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January 27, 2016

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breast, fakeaways, persian, poultry, recipe card, syn free, travel

houmous coated chicken

If you’re here looking for houmous coated chicken then scroll down! This entry is all about our wonderful trip to Iceland’s famous Blue Lagoon. Enjoy!

twochubbycubs go to Iceland: part five

Our trip to The Blue Lagoon, then. The Blue Lagoon is possibly one of Iceland’s most recognisable places – a large man-made pool created from the water output from the nearby geothermal powerplant. They take super hot water from the ground, spin a few turbines with it and then let the rest pour into the lagoon, keeping it toasty warm. I admit I was surprised – I thought it was a natural pool thanks to all the tasteful photography and talk of ‘lagoon’, but then I suppose ‘come and have a swim in the run-off water from our power plant’ doesn’t sound quite so grand. I mean, I don’t worry about my fertility at the best of times, but I do like to know my snake tears could still do what they are supposed to do if the situation required it. Luckily, obviously, it’s not radioactive. They also completely replace the water every two days, meaning that even if someone sharts in the far corner of the pool, you’re unlikely to be bothered by it.

Let me start by saying that this quick tale will be bookended by two bus-woe stories, both equally vexing, but only one where Paul and I redeemed British folk for all the world.

We booked our trip well in advance and, yet again, were picked up at the hotel by a minibus and then shepherded to an idling coach early in the morning. This is pretty much the start of every single tour you’ll ever do in Iceland by all accounts. If you’re a fan of looking hopefully at the horizon, you’ll be in your element here. The buses are clean, comfortable and have free WiFi, which is handy if the endless beauty of Iceland holds no appeal for you and you’ve got Candy Crush to dribble over.

Like class swots, we took our seats at the front of the coach, only to have the two biggest, boring, most vacuous young ladies sit immediately behind us. They were lawyers from London and by god did you know about it by the time the bus had climbed into third gear. Every word was strained like they were running out of air, every sentence pronounced so loudly that I could have stayed in the hotel and still heard all about her stupid landlord who wouldn’t let Gareth (Guuur-raaaaaath) stay over. Everyone else feigned sleep – it was 8am after all – but no, this pair of braying donkeys kept up their schtick all the way to the Lagoon, a good forty-five minutes away. Paul and I were terribly British about the whole thing – coughing, giving side-eye, sighing like the oxygen on the bus was running out, but there was no stopping them. Never have I thought about crashing off a mountain road into an abyss with such longing.

The bus drops you off seemingly in the middle of nowhere (actually, a lava field in Grindavík – not active lava I needlessly add – there’s nothing especially relaxing about third degree burns), with a tiny visitor centre and a rock exclaiming that you’ve arrived. There’s very little to indicate that you need to walk further on, but, despite being spherical, we bravely continued, not letting the 400m walk to the entrance faze us. Heroes the both of us. We had booked our tickets in advance online and I’d heartily recommend you do the same – the queue, even at that time in the morning – was through the door. We chose the ‘Premium’ ticket online, which allows you to queue jump and gets you a free drink within the Lagoon. It’s worth it for not having to wait, plus you’re given a pair of slippers and a robe. Sadly, the Body Beautiful behind the counter looked at me and handed me an XL robe with a very ‘that won’t fit’ look. It was Paul in the Austrian mine all over again. For the record, the XL robe fitted perfectly, although it did say ‘FOR RENT ONLY’ in big letters on it. That took me back to my college days, I can tell you. You’re also given a wristband which acts as both your key for the locker and a card of sorts for any drinks or food you purchase. Handy. On we trotted.

Now, let me cover something off – you absolutely do need to change and shower with other people. In order to keep this facility clean and hygienic you’re expected to give yourself a good soaping. Fair enough, no-one likes to swim drinking in tagnuts, holehair and winnits. If you’re like me and couldn’t give the shiniest shite about what other people think of your body, you can whip everything out, have a blasting hot shower and be done in a few minutes. If you’re shy, though, that’s also accommodated for by way of little changing cubicles which you can hide your modesty behind, though it’s that frosted glass so if you have a particularly hairy growler people can still see it. I’m not a fan, I’m always worried my arse-cheeks will press up against the glass as I take my socks off and someone will think it’s a magic eye puzzle of a hot-air balloon disaster. There’s a handy chart on the wall showing the special areas you must wash – your face, armpits, fanny and arse, though presumably you’re not expecting to use the same cloth. Again, if you’re shy, you’ll face a wait for the privacy cubicles – so there’s another reason to get there nice and early.

Once you’re showered to the point where someone could eat their dinner off your bumhole (and they’d have a handy place to keep their napkin, certainly), you pop your clothes in the locker, use your wristband to secure the door and out you go, carefully dodging all the willies flapping about as others change. I pity the poor bastard who is given a locker closest to the ground because inevitably you’re going to look up from putting your shoes away and find yourself peering into someone’s arse-crack. Anyway. The lagoon is just at the bottom of some stairs and, being so early in the morning, was lit by soft blue lights under the twinkling stars. It was magic. You can wade in like you’re on a Lidl Baywatch, or, perhaps more sensibly, you can swim out into the lagoon from the building itself, getting yourself used to the water.

A few quick observations. It’s hot. Durr, I know, but it really threw me quite how hot it was. You know when you’re in a bath and you’re letting more hot water in with your toe, and you’re about five seconds away from it being too hot? It’s like that, in places, and even hotter still if you swim near to the vents where the hot water bubbles out. You’re not going to burn – they’re ‘rocked’ off – but expect everything to be soft and sagging when you get out. It’s the first and only time in my life where I’ve been able to scratch my balls with my big toe. The rest of the lagoon is around the same temperature as your body, but, being Iceland, you just need to stand up to cool off, given how cold the air is. It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’s also surprisingly large. Although it’s crowded at the entrance to the pool, you can swim out into the steam and lose yourself. I never felt like I was in anyone’s way, besides Paul, but that’s only because he wanted to cuddle in the water and I was alarmed that we might stick together like a cheese toastie in the heat. It’s not so deep you can’t stand up in it, but it’s deep enough to swim around should you desire. There’s a cave to swim through (where I naughtily found the switch to change the narrator from gentle, soothing English to booming German, much to the consternation of a few bathing Chinese ladies who were probably already confused by the apparent sight of two beluga whales swimming towards them. There’s also a waterfall which cascades lovely hot water all over your body with such force that my fat rolls started playing a disco beat from slapping against each other. I probably looked like an oil slick viewed through a heat haze. Don’t care. You can book a massage where you float on a pad in the water but we never got around to sorting this out. Of course, we both immediately regretted it when we saw the masseuse – a giant muscly mountain man who could have put us both over his shoulder and had his wicked way with us. We’ll put down the wistful tears in Paul’s eyes to a reaction with the sulphur, shall we.

Ah yes, the sulphur. Look, you can’t get away from the fact the place has a certain eggy smell to it. In places, it smells like a freshly cleaved poo. But it’s a natural smell, like when they spread muck on the fields or when the sewers overflow. You get used to it, which is handy, as you’ll be smelling of eggs for a good while afterwards. Dotted around the lagoon are pots of the silica mud that naturally forms on the bottom of the lagoon – it’s apparently an excellent face-mask. It’s also a brilliant white, leading to some frightening experiences when some of the more…aged folks in the pool come swirling out of the mists looking like Heath Ledger as the Joker. Paul and I covered ourselves in it and had a whale of a time. I swam up to the swim-up bar (well, it seemed like the right thing to do) and ordered us some drinks – I had a plastic pint of beer, Paul had a strawberry iced drink. Luckily I have the chest hair to carry off such manliness, even if I did scream when Paul accidentally spilt his slop down my back. Well, wouldn’t be the first time.

After an hour or so of floating about, we got out, had a sandwich and a sit down (it’s tiring being lazy) and then went back in for another hour or so. You don’t really need a full day here. Oh! One more observation. So many selfie sticks! But worse, so many unprotected phones being carried out in the water. Why?! If you drop that bloody phone in the water, it’s not coming out again working, let me tell you. You might get a final kamikaze shot of someone’s legs uploaded to your iCloud but that’s it. I don’t know how people hold their nerves, I get anxious brushing my teeth with my phone in my hand.

