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June 26, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, panko, pork, recipe card, speciality ingredients

amazing ham, cheese and pea gnocchi

I know what you’re thinking. James, you promised me a post a day, and here we were yesterday crying into our Margaret Miles-Thingy tea-towels and waiting all night long. Well listen, it’s not the first time I’ve left someone unsatisfied long into the night and it won’t be the last.

See, I’m trying to be more social. Remember me saying how lazy I am a few posts back? That also applies to social events. I get asked to go to various things and usually decline because I’m a) shy and b) incredibly fond of lying on my sofa with a cat in my back hair and Paul squeezing my feet. It’s what I live for. But see I could die tomorrow and I don’t want people remembering me as the person who was always “washing his hair”, despite having roughly the same amount of hair found on my head as you’d find in a Phil Mitchell tribute annual.

So in the spirit of socialising and trying not to die alone surrounded by cats and a stuffed Paul carcass grinning lopsidedly at me like a boss-eyed Humpty Dumpty, I went along to a pub quiz with a couple of friends from work and two other ladies, who turned out to be lovely. I’m glad I went, not least because it was hilarious.

For a start, it was awash with teams taking it far too seriously. I love this. It’s a fucking pub quiz – you’re answering questions about Miley Cyrus, if you get it wrong you’re not going to be taken outside and shot by the Gestapo. The prize was £47! Even so, there was table after table of people in dire need of a wash and some love furrowing their brows and furiously debating which two countries has the most nuclear reactors. For the record, we got that answer correct – USA and France. I watch a lot of Discovery Channel.

That said, we didn’t win. We came…second from last. We did however win an extra point for having the best team name: Bender and the Jets. I think you’ll agree that is awesome, and I’m allowed to say bender, I’ve earned the right – I’ve quite literally taken one for the team on that front. Or back. It’s certainly better name than We’re The Winners or Quizmasters. Neither of those teams won anyway, so egg on their face. It’ll go well with the cum stains on their trousers.

Oh, I also totally pulled. Now it goes without saying that I wouldn’t anyway, but even if I’d been tempted by the suggestion, his face put me right off. Some drunken arse, easily into his sixties and with a face like a smashed crab, asked me if I wanted to know the answer to who sang ‘The Joker’ and then licked his lips lasciviously at me like he was the best offer I’d get all night. I’d get more aroused getting chatted up by the cigarette machine. Seriously, he looked like that guy from The Fully Monty who was in Corrie with a perm:

I wouldn’t care, we got the answer wrong, so maybe I should have just succumbed to his greasy wiles. Boke.

Finally, our group got ‘hushed’ and then told to be ‘bloody quiet’ by some gangster granny with a nicotine fringe and a mean look about her because we had the temerity to talk DURING THE INTERLUDE. She was trying to play card bingo like the top prize was a couple of extra month’s on a drip – I’ve never seen playing cards turned over with such ferociousness. She turned around again and said ‘AH’M TRYING TO HEAR THE ANNOUNCER’ (I could barely hear her through all the phlegm in her voice trying to scramble out) and we were kowtowed into silence. I wouldn’t care, it’s not as if we were tuning up a brass band or felling trees, we were just talking normally (perhaps with a slight bit of shrieking from me, I’d had liquor). Mardy cow. Oh! And she was cheating. She had her phone out during the countries round. The temptation for me to lean over and whisper ‘Do you mind not cheating so loudly, I’m trying to hear the announcer’ was almost too much.

Card bingo, by the way – you get given a few playing cards, the Quiz Man has a full deck (unlike some of the audience), he announces them randomly and when you’ve turned over your lot, you win. Well, you don’t win. You lose. EVERYONE loses at bloody card bingo.

In all though, a really good night!

Oh – we lost 4lb between us at class, but that’s almost an afterthought these days. But let me tell you what ISN’T an afterthought – this recipe. It was amazing – it couldn’t have been better even if it had been served of the bumcheeks of the fatter brother from Prison Break. Easily one of our favourite recipes yet!

It doesn’t look so pretty on the plate, and that cheese top looks like the kind of knee-scab you’d pick off in the bath and secretly eat. I know what you’re like, don’t try and gussy yourself up for me.

you’ll need these:

250g of syn-free ham – we used the thicker cuts you can buy in a pack from the supermarket, but really any old shite will do
one chopped onion
250g of quark (taste the flavour!)
clove of garlic (minced) (yep: get one of these!)
100g of frozen peas
1 x HEA Mozzarella
1 x HEA strong cheddar
400g of gnocchi (6 syns, and this serves four)

and you’ll need to do this:

gently cook the onion in a large pan over a medium heat in a little oil until soft
add garlic and stir until it starts to turn golden
add the ham to the pan and cook until warmed through
add the frozen peas to the pan and stir
add the quark and continue to stir until it loosens and makes a thick, creamy sauce – add a few tablespoons of water if it becomes too thick
add the gnocchi and simmer for 2-3 minutes
once the gnocchi is soft, remove from the heat and evenly spread out the cheese over the top
place under a medium grill until the cheese turns golden
serve!

Now, what we did at this point was to put it in the oven, with the oven still warm from the grill but not switched on, and left it to sit for an hour or so whilst Paul came and bundled me into the car. When we came back, the gnocchi was almost broken down and the sauce really sticky – it was delicious. However, that might not tickle your buds as it were, so feel free to stick to the script.

Technically, you should probably serve with a salad full of superfree stuff. But hell if you can’t let your hair down every now and then…

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chubbycubs

Posted on

June 23, 2015

Posted under

bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, mince, pasta, pork, poultry, recipe card, sauces, taster ideas

200 posts – plus turkey and bacon meatballs with homemade bbq sauce

Well christ almighty, we’ve made it to two hundred posts. 200! To put that into perspective, each post on average is around 1500 words, so that 300,000 words, or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix combined with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. AND, unlike JK Rowling, I can still crack a smile or two! Actually, that’s unfair, she seems like a lovely person – she’s just always looks as though she’s seen her arse and doesn’t care for the colour. I bet the words of a fat diet blogger really stings – she’ll be sobbing into her solid-gold handkerchief and dabbing her tears with £50 notes.

But honestly, it’s just incredible to me that we’ve racked up so many recipes, posts, slang words for willies, nonsense and flimflam in just under eight months, and that’s excluding the various interludes where we ~~stuffed ourselves with pizza~~ fixed up the house or the website. Normally we take up a hobby and give it up fairly quickly, but it’s become a proper routine in Cubs Towers – plan the recipes, buy the ingredients, type the blog.

