Category Archives: poultry

Chicken, turkey and duck

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May 5, 2015

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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

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

frittata SLIMMING WORLD

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

detox water 1

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

garden

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…

chicken curry

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.

J

 

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April 24, 2015

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

turkey stroganoff

That has to be the most tortuous way ever of getting the recipe title into a pun. The recipe today will be a turkey stroganoff – cheap to make, difficult to pronounce and syn-free. Oh yes!

Someone lovely responded to one of our posts today saying they’d love us in book form. Let me tell you, I’d love to write a book (and indeed, I have – my Honeymoon Diary is on Amazon) and my head is full of ideas, but I’m the world’s worst procrastinator. If I can find a way of putting something off to do later, I will, even if it’s something I enjoy doing like writing. Hell, a book about a wizard made JK Rowling insanely rich, even if she does walk around with a face like a franked stamp. Like she’s seen her arse and doesn’t like the colour of it, as my dad would say. Like she’d lost a fiver and found a pound, if you will. Like an abandoned sofa. I’m only jealous. 

To give you a few examples, I painted our bedroom a charming slate grey last summer (Paul wouldn’t let me put a slab of wipe-clean Perspex on the wall behind the bed, which I think was a mistake) and I had every intention of going around with a little scrubby cloth and getting all the paint of the windowsills, lest our gardener looks in and thinks I’m a cack-handed slattern. I am, but I don’t want him judging me. But I’ve put it off and put it off to the point where I’d rather repaint the room than go at it with a cloth. For a year and a half in our old flat we had a bed that dipped in the middle almost to the floor because three of the slats snapped (sadly not through passionate love-making, but because I plucked one of Paul’s bum-hairs as he walked past naked and he fell onto the bed in fright). Did we go to IKEA and get some new slats? No, we propped it up with a few DVDs and spent 18 months walking around with spines like question marks.

If I take a day off, it’s always done with good intentions that I’ll go shopping, get some nice food in, do tasks around the house, practice writing, have a walk. What invariably happens is that I’ll spend three hours pressing the snooze button and the rest of the day watching Come Dine With Me on Channel 4 catch-up in my ‘house boxers’ – i.e. the ones I can’t wear outside of the house because my knackers tumble out of a hole in the gusset. We’ve got several pairs of these, super comfy, but god knows what we do to our boxers to make them fall apart like that. Paul puts it down to friction, I put it down to his rancid farts burning through like when you toast the top of a crème brûlée. Nevertheless, they’re handy for dossing around the house, though I do think my neighbours over the road have seen my balls swinging around more times than they would care to admit.

Here, have some stroganoff – it doesn’t look all that in the picture but it tasted lahverley! And it’s something new, so get on it.

turkey stroganoff sw

to make turkey stroganoff you will need:

1 tbsp olive oil (or Frylight if you’re that way inclined), 500g turkey mince, 1 brown onion (diced), 225g sliced mushrooms, 170g passata, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 tablespoon chilli sauce (we used Cholula, which to me sounds like something you’d rub onto an irritated foof, but for goodness sake DON’T), 500ml chicken stock, 200g fusili pasta, 250g fat-free greek yoghurt, parsley

to make turkey stroganoff you should:

  • in a bowl, mix together the chopped tomatoes, worcestershire sauce, garlic power and chilli sauce. Keep to one side whilst you make the magic happen
  • in a large stockpot or even better one of these babies, heat the olive oil (or Frylight, pussy) over a medium-high heat.
  • add the minced turkey and onion and stir frequently for about two minutes. Make sure to keep breaking up the clumps of mince as you go
  • add the mushrooms to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes until the mushrooms are tender. Don’t worry if it starts to look a bit watery – that’s what you want
  • add salt and pepper and anything else you might fancy. We won’t judge
  • stir in the passata and the delicious tomatoey sauce you made earlier and mix well
  • add the stock and bring the whole lot to a boil. Don’t be shy – if you keep stirring, it won’t stick
  • once it’s bubbling away add the pasta and reduce the heat to a nice simmer
  • cook for about 15 minutes or until the pasta is cooked as you like it. Stir occasionally, but not too often
  • add anything else you might fancy (lots of pepper is nice), remove from the heat and let it cool for about 5 minutes or so. If you do this next step whilst it’s still really hot it’ll look like you’ve spewed in it
  • add the yoghurt and mix well
  • serve, worship us and then share the recipe with your friends!

Remember – we’re on Twitter! If you enjoy us, SHARE – @twochubbycubs

Whoo!

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April 13, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, pasta, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto

Not a typo. The dish is a bit like a risotto but tastes a bit more substantial – tasty though and only uses one pot. Hooray.

But weigh-in tonight, and it’s VERY good news. You may remember that in between getting caught noshing in the hot-tub by a farmer and running caravans off the road, we managed to put on a total of 13lb between us last week? Well, we knuckled down a bit but as you can see from the recipes, still ate like pigs…and we’ve lost:

james – 7.5lb

paul – 5.5lb

Haha! A total weight of 13lb – or, for those who might be a bit touched in the head, we’ve managed to lose exactly what we put on (Paul losing .5lb more than what he put on and me losing .5lb less)! Brilliant, not least because I can’t be bothered to change the ‘total’ image on the right of the blog.

Hey I tell you what though – and this is in no way a disparaging comment against other classes I’ve visited, but what a difference a consultant makes. We’ve worked our way back to our very first consultant and she’s a genuine laugh – we were in that church hall digging those bloody awful church chairs out of our back-fat for a good two hours but it flew by. Reason? It wasn’t just ‘weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done’ which holds no allure for us. It felt like a proper class! If you get the right class, you stay, and if you stay, you learn. SIMPLE AS.

Now listen, weigh-in nights are normally a chance for us not to post a recipe but instead spend the evening ped-egging each others feet and tormenting the cat.

