Category Archives: breast

Poultry breast recipes

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August 5, 2016

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airfryer, american, breast, dressings, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, salad

blackened chicken caesar salad

Blackened chicken caesar salad? Yes, that’s right. And, for once, when I say it’s going to be a quickpost, it really is – no guff, no messing about! Your dear writer is unwell! Bah.

This makes enough for four, especially if you add some extras like tomatoes and cucumber. Just customise it however you want, I’m not arsed.

blackened chicken caesar salad

to make blackened chicken caesar salad you will need:

for the rub

  • 4 tsp paprika
  • 2 tsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp onion powder
  • 2 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp mustard powder
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • ½ tsp salt

for the dressing

  • juice of half a lemon
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 3 tbsp Morrison’s NuMe Reduced Fat mayonnaise (3 syns) (feel free to use other mayo, but check the syns)
  • 2 anchovy fillets, mashed (leave out if you’re not a fan, but, take it as someone who doesn’t like fish, it doesn’t taste fishy!)
  • 1 tsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp dijon mustard (½ syn)
  • 2 tbsp grated parmesan (2½ syns)

to make blackened chicken caesar salad you should:

  • cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise (butterfly) so you’re left with a total of 4 halves and put into a sandwich bag
  • pour in the fat free vinaigrette and leave to marinade whilst you make the rest
  • if you’ve got an actifry, throw in the bread cubes with a little bit of oil and allow to cook for about 10 minutes, or until they resemble croutons. If you haven’t got an actifry, spray the bread with oil and bake in the oven at 190°c for about 12 minutes
  • in a shallow bowl, mix together all of the rub ingredients and set aside
  • in another bowl, add together the dressing ingredients and whisk until creamy. put in the fridge until you need it
  • pat the chicken breasts dry with some kitchen roll and coat with the rub mix – don’t be shy, get it right in there
  • heat a large pan over a medium-high heat and brush with oil
  • add the chicken breasts and cook each side for about 5 minutes each side, or until cooked through
  • serve with the lettuce, croutons and dressing

Done! Now, if you’re after some more chicken recipes, you’d do well to click the button below!

poultrysmall

J

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August 3, 2016

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american, breast, dips, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, panko, poultry, quark, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, taster ideas

stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken

Here for the stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken and don’t want any of my nonsense ruining it? I know right? Well tough titty. If it’s any consolation, I don’t have a lot to say so I’m not going to keep you long, but I do want to fill you in on something exciting.

We have decided we are going to have a new theme on the blog next year: holidays. We love going away, but saving money means that we’re being sensible and not going away. Which is a shame, but we did have six holidays in ten months so really, restrain yourselves. I don’t want to end up with one of those vagina necks from being in the sun too much anyway. So, despite me being one literal click from booking Las Vegas for a December break just yesterday because I was bored at home, we’re being good.

However, next year, we’re doing ten holidays – to celebrate our ten years together (aw). Now, we’re not Rockafella, so these holidays aren’t going to be super glitzy and glam – the idea is that we have ten two-to-four day breaks away over the year, with a set budget for each one. Any money we don’t spend on one holiday can be rolled onto the next, do you see? I get a lot of comments from folks that our travelogues are hilarious, so hopefully this means even more of those. We’re trying to do different types of holiday too – so expect to see us in (possibly!) a proper roughing it camping style holiday, Amsterdam (good grief), possibly somewhere awful like Benidorm, a city break, a coach tour…we’re still mapping it all out – but it’s going to be fun!

I know what you’re thinking – set up a Paypal account and you lot will pay for us to travel the world. It’s tempting, but I’m just not that mercenary. But do us a favour, buy some bloody meat once and a while, if only to pay for the extra fat-seat that Paul needs on the plane. It’s called the cargo deck.

Speaking of meat…

Web

Right, let’s get to the chicken!

stuffed 'n' rolled crunchy chicken

to make stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken, you’ll need:

  • 4 chicken breasts
  • 8 tbsp quark
  • 50g panko (10 syns)
  • 1½ tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp celery salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ¼ tsp garlic salt
  • ¼ tsp garlic powder
  • ½ tsp onion powder
  • pinch of basil
  • pinch of oregano

Can’t get panko? No need to shit the bed, just whizz up a wholemeal breadbun into crumbs. THINK OF THE SYNS SAVING.

to make stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200ºc and line a baking tray with tinfoil
  • in a bowl, mix together the panko, breadcrumbs, paprika, celery salt, black pepper, garlic salt, garlic owder, onion powder, basil and oregano – mix it well as some of the ingredients have a tendency to settle at the bottom of the bowl
  • cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise (like you’re opening out a book) so you’re left with 8 thin breasts – lay them out flat
  • dollop a tablespoon of quark onto the middle of each breast and roll up from one end – don’t worry if it isn’t neat or it oozes out – it won’t matter – and secure with a toothpick
  • drop each roll into the bowl mixture and sprinkle over the panko mix to get an even coating – it should stick quite easily but if it doesn’t just spray with bit of frylight
  • place each roll onto the baking tray and bake for 25 minutes
  • when done, gently pull out the toothpicks before serving

We served this with salsa – Doritos Hot Salsa is 1/2 syn for two tablespoons and you know what, life is too short to be chopping up a bloody salsa.

If you’re looking for more chicken recipes, click on the button below and drool on the carpet with wonder. From your top lips or otherwise.

poultrysmall

Cheers!