Occasionally it can feel like a slog typing it all out, but listen – we know what it’s like to be on SW and seeing the same old recipes bandied around. There’s lots of nice foods but people limit themselves to the same watery stews, anaemic veg and nonsense chemical concoctions, and it’s just not sustainable. The best ‘recipe’ I’ve seen recently is a ‘jam doughnut’, which was a bloody brown breadbun injected with a bit of jam and rolled in sweetener. That’s no more a jam doughnut than I am a black lesbian. Why do that to yourself? Why not have a jam doughnut and syn it? Or, make a decent attempt at a low-syn pudding and take the edge off? Eh, I don’t know.

Certainly, our weight loss has been slow – but it’s been steady. I haven’t updated that banner in a few weeks but we’re nearly up to 60lb weight loss between us, and cumulatively, we’ve actually lost more than that – but gained a few pounds back on holiday. Our aim has always been 2lb a week for me and 1lb a week for Paul. I’ve seen grown women throwing tantrums because they’ve “only lost 2lb this week” (although actually, it’s usually “OMG onli lst 2lb dis wk :'(“, like there’s some kind of fucking tax on vowel usage) and I just despair – it’s so much better to lose slowly and not feel like you’re on a diet than it is to starve yourself, eat beans all day and shit your way to weight loss which you’ll immediately put on the second you slip into size-16 knickers. We’ve all been there too, losing a stone and then zipping around Tesco like we’re on the final round of Supermarket Sweep, running our arm along the biscuit aisle and emptying the shelves into our trolley. It’s pointless and doesn’t work.

Look through our recipes and you’ll see many, many different styles of cooking and flavours. We consciously avoid repeating recipes too much, and we’ll normally try and sneak in an unusual flavour or arrangement at least once a week. We’ve learnt so much and, for once, we’re enjoying being on a diet. This blog gives me (James) a mouthpiece for rambling and nonsense but it’s actually kept us on track – having to think up new foods means we’re focused on our diet and the ‘can’t be arsed’ element disappears.

But – and christ, prepare for your teeth to start rotting – the best part about all of this is you. Seriously. Seeing people trying our recipes, sharing links, joining our group (4,000+ members) or facebook page (almost 14,000 likes in two weeks), passing around that FAQ or even stopping us to let us know how much you enjoy it – well it genuinely, whole-heartedly makes our day. I’m actually quite a quiet person at times, and it’s such a lovely feeling to know people are enjoying what I have to say. Please continue to comment, to share, to take part, we love it all, and we promise that in return we’ll keep going. Not least because I want to get to 365 posts…!

Right, you can come back now. I know, feelings much. To celebrate, I’m going to post a recipe that we’ve been keeping back for a special occasion because it was so, so nice. It’s a long one, but you can take it. Just push out and think of England.

How best to do this…let’s go for constituent parts. So…

to make the sauce, you’ll need:

one very large white onion, or two smaller ones, I’m not a size queen (that’s a lie, I totally am)
500ml of passata
2 gloves of garlic
1 tbsp of smoked paprika
2 tbsp of honey (5 syns – but this makes – easily – eight servings, so I’m going to say one syn for the dish)
3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper
some chilli flakes if you want to punish your nipsy

This recipe is wonderfully easy. You’ll need a receptacle for your sauce – this makes enough to fill two medium sized ketchup bottles. Ours are Kilner and like everything else, we bought it from Amazon. You can get six for a tenner here. You’ll use about a bottle’s worth in this recipe, so the other bottle you can keep sealed in the fridge. It really does make a wonderful sauce which would be amazing on pulled pork or burgers.

The other thing I’m going to push here is our Kenwood Mini Chopper. Normally we chop our onions by hand but because the recipe calls for it to be very finely chopped, we used this. It makes very quick work of cutting up onions and various other things and is excellent for making breadcrumbs too. It’s £14 on Amazon. Not essential but I will say this – as people who use a lot of gadgets, this is probably one of our favourites. Right, so…

you’ll need to do this:

if you’re using a chopper, finely pulse the onion and garlic until you get a finely chopped paste – don’t make it too mushy mind
if you’re using a knife, you want it cut very fine
tip into a pan with a drop of oil and the salt and, on a medium heat, allow to soften
add everything else into the pan after five minutes or so (make sure the onion doesn’t catch, although, a bit of smokiness is no bad thing)
simmer gently for five minutes or so
allow to cool, and then blend it – again, we just tipped it into the Mini Chopper, whizzed it up and then poured it into the ketchup bottles – no need for extra dishes or gadgets

Keep those bottles to one side. Don’t put the lids on until they’re nice and cool mind. On we go…

to make the spinach, you’ll need:

a big family bag of spinach – not a pissy little few leaves, because it’s a scientific fact that spinach reduces in volume by 10,000% if someone so much as breathes near it
two garlic cloves – cut into the finest of slivers
a couple of squirts of oil or Frylight

and then you:

squirt the bottom of the pan with a drop of oil or frylight
add in the garlic
apply a gentle heat and allow the garlic to take on a bit of colour and flavour the oil
add spinach, lower the heat, cover and allow to wilt right down
serve (note: this spinach takes about five minutes, so make it at the end of your meal)

to make the meatballs, you’ll need:

500g of turkey mince – a lot of people ask me where they can find this – Tesco is my answer, and here’s another tip, it’s forever being reduced. If you spot it in the reduced meats bit, check to see whether it has a £3 for £10 sticker on it still – if it has, SCORE. Buy three packs and although it’s reduced in price, it still discounts the lot as though they were full price, which means you end up paying about £4 for three packets of mince. Damn, I shouldn’t give that away…
6 bacon medallions, or normal bacon with the ~~best bit~~ cut off
4 spring onions, chopped fine, white and green bits used please
one small breadbun made into breadcrumbs (HEB) – you’ll may not need them all
1 small egg
2 tsp of ground pepper
2 tbsp of dried parsley or even better, fresh parsley, but double up if it’s fresh

you’ll then need to:

put the oven up to 200ºC or 180ºC fan – do you know, I really loathe how Mary Berry says ‘fan’, fact-fans
cook your bacon – nice and crispy mind, then allow it to cool and cut it up (or use your chopper) into nice small bits
put your turkey mince into a bowl, add everything else, and mash it all together. Really take out your frustrations here. Lady in Primark gave you a shitty look? Someone cut you up in a company-lease BMW? Sat behind someone with dickies on the bus? Imagine that’s their face and PUMMEL
once you’ve got all that anger out and your tears have dried on your cheeks, you want to set to work dividing up the meatballs – keep them small – perhaps the size of a child’s bouncy ball* – and place onto a baking tray sprayed with one spurt of oil or Frylight
at this point, you might find you’ve got too many to eat in one go – that’s fine – set aside any leftover balls on a plate and put into the freezer, and once they’re frozen, take them off the plate and put into a bag (that way they don’t stick together whilst they freeze, genius right?)
brown your balls in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes until they’ve firmed up and taken on a bit of colour
finish them off in a frying pan – get it fairly hot, drop in your balls and then tip in maybe a quarter or half of your sauce, and cook them through, letting the sauce glaze your balls
serve on top of your noodles and spinach with carrots on the side if you want them