We got changed and walked back to the bus, stopping only for a couple more photos and a Calippo. Keeping it real. Vexingly, we had missed the hourly bus back by about thirty minutes, but we were happy enough to sit and wait.

Unlike the beast I’m going to call Sandra – for that was her name. Sandra and her very, VERY henpecked husband had missed the bus by only a minute or two, seemingly by the husband not sprinting ahead to stop it. She apparently would have ran herself but ‘what would have been the point, given how slow you were’. Let me tell you, the only time this woman was running anywhere was if a vending machine had been left unlocked. She was absolutely dreadful – she sat and very loudly explained to her husband all of his faults and why she could do better. My heart went out to him – I almost asked Paul if I should nip over and give him a blowjob just to lift his spirits. I rather got the impression she wouldn’t have done that either.

And, typically, with all the inevitability of day following night, when the bus did come, she sat behind us – and the forty five minute bus-ride from hell in the morning was nothing compared to this. She had this incredibly irritating way of trying to sound like she was better than everyone else, both Icelandic and English, and that, in her words:

“Iceland is shit because you have to get a bus everywhere” (you don’t, you can get a taxi, unless you can’t afford it but you want people to think you can)
“what’s the fackin’ point of Wifi if it doesn’t FACKIN’ WORK” (who’d have thought it? Wifi on a bus in the middle of nowhere being patchy!)
“...place would be so much better if it wasn’t for all the FACKIN’ tourists” (it would certainly be better without one of them)
“aren’t Icelandic houses shit” (because that two-up-two-down in some piss-pot village is the classier choice)
“who’d stay in a FACKIN’ shit ‘OTEL like this” (not you, my love, because you’re staying at a cheaper hotel down the road)

and so on and so forth. She was embarrassingly crass and vocal and all her husband could do was ‘yes dear’ and ‘no dear’. She was loud so EVERYONE could hear her. Here’s the fun part though. The bus, dropping everyone off in ‘random order’ (but clearly based on how luxurious the hotels were…i.e. the more expensive hotels got their passengers back first) and ours was second on the list. This pissed her off and on she ranted.

So, naturally, as we got off, I turned around on the steps of the bus and, loudly, called her a ‘common, classless tart‘ before proper dashing into the foyer in case the rancid old bag or her wispy husband followed suit. They didn’t. That split second I saw of her face avalanching in anger was more than enough for me and I’m not joking when I say that gives me a chuckle even now. Probably shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t care though.

Right, the recipe! This makes enough for four big breasts. So that’s two each. We served with mushrooms, new potatoes and some broccoli. Classy! You can mix this up by using one of our four houmous recipes found right here!

Don’t forget, you get plenty of giant chicken breasts in our big old meat box! You can find the details for that right here!

to make houmous coated chicken you will need:

4 chicken breasts
1 tsp paprika
400g tin of chickpeas, drained
2 tbsp fat free cottage cheese
½ tsp cumin
fresh basil leaves, chopped

to make houmous coated chicken you should:

preheat the oven to 220ºc
spray a large baking dish with Frylight and place the chicken breasts in a single layer and set aside
to make the houmous, add the chickpeas, cottage cheese, cumin and paprika to a food processor and blend until smooth
spread the houmous mixture over each chicken breast using a spatula – you need need to ‘slap’ it on instead of spreading it. you’ll want a nice, thick amount on each one.
bake in the oven for about 20-25 minutes, until the chicken is well cooked
sprinkle on some chopped basil and serve

Easy! It might not look amazing but it tasted damn fine and it’s syn free. So suck it!

Oh! I should say. As usual, my shite photography let me down. But here’s what it looks like when the photo is taken by someone who has more dexterity and eye for detail than a potato.

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chubbycubs

Posted on

January 9, 2016

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, panko, poultry, recipe card, speciality ingredients

crunchy honey and garlic chicken

A massive, massive thank you to everyone who went out and bought our new eBook – can’t quite believe the sales. You’ve made a fat man very wheezy / excited. If you’re still on the fence, you can find a link to it right here.

Fair warning, today’s recipe for crunchy honey and garlic chicken is also served with garlic green beans, so if you’re planning on getting fresh with someone after, better take a packet of Smints or a beaker of hydrochloric acid. You can leave off the green beans if you like, we’re just trying to increase the amount of speed food on our plate because there’s been a fair few foamy comments from the resident gashcrashers lately about not following the plan. Remember, we leave it up to you to decide what works for you.

You do, however, need to get used to seeing this.

try

Classy right? We’re going to post it every Thursday with an update of our weight loss. I want you lot to see our diet as it goes through the year, with the aim of losing 150lb throughout 2016. Sounds like a lot, but if we lose 2lb a week every week for 37 or so weeks, we’ll be done by October, just in time to put it all back on and start copying and pasting this article back for 2017. I know so many of us are starting a New Year / New Me routine – so all the very best to you.

See, whilst we’ve been eating healthy dinners, we let ourselves down with all the little extras, like the odd chocolate bar or taking November and December off in their entirety to gorge. At some point all that eating becomes less about ‘bulking up for the winter months’ and more about being a big fat chubby bummer. If I may be serious for a moment, we’re both terribly sick of being so out of shape. I get up in the morning and I’m making old/fat noises right from the beginning – I audibly OOOH when I sit down in a chair and it’s not just air escaping from my rolls.I’d certainly enjoy getting on a plane without everyone with a spare seat next to them wincing and sighing dramatically as I approach. My knees hurt sometimes – I’m not surprised, they’re probably around 75% dust these days from having to shift my corpulent frame around. I’ve always described myself as hilariously obese because well, there’s lots of funny things to do with being fat. For example, it’s difficult not to titter when you get out of a drained bath and there’s a loud suction noise like a big fart. It’s chucklesome watching checkout staff battling to fold a shirt without having to draft someone else in to assist. I’ve had to come up with more and more outlandish excuses to get the lift two stories up in our workplace rather than take the steps. But, it can’t continue.

Realistically, if I carry on ignoring the weight, I’ll end up dead, and frankly, that doesn’t sit too well with me. Paul’s promised that if I do die suddenly, he’ll see out his days wearing black and wailing into a hanky, though I know that’s bollocks – he’ll be on Grindr as ‘free4evabigcoxwanted‘ before they’ve even called time of death. Fat fucker. Not that he’s any better – I know he misses being able to see his feet, for example. He would also like to get through a working day without having to spend 67% of it pulling up his trousers and hoiking his boxers out of his arse-crack. We both find it genuinely confusing that the fatter we get, the less our clothes seem to fit properly. On that topic, we’re sick of having to get our clothes from online marquee specialists, Jacamo, however fabulous their customer service is. I’d like to get through at least one bout of anal sex without being troubled by wondering how much it would cost to have a home defibrillator fitted. And so on. There was a far crasser comment, but I deleted it on grounds of decency. What’s happening to me?

For the blog, nowt changes! We’ll post as many recipes as we can – we always feel so guilty when we can’t give you a load of guff before the recipe, but look, if it means we post more food, we’ll do our best. Please – share the blog, the group, the book – whatever you like, spread the word. If you make a recipe from here, take a photo of it and share a link! If we can help in any way, just get in touch. We might be slow in replying but we always get there eventually. Wish us luck then!