J

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July 24, 2016

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american, bacon, barbecue, breast, drinks, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

slimming world bbq: chimichurri turkey skewers and an amazing loaded potato salad

Here for the next installment of our Slimming World BBQ series? Well don’t worry, we’ll get to it. But first, indulge me a little time to ramble on…

Today has been a day of getting shit done. I know, a profanity right off the bat, but there’s a good reason for that – I’ve noticed another telling off comment on one of my articles. Please understand: this is a coarse blog about the gay-to-gay lifestyle of two fat blokes with no airs nor graces. There will be swearing. There will be frank and numerous references to sex and knobs and bumholes and slutmanship because well, you write about what you know. There’s a reason this blog isn’t called james’n’paul’n’catz and decorated wth frou-frou hearts and whimsical tales of picnics and cricket and buying peppers in a market. It’s just not us. We’re both about as classy as two seagulls fighting over a discarded packet of chips in somewhere like…oooh, Chelmsford, and we’re quite happy with that. Most of the time I’ll let the little digs wash over me with good grace and a little fart but today I thought I’d reply because, as I said, we’re getting shit done:

slimming world bbq

Oh I’m a stinker, aren’t I? To be fair, I don’t actually think I swear that much anyway. I certainly don’t use the C-word on here because it’s not worth the terse phone call from my mother telling me off for using that word on the Internet. I know, it’s warm under the thumb, but hey, you don’t upset the Keeper of the Inheritance. Though for the record, that works both ways, as Keeper of the Care Home Decision…

So what have we managed to get done today? Well, I pressure washed everything we owned that was looking a little bit grubby: outdoor furniture, fence panels, the blood stains on the front of my car, the hair and scalp in the tyre-wells, the paving slabs and the gate. There’s something amazingly satisfying about watching a tiny jet of water blast away years of accumulated dirt and filth. If I didn’t think it would tear straight through his small intestine I’d have a crack at blasting Paul’s out-pipe. It’d be like pressure-washing a hot Malteser. It goes without saying that I blasted several choice swearwords into the path but Paul made me remove them – apparently it doesn’t do for folks who visit to be greeted by an increasingly-vile set of phrases culminating in mingetacular. Pffft.

When I was putting away the pressure washer into the let’s-tell-Paul-I’ll-use-it-all-the-time-but-then-never-use-it-again pile in our shed, I realised that one of our cats had disappeared under the various detritus on the shed floor and was mewing pitifully. After digging through and locating her and putting her outside the shed (to which point she immediately came back in through the cat-flap to get lost again) (I was all, alright love, you’re not on fucking Fun House here, I haven’t just tagged you back in), I realised it was time to clear out the shed. I know, this is truly riveting reading, but please, bear with me. See, I’ve mentioned before that we turned our giant outdoor shed into a Cat Hotel / stockpile room (hence the cat-flap on a shed, see – it gives them somewhere to go when it’s raining and they can sleep on the cat tree in there). Recently the shed has become a depository for remnants of abandoned hobbies (GPS units from geocaching, walking boots, an unused tent, lightshade made of human skin), stuff from the kitchen which we’re keeping in case we need it (Nutribullet box, ice-cream maker, pickled knees) and well, all sort of other shite. It was chaos, but after two hours and several trips to the tip (mainly because Paul insisted on taking his Smart car rather than my car, limiting us to taking two Rizla papers and a discarded screw at a time), we could see the carpet again.

Yeah, carpet, we can’t have the cats getting cold feet.

As an aside, the men at our nearest tip are a delight, and I’m not just saying that because they wear those fancy hi-vis boiler-suits and I want to be roughly groped behind the oil-disposal drums (though it would be fitting). It’s rare to find folks who seem happy in their job and who are keen to help, pointing us in the direction of the appropriate skip and masking their disapproval of the fact we couldn’t be arsed to separate our garden waste from our general waste. I know, we deserve to be bricked up in a tomb somewhere for killing the Earth, but honestly, Paul’s arse does more damage to the environment and I don’t run the risk of pricking my fingers when I handle that. It’s a far cry from the roughly-hewn grunters at our previous Newcastle tip. I honestly thought I was going to have my face slashed with a shard of a broken Pyrex dish for having the temerity to ask which bin to put hedge clippings in. I mean, I apologised for interrupting their blistering chatter about which bird (sorry: boord) they’d fuck out of the Daily Sport. Pfft.

After clearing the shelves and vacuuming about half a tonne of dried rosemary out of the carpet (hang it in the shed he said…we’ll use it all the time he said…) we had a clear shed and a clear mind. This meant only one thing: time to restock. See, Slimming World and life in general can be expensive but if you buy the staples you use in bulk, you’ll save cold hard cash, and that’s good for everyone, not least because it means you can buy a few more raffle tickets in class and keep Queen Mags in Cheeky Vimtos and Cutter’s Choice. We buy food like beans, chopped tomatoes, passata, pasta and rice in massive bags and store it in the shed, meaning if we’re ever stuck we can throw something together in the blink of an eye. Off we went to B&Ms to replenish.

Now listen, I know B&Ms is like Mecca to some folk, but I just can’t bear it. It’s full of people who dawdle and who hold up a jar of Nescafe in one hand and a jar of Blue Mountain in the other, looking dead behind the eyes whilst their spittle pools around their feet. The aisles are littered with ladies who look like they could punch an articulated lorry to death. It’s awash with screaming children and bright lights and too many not-quite products to bear. We filled our trolley with dishwasher tablets, coal tar soap and oops-sorry-Mags a box of Lucky Charms and hurtled through the checkout. The charming lass behind the counter carried on a conversation with her co-worker the entire time and spoke only to spit the price out at us. Never again. I never learn, I always think ‘let’s save some money’ but then I end up stuck in an aisle with mirrors with the Playboy logo on them whilst Paul holds himself up crying next to the locked display of perfumes featuring classics such as I’ve Just Come by Mark Wright or Gonorrhoea by someone who came second in I’m a Celebrity in 2009.

Celebrity scents confuse me at the best of times – I’ve never in my entire life looked at someone famous and thought by Christ I wish I smelled like them – but even more so when it’s a non-entity from a reality show on ITV Be (Thankful You Can Turn It Over, presumably). I imagine that smells like pure shame.