* know this. I spent about fifteen minutes, I shit you not, trying to think of something comparable in size to a meatball, and all I could think about was testicles. It’s hard being me.

to make the carrots, you’ll need:

six or seven carrots, spiralised
1 tbsp of honey (2.5 syns)
a squirt or two of oil
caraway seeds

Just a note about the spiraliser – you don’t need one. Look you really don’t. But they’re good fun and a piece of piss to use. We’ve only just got one and if you’re interested, you can buy one for £27 here. They make courgettes into spaghetti and various other things, but you can do the same thing with a knife, so don’t get your bajingo frothing if you can’t find one.

and then you’ll need to do this:

spiralise or cut up your carrots
put into a bowl and add the oil and honey
chuck in the caraway seeds and a pinch of salt
mix, mix, mix, mix – get everything nicely coated (it helps to use runny honey)
chuck in the oven until they’re soft – or crunchy, if you prefer it, up to you!

We cooked up some syn-free noodles and layered our plate with noodles, spinach and meatballs, with extra BBQ sauce on the top and those carrots on the side. You don’t need the carrots, but they’re a nice addition – we just had a surplus rattling around in the bottom of the fridge, so why not?

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chubbycubs

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June 20, 2015

Posted under

bacon, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, seafood

spicy tuna and bacon pasta

Just a recipe today folks, as we’re having a lazy day in front of Netflix. We literally could not have done less today – we stayed in bed until 10am, got up, took the duvet with us and got under it on the sofa and have barely moved since. Paul went for a piss sometime after noon and I’ve made a few cups of tea, but put it this way, if we had a pedometer attached to one of our flabrolls, it would read ‘ERR’ right now. Ah well. We work hard, we can rest! It’s lucky that neither of us are the type to look with jealous eyes at other people on Facebook who are out protesting, or burning in the sun, or rolling down hills in plastic balls. I mean, yes, that’s fun, but it’s so energetic. We like to rest before we get tired.

Tell you what though, we have had a minor bout of decisiveness – we’ve only gone and booked our Christmas holiday! Yes, we’re shuffling our jellyforms onto a plane bound for Iceland. Iceland! Not the shop – the idea of spending my holiday surrounded by a herd of woman with moustaches buying horse-arse burgers and a suitcase of ice-pops holds no appeal. Thinking about it, Iceland really is the perfect holiday destination for two plus-sized puffs:

they’re super gay-friendly, which is a bonus as it means I can hold Paul’s hand without having my teeth kicked out through my arse;
a lot of their food seems repellant to me, and christ, I’ll put any old shite in my mouth, but ‘singed and boiled sheep head’ and ‘shark fermented in piss’ seems a bit much even for me. I might get old Magsy on the blower tonight and see if she’ll do a piss-shark special in the next magazine;
it’s cold – very cold – which means we don’t need to be walking around fanning our faces like frisky debutantes and worrying about the sweat patches forming under our bitch-titties; and
it’s not going to be full of awful people who think a SKOL ashtray and a STELLA umbrella is the sign of a fine establishment, although, the other side of that coin is that it’s bound to be full of hipsters photographing the Northern Lights and saying yah-but-really-though all the time.

So: if you’re a fan of our previous travels to Ireland or Germany, you’ll enjoy hearing us battle our way through the customs and traditions of Iceland. Anyway: tonight’s recipe, before I pass out through sheer exhaustion, is a spicy tuna and bacon pasta.

I know what you’re thinking. Bacon and tuna is an odd mix, but it works. I’m not a big fan of fish, but I found this tasty. If you don’t have any fancy-dan pasta like us, just use any old guff that you find rattling around in the back of the cupboard. This is a recipe that you could tart-up by adding lots of other vegetables, but actually, the simplicity works for us. We know our limits. So…

you’ll need this to make spicy tuna and bacon pasta:

200g of any pasta – we used fusilli lunghi from Tesco, but just use what you have
one tin of tuna – look, I never use this blog to tubthump, what you buy is your own business, but if you can afford it, buy decent tinned tuna, at the very least stuff that is caught ‘pole and line’ rather than the cheap stuff (actually, some of the cheap stuff is alright and the known brands are crap, like John West and Princes, but just do some research). Tuna caught in massive nets is bad because the same nets suck in all sorts of other sealife, such as sharks and turtles. Terrible when you think that turtle could have made someone a lovely ashtray)
6 bacon medallions, or you know, you could be normal and just trim the fat off proper bacon
1 yellow onion
3 garlic cloves, finely grated, and yes, I’ll plug the microplane grater again for this: click here if you want one – at least your fingers won’t reek of garlic
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4tsp of cumin powder and 1/4tsp of chilli powder (which you can leave out if you’ve got a sensitive balloon-knot
1 tsp of oregano
125ml of milk (1% is 2.5 syns, this serves two)
drop of two of oil, or Frylight, for all your pan-ruining needs!

and to make spicy tuna and bacon pasta, you should:

cook your pasta in salty water until it’s cooked – fling it off a tile to see if it sticks, though you’ll look like a monkey throwing its shit around in a zoo;
let your chopped onions and minced garlic gently cook in a drop of oil until they go as see-through as a whore’s knickers
in goes the chopped bacon, which you’ll cook unil it’s golden brown (texture like sun)
then in go the chopped tomatoes, which you’ll cook until they soften
once that’s done, in go the spices, tuna, chilli powder and oregano, which you’ll mix up nicely
ready for the milk now – chuck it in, bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer until it thickens up
in goes the cooked pasta, swirl it and mix it all up
serve with a sprinkling of parmesan (30g is a HEA)

Enjoy. Like I said, it’s not the most amazing thing to look at, but it’s tasty and quick

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chubbycubs

Posted on

June 14, 2015

Posted under

bacon, fakeaways, greek, lunch, persian, pork, pulses and grains, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

rainbow bulgur wheat salad with bacon and feta

Very quick post tonight as I’m going to work (hooray) to do overtime (hooray) and we’ve still got all of our boring, humdrum Sunday chores to do – such as watching Judge Rinder, playing Trivial Pursuit and ignoring our ironing. Slight moment of excitement when a police van came tearing into the cul-de-sac before, displaying a flagrant disregard for the neighbourhood SLOW CHILDREN sign, which I’ve always thought was a very apt description of the snotty-faced little life-leeches that occasionally visit. Of course everyone was immediately up out of their armchair peering through their nets to see what the deal was. Tsk. So nosy. I of course had to take that moment to immediately nip into the back garden and ~~try to listen in~~ hang out the washing. I didn’t hear anything and no-one was arrested.