Oh, before I go. We’re spending the afternoon doing something I’d never thought I would do in a million years – ~~turning down cock, giving money to people, being pleasant,~~ driving a Smart car. A bloody Smart car! Paul’s been itching for one ever since his sister used to work in a dealership and he saw one in action. I…hate them. Bloody hate them! I can see their merits, absolutely, but it’s not a bloody car. It’s a joke on wheels. I’m 6ft 1″ (possibly horizontally as well as vertically) and Paul, whilst much shorter, is approximately the size of a rain-soaked settee. We look bloody ridiculous climbing out of a Smart car, like that old circus trope with the clowns piling out of the Mini. I’m surprised the horn doesn’t play calliope music instead of a toot. Also, the clip of it driving along. I can’t shake the feeling that if I ran my hand over the roof I’d feel a giant electric connector like a dodgem car. A dodgem car at least has a purpose, even if that purpose is to be kicked around by someone with one eyebrow and a name like someone sneezed some consonants into a hankie. A friend of mine once got fingered and then stabbed behind a dodgems, which in Newcastle is considered an extended courtship. She didn’t even get a highly-flammable teddy of Bart Simpson in the wrong colour shirt afterwards. Fun times. If you see a pair of fat men squeezed like the last two Tetris pieces into a car on the A1 tonight, give us a wave. You’ll know it’s us because of the cloud of blue smoke pouring out the back whilst the engine overheats trying to shift forty stone (combined, I hasten to add) of Jacamo-clad love muscle up a slight incline.

Anyway, that’s quite enough of all this silliness. Tonight’s recipe of crunchy honey and garlic chicken can be made syn-free if you don’t fart on with the sauce. This makes enough for two.

to make crunchy honey and garlic chicken you will need:

2 chicken breasts
25g panko (5 syns)
1 tsp black pepper
0.5 tsp each salt, nutmeg, ginger, thyme, sage and paprika (if you leave out anything, sage and thyme are the ones to get rid of)
pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tsp dried garlic
2 eggs
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp honey (2.5 syns)

God I almost dread posting anything with panko in it these days because I get so many people asking what panko is. IT’S BREADCRUMBS. You can buy it from Tesco or other supermarkets. You could get rid of it and use a blitzed up breadbun if you prefer. But please, that’s what bloody panko is.

to make crunchy honey and garlic chicken you should:

if you’re using chicken from our Musclefood deal or the butcher (i.e. if you have big, steamy, pouting breasts instead of chicken breasts that look like someone’s took an arm off an octopus) – you can make it go twice as far by cutting the chicken into halves horizontally – if you’re using chicken from the supermarket, wrap it in cling film and pound the meat using a rolling pin until it’s about 1cm thick (this helps to ensure it cooks evenly) – there’s really nowt better than beating your meat in the kitchen
mix together the panko, peppers, salt, herbs and garlic in a bowl
in another bowl, crack the two eggs and add 4 tbsp of water and whisk together like you’re going out of business
meanwhile, stick the oven up to 220 degrees making sure your baking sheet is in there – having a hot sheet helps to crisp up the chicken and make it crunchy
when the oven is hot enough, dip each chicken breast into the egg mixture and then into the breadcrumbs – coating evenly
place onto the hot baking sheet and spray with frylight
bake in the oven for about 15 minutes – don’t open the door!
to make the sauce (optional!)
spray a small frying pan with a little frylight over a medium-high heat
add the chopped garlic and stir constantly for about a minute
add the soy sauce and honey and reduce the heat to a simmer, and stir occasionally for 1-2 minutes

We served it with a few roasties done in the Actifry and green beans, which we just cooked off with some more minced garlic and chilli flakes in the pan that we cooked the sauce with. Simple! J

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chubbycubs

Posted on

November 26, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, one-pot, poultry, recipe card, rice, sauces

sticky chinese chicken

I’ve just received a bastard speeding ticket from Corsica! We went in bloody September. You can imagine that I’m impotent with rage, although, fair dues, I was speeding – 78km/h instead of 70km/h. I’m tempted to appeal against it on the grounds that there was no possible way the car we hired could get anywhere near 78km/h – it struggled backing us off the driveway let alone speeding through the Corsican roads like we’d stolen it. Bah.

The last time I got a speeding ticket was for doing 53mph in a 50mph zone and it was all very British – slightly apologetic letter, strong grounds of appeal, nip along to a speeding awareness course and don’t do it again. This French ticket was full of French disdain – every last word in French, four different sheets of A4 in tiny writing with lots of aggressive red underlining – I can imagine that some paunchy-faced chief in an administrative office in deepest Roubaix scoffing at my infraction, spitting a wad of Gauloise-laced phlegm into a bin and ringing AVIS demanding my credit card.

Ah well. I was the one speeding, so I’m the biggest arse of them all. That’s one thing I can never get my head around – people who moan about getting caught speeding. You’re speeding! We all do it – I’m terrible for it – but you can’t complain about getting caught when you’re actively breaking the law. It’s not like taking an extra biscuit from the packet – you do run the risk of turning an old biddy into human jam on the front of your bumper if you lose control.

The speed awareness course was surprisingly good fun, though. The car-park outside was rammed full of Vauxhall Insignias, Audis (shock!) and various shittily-modded Acne Carriages belonging to the chavs. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly better things to do on a Thursday morning than sit in a hot room in a Holiday Inn with a load of chavs and salesmen, but the course itself was interesting enough. I thought I was going to have three hours of being told I’m a naughty boy for being a bit savage on my accelerator but once we got past the awkward talk and the dishwater coffee it was alright, though of course we had to spend a ridiculous amount of time introducing ourselves like we were on a shit gameshow.

Anyway – I’ve paid it, so I’m just going to sulk about it all night now. Here’s a recipe for any spare chicken you may have sitting around – it’s not exciting, it is just chicken and chips…but still! To make it a little more Slimming World friendly, chuck in some crunchy veg with the chicken. This is the kind of thing we have when we don’t want to cook – it’s just make a sauce, pour on, fry off. Easy!

to make sticky chinese chicken, you’ll need:

one chicken breast per person (makes enough sauce for four) (remember, our £40 meat bundle contains lots and lots of big, firm, pouting breasts: get it here!)
1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp honey (3.5 syns)
1 1/2 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp salt

and to make sticky chinese chicken, you should:

mix all of the ingredients except the chicken together in a bowl
heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and cook your meat according to how you like it – add vegetables towards the end if you have some
when everything is cooked, pour the sauce mixture over and bring it to a boil – this may only take a few seconds!
turn the heat down slightly and let the mixture boil and reduce
when everything is nicely coated and sticky, remove from the heat and serve immediately

Serve with chips, rice, veg…anything. Go for it!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

November 25, 2015

Posted under

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

rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

November 23, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, poultry, recipe card, rice, sauces

chinese chicken lo mein

We’re off gallivanting (actually, we’re watching Homeland with vodka) so just a super quick recipe tonight – but BY GOD it’s good. The sauce does use a lot of ingredients but they’re Slimming World staples – I bet you have them in your cupboard. Mirin is rice vinegar, before anyone asks. Seriously, I dare not use bloody panko again!

to make chinese chicken lo mein, you’ll need:

2 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks
packet of whatever syn free dried noodles you want
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 handful of mangetout, ends trimmed (about twenty pods)
60g spinach
1 red pepper, cut into slices (we only had a green pepper so we used that and added some cherry peppers for some colour!)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

FOR THE SAUCE:

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp cornflour (1 syn)
1/2 tbsp Mirin
2 tsp honey (2 syns)
1 1/2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp sesame oil (2 syns)
1 tsp chilli flakes
180ml cold water

to make chinese chicken lo mein, you should:

cook the noodles according to the instructions, drain, and set aside
next, make the sauce – it makes it much easier to do this first. In a large jug whisk the cornflour into the water until there are no lumps
add all of the other sauce ingredients, mix, and set aside
meanwhile, add the chicken to a bowl and toss well with the salt and pepper, haha
add a little oil in a large pan over a medium-high heat and cook the chicken until browned
remove the chicken from the pan and place onto a plate
add a little more oil to the same pan and add the red pepper, mangetout, garlic and ginger and cook for about two minutes, stirring frequently
add the spinach and cook for another few minutes until it has wilted
add the chicken back to the pan and the noodles
pour the sauce over the two and mix well until everything is well coated and cook it for a moment or two, just to thicken
serve immediately

Done!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

November 22, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, low syn, noodles, poultry, recipe card, rice, slow cooker, thai

slow cooker: chicken coconut curry

I can’t begin to tell you how sick I am of slow cooker week. Everything tastes the bloody same! I appreciate it’s convenient, I appreciate that it probably saves money, I understand that it saves time…but for goodness sake, I feel like I’m in a Wiltshire Farm Foods advert. And let me tell you, if that was the case, I’d give Ronnie bloody Corbett a smack on the chops because I find his hamster-like face upsetting and the fact that he’s hawking mush to old ladies for a vastly-overinflated price to be quite infuriating. Plus he’s got eyebrows like a seventies porn vagina. No, I like my food to have texture – most of the meals to come out of the slow cooker have less structural integrity than a passing fancy. I’ll rattle one more recipe for you tonight and then it’s back to business – proper bloody food that requires a working set of teeth to get through. As a rule, the only meals you’ll need a straw for going forward are the vodka-and-lemonades that Paul and I sometimes swap our dinner for.