Well, we’ve been doing that, see?

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But lo, in the spirit of giving, here’s a recipe! Gosh!

chicken orzo moonblush tomatoes risotto

Firstly, the recipe uses sundried tomatoes normally, and feel free to substitute them for the moonblush tomatoes I’ve used in the recipe (sundried tomatoes are around 2 syns for 25g), but moonblush tomatoes are very easy to make and syn free. Perhaps half a syn at most per serving, anyway. I nicked the idea from Nigella Lawson and what that woman doesn’t know about cooking you could write on the side of a rolled-up twenty quid note. To make moonblush tomatoes, first whack your oven up to its highest possible temperature. You want it glowing like an Englishman’s shoulders in Benidorm. Next, cut a load of cherry tomatoes in half and chuck them in a bowl. Add a tiny drop or two of olive oil, a good glug of balsamic vinegar, salt, dried oregano, bit of thyme, pepper. Mix gently so the tomatoes are covered but try not to squash the tomatoes. Next, tip them onto a baking tray with the cut side facing up – pack them in tightly. Once the oven is at the highest temperature and you could light a fag off the vapours, turn it off, open the door, quickly throw the tray in and leave it overnight. The hot air will dry your tomatoes out – not completely, but that’s fine – you want them a bit squishy. Syn-free and full of taste! Make it even more interesting by using a range of tomatoes of all shapes and colours. If you DO insist on using sundried tomatoes in oil like a filthy slattern, hoy them in a sieve and pour boiling water on them – gets rid of the oil, see.

OK, so you’ve got tomatoes – either moonblush (overnight) or sundried (jarred – philistine). So…

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts cut into chunks, 200g tomatoes, tiny drop of oil, 1 large onion sliced finely, three garlic gloves, 400g of orzo pasta (or rice), 3 dollops of tomato puree, 900ml of chicken stock, 1/2tsp of oregano, 1/4tsp of thyme, 1/4tsp of lemon zest and 1/2tsp of balsamic vinegar. Basil leaves, black pepper and parmesan to serve.

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you should:

  • fry the chicken off in a tiny bit of oil or a squirt of frylight (bleurgh!) – chuck in a bit of salt and pepper to swoosh it along – once cooked through, set aside
  • chuck the onions into the pan now and saute gently until they go transparent and sticky – add the garlic for a moment or two
  • add the rice and fry along with the onion for a minute or two
  • add the tomato puree, tomatoes (chopped if particularly big, otherwise just tip in), all the herbs and the balsamic vinegar, plus the chicken
  • now cook gently, on a medium heat, adding stock one ladle at a time and stirring – don’t leave it to stick, and eventually, it’ll go nice and gloopy and thick – tasty!
  • serve in a big bowl with a smashing cheesy grin on your face.

Just a note – buying a whole lemon just for the zest is a bit silly. So use whatever you need to, then pop the lemon in the freezer – you can use it next time you need zest! Failing that, cut it in half, put it in a tiny bowl of water and microwave for thirty seconds or so, then use it like a sponge to clean your microwave. Gosh we really ARE the gift that keeps on giving tonight.

Cheers all!

J

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April 12, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, noodles, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

slimming world classics – salt and pepper chicken

I tell you what, you’re doing rather well out of us this week, bearing in mind we were aiming to only post five times a week, and one of them would be a quickpost! But, like the caring, big-hearted, lovely chaps that we are, we couldn’t let you down, so here’s an extra recipe – salt and pepper chicken. 

Syn-free, mind.

salt and pepper chicken

I can’t tell you how long I agonised over putting that ‘n’ in the title. I’m someone whose teeth actually itch if I happen across a ROFL. Anyway, recipe:

to make salt and pepper chicken, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts (one per person) cut into chunks, 5 tbsp Smash, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp pepper, ½ tsp powdered garlic, one egg, a good slug of soy sauce, one green pepper, one onion, one chilli pepper, 2 tsp granulated sweetener, 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, noodles.

to make salt and pepper chicken, you should:

  • mix together the Smash, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a bowl and spread out onto a plate
  • dip the chicken chunks into beaten egg with a good slug of soy sauce and roll in the dry smash mixture until well coated
  • place the crumbed chicken chunks onto a baking sheet that has been sprayed with Frylight
  • add another couple of sprays of Frylight over the top and bake in the oven (200°C or Gas Mark 6) for around 25-30 minutes or until golden
  • get your noodles cooking
  • meanwhile, chop an onion, green pepper and chilli pepper and mix together in a pan
  • cover and let it sweat over a medium-low heat
  • add another slug of soy sauce after about ten minutes and mix well
  • in another bowl, mix together the granulated sweetener and white wine vinegar and stir until dissolved
  • when it’s all ready, add the vinegar mixture to the vegetables, mix well, and serve with the chicken on top of the noodles

Mwah! Easy-peasy. I know I’m dancing with the devil using frylight and sweetener but if I tell you to use 1tsp of honey and a dab of oil, you might have a fit. Using honey instead of sweetener and a drop of oil instead of frylight makes things better, but up to you…!

J

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April 9, 2015

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breast, chinese, classics, fakeaways, one-pot, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

diet coke chicken

Just a quick post tonight as very tired – so here’s the picture and a recipe. It’s another Slimming World classic, may god have mercy on our souls.