Upon my return, Paul pointed out that I’d dashed into the back garden in such a rate of knots that I was still wearing my Spongebob Squarepants onesie from ASDA, plus it was drizzling so not exactly outside drying weather – hardly the most subtle of moves. Ah well. I’m too fat to be subtle. Here’s today’s recipe – it tasted amazing considering it’s such a simple mix of ingredients. It would package up nicely for an office lunch so why not make double and take a few extra portions in throughout the week? Urgh I sound like Delia Smith or something. Don’t worry, I awkwardly shoehorn in a reference to ejaculate in the recipe, so we’re alright.

You could easily omit the bacon from this salad recipe and go veggie. But I mean, we’re not animals here.

rainbow salad

you’ll be needing these:

4 large sweet potatoes, cut into small 1cm cubes
a couple of drops of olive oil
3 tsp of paprika
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of cumin seeds
250g of bulgur wheat (substitute couscous if you prefer)
Zest of one lime
1 tin of red kidney beans
handful of chopped coriander, but feel free to leave this out if like me you think it tastes of soapy balls
1 tablespoon lime juice
a bunch of spring onions – cut up the green part as well as the white
6 bacon medallions
65g of reduced fat feta (cut into tiny cubes)

and you’ll need to do this:

preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius
in a bowl mix together the potato cubes, 2 tsp paprika, cumin seeds and salt with a drop of olive oil (or Frylight if you prefer) and toss (the potatoes) until the potatoes are evenly coated
spread the potato cubes out onto a foil-lined baking tray in one layer and bake for twenty minutes – turning halfway
meanwhile, heat a large saucepan over a medium heat
add a teaspoon of olive oil (or Frylight, if you prefer) and add the bulgur wheat
leave for a few minutes, stirring regularly until it starts to crackle just very slightly
add the lime zest and lime juice and 500ml water
bring to the boil and add a little salt to your taste
reduce the heat and cover the pan so the mixture simmers for about twenty minutes or until it’s cooked through
chuck your bacon medallions under the grill to cook, then slice into little strips
cut your feta into tiny cubes
drain the kidney beans and rinse well under running water, getting rid of all that gunky kidney-bean pre-cum you always get from tinned pulses
place the beans in a bowl and sprinkle with a teaspoon of paprika – mix until well coated
add the cooked sweet potato, sliced spring onions and bulgur wheat to the bowl and mix.
To put this all more succinctly: cook everything that needs to be cooked, prepare everything that needs to be chopped, mix in a bloody big bowl and you’re done.
We dressed this with a quick dressing made from natural yoghurt, minced garlic and lime juice – but actually, it stands on its own very easily.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 23, 2015

Posted under

airfryer, bacon, breakfast, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, lunch, pork, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

syn free breakfast burritos

Sort of accidentally, honest guv.

See after work yesterdayI went out with a good friend to endure Poltergeist at the cinema. I say endure, I mean barely tolerate. It was absolute bobbins. I LOVE horror movies, the schlockier the better, but this was just lazy pap. It says a lot that we weren’t bothered by the usual festering tits that had packed the cinema. The type of people who can’t sit for ninety minutes without checking Facebook. Normally they make me rage – they’re the type of people who I’d happily unplug their life support machine to charge up my phone – but given how bad the movie was I couldn’t blame them, could I? We appeared to have half of China visiting in the row behind us which gave the bizarre effect of having the English film in front of us being live-translated behind us followed by shrieks and giggles and excpetionally caricatured noises. Still a dull film though. Even I was hoping for one of Phillipa’s skin-melting farts just to liven things up but she was too busy being distracted by a rolling pig / unicorn hybrid.

So yes, I synned. See I had good intentions of staying on diet but I had a pint of Guinness in my hand before I had even sat down, which was followed by pizza, pasta and ice-cream. In my defence, I thought I was only ordering a small ice-cream but it turns out the scoop they use for their ‘three scoop special’ was a dustbin lid. You can imagine my distress and disappointment at having to eat it all, it really was just the worst.

I have to be honest, both Paul and I are in a bit of a lull with our diet at the moment – Slimming World is great because it isn’t very restrictive but occasionally I just get sick of eating sensibly and not being able to have what I want. Now, people always turn around and go ‘just have a little bit of what you fancy’ but that’s not how I work. I couldn’t just have a Freddo, I’d want a carpet-sized bar of chocolate to eat until I was sick. It’ll pass, but we’re relaxing the rules a little bit at the moment – still cooking a healthy recipe every day but just need to let it ease a bit. Once the bank holiday is over we’re going to be on it 100% – but even that’s easy to say and harder to do given neither of us have the type of job where we are guaranteed to be home at five with plenty of time to cook and prepare lunches. Sometimes I just want to come home, put on my scratty boxer shorts and scratch my balls in front of the TV for six hours until bed.

As an aside – I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately, but the good news is that I’m actually writing more than ever – it’s all going in the book. New content rather than old stuff!

Anyway: it’s Eurovision tonight, so that means vodka and snacks. No apologies! I just hope to God Australia don’t win because I’ve sort-of promised Paul that we’ll go to the next one…

OK, that was moany. So here’s a nice breakfast recipe for you to be cracking on with:

to make breakfast burritos, 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); two slimming world sausages (or use low syn sausages but syn them), two eggs, HEA portion of extra mature cheese, two decent slices of ham cut into chunks and a potato.

to make breakfast burritos, you should:

cut the potato into very thin strips and spritz with a tiny bit of oil and pop in the oven for ten minutes (if that) until they’re cooked through like french fries – set aside
cook the sausages either under the grill or in an Actifry, then cut into thin slices (like matchsticks rather than discs)
crack the eggs into a pan and whisk on a medium heat to make scrambled eggs, set aside
slice up your ham and grate your cheese
when everything is ready, hoy your wrap into the oven for a minute or so to warm it through, then lie it flat on the counter
load it up – a row of cheese, then sausage, then egg, then chips, then ham
roll it up!

If you’re a bit slow and don’t know how to roll a wrap properly, you can find a guide here. I had to use it, don’t worry, no-one is judging.