Where have I been anyway? Who are you, my mother? I can tell you’re not because you’re not asking me to fix your iPad. No, the ear pain I mentioned last week became a cheery infection and knocked me for six. For four days it felt like I had been kicked in the head by a pissed off horse. It was all I could do to stay in bed demanding ice-cream and comfort from poor Paul, who had to take over all the duties within the house. Actually, he does them anyway, just this time with me being ill he wasn’t allowed to complain about it. The poor bugger. He’s a trooper though and I don’t give him his dues often enough. LOVE YOU DEAR.

So what’s been happening this week? I managed to get into a proper argument with some pallid-faced swamp donkey on facebook who tried to peddle her Juice Plus shite in my group. She private messaged me to tell me that the fact I’d deleted her snake-oil post told her that I hate women and people who try to make a go of themselves. Honestly – I could eat a tin of alphabet spaghetti and shit out a better argument than that. I don’t hate women (except Mylenne Klass…and I don’t hate her, she just makes my skin shiver) and I’m all for entrepreneurship, but as well you all know, I can’t bear the idea of vulnerable folk being duped into buying worthless, untested medicines on the scientific advice of a hairdresser from Worksop. What I can’t get my head around is the fact PEOPLE FALL FOR IT. Why?! I can understand folks who are seriously ill buying a pill in the vain hope of it helping, but spending hundreds of pounds just to shift a bit of weight? Bah! Are these the same people who buy laptops from a car boot sale and get them home to unwrap a cardboard box full of bricks? Or the people who get an unsolicited phone-call from Microsoft telling them they need to buy antivirus software at a cost of two bajillion pounds? Honestly. How do these people sleep at night? Penniless, I presume. Anyway, the argument rumbled on for ages, with Juice Plus curing her of depression, suicidal thoughts, liver disease, tennis elbow, easy living and fast cars (apparently it didn’t cure her of her verbal diarrhoea or dirty mouth), until I copied our chat in with the Juice Plus representatives and left it at that. I know nothing will come of it because Juice Plus is a dishonest pyramid scheme sold by numpties and dolts, but meh, made me feel better.

Now, my next piece is going to feel like an advert for Amazon Prime, and well, although I’m going to stick a link on the bottom, this isn’t really an advert at all. Just an observation. Paul and I are members of Amazon Prime, and have been for a very long while. I can’t remember the last time I paid for it because every time something is late, they stick an extra month on the membership. We’ve become accustomed to ordering something on a whim and having it turn up the next day, which is handy as it gives us no time for buyer’s remorse. Hence the cat tower. Hence the all-in-one breakfast sandwich maker. Hence the shit-you-not Teasmade. A bloody Teasmade, I ask you – I don’t even drink tea in the morning. I don’t get out of bed unless I’m having a palpitation just from smelling my morning coffee. Anyway, we got a little email the other day with the news that Amazon Prime Now has launched in Newcastle. What is it? You order something on Amazon, and it’s delivered within two hours for free.

Well fuck me. The only thing from turning Paul and I into perfect spheres with weak ankles is our inability to muster up the energy to drive to ASDA of an evening to buy ice-cream. Now it’s delivered by Amazon within enough time for Paul and I to have quick marriage-friendly nookie, make tea and watch Emmerdale. It’s too convenient. It’s not without flaws, though. You can only select from a range of groceries and flimflam via their App, which is proper hokey. I put ‘dip’ into the search box and it suggested some taramasalata, tzatziki and er, industrial strength cat-nip. One whole kilogram of the stuff. A kilo of cat-nip delivered within two hours! Unless you’re fighting a fucking tiger in your box-room, who the hell needs that? Nevertheless, we persevered and placed an order full of Slimming World friendly things – the usual Haagen Daaz, Goodfellas pizza and bags of Skittles. Look, we had to spend thirty quid, and I wasn’t going to spend it on bloody quinoa. I bet Mags is sucking on a Bensons and Hedges quite furiously with the thought but you know, I’ve got to let my (apparently Geography-teacher-esque) hair down.

What followed was a tense 80 minutes where we watched, in real-time, our order being picked from somewhere on an industrial estate in Gateshead – all terribly exciting. When the screen updated to show ‘MARK’ had picked up our order and was beetling up the A1 to our house, well, we were agog. It’s a bloody miracle, technology. We had it on the big TV in our living room like the shittest, cheapest version of 24 you can imagine. The whole process fell down at the end though, because the driver turned onto our street and spent five minutes trying to find our house. I’ll give you a clue, mate – it’s the only one that’s not attached to any others, plus we were flashing the lights from green to red whenever he backed his van out of sight. The groceries were all nicely chilled and the ice-cream was spot-on. It took eighty eight minutes from beginning to end, and that includes 5 minutes of the driver being unable to find the only house in the street to be named after a sexual consequence.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Amazon Prime is amazing, anyway, if you’re a big Amazon shopper. Yes it costs £79 a year but you get plenty of perks with it. Plus, you can always sign up for a trial and then cancel. But don’t forget to actually cancel. Otherwise you’ll be one of those turds who complain about getting money taken out of your bank account for something you’ve asked for. This two hour thing is dangerous for Paul and I though – we already dish out way too much of our monthly pink-pound disposable income to Amazon – I can’t help feeling that eventually I’m going to be paying them my wages direct and they’ll be sending a box van of goodies every month, probably branded Amazon Instant, with a picture of a smiling man sucking the pound coins from my pocket on the side. Ah well. If you did want to try it, you can do so here.

I still can’t believe it. I’m easily impressed, but jesus, Amazon stuff delivered within two hours for nowt. I remember ordering pornography online back when we first got the internet and actually taking time off from school just to sit by the letterbox for about two weeks in case my father accidentally opened my post and wondered who the hell had sent him RUGBY CUM BATH 2: SCRUM, BUM AND ORAL FUN on DVD. I might have made that title up but you get the drift. I feel I should hasten to say that my parents weren’t lax when it came to supervising my internet security…I was just better at it. Honestly, you parents out there who think the kids can’t access what they want on the internet, you’re so wrong.

Finally, Paul, being a sod and knowing I didn’t have the iPad with me on my commute into work on Friday, started streaming Enya’s new album through the car speakers. Yes, I could have turned it off, but then I have to listen to myself swearing at people and I shame myself, so I left it on. Jesus, how does she do it? It’s like she records one song and then changes the key, layers it on top of another song, and plays it backwards. She’s the aural equivalent of a malfunctioning self-checkout. An ex of mine used to be absolutely obsessed with her, almost to the point of being unable to come without me whispering LET THE ORINOCO FLOW in his ear as we made love. I say made love, he was a means to an end, so let’s not romanticise it too much. Anyway, I spent most evenings at the age of seventeen being forced to smile politely as he showed me the Irish tinker caterwauling her way through videos that looked like something even a gap-yah student would deem too pretentious. Christ it’s no wonder I’m so mentally fragile.

