If Paul and I ever win the lottery, we’re moving to the Pitcairn Islands with a live-in rent-boy. Would that be a mortgage-boy? Huh, that sounds less erotic.

Now, as it’s New Year, there’s been an almighty spike in subscribers and blog views: welcome. Take a seat: it’s reinforced. You want to lose weight and you’ve been told about us in the same furtive manner that schoolboys whisper about the school slapper (which was, ironically, both of us). Everything you’ve heard is true. We’re filthy, but full of fun. We never get straight to the point. We swear altogether too much and you’d be astonished how many tired references about anal we can shoehorn into a cottage pie recipe. However, know this: this is a personal blog, not a SW blog, and thus the content will never change! You can always skip straight to the recipe if you find your ‘tache bristling at the crudeness.

There is a slight change this year, however. Since starting this blog we’ve typed over 500,000 words: that’s a lot of typing. My fingers are so worn down that I’d struggle to pick up a penny from a tiled floor. Sometimes it’s a chore having to think up all sorts of shenanigans before the recipe so we’re shifting focus just a little – more recipes. Not less chat, you understand – just rather than having gaps between the recipes, we’re going to save the ‘long’ posts for a couple of times a week. More holiday entries, less moaning. I hope you understand that this keeps things interesting for us – this is like the bit in a marriage where you can’t face another serving of your other half’s sausage surprise so you start making coquettish winks to the postman. Makes sense: our postman is an absolute dish. It’s all I can do not to wait at the letterbox on all fours when I see him lumbering up the path. So yes: change is coming. But we all change, when you think about it, we’re all different people; all through our lives, and that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear…

House-keeping then.

Right! That’ll do.

Oh, a further treat for you if you like – we designed a weight-loss tracker for the year! Click the image to download a pin-sharp A4 version ready just for you!

Right, that’s quite enough nonsense. Let’s do the recipe! If you can’t be arsed to read the recipe, we’ve actually done an entirely serious video recipe for you. Yes: serious. Now that’s a screengrab you can take to the bank.

Enjoy that? We’re spent.

bacon cheeseburger bites

bacon cheeseburger bites

to make bacon cheeseburger bites you will need:

  • 500g lean beef mince
  • 1 red onion, diced finely
  • 50g panko
  • 80g reduced fat cheddar cheese
  • 6 bacon medallions
  • handful of gherkin slices, finely diced
  • pinch of salt and pepper

useful bits:

  • you can get decent mince AND bacon (plus loads more!) in our fantastic Musclefood packs! Just click here to find out what deals we’ve got on!
  • we’d also recommend you invest in one of these cutiepies to help you out, especially with the faffy bits of chopping the onion and the gherkins!

to make bacon cheeseburger bites you should:

  • cook the bacon until it’s super crisp, however you like. We used our OptiGrill and it worked perfectly! You want it really crisp!
  • allow the bacon to cool down a bit, and then chop into little bacon bits (or do as we did and chuck it in a food processor)
  • preheat the oven to 175°C
  • next, get all of the ingredients together, chuck in a bowl and mix together
  • divide the mixture into 20-25 balls and lay on a non-stick baking sheet
  • cook in the oven for 20-25 minutes
  • serve with tiny baby gherkins, or anything else you like!

If you’re looking for similar party food, taster night ideas or snacks, why not try some of these?

Finally: remember to share our recipes! Just click those giant share buttons and make your friends wet with excitement!

J

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December 18, 2017

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beef, british, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, quark, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, taster ideas

stuffed yorkshire pudding: beefy or cheesy!

Gosh, that’s a mouthful of a sentence, isn’t it? Yorkshire pudding canapés: aye, I know it’s not really a canapé, but listen, it beats eating mystery meat or hydrogenated tomato flavoured dust from Iceland, no? For all those uncultured swines out there who think a canapé is what a Geordie might say when the bailiffs turn up to take his telly away, it’s actually a wee decorative food served to whet the appetite before someone brings out the chips. The Internet is awash with ideas but they’re all spectacularly frou-frou and pointless. Shirley Conran said that life was too short to stuff a mushroom and she’s absolutely correct so you’ll be glad to know that these can be made in two shakes of a lamb’s tail – instant ingredients turned into something nice.