The good news is the shed is all stocked up. The bad news, if you’re a picker at the Tesco in Kingston Park, I’ve just put an order in for 96 bottles of various mixers to fill up our mixer shelves. If you want, crack open a bottle of the diet ginger ale because that belongs to Paul and I know he’ll spare it. Touch my tonic with a hint of cucumber and I’ll turn your delivery truck over. Obviously I’m kidding, but seriously now. Paul did suggest we go and pick up the drinks ourselves but frankly, if we took his car, we’d only have enough for one of those tiny tins of Coke you used to steal buy from Woolworths. The jokes about his Smart car will never, ever end, you realise. Even he’s accepted that, answering me with a chuckle that says ‘oh my’ and eyes that say ‘fuck you’. Ah well.

The other thing I managed to get done today was to finally open and put to use the copy of Adobe Illustrator that I’ve been paying £30 a month for since January, when I downloaded it in order to design a new front cover for our book. Did I mention we have a book? We do! Yes, click here to have a read. If you’ve read it, leave a review and buy ten copies of your friends. The reason for my dip into Illustrator was to design a little advert I could put into these blog entries to sell our Musclefood boxes – it gets difficult trying to shoehorn in reference to meat, especially when the topics are stuff like online bullying or my nana dying. Some might call me tactless but at least I didn’t put a sponsored ad in the funeral readings. So, you might see something like this on a post, but I’ll keep them discreet and not hammer home the advertising:

advert - summer-01

By the way, that’s an absolutely stonking deal – it’s what is fuelling our current BBQ week and the meat is delicious. We do also have three other deals and you can view them by clicking on our special, updated Musclefood page – even if you’re not wanting the meat, pass it to a friend by sending them a link. Cheers, big-ears.

I really have ummed and aahed about adding adverts – I bet you’ve hardly noticed our current level of advertising because we only have one on a page as a rule, and they’re tiny. Advertising is what keeps the blog going so we do have to have it, but I’m loathe to become one of those blogs where you get ten ads on a page, a newsletter sign-up shaking away at you every few minutes and constant plugging of various products that you know the owner is only saying because they’re getting paid to do so. Everything we recommend is something that we genuinely use, I promise. We do try and strike a balance of user friendliness vs advertising and I reckon – based on feedback I’ve requested in our group – we’ve got it right. Please do tell us if that isn’t the case! We want you to come here for either:

  • the delicious food;
  • the attempts at funny chatter; or
  • the hope of seeing my genitals in a blurred reflection of a polished curry bowl.

We’ll take whatever we can!

Right, right, goodness me, we have to do the recipes, don’t we? Sometimes when I sit down I can think of nothing to type and other times, nothing will have happened but I’ll still be able to spin 1800 words out of it. If you’re not a fan of my verbosity, you can always scroll straight to the recipes. If you are a fan, do me a favour and recommend us in your slimming groups or to mates. Build us and watch us flower.

Tonight we have three recipes – one for marinated turkey chimichurri skewers, another for a genuinely delicious loaded potato salad that tastes like it would be full of syns and nastiness but is actually low in syns and keeps well for lunches the next day, and oh, a seabreeze. We’re really getting into the cocktails thing. I know, just when you thought we couldn’t get any gayer. Ah well. To the food…

slimming world bbq

to make slimming world bbq: turkey chimichurri skewers, you’ll need:

  • 2 garlic cloves, minced finely (hey guess what, I’m not going to recommend…ah fuck it, you know I am: here, use this!)
  • a big handful of parsley and a big handful of coriander

Listen, it’s always better to use fresh herbs. Buy a plant from the supermarket, stick it in water on your windowsill and it’ll grow all summer. But if you’re pushed for time, use dried

  • 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons of water
  • a pack of diced turkey – and what do you know, our Musclefood deal has the perfect pack in it – click here for that – you could also use a couple of diced up chicken breasts from the same box, we won’t tell
  • pinch of salt
  • pinch of pepper

Normally proper chimichurri is made with oil – so if you want to be a decadent bitch, get rid of the water and use four tablespoons of oil (24 syns) – this makes enough for eight skewers so that’s still only 6 syns per serving, assuming you have two skewers. If you use the above recipe, it’ll be 1.5 syns for two skewers.

to make slimming world bbq: turkey chimichurri skewers, you should:

  • dice the turkey or chicken if not already done
  • blend in a food processor all the other ingredients – taste with your fingers – you want to get it to a runny paste with some herbs left intact, not a perfectly blended mush
  • tip the turkey/chicken into a food bag and top with the chimichurri – really moosh it in with your fingers to get it pushed into the meat
  • leave for as long as you see fit, but, just like a lot of things, the longer the better
  • actually, that’s a lie, girth is more important, apologies if you’re a guy with a knob like one of those novelty giant pencils you buy in Scottish gift shops, but it’s true
  • when you’re ready to cook and the BBQ is up to temperature, thread the meat onto soaked wooden skewers or, better, metal skewers, together with whatever vegetables you have lying around in the house and place onto the grill
  • turn these a couple of times and for god’s sake, like everything else, make sure it’s all cooked before you eat it

You can also see in the picture there the hickory BBQ steaks and the drumsticks from our Musclefood deal. Just saying. They were delicious.