Let’s do the chicken coconut curry. I actually typed cocknut curry there. I can’t decide whether that actually might look better.

to make chicken coconut curry, you’ll need:

four chicken breasts (remember, you get more breasts than a Razzle magazine in our super-amazing Musclefood deal (and I have some exciting news coming for that) – click here!)
two onions, finely sliced
1 tin of Blue Dragon Light Coconut Milk (400ml is 14.5 syns – split between four…well we’ll call it 4 syns for good luck)
3 garlic cloves, minced (yes, you know what I’m going to say, USE ONE OF THESE)
1 tsp ground ginger (fresh is better, and see above, you can keep a little knob in your freezer…like Jeffrey Dahmer)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp each of black pepper and smoked paprika
the juice and zest from two limes
a sprinkling of coriander, if you’re a fancy bastard
any veg you want – we used green beans and some frozen mixed veg

and to make chicken coconut curry, you should:

well, hazard a bloody guess
no? chuck it all in the slow cooker, cook for six to seven hours, serve with rice

Serves four. Looks worse than it tastes. I hate slow cookers!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

November 7, 2015

Posted under

american, breast, burgers, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, panko, poultry, recipe card, speciality ingredients

2CC zinger tower burger

Tonight’s recipe is a Slimming World friendly version of the Zinger Tower Burger from KFC. The original weighs in at 33 syns. And I’m sorry, look at the clip of it. We ordered one so we knew what to make, and it looks awful. Scroll past all of the chat below if you just need the recipe!

We were supposed to be going to Hexham to see the fireworks but see it’s been raining like a pissing cow, so we didn’t bother. I can tolerate sliding around in the mud with a group of men waiting for a banger to explode behind me and a large rocket to go off in my face – hell, that’s 3am on a Sunday morning for Paul and I – but the thought of having to drive along the country roads in this weather, invariably stuck behind Arthur and Martha Pissknickers in their 40mph-at-all-costs Astra…well that was just too much to bear.

We didn’t get a chance to lie in this morning, saying as Paul had helpfully booked his little Micra in to have a tyre changed at 9am in the bloody morning. On a Saturday! I was calm and collected when he told me the news and then asked me to take the car – I left him with two working teeth, so all was well. Paul goes through car tyres like most of us go through excuses as to why we’ve put on weight. I swear Paul’s car spends more time up on the ramp than it does on our drive, blocking the neighbour’s view of the road (eee, no wonder she struggles so much). Nevertheless, I forced myself out of bed at 8am, had a half-hearted shower and a twenty minute morning piss, and I was on my way. I said goodbye to Paul the only way I could, by silently creeping into our bedroom, pulling down my trousers and letting out a particularly noxious fart out a millimetre away from his face. Still didn’t wake him mind, though his tongue died.

I drove to Ashington (oh the glamour) in the pissing rain, eyes full of sleep and mind full of cotton-wool. I don’t wake up in the morning until I’ve had at least three cups of coffee and a Double Decker. The trip was as uneventful as driving with about 5% of your brain awake normally is – red lights missed, cyclists to prise off the bonnet, the usual (OK, I really AM joking on that one). At one point I felt a rumble in my nethers and, forgetting my destination, I let rip with a fart that could have parted the sea. Even the car sped up of its own accord. Of course, I hadn’t remembered where I was going – a garage where doubtless some fancy-dan in overalls would want to clamber around in my car – and as it turned out, I was only 600 yards from arriving. This led to me having to do several extra laps of the estate with the windows down and me tilting my bulk to one side each time I went around a corner to try and displace any remaining air-pockets of stink. Paul’s Yankee Candle air-freshener did nothing, though I’d genuinely rather smell what billows out of my arse of a morning than the insipid sickliness of ‘A Child’s Wish’.

Realising that I’d done all I can to dissipate the smell other than calling in an exorcist, I confidently turned into the garage, and ignoring the street-long garage forecourt, promptly drove down someone’s drive just to the left. Realising my mistake and forgetting how shit the gearbox was on the Micra, I spent a minute or so doing a tiny 533-point-turn and turning around, the mechanics in the garage giving me eye as I did so. Having parked, the mistakes continued to pile up – I walked into the back office and announced myself as the Micra driver only to be told to go to the reception and that ‘this was a staff room’ (which is a rather extravagant thing to call somewhere consisting of a settee and copies of the Daily Sport). Signing the car over, I was told to take a seat – I demurred, saying I’d never fit it in the boot* – and went to get myself a coffee from the machine.

Irma Grese behind the reception counter looked at me like I was muck on her shoe and waited until I’d upended all the Splenda and taken a stirrer to tell me that ‘coffee was a pound’. I looked down at the watery brown liquid I had in my hand and had to bite my tongue not to reply ‘how much for this stool sample?’. I explained I didn’t carry cash (I really don’t) and she, after quickly checking with Google as to the legality of having me taken out and shot behind the tyres, ‘let me off’. By god though, did she let me know she’d done me a favour – she spent the next forty minutes sighing and snorting so much that I almost called for oxygen.

Aside from her theatrics, the time passed quickly enough, with me alternating between cursing myself for leaving my phone at home and finally catching up on Jordan’s love life via the various Heat magazines littered around. I did half expect to see at least one mechanic being taken away on a stretcher after venturing into the car’s Cloud of Death’, but no, all was well, and the mechanic ushered me over to ‘take a look’. Take a look? At what? Unless he’d accidentally fitted a Domino’s pizza or a ship’s wheel instead of a tyre, what could I say? Nevertheless, because he was manly and I’m not, I pointed at the tyre and made appropriately straight-man remarks, like ‘cracking job’ and ‘ah yes it looks so much better now’, until he pointed out that it was the back tyre on the other side of the car.

For fuck’s sake. If I can find a way to make a tit of myself, I’ll do it, I really will. I paid up, left with a flounce of my coat, and promptly climbed into the passenger side of the car. I wish I could say I’m exaggerating, but I’m genuinely not. When I realised my mistake I tried to make it look like I was just getting something but they knew – you don’t put your foot in when reaching for the glove compartment, do you? And so with all that over I finally managed to get myself into the right seat – and then stalled it, because I’m not used to Paul’s car.

SO, I won’t be going back there.

Tonight’s recipe then is KFC chicken DONE WELL. Our local KFC is a hovel, no fibbing. We went through the drive-through (I’m sorry, but I’m not putting thru, I’m just not) once and had to wait by the intercom whilst the chickenkicker finished her rollie in front of us before lumbering back into the shop (I’m sorry, but I’m not putting restaurant, I’m just not) and phlegming her way through our order.

In the photo below we’ve used a white bread bun instead of a wholemeal bun – but that’s because wholemeal buns look so boring. You must use your HEB to keep it low in syns. We’ve used panko to coat the chicken, panko being a dried breadcrumb you’ll find in most larger supermarkets, but you can just use a whizzed up breadbun if you prefer. The key is – although we’ve synned the full amount, you’ll not use it all to coat your chicken, so it’s actually less than three syns for the whole thing! I’m going to give you the recipe to make hash browns and the chicken, and then you assemble it however you want – ours is breadbun, bit of ketchup (up to you if you syn it, but we use a tiny amount so don’t bother), chicken, slice of cheese (Tesco Edam slice used here as a HEA) (there are others!) (or grate some cheese), hash brown, lettuce, bit of reduced fat mayo (again, syn or not syn, up to you) and top the breadbun. I’m giving the recipe as enough for one, so just double or triple the ingredients if you want more. SO…

to make twochubbycubs’ zinger tower burger, you’ll need:

1 large chicken breast (remember folks, if you like big, pouting breasts, you’ll find an awful lot of them in our £40 box of meat through Musclefood – along with mince, bacon, sausages, steak…click HERE for that deal)
1 wholemeal roll (HEB)
1 egg
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp dried basil (not essential, but nice)
pinch of salt and black pepper
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1/8 tsp sage (again, not essential, but nice – substitute in a pinch of mixed herbs)
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/2 lamb or beef stock cube, crumbled
12g panko (2.5 syns)
1 medium-size potato
pinch of salt and pepper
bit of tomato ketchup or mayo (I’ve counted half a syn here, because we use so little)
we served with chips and beans because we’re so common, but you could have a bit of sweetcorn if you’re feeling fruity)

to make twochubbycubs’ zinger tower burger, you should:

an hour or so before you want to eat, make the hash-browns by grating the potato into a bowl and fill with cold water to cover it – this step is necessary to stop them going grey
allow to sit for about an hour before draining the water
squeeze as much liquid out of the potato as you can – it helps if you tip it into a dry, clean tea towel, bundle it up and squeeze – or, what we do, pile the potato on a chopping board, put another chopping board on top and then press down as hard as you can – the drier the potato the better the hash brown
press the potato into round moulds (we use one of these, makes things so much easier – and look, that’s two recipes I’ve used it in lately, this and the bubble and squeak) and cook in a frying pan (don’t use oil if you’ve got a good frying pan, but if you haven’t, a bit of Frylight or similar should be used) over a medium-high heat until golden, turning once
in a large, shallow dish mix together all of the breadcrumb ingredients
beat the egg in another bowl, dip your breasts in the egg mixture and roll in the breadcrumb mixture until well coated – you might need to press some of it on to make it stick
bake in the oven at 190 degrees for about 25-30 minutes, until golden
assemble your burger!