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This is a recipe from SW’s own website – and well, if you follow their recipe, you’ll end up with that old favourite of SW, watery sauce and no taste at all. How do they do that so consistently – take decent food and add water and sweetener? The mind boggles. So I’ve modified it just slightly (increase the cooking time, reduce the heat) and what comes out isn’t actually half bad.

to make diet coke chicken, you’ll need:

ingredients: touch of oil, one onion, red and green pepper, 2 garlic cloves, 2 chicken breasts, 2tsp of Worcestershire sauce, 4tbsp of tomato puree, half a carton of passata, 1tbsp of dark soy sauce, 1tsp of dried mixed herbs,, 330ml can of diet coke, 200ml of chicken stock and 200g of sugar snap peas.

and to make diet coke chicken, you should:

recipe: chop up the onion, pepper, chicken and garlic. Fry gently, add the liquid and spices, and cook low and slow. The original recipe says to cook it quick for fifteen minutes but you just end up with too much liquid. Serve with rice.

Is it nice? Meh! It was alright, but it just tastes so…Slimming World-y!

J

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April 8, 2015

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american, breast, classics, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, travel

KFC-style chicken

Classics Week continues with a recipe for KFC chicken – I’m not a fan of KFC, something about sticking my bone in a greasy box doesn’t appeal. But, nevertheless, it’s a recipe that seems to be doing the rounds on the various SW facebook sites so we thought we should give it a go. Recipe near the bottom, but first, MORE CHUNTERING ABOUT IRELAND.

You left us yesterday as we pulled up outside the cottage, and going forward, I’m not going to talk day to day as a lot of the days were the same (pootle about in the car, eat, eat some more, pootle a bit further, eat, stock up on ice-cream and nip back to the cottage in time for Tipping Point) – instead, I’ll just rattle off some incidents, high points and thoughts.

First, we managed to cause major offence within twenty four hours. Frankly, if you’re of a nervous disposition or candid talk of sex makes you green, just skip ahead a couple of paragraphs.

See, the cottage came with a hot-tub, and we decided to enjoy dusk in the hot-tub completely nude – pity the poor filters having to work overtime to drain out our back-hair and toenails.  But, it was incredibly romantic and we were incredibly isolated, with not a soul around us (to the point where, at night, we could look across the valley and see only one solitary light for miles around), and being young, virile young men, we immediately got up to dickens. Well, it was my birthday after all.

Picture the scene – the bubbling of the steamy water, music playing through the iPad, the rhymthic sound of the jets, the twilit light bouncing off Paul’s wobbling buttocks (it would look like the Mitchell brothers were hiding just under the water), me playing a mean tune on the old ham trumpet – perfectly romantic for a married couple. Well yes, until a honking big tractor appeared at the end of the garden less than thirty foot away. How we had missed it was understandable – Paul was facing the other way and I was always told not to talk with my mouth full – but how the hell the farmer didn’t see until he was parked up I have no clue. Looking back, there would have been a hedge blocking his view until about 40 foot away, and then he probably just thought he was committed.

Good lord. You’ve never seen two people spring back as quick as we did – it was like someone had dropped a toaster in the water. Half the water in the hot-tub sloshed over the side exposing even more of our milky-white frames. Mind, he was no better – he looked like your very personification of a hard-bitten farmer – tattered cloth cap, wax jacket from the eighties, face like a drained field, and he ambled over with his hand pulling the brow of his cap over his eyes like he was Icarus approaching the sun. When really, it was the FULL MOON he should have been worried about. He spluttered something about the oil heating and asked if everything was alright – I assume, anyway, because we couldn’t hear or understand a word of what he said and I certainly wasn’t going to engage him in any chatter whilst my boobs blew around in the hot-tub jets. He sharp got back in his tractor and almost did a donut on the gravel drive way trying to get away.

So that killed the mood. To be honest, I’m not a massive fan of the hot-tub, it’s what people with bad taste buy when they win the lottery. What might look glamorous on the deck of a gorgeous chalet in the Alps doesn’t look quite so alluring pressed up beside a mouldy shed and the frame of a B&Q value trampoline in a shitpit in Southend. Nothing quite says class like drinking Bellabrusco from a plastic beaker as multi-coloured LEDs illuminate your bumhole. Anyway, that didn’t stop us, and despite it being a proper fan-on, we used that hot-tub several more times throughout the holiday.

However, I’m not convinced the filter was working correctly, because towards the end of the holiday, the water became murkier and murkier and started to smell. Not that such trifling matter stopped us – here, we’re Geordie, divven’t ya knaa – but I don’t think you should have to crack the top of the water like a crème brûlée before you get in.

Actually, that’s not even the end of the hot-tub tale, and nor was it the only time we were surprised by an unwelcome visitor. See, on one of the nights that we spent in the hot-tub under the stars, the local horse made an appearance, looming out of the dark about 5 foot away from Paul’s head and promptly did that noise that horses make when they blow air through their noses. Paul shit himself – no wonder the filters didn’t work – but soon calmed down when he realised what it was. All was well until the horse bit him on the head – at that point we called it a night. Ah, nature.

Well now look at that – see this is why I couldn’t write for a living, I’ve spent eight paragraphs talking about hot-tubs! So let’s put Ireland to bed for an evening whilst I mull over whether to categorise this post as x-rated or not.

KFC chicken!

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Now, we used one wholemeal bun and it made more than enough ‘crumb’ for the two of us – one wholemeal breadbun being one person’s healthy extra. If you want to syn it, you’ll need 6 syns – 3 syns each. You can use smash and make it syn free but ew.

to make KFC style chicken, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chicken breasts (cut into strips), one breadbun, 1tsp of dried oregano, 1tsp of garlic salt, 3tsp of paprika, black pepper, a bit of salt, a tiny pinch of ground ginger and one big old bugger of an egg.

to make KFC style chicken, you should:

recipe:

  • honestly, if you struggle making this, you need to pop yourself into a nursing home now
  • blitz the breadcrumbs and the various powders together in a food processor – you don’t want it like dust, but just fine crumbs
  • beat your egg in a little bowl
  • take a strip of chicken, drop it in the egg, make sure it is covered, put it into the bread/spice mix, cover well, and place on a baking sheet.  If you have cheap trays that stick, either grease them a smidge or use non-stick lining
  • into the oven they go – twenty minutes on one side, turn them, and fifteen minutes on the other on a 200degree heat
  • take them out if they burn, obviously
  • serve with BBQ beans (we added a drop of chipotle rub into our beans before cooking), fries (We use this little potato chipper to make decent shaped fries in a jiffy! Only £7), corn if you want and coleslaw if you can be bothered to make your own (syn-free coleslaw recipe here)

Enjoy!