Just out of shot in that photo was an attempt to make homemade salsa but as it looks like something you’d scrape out of an infected foot, I’m not putting the recipe on. What a bitch!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 14, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breast, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad

rocket, pea and mint salad

Want to know something embarrassing?

The first MP3 I ever downloaded was The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. Good lord! I was a country boy growing up in a council house in BHS adult-sized trousers, I don’t think I was ready for all that ghettofabulousness. I’m surprised the download made it past all the porn, mind, though I don’t doubt it took twenty minutes to download. Kids these day don’t know how lucky they are. Could have been worse – one of the first CDs I owned by Doesn’t Really Matter by Janet Jackson. Argh, I really had a thing for a marimba and sass.

The reason I am rambling on about music is because it’s an integral part of writing this blog – I can’t write unless I have music playing and no distractions, and even then I’ll spend forty minutes trying to find something I want to listen to on Spotify. It’s very distressing – a whole world of music and I always end up coming back to the same twenty or so songs. Paul hates it, because I always end up singing along and my voice sounds like a cat being pushed through a mangle, plus I add new notes and words into the lyrics, so a simple beautiful verse becomes peppered with falling scales and swearwords.

Anyway. I’m a bit pushed for time tonight so instead of words, I’m going to show you something. Something AWFUL. You may remember from my About Me page that it’s always been a hope and a dream of mine to get into the newspapers holding out my fat-bloke trousers after I’d lost so much weight? Well…when I was 18…

That hair though, seriously. I told you I used to have hair like Enya in her Orinocco Flow video. I’d give anything for a chance at that long hair again, though I wouldn’t have it quite such a sex-offender colour. Plus those trousers! 46″. Christ. Plus, white jeans. Never give a fat bloke white jeans, they’ll always have chocolate in their pockets and it’ll look like they’ve shit themselves when they stand up. What I didn’t mention in that article is how seething I was about losing out at the Slimmer of the Year finals to some black-footed leviathan who was too fat to get on an operating table. I didn’t have a sob story.

Ah well. It’s not like the haircuts ever got worse. Well, save for the Myra Hindley…

And of course, the Bjorn Again:

Aaah. Oh young James. You poor bastard.

Anyway, enough of all that. Tonight’s recipe is a simple salad full of fresh tastes. Just like my hair, am I right?

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you will need:

two chicken breasts, big old handful of rocket, couple of rashers of fat-free bacon, 200g frozen peas, small bag of new potatoes, mint, 0% fat-free natural yoghurt (make sure you pick up a syn-free version), lemon, fresh mint, four spring onions and rockets

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you should:

make the dressing: a few tablespoons of yoghurt, plus the juice of half a lemon and a few leaves mint chopped nice and fine – and set aside
grill the chicken breasts nice and plain and set it aside, and grill the bacon off and when cooked, cut into tiny slices
chop up your new potatoes into small chunks and boil them for a few minutes until they’re tender, adding the frozen peas into the boiling water for a couple of minutes too, then sieve the lot
chop up the spring onions into nice small slices
put a drop of oil into a frying pan, add the onion, potato, bacon and peas – I like to splash some lemon juice in;
after a few minutes, take it off the heat and add the rocket and a few sprigs of mint, and stir everything through
serve with the dressing and chicken, with some slices of radishes to garnish.

A simple, elegant evening meal. Yum!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 9, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, burgers, dressings, low syn, lunch, mince, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

BLTE bap, hot tuna salad and larb burger

So here’s the thing. I get a lot of people telling me to write a book, and I’ve always wanted to, but never really had the right idea or the inclination to do research and gain the appropriate knowledge. Then, as it happens, Paul decided to stroke my ego in the car today (and we weren’t pulled over in a layby flashing our interior lights at lorry drivers, which is normally what we’re doing in the car together – honestly, I hope Eddie Stobart’s drivers aren’t epileptic, it looks like an Eighties disco in our car) and told me I really should get on with it. Well, I love writing, I adore writing this blog (for the most part) and because I’m massively egocentric, what better topic to write about than what is happening in our lives? That would be great for me – but boring(ish) for you.

Here’s my idea: I am going to write a book – it’s going to be in the same format as what we’re doing now with the blog posts, but with fictional stuff interwoven amongst the nonsense. It won’t be a slimming book, simply because I don’t want Margaret coming after me with her Lynda la Plante weave all awry and her gang of Slimming World lawyers straining on the leash to do me in for copyright law. But I’ll put a few of my favourite recipes in there too. It’ll be like Bridget Jones Diary, only massively less successful. Renee Zellweger could totally play me though, if she put 180lb on and fell face-first into a fire. Naturally the blog remains at the forefront of my writing, and this side project will be something I’ll be tinkering on with for the next few months. In the meantime, if you fancy reading more of our writing, don’t forget we have a book on Amazon which is an account of our four weeks in Orlando: read about how I spent the first two days of the holiday tinted blue thanks to cheap sunscreen, or how I exposed my not unsubstantial arse to a crowd in a waterpark. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by paying only £1.20, you’ll keep Paul and I in replacement ped-eggs. That can be found here.

Right, so with that announcement over, let’s start with day four of SP! Tomorrow I’m going to explain SP in a bit more detail and also tell you exactly what I think of it. I’ll give you a clue: I think it’s a load of horse’s arse. And I’m not even going to mark that as a protein, either.

BREAKFAST

BLTE

The E stands for egg (P), obviously. Plus lettuce (S) and tomato (S). There’s not an awful lot to say about this, other than:

we totally didn’t have two each *cough/splutter*
I got Paul out of bed to make this (because I was hungry) by setting off the smoke alarm and then hiding in the kitchen – he came dashing in completely nude like the world’s cuddliest fireman and then proceeded to tell me off for about five minutes, the whole while I’m standing there agreeing solemnly with everything he said and pushing the packet of bacon closer and closer to him. I know one day our actifry is going to burst into flame through overuse and we’ll both perish in the fire because we’ve played too many pranks with the smoke alarm. I bet Paul manages to die with a pious ‘see I told you’ expression on his face
there’s a certain type of wholemeal bread roll you’re allowed – I think it’s a Weight Watchers one – but we only had these little buns in the freezer and after waking Paul up by tricking him into thinking he was in The Towering Inferno, I didn’t have the temerity to tell him to go to the shop…so we just used these. They’re about the same size.

LUNCH

Hot, hot tuna salad

So good I named it twice, see. No, it’s hot in both senses of the word – hot because of the added chilli and also, served hot. Usually tuna salad is served cold and, to someone who doesn’t like fish, isn’t especially appetising. Hell, I’ll make Paul wash Little Paul in the bathroom sink before he gets his birthday gobble.