Easy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

October 28, 2015

Posted under

breast, fakeaways, kebab shop, poultry, recipe card, syn free

chicken parmesan with bubble’n’squeak rostis

So you may, or indeed may not, remember me prattling on about having a sore shoulder a while back which was resulting in a numb face and a painful neck. At first, I put it down to the extravagant swimming I pulled off in Corsica, or my particularly deft way of dragging a suitcase behind me with ne’ry a thought for my posture or the shins of passer-bys. I even had to go for an x-ray which was terribly exciting. Though not as exciting as the time I went for an MRI. Anyway, after the usual battling through a phone menu last revised back in the eighties and waiting the customary seven and a half years to get a doctor’s appointment (on the basis I’m not 89, and thus unable to get up at 5am to queue up outside the surgery), I went in for my results. I didn’t get my usual doctor. Instead, I got the doctor who I always try to avoid.

Now, let me say this. She’s a brilliant doctor, exceptionally knowledgeable and concise, and I’d (luckily) trust her with my life. But I don’t feel comfortable talking to her because she’s very aloof. I like a doctor who I can crack a joke with to relieve the tension and who will patiently explain all of the difficult terminology to me, such as spondylosis or stenosis or irreversible anal trauma or leg. I once, at the very peak of my anxiety, asked whether or not my erratic heartbeat was to be the end of me, only to be told by a jolly doctor with a nose the colour of a postbox that ‘I would still get the ladies to fit you up for a Christmas suit as opposed to a bodybag‘, before launching into a paroxysm of phlegm-filled chuckles. He was great, though I believe he’s dead now, so who got the last laugh?

No, this doctor speaks to me in a very clipped, matter-of-fact tone. Very professional, which is probably why I don’t get along. If I was a doctor I’d spend the entire time bringing out the giant arse thermometer with a wince on my face, only to poke it rudely in my patient’s side with an ‘only joking, no, seriously now, it’s terminal’. I sat down in the chair and I was given a look that almost set my ears on fire – the results were discussed over…ooh, seven seconds, and I was told I had spondylosis and that was that. To me, spondylosis sounds like a Eurovision entry from one of the wildcard countries, like Azerbaijan. Or perhaps a packet of Belgian sweets. When I asked for a mite more information, she signed like I’d punctured her lung and explained it was a form of ‘arthritis and a result of getting old’.

Getting old! I would understand if I was in my sixties but I’m only 30 – and whilst I’ve doubtless weathered my body disgustingly by years of smoking, drinking, casual sex and hilarious-obesity (well it’s better than morbid obesity) – I don’t think I’m ‘getting old’ just yet. Granted, I do make a noise like the air-brakes on a bus when I finally settle into my chair at the end of a working day, and I find myself picking up trinkets in garden centres and thinking ‘well now isn’t that just the ticket, a little foam pad for my knees when I’m weeding’, but come on. There’s a few years left in me yet, I hope. Actually, the fact that I put down in writing how often I’m in a garden centre is worrying – they were always the domain of ladies who smelled damp and men with cumulatively more hair sprouting out of their nose and ears than on their scalp – but then there I am on a Sunday, fingering the seed packets and worrying endlessly about my car being scratched. Hmm.

I courted her opinion on whether I should see a chiropractor and her reply was that she couldn’t comment – I resisted to urge to ask whether she was being held against her will or if a rogue chiropractor was holding her children hostage. She referred me to have my bloods taken, which I’m beginning to think is just a ruse to build up supplies because I have a rare blood type and they’re forever taking my blood. I swear, I go in for an ingrown toenail and they’ve got a needle in my arm before I’m so much as sat down in the reception flicking through a Home and Country. That’s a fib. There’s no Home and Country in our surgery. There’s a few dog-eared OK magazines – ‘It’s true love for Anthea Turner!‘ and ‘Happy future ahead for Princess Di‘ and a copy of Puzzler which I swear has been there since the centre was built – it’s probably a load-bearing magazine – and will remain there evermore. Out of little more than spite, I’ve arranged an appointment with a chiropractor regardless. If anything, it’ll give me something to twist my face about down the line. I do wish there was a way of discreetly asking whether or not their investigation table can stand up to twenty stone of fat slithered on top like cooling lava but no.

Anyway, enough about my day. It’s hurting to type, so I’ll need to hurry. I don’t like having a neck pose that makes me look permanently inquisitive. I’m actually frightened that I’m going to end up like all of those silly people on facebook who cast their head to one side and pout into the camera in the misguided belief that it’s hiding their chins, which are smartly avalanching into a fleshy heap under their right ear. So without a moment more of hesitation, here’s tonight’s recipe.

The chicken is delicious, all crispy and flavoursome, and don’t forget you can get your hands on a decent selection of breasts just by clicking on our Musclefood deal. Musclefood’s chicken doesn’t seem to shrink away to nothing in the oven, which is a bonus, and it actually tastes of something other than a farmer’s fart and a short life filled with disappointment and ennui. Give it a go. The accompanying sides are a piece of piss to make, but don’t they look good? You can serve this dish to loved ones and bask in their oohs and aaahs. Aaah, not arse. No-one wants to bask in my arse, sadly. I’ll divide this into two recipes, because I love you so much.

to make baked chicken parmesan, you’ll need:

4 chicken breasts
60g parmesan (30g is a HEA)
1 wholemeal roll, made into breadcrumbs (HEB)
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp black pepper

It’s worth noting at this point that you’ll not use anywhere near all of the ‘covering’, so I wouldn’t worry too much about any syns and HEB. Up to you, though – this makes enough to coat four breasts.

to make baked chicken parmesan, you should:

preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
in a shallow bowl, mix together the garlic powder, breadcrumbs, parmesan, basil and pepper
spray the chicken breasts with a little spray oil and roll in the breadcrumbs so they are well coated – use a little more frylight on patches where the mixture won’t stick
place onto a non-stick baking tray and bake for about thirty minutes, checking that the chicken is cooked through so you’re not shitting through the eye of a needle later on

to make sticky-leek topped bubble and squeak rostis, you’ll need:

700g of potatoes, chopped, don’t bother peeling
300g of broccoli
a chicken stock cube
any other veg you want to add in
a pack of two leeks
pinch of thyme
pinch of salt

to make sticky-leek topped bubble and squeak rostis, you should:

slice the leeks thinly – this is where a mandolin comes in really handy – and you can find one here. Take care though, don’t circumcise your fingers. You can just use a knife mind, but it’s faffy and the more uniform they look, the better
pop these into a pan with a drop or two of oil, a teaspoon of oil and a pinch of thyme and salt – then put the lid on and shake shake shake, breaking the leeks up – then keep the lid on and put them on a low heat for as long as you dare, they’ll reduce down and get sticky
meanwhile, cut up your potatoes and broccoli and boil for however long it takes to go soft
allow to cool and then roughly mash – you don’t want baby food, so just give it a cursory mix – and add in the stock cube – if you have any parmesan left over from the chicken, chuck it in here
shape into discs – now, we use one of these rings and presses – it makes things much easier, and costs less than a tenner – just use a dab of oil on the sides and you’ll get perfectly uniform, lovely shaped discs – but, you can use a scone ring or something circular!
top with the sauteed leeks
pop into the bottom of the oven when the chicken goes in
serve with gravy if you like!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

October 22, 2015

Posted under

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

garlic, bacon and chicken pasta

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

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

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

OK. So let’s do the recipe.