Quick note – if you love this blog, please share share share! Tell your friends! Tell a neighbour! Tell that fat lassie you don’t care for! Leave a note in someone’s lunchbox. Tell your group about us. Share it on FB. Spread the word – where else can you get gay sex, snobbery, KFC chicken and sassiness all in one post?

J

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April 7, 2015

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breast, budget, classics, one-pot, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free, travel

mushy pea curry

Where to start? Firstly, if you’re here for the recipe, have a good scroll down and you’ll find a recipe for good old mushy pea curry, which although it does look like someone’s already eaten it for you, is tasty, cheap and slimming. Trust me. If you’re here for the long haul, enjoy the first part of my rambling about our recent few days away in Ireland…

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You may remember me mentioning that we had no plans and were planning a last-minute holiday away wherever we could find a cheap deal to a decent place? Well let me tell you – don’t bother. The only available flights were to places which you just know will be full of bald English men with red shoulders reading The Sun and eating full English breakfasts at 4pm. Bleugh. I don’t like flying – the thought of flying somewhere with such little reward just ruled going abroad at last-minute completely out. So, the night before we set off, we booked a holiday cottage in the absolute middle of nowhere in the Ring of Kerry, Ireland, and at 5pm the next day our car was packed, Paul had been picked up and we were on our way in no time at all. I normally hide away the sat-nav for reasons below but intrigue got the better of me as to how far I had to drive and the sat-nav was plugged in and on the dash within ten minutes.

Sat-navs are great in principle but I always end up putting mine sulkily away in the glove box after approximately five minutes. We bought a proper fancydan version in the sales but see, I hate being told what to do when I’m driving and struggle with the authority it commands in the car. I always have good intentions of listening to it and indeed, it’s never failed to guide us where we need to go, but I still have an inherent distrust and because Paul always sides with the sat-nav, it causes arguments. Plus, it only has two male voices, Daniel and Kevin. Kevin is a sarcastic knobhead so he immediately gets turned off but Daniel has been upgraded to this weird breathy version who almost whispers the commands at us like some robotic milk-tray man. I don’t know how appropriate it is to have a semi whilst clumsily navigating around the Bangor ring-road but there you have it.

We arrived in Bangor at around ten and, due to being full of wine gums and other sweets, went straight to bed. We’d elected to stay at a Premier Inn but this is always a mistake – not because they’re uncomfortable, quite the opposite actually – I’ve always had a great night’s sleep at a Premier Inn – but rather I spend all night scheming and plotting about how I might make my money back under their ‘Guaranteed Good Night’s Sleep’ promise.  The problem with that is, I’ve always found the staff so nice and disarming that I immediately become charming and submissive and don’t dare mention any perceived problem with the room. Bah. We sped down towards Holyhead in the morning and we were at the dock in plenty of good time to sit and wait in the gales and mist before it was time to board the ferry.

Oh! Before I carry on with the tale, let me mention Paul’s idea of breakfast. As we didn’t have time to hoover up an all-you-can-eat-breakfast at the Premier Inn, I bustled him into Holyhead ASDA with the direction of getting a breakfast snack for us. This is what he came back with.

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Haway. In case you can’t make it out, it was a little packet which contained a cheesestring, a wrap so dry I could have shaved my three-day-stubble with it, a sachet of knock-off tomato ketchup and (unlike in the picture above, which I’ve nicked from somewhere to illustrate my post) some sliced rolled chicken. It was unspeakably vile. I opened the packet and I swear it hissed when I pulled the lid back. The car smelt like someone had shit out a corpse on the back seat. We got fifty yards down the road before I pulled over and Paul, now with a considerable flea in his ear, had to dispose of the ‘meal’ in the nearest bin. Honestly Holyhead, get your act together. I had tears in my eyes as we drove past McDonalds to the ferry port, let me tell you. Anyway…

You know what I love about the English? The very second they perceive anyone to be at any sort of advantage to them, they start bitching – and this is compounded if they’ve paid extra. Let me explain. Paul and I paid an extra £10 each way on the ferry to be given priority boarding, disembarkation (is that a needlessly clumsy word or what) and access to the Stena lounge. It is the ferry equivalent of first class and we only bought it because the seats in the lounge looked moderately comfortable and there was promise of free snacks. Accordingly, when we drove into the port, we were asked to drive into one of two ‘Premium’ lanes. We parked up and had the windows down only to hear the whisker-faced woman, putting the Tena in Stena Line, in the Audi (shock! horror!) to my right immediately start bitching to her husband that ‘they had paid extra’ and ‘why where we in the second premium lane and they weren’t’ blah blah. He looked amazingly henpecked. She went on and on and on about the perceived injustice of people boarding ahead of her and only stopped when I put my window back up and we both started laughing at her. I think her mood soured further when we did indeed board first – a whole lane ahead of her – and I gave her and her watery-eyed husband a dainty handwave as we drove past. Stupid old mare that she was – it’s not as if those in Premium were going to sailing over on the fucking QE2 and the rest of the passengers were sailing on a floating door.

Once we were loaded onto the ferry, we dashed up the stairs to be the first couple into the ‘Stena Plus’ lounge. Part of the ‘premium’ booking is access to this lounge which is controlled by a surly miss and a set of glass doors. We had to give our surname and were ushered in to avail ourselves of the free snacks, which consisted of those little packet of shortbread that you get in cheap hotels and a few cans of Diet Coke. There were some bottles of wine available for those who were already shaking and slurring at 9am in the morning, plus tea and coffee. Once they had allowed all of the steerage passengers onboard and shut them behind the metal gates, we were on our way.