Christ can I say as an aside I realise that this post is making it sound like Paul has an awful life, like some hairy Little Mo to my Trevor. Honestly, it’s not that bad, no-one needs to call Relate for us just yet. The only time he’s raised an iron in anger is when our ironing lady was off for two weeks having something done with her ovaries. Having them out I think, not wallpapered.

Anyway, yes, tuna salad:

to make hot, hot tuna salad you will need:

several big fuck-off lettuce leaves (S) – I grow mine in the greenhouse and honest to God, it’s like Day of the Triffids in there at the moment. I’m lucky I have a retractable hose-pipe – if I get lost amongst the lettuce, I just pull myself free. Yep. You’ll also need two tins of tuna (P), two large sweet peppers cut into chunks (S), three shallots sliced thinly (S), two tomatoes cut into chunks (S), 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of oil.

to make hot, hot tuna salad you should:

mix the tuna together with all the spices and salt and set aside
fry the onion and pepper in a dab of oil or some frylight until soft
chuck the tuna in and heat through – why not add a bit of chilli sauce if you like your hoop to look like a deflated liferaft
serve up on the giant lettuce leaves
to eat, fold the lettuce into neat parcels and chew

DETOX WATER

Mandarin

My favourite water so far! It tasted like sunshine in a glass. Well no, not quite, but it’s just one ingredient:

mandarin – which is excellent for vitamin C, which is handy for preventing skin wrinkling.

Don’t forget, if you want a gloriously ostentatious way of serving up your water (and don’t think for a second that come Eurovision night that isn’t going to be full of punch) you can buy one from Amazon. I will say this, we’ve certainly consumed a lot more water since we bought it, but that’s more because I’m such a tight-arse that I’m determined not to lose face and see it consigned to the back of the cupboard along with the lollipop maker and the ravioli crimper.

Haha, crimper.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – GEOCACHING

geocachingday42

Ah geocaching. I’ve rumbled on about geocaching before – it’s essentially a giant treasure hunt where no-one wins. But you don’t need to win a prize to enjoy it, it’s fantastic fun if you’re GIANT NERDS like us. People have hidden containers all over the world (and I’d bet my savings there’s probably at least five within easy walking distance from your house right now) and you use your GPS or an app on your smartphone to find them. Then you sign the book and put it back. It’s a great way of:

livening up a charming walk out in the country; and
making the British public think you’re loitering in the bushes with your knob out ready to strike.

See, part of geocaching is that you have to be subtle – some of the containers are hidden in plain sight, so you have to try and swipe them without people seeing, which can be difficult when you’re stumbling around in the trees like a flannel-shirted rapist. We had a lovely walk around a nature reserve and ended up on one of Northumberland’s fantastic beaches. Just look at that scene above. See, the North is so much more than child-beating and whippets. That picture of the rock at the top – that’s called a disco cache, where the logbook is hidden inside a container designed to look like something completely different. They’re extra hard – I’ve hid caches myself inside golf balls, birds nest and even a fake blob of chewing gum. It’s all free of charge and hey, if you’ve got kids, get them involved too.

Everyone I ever explain geocaching to wrinkles their nose and asks me what is the point, but it’s great fun. You’ll end up enjoying yourself, trust me. Visit www.geocaching.com, pop in your postcode and go and find the closest one to you.

DINNER

Larb burgers

Told you I was getting the use out of my lettuce! Note: I used a carrot and ginger dressing from Tesco on this which works out at almost a syn for two tablespoons. But you can use fat-free vinaigrette if you dare not sacrifice a syn.

to make larb burgers you will need:

500g of turkey mince or three chicken breasts (if you’re using breasts, then you’ll need a mincer – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that?), 3 shallots (S) (one thickly sliced, the other two thinly), 3 cloves of garlic (S), a few lime leaves (get them from Tesco’s world food bit), 1 small stalk of lemongrass, a dash of fish sauce, a bit of ginger (you only need a little knob to really taste it – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that), a lime (S), pickled cabbage (S I think) and the ubiquitous giant lettuce leaves (S).

to make larb burgers you should:

get your food processor or blender or what have you on the go
throw in the thickly cut shallot, garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and a pinch of salt and pulse to a paste
add the meat and pulse so it’s nicely mixed up with the spices
shape into six burgers
heat a griddle pan with a drop of oil or some Frylight and get it medium hot
add the burgers and cook hard – you want to get some sear lines into the burger for that classy bitches look
turn over and repeat on the other side – we cooked them for seven minutes each side to really cook them through – always be careful with chicken
if they look a bit dry, throw some lime juice into the pan
in the same griddle pan, put the finely sliced shallots in to fry off in the juice of the meat and lime
once cooked through, assemble onto the lettuce leaves, add some pickled cabbage and the shallots, and serve (you can add dressing if you want, I found it wasn’t necessary.

Enjoy! Oooh it’s like you in a tropical paradise, right?

DAY FOUR DONE.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 5, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, breast, classics, fakeaways, indian, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata

Right, so remember we’re structuring the posts a little different this week – it’s pure diet. No sass. Oh fuck off, this is me, I can’t sign my name without a 500 word critique of someone’s hairy top lip and an anecdote about peas. I heard something I haven’t heard in years today: ‘Oh, you’ll know him, he’s gay too’. I mean, it’s a harmless enough comment and it was certainly meant with no malice, but it does tickle me. I like the idea of there being a gay psychic link that becomes activated the very second you turn to someone who shares the same approximate genitals as you (so to speak) and say, oh we’ll give it a go. A yellow pages but in lavender. I suppose it works on the same idea as ‘having a gaydar’ which I DO think there’s a grain of truth in. Paul and I can normally spot the other gay couples wandering around the garden centre or fingering the strawberries in Waitrose, but it never extends to anything more than a tiny smirk and a colossal leer at the cucumber in their trolley. Half the time I walk around like I’ve had a stroke because I’m trying not to wink at them.

In fact, this is what happens when you’re not looking.

Anyway, hush. So how are we going to do this? Easy! I’m going to mark speed foods with a S and protein-rich foods with a P.

BREAKFAST

Poached eggs on marmite toast with baked beans

Now come on, you don’t really need me to talk you through this, but it’s a HE of wholemeal bread (the small loaf, don’t be putting two eggs on a doorstep of bread and come crying to me next week) slathered with marmite, baked beans (P) and eggs (P). I can poach an egg properly no problem but time is always a factor, especially now I have to contend with the worry of not getting a reflection of my knob in the pictures (we’re always naked during breakfast, saves showering twice when I invariably spill my cornflakes into my chest hair). So we bought one of these egg-poachers – It’s the easy and lazy way to cook poached eggs in the microwave. £4.99 on Amazon, steal. You half fill each compartment, microwave for forty seconds, crack your egg in, microwave for another 30 seconds and you are done. Normally you get the runny yolk but I was sidetracked scratching Paul’s back this morning so forgot to take them out. Anyway, done!