OK, now the potato salad. This was genuinely amazing, and well worth making! You can gussy it up however you want. This makes enough for four, though it was all Paul could do to stop me mashing my face into the bowl and eating the lot.

slimming world bbq

to make amazing loaded potato salad, you’ll need:

  • 1kg baby potatoes
  • 2 teaspoons salt, for the boiling water
  • 350g bacon medallions
  • 1 red onion, finely diced
  • 2 cloves of darlic, finely chopped
  • 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons dijon mustard (1½ syns)
  • 2 tbsp Morrison’s NuMe Reduced Fat Mayonnaise (2 syns) – or use any alternative reduced fat mayonnaise but check the syn values as they vary
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained (obvs)
  • 2 big handfuls of baby spinach

to make amazing loaded potato salad, you should:

  • boil a big pan of water and throw in the potatoes, whole and with the skins on – cook until they’re done and they fall off when stabbed with a fork (about 15 minutes or so)
  • when done, drain and then rinse the potatoes under cold water to stop them from cooking. drain again and set aside
  • cook the bacon in a frying pan on a medium-high heat until crispy, then remove from the pan and onto a plate to cool
  • in the same pan add the chopped onion and cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally
  • then, add the garlic and cook for another minute or so, then remove the pan from the heat
  • in a small bowl whisk together the red wine vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper
  • cut the potatoes into chunks – either halves or quarters, depending how you like them and place into a large bowl
  • crumble the bacon into small pieces and add to the potatoes, along with the onion and garlic
  • then add the sweetcorn, spinach and mustard sauce and mix well to combine
  • serve!

Perfect, right? Now let’s end with a cocktail. We’re keeping it easy with these cocktails, nice and strong with the idea that you’re not going to down it in one. Frankly, if you’re that type of lady, we both know your BBQ is going to end with you with your knickers off face-down in the neighbours’ leylandii, you shameless hussy.

slimming world bbq

to make a slimming world bbq: seabreeze, you’ll need:

  • a chilled glass
  • 35ml of reasonable vodka – we used Absolut Grapevine, but that’s because we’re extravagant  (4 syns)
  • 50ml of cranberry juice (1.5 syns ish)
  • lots of ice
  • 50ml of grapefruit juice (1 syn)
  • slice of lime

to make a slimming world bbq: seabreeze, you should:

  • lots of ice in the glass
  • vodka in the bottom
  • then cranberry juice
  • then grapefruit juice
  • decorate with a lime

Drink lots and be merry, folks.

J

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July 20, 2016

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

slimming world bbq: syn-free chicken wraps and mojitos

Yes, a Slimming World BBQ! We haven’t done a themed week (although realistically, it’s going to be longer than a week because a) the weather keeps changing every time I blink and b) it’s too hot for us to run anywhere near full capacity on blog entries. But we’ll do our best!

Can I just get the ultimate first world problem out of the way first, in the hope that someone out there can solve it for me. Every time I switch my Mac on to write I have to clart about in the system settings to make the Caps Lock key active as soon as I start to type. Why? Why can’t it come on the second I press it? I know using the Caps Lock key to capitalise letters as you type is just one level above running your fingers under words as you read but I don’t care, I was too busy wiping smudged ink off my left hand in school to properly type. Not even a euphemism – being left-handed in a school where you have to write in proper ink was a nightmare.

Speaking of solving problems, I’ll say no more than how excellent the DVLA are at dealing with complaints and really, they employ the most terrific staff. I rescind everything I said in my previous post and really, can’t say enough about how good they are. Yep, they have sorted out the issue with the shitbiscuit Micra and now I’m good to go! Thank you, Guardian Angel. I know, I’ve got more faces than the town clock, and each one of them is putting things in its mouth that it shouldn’t.

So, BBQs then. Let’s be frank – no-one wants to sit nibbling away at a limp bit of lettuce whilst people shove more meat into their mouths than an eager lady on a football bus. As a result, the recipes are going to be fairly meat-heavy but I’m going to try and throw in some vegetarian recipes too. Bear with us. Also, because it’s summer and we need something to cool us down so our sweaty flesh doesn’t collapse in on itself, we’re throwing in some easy drink recipes too. That gives us an opportunity to show off our newest labels…

bbqsmall drinkssmall

After we’ve finished this themed week, we’ll add these to the recipes page so you’re good to go. You have no idea how much stress I went through trying to decide on the correct spelling of barbeque. It’s acceptable with either a Q or a C, so if anyone is feeling they want to comment telling me it is wrong, I invite them to go find a church and sit on the steeple. Can you tell I’m cranky?

Before we get to the recipe, it would be churlish of me not to mention our LIMITED EDITION Musclefood deal – we’ve upgraded our freezer filler to add in some BBQ friendly products. Same price as before – £50 – but this comes with free delivery, 24 chicken breasts, 6 half a syn sausages, 2 fat steak burgers (1 syn), 2 fat rump steaks, 2 hickory bbq chicken steaks (syn free), 400g of spicy chicken drumsticks (syn free when skin removed), 400g of diced turkey, huge pack of bacon medallions, 12 giant meatballs (half a syn each) and 1 pack of seasoning (2 syns). It’s only for a couple of weeks whilst the weather is hot and I thought it would be a good change to add in some BBQ foods! Click here to order and use the code TCCSUMMER to get the deal!

Oh and as a one off, we’ve done an unboxing video so you can actually take a look at what you get for your cold hard cash!

Ten points if you know the tune…

BBQs were always a mixed affair in our families. In my house barbecues consisted of enough black smoke to warrant someone knocking on the door and asking my dad if he was burning tyres in the back garden, a chicken breast that had the unique feature of being pure carbon on the outside and still clucking on the inside and running around the garden until the shits kicked in and then it was twenty minutes sitting on the toilet crying. My parents hosted barbeques of an evening for adults only, where all us kids could do is look mournfully from our bedroom windows like the children in Flowers in the Attic whilst everyone chomped party food under a solid ceiling of Lambert and Butler smoke. I did once light the barbeque at 5am in the morning when my parents were away and I had people over, although the bewhiskered chin of our neighbour appearing and tutting at us soon put paid to that fancy. To be fair, who does want to be woken up by some posh bird from Hexham screeching her way through the opening of B*Witched’s C’est La Vie with her knickers around her ankles? Not me.