And good lord, what a crossing. We were warned by the captain (via the ship’s loudspeaker, not personally – I mean we’d only paid an extra tenner and that had to cover the forty cans of Pepsi that I’d secreted away into my rucksack) that the crossing was going to be rough due to the strong winds and turbulent seas, and he wasn’t kidding. The Stena Plus lounge is situated at the front of the ferry and the waves were cresting over the top of the prow as it bobbed up and down. It was awful – it was all I could do to eat my cooked breakfast and fret about whether I’d put the handbrake on, envisioning my car rolling around on the car deck and the weight of our car-snacks causing a frightful Herald of Free Enterprise incident. It was a long four hours – I spent most of it snaffling snacks and gambling in the arcades. Oh and another moan! If you have kids, you don’t automatically have the right to use any machine you want or to have people who are altogether more sensible than you to get out of the way just so your crusty-faced little shitmachine can ‘have a go at driving’. I know, awful, but some pompous little knobhead with a bristly-little tache and his child took a look into the arcade, saw Paul and I playing Mario Kart Arcade Edition and said to his child ‘DON’T WORRY DARLING, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO HAVE A TURN ON THESE KIDS MACHINES WHEN THESE FULLY GROWN MEN HAVE FINISHED’. Honest to God, fully grown men. It was all I could do not to pick up his child and toss him into the Irish sea. I wouldn’t mind but we all know that children don’t actually play the machines, they just sit making silly noises and taking up space. Frankly, parents should be made to lock their children in the car and they can spend the ferry crossing on the car-deck, well out of the way. The ferry journey passed, eventually.

Now we managed to get all the way to the Ring of Kerry via Holyhead, a ferry and seemingly eight years of twisty roads absolutely fine and without incident, and we were a mile away from our cottage when it all went wrong. We arrived at the right ‘area’ and that’s where we were told to switch off the sat-nag (typo intended) and open up the owner’s own directions which would guide us merrily to our cottage in enough time to get the hot-tub going and allow us an hour to flick disdainfully through her CD collection and make snide comments about her glassware.

Well, did they fuck. For a start, she had worded the directions as though as we were in Lord of the Rings, all ‘go over the brow of the hill and make a turn (which direction? which hill?)’ and ‘drive on until you feel a chill’. They were crap. You need to understand how remote the area was – imagine in the pitch black trying to find a remote cottage with not so much as a blinking light anywhere to be seen. It took us three hours – THREE HOURS – of steaming around the countryside along farm tracks screaming and swearing at the perceived injustice of it all. I like to think what the poor horse in the field nearby thought of it all when he saw our car appearing over the crest of a hill for the eightieth time and the last few syllables of a swearing tirade against the Irish, Tom Tom, cottages, Citroen, Enya and Guinness as we sped past. No wonder he got his revenge later in the holiday (that’ll be in part 2).

Completely lost and on the verge of driving the car into a peat bog and setting it on fire, we found an isolated little cottage with a light on and knocked on the door. Now imagine that. You’re a lady, alone, cooking your evening meal, when two burly bald blokes come mincing up your track and braying on the door asking for directions to ‘Cum Bag’ (which was our approximate pronunciation of the name of the cottage, which was in Gaelic). The poor lass probably thought she was starring in her own Vera adventure. She took an age to find directions but eventually, helpfully, she sent us on our way. Buoyed with confidence, we shot off and within five minutes we’d taken another wrong turn, driven the car up a forty-five degree incline into a farmer’s field and were left spinning the car around in the mud in the pitch black, with Paul outside of the car bellowing directions on where I should reverse and me unable to hear him as I was revving the engine so hard out of sheer, unadulterated anger. Haha. Just to add a cherry on top of this my reverse sensors were blaring away making out there was an obstacle behind me until we realised it was mud on the sensor.

Aaah. We headed back to the road, sulked for a good fifteen minutes and then decided to go back to the start and try following her directions one final time. We were at the cottage, parked up and steaming, within ten minutes. God knows how, why or what we were doing wrong, but we managed it without a hitch. I was fizzing and it seems like a good point to stop the tale and move onto the recipe…

Mushy pea curry. Yes, I know, it sounds revolting, but most people will eat a chickpea dahl and this is quite like that. I’ve added chicken, somewhat unnecessarily, but that’s me all over. It’s syn free and you’ll be able to get a good few chapters of my book completed as you sit on the thunderbox firing this out for the next two weeks.

Delicious.

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to make mushy pea curry, you’ll need:

two tins of mushy peas, one tin of baked beans, a few mushrooms, a tin of chopped tomatoes, two onions, three garlic gloves (minced), a chicken breast, a red pepper, 1tsp of hot chilli powder and two tbsp of curry powder, as hot as you like. You’ll also need a decent pan. You’ll also need a drop of oil and some salt.

For the rice, you’ll need long-grain white rice. Duh.

to make mushy pea curry, you should:

  • slice the onions nice and thin – use a mandolin! My mandolin has dropped again in price – now only £10, and it’ll save you hours. Plus, who needs the end of their fingers anyway? EH?
  • do the same with the pepper
  • cut the chicken up into small pieces and the mushrooms into slices
  • put the tiny drop of oil into the pan and chuck the onion, mushroom and peppers in there with a bit of salt, and on a medium heat, leave them to sweat down a little
  • after ten minutes or so, pull maybe a quarter of the onion/pepper out and set it aside in a dish – you’ll use this for your rice;
  • throw the chicken into the hot pan and cook it hard and fast on a high heat;
  • now throw in everything else (bar the rice and the quarter of the onion mix, obviously) and mix well – leave it to simmer for half an hour or so
  • for the rice, add a cup full of rice (literally a cup full – take a cup out of the cupboard, fill it with rice, tip that into a pan with the onion/pepper you set aside, using the same cup add two cups of water into the pan, bring to the boil, turn it down to simmer and leave it for around fourteen minutes – covered with a tight-fitting lid – on a gentle simmer. Tasty, fluffy rice
  • serve when thickened and tasty!