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

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

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

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

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chubbycubs

Posted on

October 9, 2015

Posted under

dips, dressings, fakeaways, indian, low syn, mince, persian, poultry, recipe card, rice, taster ideas, travel

turkey biryani and Corsica shenanigans

Three things before we set off:

I was in ASDA before (the glamour!) and as I was busy upsetting the self-scan machine, I heard some pompous bellend bark at an ASDA employee to ‘fetch me a basket’. The worker had the good grace to point him in the direction of some baskets, but I was instantly reminded why I hate people before I love them. The only thing I would have fetched him was his arsehole through his throat.
It’s approaching poppy season, which means the people whose DNA had to decide between growing black teeth or growing brain cells and promptly decided on the former will be on facebook telling you that poppies can’t be sold in XYZ because of Muslims. I’ve exhausted myself on facebook arguing with numpties, but look, it’s bullshit. The Royal British Legion have confirmed. Just research it!
First weigh-in since we decided to give it a bit more effort. I lost 5.5lb (and you’ve seen the meals I’ve been eating!) and Paul managed a respectable 2lb, meaning half a stone’s worth of pressure has been taken off the metal slats of our bed. Good. See, eating properly works, so put down your Scan-Bran and crack on.

A lovely lady at class last night told me I had to crack on with my Corsica holiday trip – and she’s quite right, of course, as ladies always are. So here we go. The last entry finished with us landing at the world’s smallest airport and being given a Peugeot 206: Sloth Edition to trundle around the island in. If you’re not a fan of my writing and you just want the recipe, hit the scroll button, because this is a long one. Like you can’t handle a long entry, you FILTHY MINX. So…

After landing at Figari, and wrestling the keys from a woman who probably could have brought the car in on her shoulders, we were on our way down the N198 (the main road ‘around’ Corsica) to the charming little town of Sainte Lucie de Porto Vecchio, which was a good half hour drive away. We didn’t mind the drive, it gave us an opportunity to let the scenery sink in. Corsica is beautiful – a true island of contrasts, with white beaches, heady mountains, green fields and dusty trees – and not what I was expecting. Our car, protesting as it did every time I dared nudge it above 40mph, shuttled us towards the town, and, us being us, we drive right past the turn off for the villa. Good stuff! We realised our mistake a good twenty minutes down the road and pulled over in a dusty lay-by by a beach to take stock. I could have texted the rep for directions and assistance but Paul had packed away my mobile into the suitcase, locked the suitcase, and put it in the bottom of the boot. It was altogether too much effort to sort. Paul insists on locking the suitcases at every opportunity, partly because they’re fancy-dan editions where the zips actually form part of the locking system. He locked them after we had wedged them into the boot of the car. He remained entirely non-plussed by my bewildered reasoning of ‘who the fuck is going to nick anything from a moving car, a tiny Corsican gypsy hiding in the ashtray?’. Honestly, the things I have to put up with. Frankly, if someone is that desperate to be at my passport that they want to sort through my extra-extra-large t-shirts and his ‘broken in’ boxers shorts, they deserve a reward.

Paul nipped into the bushes for a piddle and came dashing out with an alarmed face – not because of snakes, or scary wild boars, but (in his words) ‘there’s SO MUCH SHITTY BOG PAPER IN HERE’. Oh lovely! That would be a bit of a theme mind. Corsica is astonishing, but by god don’t venture into the bushes to change your clothes, empty your shoes of half a ton of sand or for a piss, because they sure do love shitting and leaving the paper for nature. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t imagine anyone would take their skidmarked paper home like a flower pressing, but at least bury it, don’t festoon the fucking branches with it. Honestly, it looked like Christmas in Worksop.

We stopped at a nearby Spar for groceries. Groceries isn’t quite the right word for the food you buy on holiday, though, is it? The only thing we left the shop with that could provide any nutritional value was the receipt. I’m going to hazard a guess that it will be the only time in my life that a bottle of Limoncello, swimming googles, eight bags of Haribo, headache pills, Pringles and enough bread to build an ark would appear in my shopping basket together. We did buy a token bag of rocket which looked great in the fridge at the start of the holiday and even better in the bin at the end. As a ‘car snack’ we bought a pretzel the size of a steering wheel to eat in the car (I was reassured that I could have dislodged any errant blobs of dough from my teeth with the toenail clipping that the previous driver had generously left on the dash) and we were back on our way. Let me tell you – it’s difficult to drive an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads whilst trying to make sure Paul didn’t get more than half of the bread. We made our back, veering dangerously across the road and spraying crumbs everywhere until we spotted the turn-off.

I have to say, the approach to the villa wasn’t very inviting – it looked like the start of every dodgy serial-killer film I’ve ever seen – and the architects had carefully and assuredly made sure to put as many possible pot-holes and boulders on the drive-way, so that the 100m drive up to the villa made me feel like a trainer in a tumble drier. It was worth it, though.

Casa Julia! I’ve stolen the photos from Simpson Travel’s website because frankly, my photography skills are up there with Stevie Wonder’s. I could be alone in the world and still manage to get the back of someone’s head or a rogue thumb into my shots. Anyway, we paid a king’s ransom for the villa, I’m fairly sure they can let me use their photos. Isn’t it beautiful? It accommodates ten people, so naturally it was just the right size for Paul and I to mince around naked and use every single bed to get the full value out of the holiday. Anyone else do that? God forbid the maid would get a moment to herself, we were too busy crinkling the bedsheets and leaving chest hairs in every conceivable crevice to care. Paul went for a dump almost immediately, despite having ‘freshened the air’ at the airport a mere hour ago. He uses new toilets like one might stamp a passport – to say he’s been.

Nevertheless, the suitcases hadn’t been unlocked more than half a minute before I was fully undressed and scampering to the pool. That’s a fib, I’m too fat to scamper. Let’s go with trundle. Lumbered. Yeah – I lumbered excitedly to the pool. That doesn’t work either, actually, because you can’t lumber with enthusiasm. How the fuck do you describe that grotesque speedy ‘shift’ that us fatties do? Shall we say I galumphed to the pool? That means to move in a ‘loud and clumsy way’, which describes the way my thighs slap when I go at speed. I galumphed to the pool. Not quite ‘Arnold raced out of the door’, mind.

I spent five minutes teetering on the step of the pool because it was SO BLOODY COLD. Not because it wasn’t heated, it was, but because I was so overheated in my ‘English’ clothes that anything less than a pan of boiling jam hurled in my face would have felt a bit ‘nippy’. Paul shouted encouragement from the lavatory (thankfully that was a one-way process – I don’t think the locals would have been especially pleased to hear my Geordie tones shouting ‘PUSH’ and ‘IS IT CROWNING YET’ across the fields) but that’s rich coming from him. Paul has never, ever just ‘got’ into a pool. He has to inch himself in, letting the water hit each part of his body and letting out a tiny scream as it does so….OOOH ME ANKLES…OOH IT’S COLD…OOOH IT’S ON MY HELMET…CHRIST MY GUNT….and so on. He’ll then spend ten minutes with it lapping just under his tits before finally he’ll crack and tumble in like a falling mountain. A fatslide, if you will. I’m the opposite, I’ll dither and fanny on for a little bit and then just jump in. I’ve got the luxury of all-over hair, see – the cold doesn’t bother me so much because it has to penetrate my shag. It does rather look like someone has pushed an old persian rug into the pool, however. Even the air-filter gasped rather unnecessarily when I waded in, I thought.