Paul confirms that his barbecue experiences were much the same, save for a time when someone enlivened proceedings by accidentally kicking a gas canister into the fire. I’ve always wondered why Paul always looks so shiny and surprised, now we know. He was fed ‘Mum salad’ which consisted of lettuce (iceberg, heaven forbid there would be flavour), chopped tomato (always almost green, heaven forbid there would be flavour) and cucumber (yeah, you get it). This would all be put in neat vinegar and served with a healthy side of coughing. I do love it when Paul tells me stories of his childhood, it’s always like a Catherine Cookson novel but with more knock-off fag brands. There’d always be a bowl of microwaved-to-fuckery golden rice which was served in the same bowl used if anyone needed to vomit, oh, and this bit I love because we had exactly the same – a french stick from that bakery in the Co-op whose name escapes me cut into discs and buttered.

Truly, those were golden times.

Tonight’s BBQ recipe is simple enough – a good way to have a burger without having to use the bread from your HEA. So you could have two, if you wanted, and you know you’re going to so let’s not pretend. It’s up to you if you decide to syn the pineapple ring – Slimming World say 100g of Del Monte pineapple rings in juice is 3.5 syns. You’re not using 100g and you’re not using the juice. If you’re so concerned, cut a pineapple up yourself – fresher too! The recipe makes enough for two ‘wraps’, so just add more stuff onto the BBQ if you’re wanting more. Obviously.

slimming world bbq

to make slimming world BBQ chicken wraps, you’ll need:

  • two chicken breasts (the beasts from our Musclefood deal will do the job!) that have been marinating in minced garlic, juice of half a lime, a teaspoon of fresh lime zest (use one of these for both the garlic and the zest) and a chopped red chilli (leave this out if you’ve got a sensitive arse) for as long as you dare
  • four rashers of bacon from our Musclefood pack or indeed, any bacon with the fat cut off
  • some pineapple rings, either fresh or tinned
  • lettuce with big leaves – we grow ours in the garden so lord only knows what it is

to make slimming world BBQ chicken wraps, you should:

  • get your BBQ nice and hot with grey charcoal
  • throw the chicken on to cook, turning regularly – about five minutes before you think it’s done, chuck the bacon and pineapple on the grill
  • once it’s all done, with the juices running clear (from the chicken, not you), assemble by wrapping the chicken in the cooked bacon with a pineapple ring underneath, then wrap it all in lettuce and stuff it in your big open maw
  • easy!

Now I can’t stress enough that you need to be careful when cooking on a BBQ. Buy a wee meat thermometer for example, or at least ensure everything is cooked through properly. You will lose weight if you’re firing the chocolate laser all night, but it’s not a good way to live.

Of course, you’ll need a drink to go with your burger, so may I suggest you have a good, proper Mojito? We have a really decent, if altogether far too wank, cocktails book which goes into great detail about the history of each cocktail and the proper way to make it. But hey, we’re in a rush and we’re not fancy here, so…

slimming world bbq

to make a decent Mojito, you’ll need:

  • a 50ml shot of decent white rum – listen, the idea is that you make a decent drink using only a few syns because then you’ll enjoy it more and not miss your litre of Bellabrusco, so choose wisely – 50ml is 5 syns
  • fresh mint – we have it growing in the garden but you can buy a plant in the supermarket and, providing you keep it watered, it’ll last all summer – hell, it’ll last forever, it’s the herpes of herbs
  • a literal drop or two of honey (if you want to syn it, it’s 1 syn per tsp, but you’re not using anywhere near that)
  • mmm, nice
  • soda water
  • 25 ml of fresh lime juice
  • lots of crushed ice

to make a decent Mojito, you should:

  • place ten or so mint leaves in the bottom of the glass and very gently knock them about a bit – don’t writhe on at them like you’re killing a spider, you just want to bruise them lightly to release the mint
  • add the rum, lime juice and honey drop and stir gently with a little crushed ice
  • add some soda water and the rest of the ice and fill to the top, swirling gently
  • decorate with a mound of crushed ice and a bit more mint

Classy, eh? I like a strong measure but if you’re a Dainty Daisy, cut back or leave out the rum. Although I mean, come on…more Slimming World BBQ meals tomorrow!

More chicken recipes? Of course, click the button.

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J

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July 17, 2016

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

chicken and pea lasagne

Chicken and pea lasagne? Yes! Just scroll down if you don’t want to hear all my prattle.

Before we start: some good news. I’ve had a weird thing happening with my neck for ages where if I look to the right, there’s a click noise and a lot of pain. Very frustrating. But the good news: I was sniffing a flower and the pollen made me sneeze so hard that I’ve fixed whatever what was wrong with my neck. I’ve sneezed myself better! Let’s celebrate by being nice. No…

I’ve discovered a new past-time. Admittedly it’s one that shows off my mean, vexing side, but I don’t care. I <3 looking through and commenting on the Facebook ‘buy and sell’ groups in our local area. Honestly, the tat people try and sell is just beyond me. Plus, you get the bonus of looking at pictures of people’s houses and getting to suck air over my teeth at the state of the wallpaper or the “canvas art” littering every room. If I see another KEEP CALM AND DRINK PROSECCO poster I’m going to find a way to reach through the atoms on my iPad screen and torch their house.

As an aside, Paul used to know someone who drank from a cup that said ‘KEEP CALM AND GO MENTAL’ on the side. I rather think it remains to his credit that he didn’t smash it over her head.

I recently got into a spat with some orange harridan with a face like a rushed omelette who accused me of being a bald fat fuck because I accused her ‘100% NOT FAKE’ Calvin Klein dress as being fake. First of all, you can’t insult me by calling me a bald fat fuck because, if you remove the spaces from that and add slut, that’s my Grindr name, and secondly, I don’t think Calvin’s knocking out dresses under the name Calvan Kline. Calvan Kline sounds like a ski village in Norway, for one thing. Anyway, spluttering ill-conceived and predominately vowel-less insults at me has no effect. It rolls off me like gravy off a fat duck’s back.