Enjoy!

J

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February 15, 2015

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fakeaways, greek, mince, pasta, poultry, recipe card, syn free

greek turkey meatballs

Surreal sight #477 in Tesco today. Well, no, just outside of Tesco, some biffa standing next to her bags with an inhaler in one hand and a cigarette in the other – she’d take a couple of drags on her cigarette and then a quick puff on the inhaler. Now THAT’S commitment. Even when you can physically feel yourself choking, you carry on – oxygen is for pussies, after all. It’s like opening an AA meeting with a swift half and a celebratory chaser. Takes all sorts. Anyway, there’s a rant coming, so batten down the hatches.

I’m going to write about tweaks today. Before I start, know that this isn’t exactly the official Slimming World position, but rather my own. Obviously.

To me, the ‘no tweaks’ rule is something Slimming World have put into place to stop you blending eighteen bananas into a smoothie for breakfast, or using two tubs of Smash and some Splenda to fashion a small motor car to take you to McDonalds. The logic is over-consuming is easy – you can drink a smoothie in moments but it would take an age to eat the fruit that goes into one, and you’d likely stop before you’d even had a third. You’d need to press a whole lot of apples to make a glass of fresh juice, but one apple would normally curb your hunger.

But people take it to ridiculous levels, and my carrot cake overnight oats from a week or so ago caused a bit of a stir because I said it was syn free despite it having a mashed banana in it. If you follow the Slimming World rule about fruit to its absolute base level, then yes, it should be synned. But, if you apply logic and reason, there’s no difference to me mashing the banana using my fancy-pants potato ricer than there is mashing it between my teeth. Using a masher isn’t going to coat the banana in Nutella, it isn’t going to ‘add sugars’ or ‘release the fibre content’ any different. Sugar doesn’t float about in the air like a midge, waiting to strike the very second you cut into a piece of fruit. Some try and say that you’d use up energy chewing your banana which you don’t do if you mash it in a bowl – perhaps, but I’m not a fucking snake, I don’t dislocate my jaw and swallow the bowl and its contents without chewing, for goodness sake. I have a banana every morning on top of my porridge, the only difference here is that it’s inside my porridge as opposed to sitting on top. It’s still going to be chewed, digested and turned into a gentleman’s egg a few hours later – and I’m not going to fucking syn it!

What irks me more is that there’s always a curious sanctimony applied with the rule, with some people delighting in pointing out ‘BUT THAT SHOULD BE SYNNED’ like they’ve got Margaret MB standing behind them, pointing a pistol at the back of their shaking heads. A rule is a rule, but common sense also needs to apply. I mean, you’re not exactly supposed to stop in the middle of a road, but you do if an ambulance needs to be past – you don’t sit there blocking it, sucking air through your teeth and going WELL THE HIGHWAY CODE SAYS OTHERWISE as some poor bugger has his chest pumped in the back. I’ve been told before that it could confuse new starters, well, perhaps so – but my nephew still craps his pants because he hasn’t got the hang on his potty quite yet, should I start wearing adult nappies so he doesn’t get a complex? Haway!

And finally, what really riles me about being told off about my tweaking is that the very same people will sit there and tut and huff about a cake made from chickpeas but will then make a brownie using a bollockload of artificial sweetener until their countertops look like the inside of Kerry Katona’s fucking nostril. At least I cook proper, healthy, nutritious food instead of manky, artificially-sweetened pap – even if I do have the temerity to use a mashed up banana. FORGIVE ME.

BAH. After that, I could murder a cigarette, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t know where my old salbutamol inhaler is. Anyway, after all that, here’s tonight’s recipe which is actually bloody delicious!

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to make greek turkey meatballs you will need:

300g of chopped frozen spinach (defrosted), 500g of turkey mince (very low in fat), 3 cloves of garlic chopped so finely, an egg, tsp of oregano, salt, pepper, 90g of crumbled feta (45g is your HEA, but this serves four) and you might, dependent on the quality of your mince, need some breadcrumbs – if so, chuck in 25g of dried breadcrumbs (4 syns – so 1 syn each) but we didn’t need them. For the sauce, a pot of passata, garlic, onion. Spaghetti, any.

to make greek turkey meatballs you should:

nothing more to it for the meatballs than combining everything together for the balls into one bowl, mixing and squeezing and really blending it with your hands and shaping it into 24 balls. Stick them onto a non-stick tray and pop them in the oven for twenty or so minutes on 180 until nicely browned. Meanwhile, cook your spaghetti. Make a simple tomato sauce by mixing passata, sauteed onions and garlic. Combine sauce with cooked spaghetti, put meatballs on top.

extra-easy: yup. plenty of spinach and tomatoes in this to make it a go-go-go. You could jazz up the sauce by adding peppers if you were so inclined but this’ll do nicely. The balls are tasty and cheesy, and it’s not often I say that.