We’re cheating, of course: we’re using Aunt Bessie’s tiny Yorkshire puddings from Asda. We’re not getting paid to promote the red-faced old bag, don’t worry: I just resent making Yorkshire puddings unless they’re big enough to be considered as a second car. Go large or go home. They’re £1.50 for 30 and it saves clitting about in the kitchen using ground up oats (really) or having to buy a special whaddya-know-it’s-an-Amazon-link muffin tray. Just saying. Buy these and you’ll have enough time to sit and scratch your minnie.

By the way, we’ve been away. That whole schtick about a Christmas clear-out? It was bollocks – we were spending a glorious ten days in Stockholm, Oslo and Bergen. There’s going to be some cracking holiday entries in the New Year but if I can give you one eye-opening revelation about the whole thing, it’s this:

Benny from ABBA! I had absolutely no idea he was such a DILF back in the day! Good heavens. Of all the places I expected to be walking around with a badly-hidden semi, the ABBA museum was not high up on the list. Does Your Mother Know? She does know, I called her to tell her I wish I’d been born in the seventies. He could lay all of his love on me, oh yes – he’d definitely not end up Slipping Through My Fingers either. I’d be the winner who took it all, for sure!

Listen, I tried desperately to make a pun about it being ‘The Day Before You Came’ but I just couldn’t. Anyway, HELLO. Perhaps not now though – he looks like Bill Bryson scratching through bins for a sandwich.

Anyway, that’s quite enough of all that – I’m all moist. Let’s get straight to the recipe, such as it is. You could make these for taster nights, or a spectacularly depressing party (sometimes the two aren’t mutually exclusive), or do as we did and make thirty and sit and eat them in front of The Apprentice. No-one’s judging you, bar me. This makes thirty – fifteen of each, with plenty of mix left over. Once the two fillings are made you can freeze them for another time. Gosh!

yorkshire pudding

yorkshire pudding

to make the yorkshire pudding canapés, you’ll need:

  • one bag of mini Yorkshire puddings – you’ll find them in ASDA – £1.50 for 30 – half a syn each
  • an icing or sandwich bag

for the beef and horseradish:

  • good quality sliced beef
  • 200g of quark (trust me, if you think it’s vile, don’t worry: the horseradish masks the taste – but you could always use Philadelphia Lightest instead – 110g is a HEA!)
  • two tablespoons of horseradish sauce (3 syns)
  • good pinch of salt and pepper

So that’s 3 syns to make enough filling for 15 puddings – up to you if you syn the 0.2 syns! You could maybe argue that each filled pudding is a syn, but hey, it’s Christmas. I’m going for 0.5 syns, because I’m a decadent winter whore. Same if you’re going to measure that sliver of HEA!

for the sausage and cheesy mustard mash:

  • any leftover mash (syn free) or Smash original (syn free) made up as instructed – probably need about a small packet
  • two tsp of wholegrain mustard (1 syn)
  • 50g of Mattessons Smoked Pork Sausage (4 syns) cut into 8 discs, then halved (eat the spare)
  • 30g of extra mature cheddar (1 x HEA)
  • good pinch of salt and pepper

That’s 5 syns for 15 puddings. For ease, with the Yorkshire pudding added in, let’s call it a syn per pudding. But again, that’s over-estimating…

to make the yorkshire pudding canapés, you should:

  • well, this is embarrassing – it’s as easy as cooking the puddings for four minutes on 200 degrees fan
  • make the fillings by combining everything together
  • stuff the pudding by slopping the filling into your sandwich bag, snipping off the corner and piping the filling on top – decorate with sliced sausage or the beef sliced curled up like an unsightly labia

Done! You can impress your friends and be the envy of your slimming class once more! You want more ideas for snacks and taster nights? Naturally. Check out:

Yum!

J

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December 9, 2017

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beef, beef mince, low syn, lunch, pork, pork mince, pressure cooker, recipe card

christmas clear out: lazy cabbage bowls – instant pot or hob

‘ey up! Cabbage bowls time!

We’re having to take a bit of a break from the blog to concentrate on an exciting personal project – but rather than leave you sitting there with a sulk on with no new recipes, we’re going to use it as an excuse to pump out some recipes with no guff. Trust me: some of the recipes coming up will leave you dripping like a St Bernard’s chin.

Can I ask a favour, though? If you’ve got someone who is doing this infernal diet alongside you, share our stuff! The buttons at the bottom will instantly share to Facebook and Twitter. Help us to help them – god knows they need it.