Just an aside, I’m not always mean. I’ve bitten my tongue all weekend after seeing a PicCollage (it’s always a fucking PicCollage) recipe for ‘Hawiian BBQ chicken’. Hawiian? That’s how a Geordie mother calls her children in off the street.

Now, a lovely bit of news. You may remember from previous posts that we are part of something called the Reddit Gift Exchange? In short, you pick one of the monthly themes (for example, The Simpsons, or The 90s) and you’re matched with a complete stranger from somewhere else in the UK. You then buy this person a gift pertaining to the theme and send it to them. It’s a giant Secret Santa. You’re guaranteed a present in return from someone else and it’s all very jolly-hockey-sticks and amazing. We love it. In the twelve months we have been doing it we’ve had some genuinely brilliant gifts – homemade cookbooks, a massive box of ‘tourist’ paraphernalia from Scarborough, posters and gaming kit and plenty of others too numerous and marvellous to mention. I do love a Secret Santa, although I did once get my ex-boss a duck for her bath without realising it was a vibrator. That caused much embarrassment, especially when she tried it out in the office no-she-didn’t-don’t-worry. We didn’t have a bath!

So the theme this month was favourite decade and for both Paul and I this was definitely the 90s. It had it all – great TV in the shape of The Crystal Maze, 999 and dinnerladies, superb music (aside from Eiffel 65, fuck those guys) and proper morning-piss yellow Sunny Delight. Though for the record, remember we didn’t have much money and so branded radioactive drinks were out – the best we had was a bottle of Overcast Ennui in our lunchbox. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, our Secret Santa totally knocked it out of the park with their selection of 90s goods – just look at what we received!

bodacious-90s-gifts-1468606962-32659247819

Quite hard to see from Paul’s tiny photo which, in the spirit of the 90s, he seemingly took with a Game Boy camera, but there’s three CDs which I used to own and absolutely fucking love (especially the one on the right), a packet of Nintendo Playing Cards, two Tamagotchis, some Hot-Wheels and a proper little watch. There was also a lovely card. But good lord, what a perfect selection of 90s goodness – I had such a rush of nostalgia that my pubes disappeared and my voice unbroke. I know that’s not a word, squiggly-red-line, but it makes sense in this sentence.

I was always very lucky in that I didn’t go through the whole protracted stage of my voice breaking – I went to bed one night with a voice like Joe Pasquale and a scrotum like a tangerine, woke up the next morning sounding like Isaac Hayes and had a ballsack like a Bassett Hound’s ear. Perhaps it didn’t go quite as deep as Isaac but certainly I avoided all the squeaking and dropping that so many teenage lads seem to experience.

It was the Pogs that really sent us both whooshing back into memory land though. I absolutely loved them. God knows why, it’s just some natty coloured cardboard discs, but something about the simplicity really won me over. Paul and I tried to have a quick game only to send them tumbling all over the kitchen floor so god knows what has happened since, but back in the day, I was the King of Pogs. Well, perhaps the Queen of Pogs. I had the full set, a fluorescent green Pog holder and a slammer which was really just a massive, heavy-duty washer that my dad brought home from work. The Pogs epidemic swept through our school like the norovirus, with fights and scuffles leading to the outright ban of Pog battles in the playground. Didn’t stop us – we used to just play out of the sight of teachers. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the amount of lads I beat off behind the sheds when no-one was looking. Some things never change, eh.

I reckon Pogs was also the first flirtation with crime for both me and my sister. We had been dragged along to a car-boot sale somewhere inexplicable and indoors and were bored shitless. Parents, don’t take your kids to car boot sales. They’re full of things other people don’t need or want and anything interesting a kid finds is always met with a ‘WE DON’T NEED THAT’ from the parents. Oh, but we do need a VHS of Beverley Callard’s Fitness First and a giant glass ashtray, apparently.

We had spotted a Pog stand full of slammers that looked like something out of Saw and not-quite-Pogs that were possibly printed at home. Didn’t matter. All about volume in those days, see. Anyway, I distracted the lady behind the decorating table by commenting on how fine her moustache was or something whilst my sister proceeded to fill her trousers with Pogs, all held in by virtue of her Adidas Poppers had been tucked into her socks. Genius right? We were like the Krays of South Northumberland.

Don’t judge us too keenly, we were young and bored. Karma got us back anyway because the Pogs were of such bad quality that the ink ran and they were ruined by the heat of a rustling shellsuit. I’m sure my sister probably has a faint imprint of a Tazmanian Devil somewhere on her ankle even now.

Mind, as an aside, Pogs were nothing compared to the thrill of completing a Panini Premiership sticker book. Seeing Alan Shearer’s smug, insufferable face sliding out of the packet on a shiny backing meant being King of All Things, if only for a day. Nevermind the arguments that Pogs caused, I’ve seen fights that looked like when The Bride battles the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill 1 over a four inch by two inch sticker of Tino Asprilla. No amount of trading Paul-Furlong-for-Kevin-Pressman-and-the-Nottingham-Forest-logo is worth having your first adult tooth kicked clean out of your mouth for.

Dangerous times indeed!

Speaking of teeth, you’ll need them to chew the next recipe. I know right, a flawless segue. Now listen, I can’t claim any credit for the idea of this recipe, I found it on another site (Every Nook and Cranny) and thought it looked delicious. Naturally, ours came out looking like someone had driven a car over it before serving, but hell, who cares. It tasted fine and I’ve adapted it for Slimming World. So let’s do this.

chicken and pea lasagne chicken and pea lasagne

to make chicken and pea lasagne you will need:

  • 2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (three if you’re using supermarket ones) OR 500g chicken mince

Here’s the thing. Chicken breasts from our big Musclefood deal – you only need two because they’re so large and don’t shrivel away to nowt like the supermarket ones do. Click here to have a look – it’s definitely a good deal!