Once I’d managed to acclimatise to the coldness of the pool and my scrotum had stopped resembling a Shredded Wheat, it was lovely. I swam around in that fat-person style – 2m of front-crawl, bob under the water, kick my legs about, lie on my back. I got a bloody fright when I felt something swim underneath me and envisioning some kind of aqua-wild-boar, I hurtled (again, however a fat man hurtles) to the other end of the pool only to realise it was the bloody pool cleaner. I hated it immediately. I have an inherent and deep phobia of machinery in water ever since I watched 999 and watched some poor horse-faced lady get stuck underwater when her pony-tail was sucked into a filter. Brrr. Although looking back, everyone was panicking and screaming but really, no-one thought to grab a pair of scissors? Anyway, this little device looked like a Roomba – a smooth circle of menace attached to a hose and with three turning wheels, and it’s job was to beetle around the pool during the day (when normally, the guest would be out), sucking up leaves and hair and tagnuts. It was creepy. It moved silently through the water aside from a tiny electrical hum every now and then and all I could think was that it was going to either get entangled in my arse-hair (imagine THAT 999) or it’ll somehow become live and fry me in the water like an especially fatty pork chop. I couldn’t relax until Paul finished his dump, fished it out for me (the robot, not the poo) and placed it to the side, where it lay gasping and spluttering and wishing me dead. We did manage to turn it off before it drained the pool. Phew.

We then spent a hearty two hours getting in and out of the pool, lying on every sun-lounger and swinging in the hammock that rather put me in mind of a big metal bollock. By god they were comfy. I looked for them online when I got home only to discover they were over £1,000 each. I like comfort, but I don’t think an afternoon lying in the mild air of Northumberland quite justifies the cost. Plus, I’d need to be dressed here, and it just wouldn’t be the same. I was swinging away in my hammock telling Paul all my thoughts on the stewardesses and Corsicans when his lack of answering – and his rumbling snoring – told me he was off to sleep. Ah well. Regular readers will know that we can’t go more than a few scattered minutes without impressing some kind of embarrassment on ourselves and it was my time to shine with a trip to buy yet more beer and bread. Beer and bread, it genuinely doesn’t get better than that for a fatty. Don’t worry needlessly however, we weren’t forgetting our roots – the beer was an entirely unnecessary raspberry froth called pietra (recommended by a far classier and tasteful friend) and the bread a foccacia with pressed olives and bacon wedged inside. We’re that fancy. Leaving Paul in the hammock to fart away to his heart, and indeed his arse’s, content, I stole out of the villa with a view to restocking the fridge with all manner of local ‘nice things’ from the other grocery shop I’d spotted down the road.

You may recall that I can’t speak a lick of French. I really can’t. I only managed one year of ‘French lessons’ before I got so bored it was either transfer to Spanish or defenestrate myself. Actually, we used to take our lessons on the ground floor so the most I could have hoped for was a grazed knee and an audition for drama school. It didn’t help that our French teacher had an eye full of blood for seven months. It’s all any of us could look at. No wonder I never learned my pronouns for goodness sake, he looked like the Terminator 2 poster rendered in Microsoft Paint. After a year I transferred over to learn Spanish and well, no me arrepiento, right? That said, I’m always keen to at least try, so I spent the fifteen minutes walking down to the shop reading my language app and practising out loud anything I may need to say – ‘…huit tranches de jambon, s’il vous plaît’, or ‘une petite portion de fromage local, mon amour‘ or indeed, ‘…pouvez-vous me montrer aux préservatifs extra-forts?‘ I genuinely thought I’d be welcomed and praised for my attempts, that perhaps someone would admirably slap me on my back and strike up in French with me about the local political situation or Greece’s turbulent economy. Thank fuck they didn’t – me repeating ‘QUOI’ over and over wouldn’t have quite the same effect.

Anyway, you can guess, that didn’t quite happen. No. I minced around the shop, filling my basket with ham and eggs and cheeses and, somewhat inexplicably, a box of blonde hair dye because I had a fit of the vapours and thought about dyeing my hair blonde because I’m on holiday, which has to rank up there amongst the ‘unlikeliest thing to do because I’m on holiday’ together with having a colonoscopy or visiting the dentist. My basket was full of deliciousness and I was immensely proud of myself for engaging the various shop folk in stilted, bare-bones chatter. I spotted the beer I’d seen earlier and put two six packs in my basket. All good. No. In my haste to reach for a bottle of mixer, my basket tipped over and deposited everything I’d picked up all over the bloody floor, each beer bottle shattering at once in the most noisy fashion. It would have been quieter if I’d ramraided the shop in a fucking train.

Time stopped. Every single person in the shop – indeed, the island – span around to look at me in a most accusatory manner, as if I was some tiny-scale terrorist. I stood there, desperately fishing around in my head for any relevant French, but I could feel every last French word in my brain popping like champagne bubbles, rendering me entirely mute and confused in a sea of glass and blood-coloured beer. Finally, the silence was broken by the absolute harridan behind the till yelling and shouting at me in incomprehensible gibberish and waving her hands around like Tony Blair bringing in an aeroplane. After a good couple of minutes I FINALLY remembered and I blurted out ‘je suis désolé‘ over and over until she FINALLY twigged I couldn’t understand her. Do you know what is shameful? I only know ‘je suis désolé’ from a bloody Madonna song. Thank God for ole Vinegartits! Some genuinely tiny hairy man came bustling out from the back with a brush and set about clearing away the glass with such exaggerated sighs and harumphing that I almost emptied out my tomatoes and gave him the paper bag to breathe into. I wish I knew what the French was for FAT, ENGLISH, CLUMSY OAF. I felt paranoid that the cow behind the counter was going to put a tannoy announcement mocking my silliness so I hastily paid (her slapping the coins down into my hand with such venom that if I turn my wrist towards the sun, I can make out the imprint of a two euro coin under my thumb) and scuttled back to Paul, who hadn’t so much as noticed I was out of the pool.

To make up for my folly, he prepared a delicious tea of French bread, cheese, ham, grapes and that great equaliser, Pringles. ROSEMARY FLAVOURED PRINGLES, mind you. Living the dream! We spent the rest of the evening lounging and watching Modern Family on the Chromecast.

Sweet Jesus. I’ve typed 3,000 words and all I’ve managed to do is get to the villa and drop some beer. I need an editor! We’ll leave it here, because the tip-tapping of this tiny Mac keyboard is getting on my tits. What do we have for dinner tonight? Turkey biryani! I’m making a bit of effort to use turkey mince where I can because it’s cheaper and a lot of you ask us for cheaper recipes – plus it’s very low in fat. That said, if you’re feeling like a decadent trollop, swap in beef mince. Don’t let the long list of ingredients put you off – it’s easy to make and tastes delightful. Ah fuck, I said delightful. That’s one of my least favourite synonyms.

to make turkey biryani, you’ll need (deep breath):

1 large onion, chopped
500g turkey mince
1″ knob of ginger, finely chopped
1 chilli pepper, finely shopped
1 tsp of cardamom seeds
1 tbsp each of ground cumin and ground coriander
6 cloves or half a tsp of clove powder (but you’re so much better with actual cloves)
1 cinnamon stick or half a tsp of cinnamon (see above)
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp crushed black peppercorns
1 tin of tomatoes
300ml chicken stock
25g sultanas (4 syns)
250g basmati rice
1/2 tsp tumeric
salt
100g fatfree yoghurt
1/2 cucumber
2 tbsp chopped mint (or 1 tsp mint sauce)

You can get away with leaving out the odd spice, just use what you have.

then to make the turkey biryani, you should:

cook your onion gently, until nicely golden
add the turkey mince and cook over a medium heat until cooked through
stir in all the spices bar the turmeric and leave to cook for a minute or two
add the tomatoes, stock, sultanas and a pinch of salt
bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to let it gently cook for around forty five minutes
meanwhile, preheat the oven to 160 degrees
cook the rice however you like – we use the one cup of rice to two cup of water rule – add the turmeric before it boils – BUT STOP after ten minutes – you don’t want the rice fully cooked yet
mix together the turkey and the rice and place in a casserole dish
cover and cook in the oven for 25 minutes, add a little more stock if the rice isn’t cooked after 20 minutes
meanwhile, core the cucumber of its seeds and then grate it into the yoghurt, adding the mint
serve everything together

Yum. I am so tired now.

twochubbycubs

slimming, sassy recipes

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