Oh, be careful – whilst I’ve never experienced this, it can be slightly dangerous to microwave an egg. Perhaps prick the yolk. Up to you. If you happen to like goo blasting across your face in the morning, well then you’re my type of reader.

LUNCH

This makes enough for six servings, or if we’re being realistic about the type of people that we are, two servings and a bit leftover to pick at in tears whilst you hang that too-skinny pair of jeans back into the wardrobe. WE’LL GET THERE.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you will need:

: one big bugger leek (sliced) (S), a handful of samphire (S), handful of sugarsnap peas (S), mushrooms (sliced) (S), salt and pepper, garlic, 30g of parmesan (optional – HEA choice but don’t forget this serves two/three) eight eggs and a frying pan that is a) non-stick and b) capable of going in the oven.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you should:

slice and prepare your veg and chuck it all into a frying pan
cook off the bacon medallions under the grill (or normal bacon, but chuck away that fat) then chop and add
beat all the eggs into submission in a jug, adding a good sprinkle of salt, pepper and garlic (grated)
pour egg into the bacon and veg mix and give it a good shake and mix to let the egg soak through
pop onto a medium heat for around ten minutes or so until things start to firm up – the top will be runny though
add the grated parmesan here if you’re using it
whack it into the oven for ten minutes or so on around 180 degrees – you want it firm but not overcooked
leave to cool and then slice and serve with salad – it transports well so it’s good for lunch

top tip: you really can chuck any old shite into a frittata, it’s really very forgiving. Any flimflam you have sitting in the bottom of the fridge will easily taste delicious in a frittata. Get it done!

DETOX WATER

Full disclosure – I really think detox waters are a load of piss. Well, not immediately, but they’ll get there. Your body is a detoxing machine! However, that said, drinking water is always a wonderful thing. Click here for the Kilner water dispenser. You don’t need one. You really don’t. But it’s summer soon. Cheaper alternatives are available, by the way. This water contains:

two sliced limes (S) (can help prevent kidney stones)
one sliced lemon (S) (because you don’t want scurvy, your legs will bend when you get on the scales)
half a sliced grapefruit (S) (strengthens the immune system)
pineapple sage leaf.

Pineapple sage leaf? Totally unnecessary. But it’s amazing. You may recall I started a herb garden a few posts ago and this little bugger is growing merrily away – the leaves taste like sweet pineapple and smell amazing. You could brew it in a tea, if you’re the type of arty-farty person who thinks such a thing is a sensible idea.

The water was refreshing and ‘clean’. But then what do you expect, we have plumbed in filtered water and an ice-dispenser. FAT MEN LIVING THE DREAM. Of course, I needed it after my body magic…

BODY MAGIC – GARDENING

I had timetabled four miles of walking for the body magic today, but when we got up it was absolutely chucking it down. I would have been drier had I swam to work down the Tyne. Plus the cows are back on the Town Moor, and they terrify me with their cold, dead eyes and shitty tails. So instead, we spent a good hour or so gardening – from top to bottom:

repotted our baby leeks
potted out our tomatoes into their automatic watering beds
trimmed back our lettuce monster
FINALLY planted all the early potatoes!

Google tells me that gardening comes in at around 300 calories for an hour of medium graft. Personally, I reckon 295 of that calorie spend comes from me constantly yanking up my trousers to stop the neighbours over the road being able to see my bumhole everytime I planted a potato. I live in perpetual and unending fear of my top of my arse-crack being exposed.

Never gardened before? You’re missing out. I’m no Charlie Dimmock, despite having her tits and then some. Even if you’ve only got a tiny bit of land to potter in, you can grow your lettuce and herbs easy enough. Tomatoes are more of a fart-on but worth the effort. But start small. Nothing tastes better than something you’ve grown yourself.

Finally…

Does anyone have Margaret’s number? Seriously, I feel like ringing up and congratulating her. I’ve FINALLY found a Slimming World curry recipe that doesn’t taste like someone’s sneezed a curry stock cube onto some chicken and wrung a dishcloth over it. It was tasty, though I made some adjustments! And SP friendly. So without a moment of hesitation…

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you will need:

one red onion (chopped) (S), 2 garlic cloves (grated) (S), one chicken breast (makes enough for two) (P), 1 tbsp of korma powder, 6tbsp of tomato puree, 200g of passata, a half teaspoon of turmeric, 400ml of chicken stock, chopped red pepper (S), spinach (S), bit of coriander so you can pretend you’re out somewhere dead fancy. For the broccoli you’ll need some tenderstem broccoli (S) and a 1tbsp of tandoori curry powder

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you should:

gently cook the onion, chopped red pepper and garlic in a drop of oil or a few squirts of everyone’s favourite pan-ruiner, Frylight
chuck in the diced chicken and cook hard and fast until there’s not a squeak of pink chicken
add everything else – powder, puree, stock and passata, bring to the boil and then reduce to a low heat and cook for twenty minutes or so until the sauce has thickened, throwing in the spinach for five minutes near the end;
whilst that’s happening, throw your broccoli into boiling water and cook the very life out of it for 3 minutes or so – you still want it firm, if you have to gum it to enjoy it you’ve gone too far;
drain the broccoli and whilst it is still damp, sprinkle that tandoori powder all over it
heat up a griddle pan – again, tiny bit of oil or frylight, and griddle the hell out of that broccoli for a couple of minutes
serve up – add a dainty bit of coriander that’ll sit mournfully on the side of your plate until the cat eats it.

Phew! Enjoy that did we? I hope so!

SPEED FOODS USED TODAY: red pepper, spinach, leeks, broccoli, grapefruit, lime, lemon, garlic, onion, mushrooms, samphire, sugarsnap peas (12).

Before I go, there’s a competition running this week. I’ll announce it tomorrow (if I remember) but it’ll reward those with keen eyes…

Please do share this blog as far and as wide as you can.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 7, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, pork, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free

dirty breakfast baps

I’m absolutely gutted, you know. I had a 3000 word (usual length only 1000, but it’s not the size of the post, it’s how many tears it brings to your eyes) post, I thought I’d clicked save, and nope. Disappeared. All those witticisms (it was the fourth part of our trip to Germany, which I forgot to finish) vanished into the digital ether, scattered to the wind like posts about Big Brother 5 and Connie Clickit. Bah! So, a quick improvised post about shoes.