  • 2 leeks, finely sliced (save your fingers and time by using a mandolin slicer, not least because they’ll be uniform and so skinny it’ll make the other vegetables jealous) (also that’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen this slicer)
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced (use a mincer – garlic powder is fine, but a mincer makes short work of this and takes no time at all – buy one here and I promise you you’ll never look back)
  • 8 to 12 lasagne sheets (it depends on what size dish you use, see, I’m not just being awkward) (totally am)
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp sage
  • 3 tbsp passata
  • 2 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 200g peas
  • 250g quark
  • 30g grated parmesan (HeA)
  • 70g reduced fat mozzarella ball (HeA)
  • 12 cherry tomatoes (because I’m an ostentatious sod, I’m using ones grown in our greenhouse – next year raise a tomato plant and you’ll be amazed by the difference in flavour – because home-grown tomatoes actually taste of something, see)
  • salt
  • pepper
  • worcestershire sauce

If you can’t get chicken mince and don’t have a food processor to make your own, don’t panic – use turkey mince instead. Perfectly acceptable swap and very easy to buy in supermarkets. Chicken is tastier, though.

to make chicken and pea lasagne you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • if you’re using chicken breasts you will need to mince it – if you don’t have a fancy mincer (who does?!) then you can use a food processor with a grating blade, or use a cheese grater. Either way it’s a clart on so use chicken/turkey mince when you can!

Because we’re super fancy, we have one of these wonderful Magimix mixers. We threw the chicken breasts in there, pulsed them for a few seconds and that was that. If you cook a lot and have some spare moolah, I can genuinely and heartily recommend it. If you’re someone whose refrain to anything is ‘I CAN GET IT CHEAPER IN ALDI’, perhaps don’t even look.

  • heat a large saucepan over a medium heat and add some squirty olive oil, but not Frylight. Never Frylight, it scares me.
  • add the leeks, reduce the heat to low and cook until they soften, which will take about ten minutes
  • when the leeks are soft, add the garlic, stir, and then add the chicken
  • raise the heat to medium and stir well and cook until the chicken is no longer pink, because you don’t want to be revisiting the lasagne thirty minutes after eating as it thunders out of your arse
  • add the oregano and sage, stir, and then add the chopped tomatoes, passata and tomato puree with 60ml of water
  • stir the peas into the pan and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the sauce has reduced. If it looks too thick add more water
  • add salt, pepper and worcestershire to season however you like it
  • in a small saucepan add the quark and parmesan and heat over a low heat until it softens, then remove from the heat as soon as the mixture is well combined, adding salt and pepper if you like – I like a really peppery sauce so I always shoot for the moon at this point
  • in a deep dish assemble the lasagne however you like
  • spoon a third of the chicken mixture into the bottom of the dish, followed by a third of the cheese sauce and a layer of lasagne sheets. repeat for two more layers – if you don’t have enough, just do two layers – it’s all going to get turned into poo, it doesn’t matter how well you put it all together
  • top with torn chunks of mozzarella and pop on the cherry tomatoes
  • bake for 35 minutes or until everything looks delicious and the top looks like a burnt knee
  • serve with a side salad of speed food, or, do as I do, give a portion to your other half and then secretly eat all the crusty cheesy topping under the guise of going back to the kitchen for a drink
  • it’s no wonder my thighs smell of bacon, is it

See? Nice and summery and a bit lighter than your traditional hefty lasagne. You can adapt this recipe however you want. I got scolded last time for using two HEAs in my recipe on the basis that one person is only allowed one healthy extra. This is true. But, this also serves four folks easily and six people at a pinch, and frankly, if you’re eating enough lasagne in one sitting to feed six people, you’ve got more to worry about than an extra 30g of cheese.

We’ve made three other lasagne recipes, why not take a look?

If you’re looking for more pasta ideas or chicken recipes, click on the buttons below and be whisked away to a land of recipes and whimsy.

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Cheers!

J

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June 18, 2016

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, rice, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

sticky apricot chicken skewers

Here for the sticky apricot chicken skewers? Scroll on down, because first…

’tis a lovely day. Now see, whenever Saturday comes around, I always think we should fill it with fun activities and marvellous days out because within the blink of an eye it’ll be Monday again and I’ll be sick of my life. There’s only so much enthusiasm one can fake for getting into a car and looking at the back of some cockknocker in an Audi for forty five minutes on a Monday morning. But invariably it’ll get to noon, Paul will peel himself out of the soggy patch, make the bacon sandwiches and we’ll spend two hours farting about doing fuck all. Then really it’s getting on for being too late to go out and make a day of it, so instead we end up watching X-Files and turning pale from the lack of sunlight. In my defence, I was going to spend the day weeding the flower-beds but one of the litters of flimflam up the street are having a BBQ and I can’t concentrate for the smell of Iceland sausages not being cooked correctly and the tinny sound of Now That’s What I Call Inevitable Domestic Violence playing over cheap speakers. I stepped outside to hang out some shirts and someone was loudly discussing Crocs as if they were anything other than fit for a bonfire so I came straight back in. Pfft.

I suppose I could entertain myself by watching the football but really, no. I can’t see the appeal. I see grown men crying (possibly because of the tear gas) on the television and feel nothing but cold embarrassment. I’m not afraid to show my emotions but I can’t leak over someone not kicking something else into a football net. I don’t feel national pride stirring when Rooney lumbers out looking like someone shaved Susan Boyle and spun her through Sports Direct and it annoys me more than avocado being synned that none of the players sing the national anthem properly, instead choosing to mouth the approximate sounds and keep their heads buried into their dandruff-free shoulders. I come from Newcastle, a city known for its enthusiastic football supporters, but I confess the only reason I own a football shirt is because my ex used to like using it for role play. I still don’t know who Jimmy Five Bellies is.