You can make this recipe in the Instant Pot or on the hob – if you’re using the hob, you’ll need a good non-stick casserole pot. Let’s go! This makes enough for four.


to make lazy cabbage bowls you will need

  • 1 savoy cabbage, chopped roughly
  • 250g beef mince
  • 250g pork mince
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 750ml passata
  • 3 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp maple syrup (4 syns) (you could also use honey, brown sugar or even sweetener, but just make sure to check the syns)
  • 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • 2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp mustard powder

Looking for an Instant Pot? Still on the fence? Don’t be, you’ll give yourself piles. They’re having stock problems at the moment but stop fretting – the Pressure King Pro is a decent replacement. Cheap on Amazon at the moment, too!

Oh and if you need pork or beef mince, don’t forget that you can build your own meat hamper with our Musclefood deals!

to make lazy cabbage bowls you should:

  • on the Instant Pot, press the ‘saute’ button and adjust to ‘Normal’
  • add a bit of oil and then the mince, and brown off until just a little bit of pink remains
  • add the diced onion and stir frequently until it’s starting to go translucent
  • add the rest of the ingredients except the cabbage and give a really good stir
  • sit the cabbage on top (don’t stir!) and put the lid on
  • cook on High pressure for 8 minutes, and use the quick release method when done
  • give a good stir and serve – we had ours with rice – it was lovely!

Using a hob? Same kind of idea – cook everything off first, then leave to simmer and sweat for maybe forty minutes until everything comes together like a Roman orgy.

Looking for more ideas? Naturally.

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J

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December 3, 2017

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beef, beef mince, chinese, fakeaways, lunch, pork, pork mince, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

speedy spring roll bowls – perfect for a quick lunch

Just a recipe post tonight for speedy spring roll bowls to get you through the dark days – a cabbage recipe to use up the rest of the cabbage from yesterday’s recipe! Please don’t be put off by cabbage – cooked correctly, it’s so much better than that boiled-to-mush slop you used to get at school.

Before we get to the recipe, though, we have a small treat for you. Our Christmas card! As you know, we aren’t bothering with printed cards this year, so this is just for you!

This Queen and her loyal companion wish you a marvellous Christmas indeed! A few people think we’ve been mean by posting Rolf Harris’ face onto hers, but alas, no, it’s just me with a white beard. I actually like how it looks!

This is an easy, speed-packed dish and takes hardly any time to cook – most of the time is chopping up the vegetables. Once that’s done, you’re good to go!

spring roll

to make speedy spring roll bowls you will need:

to make speedy spring roll bowls you should:

  • heat a little oil in a large frying pan over a medium high heat
  • add the mince and the onion and cook until the mince is browned and the onion is translucent
  • add the cabbage and the carrots to the pan and cook for another five minutes, stirring occasionally
  • in a bowl mix together the garlic, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar and pour into the pan
  • stir well, and cook for another ten minutes, reducing the heat to medium, stirring often
  • serve, and sprinkle over the spring onions

Want more like this? All you’ve got to do is click the buttons below to find even more!

beefsmallporksmallfakeawayssmall vegetariansmall   breakfastsmallsnackssmall dessertsmallslowcookersmallovernight-oats

J

PS: it’s Graham from Jeremy Kyle in the food picture, not Gary Glitter!

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December 2, 2017

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bacon, breast, british, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, sandwiches, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

introducing the low-syn Greggs style festive bake

Oh god, we’ve succumbed. We’re giving in to the tidal wave of barely-literate posts about using Weight Watchers wraps for all sorts of things, from Cornish pasties to incontinence knickers, and making our own recipe for the Greggs festive bake. Well: a Slimming World friendly take on it. If you’re not familiar with what a Greggs festive bake is, let me clarify for you: it’s what mothers who are more earring than human push into their toddler’s mouths instead of a sausage roll at Christmas-time. You’ve got to make an effort for the bairns, after all. If that analogy is a little too mean-spirited for you, swap it out for this one: Greggs is responsible for at least 93% of the crumbs you see stuck in the corner of Northern folks’ mouths. Barely a sentence can be finished in Newcastle without someone opening their mouth and:

  • Greggs opening a new shop in there; or
  • half a stottie falling out.