I’m sure Paul would tell people that if I dropped a pound, it would land on the back of my neck as I bent down to pick it up. That’s unfair. I just hate spending money when I don’t need to, and my shoes illustrate this perfectly. I use the same Chelsea boots for everything – walking across the town moor, gardening, walking dogs, office wear, hammering in nails, scratching my back, smoothing icing – and they’ve finally given up the ghost, with the back heel actually falling off halfway through my trot into Newcastle last week, meaning I had to spend the day listing to one side like a badly loaded ferry. I was gutted – not just because I loved those shoes, but because it meant buying more, and that money could always be better spent on a nice bowl or a videogame. However, thriftiness saved the day, as I just took Paul’s old work shoes that we had wedged under our bed to stop the cats getting into the drawers. Obviously. Comfortable, didn’t smell like death like his shoes usually do – I was set for a good day. Until about 2pm when, obviously inspired by the break for freedom that my boots made, the entire sole of the shoe came away. Brilliant! Two years of Paul’s pitted keratolysis (and for fuck’s sake don’t google that – if you don’t know what it is, you’re better off) had clearly acted like an acid wash and ruined the fuckers, meaning I had to schlep around the office looking like Barry Tramp for the afternoon.

Anyway, if anyone reading this was PERHAPS STUCK FOR SOMETHING TO BUY ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY:

Men’s Dr Martens’ Congress, Size 11. Cheers. Gosh they’re on ebay and EVERYTHING. And yes, that is the right size!

Anyway, whilst I’ve got you all here, Paul and I have been chatting and we have some news. We’re going to make a couple of small changes to the blog just to give it a bit of structure – we currently struggle to post every day just because of work commitments and other boring nonsense. So we’re committing to five posts a week, all five of which will have a new SW recipe. The aim is for 1 weigh-in post (Tuesday), 1 quick-post (which is usually just where I post a recipe but I always end up gabbing on anyway) and 3 regular posts where you get plenty of sassy writing and anecdotes. To be quite honest, I’ll more than likely end up posting every day anyway, but I might be posting shorter updates occasionally. Both Paul and I work full-time in front of computers, and sometimes the last thing I want to be doing when I come home is typing out my usual flimflam! Plus, it takes time to prepare the photos and type out the recipe. It’s gotten to a point where I feel bad if I have a night off from writing and that’s a trifle silly.

I tell you what isn’t silly, though…these!

LOOK AT MY DIRTY BREAKFAST BAPS!

Syn-free breakfast! Using the SW syn-free sausages (alright if you hide them in a bun), bacon medallion, mushroom, well fried egg and grilled tomato. Healthy extra the bun, beans on the side, you’re laughing!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 3, 2015

Posted under

american, bacon, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, pizza, pork, recipe card, taster ideas

bacon cheeseburger pizza

I very nearly became a Slimming World consultant, you know.

I say very nearly, it was as near as most of my other fleeting fancies, but I made the effort to make contact, drop in my details, attempt to find out more. I had plenty of cold hard cash ready to be handed over gladly to Magic Margaret and her Synning Sisters but alas, despite chasing three times, I got one phone call which was rearranged and then totally ignored. Ah well. Part of me remains disappointed because I think I’ve got the sassy people skills to really get a group moving. But most of me thinks that my money (well, our money) is better off in my pocket and that’s that.

I’ve been going to Slimming World classes on and off for over ten years now, and they’ve never changed. Which is clearly a good thing, because the results speak for themselves and I’ve been lucky – I’ve never been to a bad class. Actually, tell a fib, yes I have – I had to sit through twenty minutes where the class gave advice to someone with piles – what best to eat for soft poo. Plus, if you get a boring consultant, the class drags something chronic, although I haven’t had one of those in a long, long time. I did have some great ideas – Paul stepping in as my Debbie McGee in a glittery bikini on the payment counter, a wheel of fortune to win something decent other than a banana that fell off the side of the ark and a Mugshot, interactive recipes…the works. But it wasn’t to be.

The reason I’m bumbling on about classes is because of our recent decision to move to a different class – it’s primarily so that we can stay to class as I feel we get a lot more out of it, not least because I get to blabber on about recipes and make smutty jokes. When we get weighed and go out the door, we almost lose a sense of responsibility – that although we are following the diet, we’re only paying lip service to it. So, we needed to find a class that works for us in terms of times, and although ironically we have managed to miss tonight’s because of a late finish at work, Tuesday evening will be our new weigh-in.

Finally, as an aside, I made a post in a FB SW group about people not being able to say please or thank you. It’s always the same – some blurry, off-brand yoghurt thrust too far to the lens on their phone with a comment like ‘HOW MANI SINS’ and it does my nut in. I’ll personally help anyone if I have the time, but I can’t bear bad manners. Thankfully, and somewhat reassuringly, most people have weighed in with complete agreement, with only the odd little dolt kicking up a stink at someone having the temerity to ask for manners. Well. The day I take criticism who has Inside Soap listed as a ‘favourite book’ on their facebook page is the day I shut my bollocks in a car-door. MANNERS MAKETH THE MAN.

Tell you what else maketh the man? Meat. And pizza. And cheeseburger. Well, look at this for goodness sake. You might as well jog on if you’re one of those people who won’t use syns on their dinner, despite THAT BEING EXACTLY what they are for…!

so, to make bacon cheeseburger pizza:

This is six syns for a quarter, but it makes a big pizza, and served with chips will fill the hole nicely. Put it this way, if you were to have a big pizza from Dominos, you’d be racking up syns in the sixties and seventies. Treat this as a treat…

ingredients for the crust: 125g of strong white bread flour, a packet of yeast (7g), 75ml of lukewarm water and a pinch of salt

ingredients for the topping: use a HEA for each of you – so 65g of mozzarella is one HEA, and 40g of grated light cheddar is the other. You’ll also need lean mince (5% or under), gherkin slices and a few medallions of bacon. Hoy some chilli flakes on too.

recipe (which I’m going to split into bullet points from now on for this blog – step by step):

make the crust – put the flour into a mixing bowl or a stand mixer, add yeast on one side, salt on the other, water in the middle and knead it together using your hands (wash them first, I know where they’ve been) or a dough hook (infinitely easier). When you have a big lump, stop, cover the bowl in cling film and leave it to prove for an hour or so;
prepare the toppings – grate your cheese, fry off your mince in a tiny drop of oil and some onion powder, fry off your bacon and cut into strips, cut your gherkins, do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight;
stretch your dough, hoy some tomato puree over it, add cheese, add mince, gherkins, tomatoes if you want them, bit more cheese, bacon;
cook in the oven for twenty minutes and serve with chips.

Tasty!