Cheers now,

J

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February 8, 2015

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, noodles, poultry, recipe card, syn free

syn free chicken chow mein

That title suggests that our marriage is heading for the rocks, with some almighty scrap on the front lawn or atop the bungalow like in Die Hard, but no. We’d both look dreadful in a vest, like cottage cheese being strained through a yard of muslin. We’re an odd couple, we so very rarely argue, and when we do, it’s always over in seconds because Paul pulls a stupid face at me until I stop moaning at him. We’re both too laid back to argue – like everything else, if it gets us out of breath, it isn’t worth doing. That said, we did have a disagreement yesterday over what flavour stock cube to use in a recipe (honestly, it’s all go in this house) and it got me thinking of an idea of a blog article – those little tiny things that irk us about one another after being together eight years. So I asked Paul to compile his top five (and oh, because I’m the writer, I get a right to reply), and so…

Paul’s five things that rile him about me:

  • I put things on top of the kitchen bin instead of putting them in;
    • this one sounds reasonable to the reader until you realise my logic – I put big stuff on the top of the bin so I remember to take it to the outside recycling bin rather than clogging up the tiny kitchen bin with giant lemonade bottles;
  • I eat all of his ‘lunch’ ham -i.e. the expensive ham that he buys to put in his sandwiches for lunch instead of the wafer-thin shite we buy for the cats;
    • because it’s tasty;
  • I don’t put chicken on a plate when it defrosts;
    • because it’s in a sealed, freezer-proof bag! Plus it means we have an extra plate to wash…;
  • I play odd music whenever I’m typing the blog;
    • this one is fair enough, but I do have a defence, I can’t have the TV on because I get distracted, and I can’t have music with lyrics playing because I start singing, so it has to be score music or soundtrack stuff. Admittedly, he might not enjoy the theme from Rollercoaster Tycoon playing whilst I type but it’s infinitely better than hearing an almost-30-year-old-man caterwauling his way through the Cher back catalogue;
  • I always put my smelly feet on him whenever we sit and watch TV.
    • I’m six foot one, they have to go somewhere, and the floor is cold, whereas Paul is like a little hot water tank pumping out heat – cheaper than slippers.

Things that annoy me about Paul:

  • he’ll happily put the milk carton back in the fridge even if has the tiniest sliver of milk in it – not enough for anything practical but just enough to make sure I try and make a coffee and end up exasperated;
  • he’ll randomly and without warning decide he doesn’t like a food that I’ve cooked plenty of times before, turning serving up a new recipe into a dangerous game of ingredient russian roulette;
  • he’ll cheerfully announce to the room every time he’s been to the toilet;
  • he can’t take a single comment on his driving (although that’s partly because I’ve made him so sensitive about it by hanging on like I’m Sandra Bullock in Gravity every time he goes round a corner at 35mph); and
  • he eats all the fucking cheese in the fucking fridge – for all that he bitches on about me eating ham every time I go to make an omelette or something I’ll find the tiniest crumb of cheese left or even worse, a block with a great big crime-scene-esque tooth-print in it.

Well, if that’s all we have to moan about, I say we’re doing pretty well! At least we’re not the Trevor and Little Mo of the street, which is a shame because I do a brilliant Scottish accent. Weigh in tomorrow and I’m aiming just to maintain or put on a pound – my boss left us with a colossal box of Sports Mixture to work through, knowing my weakness is flavoured animal hoof. So we’ll see.

I’m off to the cinema on Tuesday, though not to see 50 Shades of Grey. I can’t genuinely think of a film I’d want to see less at the cinema, not least because I bet you can barely hear the audio over the sound of what sounds like 250 tiny pairs of bellows pumping away. Work that one out. I just don’t get it, I really don’t – the books were about as erotic as hearing an uncaring doctor telling a child that they’re not going to make their teenage years. Sex as described by the perpetually celibate – I’d get more aroused ringing up the speaking clock for a phonewank. BAH. Anyway that’s out of my system now, here’s tonight’s recipe.

chicken chow mein slimming world

Now, if I’m completely honest, this wasn’t a total success – it tasted alright, but it didn’t blow my socks off. Partly down to Paul adding the wrong stock cube, I reckon – it’s no wonder I’m planning some Machiavellian Gone-Girl scheme to frame him for my murder.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chicken breasts, cut thin, 2 carrots cut thinly, mushrooms sliced any old how, three big spring onions, cut however you like, 100g mangetout, 100g baby corn, two sliced peppers, one pack of dried egg noodles, 300ml stock made with two CHICKEN stock cubes, 1tbsp of worcestershire sauce, 2tbsp of soy sauce and 1tsp of bovril. Also, add some chinese five spice.

to make syn free chicken chow mein, you should:

recipe: fry the chicken and vegetables until cooked through – hot and fast. Cook the noodles. Add them. Make up the stock, add the sauce, five spice, soy sauce and bovril. Tip and mix. Serve. That was easy.

top tip: serve with my bloody amazing spring rolls.

extra-easy: yes. Eat this and you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your ears, and, if you don’t follow my advice about cooking the chicken high and fast, you’ll have superfree veg coming out of your arse a good twenty minutes later.

K, must dash.

J

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February 5, 2015

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breast, lunch, one-pot, pasta, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

chicken and lentil one-pot dinner

Honestly, today has been a great day. My work allow us to take two days off a year to spend at home masturbating and watching Jeremy Kyle, though not at the same time volunteering at local charities, so today I took them up on it and went along to the cat and dog shelter to volunteer. Dressed in my most fabulous tracksuit, I was given the job of walking Lulu, a tiny angry-looking staffie (and I normally say no thanks I prefer bigger to them, oh wait, a STAFFIE) which I set about with great gusto.

It was a great walk, but fuck me Britain, learn to take your litter home. Cans of Rockstar and spent johnnies I can sort of understand (because nothing says ‘I right fancy a shag’ like having to reposition yourself mid-thrust amongst the dogturds and needles) but some of the other litter was perplexing. Dumping an armchair down a back lane is one thing, but carrying it across a farmer’s field and dumping it in the middle of a bridlepath? Bewildering. Even odder, there was around 20 ‘Happy birthday Brother-in-Law’ cards blowing around in the hedges, all of different designs. Who not only buys these cards but then packs them into their bag and absent-mindedly loses them in the middle of absolute nowhere? They were all sealed too. Perhaps I could have sold them in my own little niche card shop – but then I’d need twenty people who wanted to wish their brother in law good wishes, but not enough of a good wish to give them a card that wasn’t streaked with dog-piss and armchair tassles. Ah well. I walked far too far before reminding myself I needed to turn back, and even poor Lulu looked pissed off with me as we began the long, long, LONG, uphill walk back. Nevertheless, she was dropped off at the centre, puffing and panting.