To put that into perspective, there’s over 29 Greggs stores in Newcastle alone. Hell, there’s even an outlet shop on the West Road that sells their leftover stock off cheaply. I mean, that’s commitment to earning a crust, no?

Anyway, the Festive Bake – a combination of stuffing, chicken, cranberry, pastry, heart disease and I think onion, superheated until it is hotter than the surface of the sun – causes much excitement up here. People talk about the arrival of the festive bake as if it’s the second coming of Jesus – my facebook is awash with people getting a froth on when they go on sale because it heralds the arrival of Christmas. We don’t buy into it – no disrespect to Greggs, but I refuse to go in since they stopped keeping things warm.

Nevertheless, we’re all about giving you what you want, so please, find the recipe below. Before we get to that, though, I wanted to draw your attention to this:

We absolutely nailed it – our revised target was £3,000, and we’ve done it – if we can get it up to £3,200 that means that, with Gift Aid, we’re donating £4,000 to a charity that means the world to us! If you can find a spare quid to donate, please do! As an addendum to that plea, just a word of FUCK YOU to the person who left us a comment bemoaning that we are asking for money. You don’t need to donate, you don’t need to share, you don’t need to do diddly-squat – but we’re not getting a penny of this money, we’re not doing it for us, and anyway, it’s our blog. If you have a problem with the infrequent (and only temporary) Christmas charity requests, you can kiss the most tainted part of my ring! We’re never going to apologise for doing good.

Anyway, hush. No negativity! The recipe makes enough for four.

to make a Greggs style festive bake, you’ll need:

  • two big fat chicken breasts;
  • a nice pack of bacon medallions;
  • one big fat white onion;
  • 330g of Philadelphia lightest (3x HEA) (you might want to use Quark, but please, have some dignity)
  • 4x Weight Watchers white wraps – can’t find them in the shops? No need for tears: just swap out for wraps of near enough the same nutritional content – 1 wrap is a HEB choice
  • 1 tsp dried sage if you’re common, or, if you’re as bent as a butcher’s hook like me and have a herb garden, a few leaves of fresh sage
  • 1 tsp of garlic powder
  • 2 tbsp of cranberry sauce (we use the Tesco Finest cranberry because we’re classy, which works out at 4 syns)
  • Paxo stuffing mix – we use 25g of made-up stuffing in this recipe – to be honest, with the added sage, you could cheerfully leave it out, but we’re all about being authentic – 25g is 1.5 syns

So, assuming I haven’t had a mild brain injury, that works out at 5.5 syns. For the sake of argument, we’ll call the bakes 1.5 syns and get on with it.

If you need a good deal on chicken or bacon, our Musclefood deal allows you to create your own hamper – no more packages with stuff you don’t want to eat, like bumholes or lamb. Come, take a look: it’ll open in a new window.

to make a Greggs style festive bake, you should:

  • oven on to 190 degrees, please
  • dice up the chicken, bacon, onion and fingertips – you want everything roughly the same size
  • can’t be arsed with all that knife work – then throw it all in a blender and roughly pulse – you want uniformity, you do not want a puree
  • squirt a few squirts of oil into a hot pan – use Frylight if you must, but honestly, you’re better off using Castrol 4-Stroke than that muck
  • cook everything off, adding the garlic and sage as it heats through, until the chicken is cooked, the onion softened and the bacon a bit crispy
    • if you’re using fresh sage, just chuck the leaves in whole but remember to take them out before you stuff the pasties
  • once all is cooked, stir in the Philadelphia, plenty of salt and pepper, stuffing (if using) and cranberry sauce on a low heat – it’ll soften down and bring everything together – maybe add a touch of chicken stock if you think things are a bit claggy,
  • allow to cool – we actually put ours in the fridge overnight to settle but that’s not necessary
  • stuff your wrap: put the wrap in front of you, place the filling in a rectangle in the middle, then fold in your flaps so the meat doesn’t fall out
  • brush with egg or milk, top with some black pepper and if you’re feeling saucy, a grating of Parmesan, throw them onto a non-stick baking tray then stick in the oven to cook for maybe 25 minutes – keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn
  • serve with an ambulance on stand-by

Delicious! These freeze really well too!

Don’t forget you can share our recipes by clicking on the buttons at the bottom of the page, and, if you need more ideas, you’ll find them right here:

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J