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The next job was washing out all the cat litter trays and cuddling the cats. This was fucking amazing. Well not the cat litter, that was literally shit, but cuddling the cats? Amazing. Each one was more grateful than the last – all purrs and clawing and rubbing. Their homes were warm, clean and full of toys, and that made me incredibly happy and rather grateful. I knew that had I gone there and the cats looked as though they were feral Fukushima cats, I’d have taken them all home. And well, I don’t have good experience with cats in cars.

The first time we took Bowser to the vets he immediately retaliated by clawing his way out of his cat-carrier (it had a dodgy door) and set about hurtling around the inside of the car like a motorbike in a wall of death. Let me tell you, it’s hard to drive along a motorway with a black and white angry blur running horizontally around the interior of the car, simultaneously hissing in your ear and trying to remove your eyelids with its claws. Anyway.

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The next job was even better – I had to spend half an hour socialising with one of the kittens who had to live alone. Only temporarily – he was brought back because someone had adopted him and then returned him because he has stomach problems meaning he has diarrheah. Frustrating that someone returned a cat just because it has the skitters – they’re testing him but apparently it’ll fix itself. I wanted to take him home – we’ve got plenty of experience with cats going to the toilet in odd places too. For example, our old cat (Luma – who went to live with my neighbour) used to go to the toilet not because she needed to but because she spotted an opportunity to piss us off – she pissed on our sky box, she pissed on the top of our hob, she had a crap in the plughole in our bath which we only spotted when we turned the shower on and the water didn’t drain away due to the little cat-poo floating around our feet. She remains the only cat I know who could turn Whiskas Bite and Chew into a weapon of mass destruction. Cow. Anyway, Starshine the Shitty Kitty (as I tactfully named him) spent half an hour climbing all over me, chewing my face, clawing my top, purring in my ear. He was amazing.

After helping tidy up a bit, I was asked to take another dog for a walk – this time it was Rascal, another staffie but this time she’d been treated for ringworm, meaning she came out of the kennel looking like a threadbare doormat. Naturally, despite having the freedom to shit away to her heart’s content in his cage, she waited until I was five steps out of the door before curling one out that even made my eye’s water. I didn’t know whether to call back in and tell them she’d had a puppy. Anyway, I took this patchy little wonder for a walk down under the A1 and back (oh the glamour) before accidentally stumbling across the place where my ex and I had our first date. He wasn’t out at the time (unsurprisingly, as when he did come out his parents held a screwdriver to his throat and told him they’d get the gay out of him, poor bugger) so we had to go for a walk in the country. Bless him. I thought he was shivering with cold, but he was just scratching away at the eczema on his elbows. I’m so grateful she was a staffie mind, because she quite literally pulled me back up the hill, me clutching at my chest and panting dramatically. See had it just been me and Paul, we would have stopped twice climbing up that steep hill to ‘check the view’ – actually a ruse to cover our panting and heart arrhythmias. I’m still out of breath now.

Upon returning poor Rascal, it was four o clock and time to go, but they had saved a special treat for me. They know I love cats and they let me into a back room where there was a mother nursing her four tiny, newborn kittens. Well, born a week ago. It was wonderful – they were tiny, whimpering and clicky-purring, suckling away on the mother cat who looked so content. She only moved to get a face-rub from me, and then she immediately lay back down on top of her cats. Wouldn’t that just have been my luck to have four poor kitties killed on my watch? After ten minutes, I left them to it. Aw.

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On a serious note – if you’re looking for something to do, please volunteer at your local cat and dog shelter. The one I go to is amazingly well run but they’re always looking for help, and the exercise can’t help but improve my weight loss. Do some research and give it a go.

Now, tonight’s recipe:

lentil chicken lemon rice

to make chicken and lentil one-pot dinner, you’ll need:

ingredients: a tiny bit of oil, or frylight if you must. But you shouldn’t, so don’t. It’s my recipe, damnit. 2 chicken breasts, 1 small onion, crushed garlic, 1tsp made up of dried thyme and oregano, 1 tin of green lentils (rinsed), 200g of orzo rice, 1 litre of chicken stock and the juice and rind of one lemon. Plus a nice heavy pot. Not to piss in, to cook with, obvs.

to make chicken and lentil one-pot dinner, you should:

recipe: sweat the onion for a good ten minutes, slowly, slowly. Add the garlic and herbs, stir, sweat a bit more. Cooking’s hard, huh. Add the chicken, whack the heat up, cook it through. Chuck in the rice, lentils, stock, lemon juice, rind, bit of salt and leave it to cook slowly on a lowish heat (6 on our induction hob) for 25 minutes or so until the rice has cooked through. Chuck in the frozen peas, leave to sit for a moment or two, then dish up. Add a bit of parmesan to the top if you’re feeling fabulous.

top tip: I say it every time – if you’re grating garlic and lemon, use one of these microplane graters. This one right here. Quicker and better results. You don’t need one (you never need anything fancy for my recipes), but you’ll want one. Also, Orzo is a type of pasta – if you can’t find it (or can’t be arsed) just use rice.

extra-easy: well, it’s syn free. Is it full of superfree? No. But then nor is chocolate, so really I’m saving you from yourself. So have a fruit salad or just get on with things. I won’t tell anyone, OK? Jeez.

J