And it’s not as if many people haven’t tried to get me into football. My parents used to have loads of people around to watch the matches back in the day when Newcastle United were half-decent. I used to watch every other match that I could but it wasn’t out of interest or passion, oh no, it was more for the opportunity to try name-brand buffet food – Pringles instead of Stackers and Diet Coke instead of Påpsi Mild. The luxury! This was when football would be faintly interesting, too – when Newcastle beat Manchester United 5-1 or when Kevin Keegan was blowing spittle into the camera on Sky Sports. I could name you more players from 1996-1999 than I could modern day footballers, but I suppose that’s because you rarely see their faces given they’re always rolling around on the grass clutching their ankles.

Darren Peacock used to have a lovely home in the village that I grew up in, and he’ll remain my favourite player ever simply by virtue of giving us all a tin of Quality Street each for Hallowe’en – and this was before the tin was the size of an engagement ring box. I’ve met Alan Shearer twice in my career and each time he’s been nothing short of an arse – entitled, self-aggrandising and absolutely in love with himself. Honestly, if you’re going to pick a Geordie to make you wet, don’t make it him with his baldy heed and face that looks like he’s always trying to remember if he’s switched the iron off. I appreciate that there aren’t many other Geordies to choose from that’ll make your Birth Cannon tingle. Jimmy Nail looks like a donkey being told bad news. Robson Green is 2ft tall and apparently suffers from the same arse-ache as Shearer. Sting would be too busy cooing at his own reflection to satisfy you and well, you can’t have Ant without Dec.

We did give the world Charlie Hunnam though, so you can thank us later for that. Speaking of thanking us for a slab of tasty meat, you’ll be grateful for our recommendation once you’ve tried our sticky apricot chick skewers. Served with rice and a HEB pitta, they make a perfect summer dinner.

sticky apricot chicken skewers

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you will need:

  • 4 chicken breasts, diced
  • 4 peppers, cut into big chunks

You get about 24/26 chicken breasts, along with extra lean mince, lean bacon and beef chunks, in our fabulous Freezer Filler! Treat yourself – and us via commission – right now!

for the marinade

  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 4 tsp onion powder
  • pinch of salt and pepper

for the sauce

  • 8 tbsp no added sugar apricot jam (12 syns)
  • 10 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 3 tsp fresh minced ginger
  • 6 tsp soy sauce
  • 4 tbsp cider vinegar

I know I bang on about this all the time, but if you haven’t already, buy yourself a microplane grater. It’ll mince your garlic and ginger in no time at all, and it’s less than a tenner. Easy! Click here for our recommended mincer.

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you should:

  • place the diced chicken in a freezer bag, sprinkle in all the marinade ingredients, shake, and leave for at least two hours if possible (overnight is best)
  • when ready to cook, add all of the sauce ingredients to a saucepan and heat over a medium-low heat
  • stir until well blended and keep over a low heat
  • thread the chicken and peppers onto the skewers – you should have enough for eight
  • cook the chicken under a hot grill, turning after about 3 minutes or until the chicken is cooked
  • remove the skewers from the grill and spoon the sauce over the skewers
  • put them back under the grill for a minute or two just to make the sauce sticky
  • serve with your rice and pitta – easy!

How easy was that? Want more chicken or takeaway recipes? Click the links below!

fakeawayssmall poultrysmall

Done!

J

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June 11, 2016

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breast, poultry, pulses and grains, recipe card, syn free

tasty quinoa stuffed chicken

Here for the tasty quinoa stuffed chicken? Well aren’t we all. However, you’ll need to get past all my huffle-and-puffle first.

I was talking with a colleague yesterday about the hanky code. For those who don’t get the gay newsletter, the hanky code was/is a system used mainly by gay blokes back in the seventies and eighties to subtly clue in possible paramours (for those less classy: shags) as to their sexual predilections. A dark blue hanky in the right back pocket meant you preferred being the garage rather than the car. Grey meant you liked light bondage, black meant you liked extremely heavy BDSM and pain, like being made to sit through The X-Factor without having a mallet to repeatedly set about your skull with. Somewhat disconcertingly, the hanky for a chap who likes men who smokes cigars is described as ‘tan’, whereas the colour for someone who wants to act as a full toilet (i.e. someone who fancies a Hot Karl: don’t fucking google it) is ‘brown’. I genuinely don’t think I could tell you the difference between brown and tan, and imagine the horror of going back to someone’s house for a Montecristo and a chat about socio-economics only to be confronted with them squatting over you with a determined gurn on their face. YIKES.

And anyway, it wouldn’t work for me – I have trouble spotting Paul in a room, and he’s the size of a family tent. Trying to get me to differentiate colours, especially when blood is rushing to a head on my body that doesn’t contain my brain, is just asking for trouble.

It’s almost a shame that the hanky code has died off, I reckon it would be interesting if we all, quite literally, nailed our colours to the mast. We certainly live in a time where people are open and being gay is so much more accepted. It’s brilliant. I was driving home the other day past a school (this isn’t as Operation Yewtree as it might sound) and there was a young lad walking up the street, surrounded by girls, as flamboyant and camp as you like – more mince than even our fabulous Musclefood deal (BEST LINK EVER). No attempt to hide it – and why should he – and whilst he might have just be a colourful young straight lad, my gaydar pinged and I thought it marvellous. I reckon we’re about twenty years from it just not being a thing at all, I reckon.

I’ve certainly been lucky, having never experienced any kind of homophobia. There’s been jokes about my sphericalness and god knows I endured many a crack about my long black hair, but never the fact I’m a backdoor betty. Perhaps because I’ve always been hard to push over, who knows? I’ve never hidden Paul away – I’d need a fucking big piece of camouflage netting for one – and although I like playing the ‘partner’ game when I meet someone new (i.e. using non-gender specific terms of endearment when talking about Paul – my partner, Fats Waller, my bitch, slave), I’m always proud to say I’m a gay man.

I have my own feelings about the ever-increasing list of genders and sexualities which I won’t share here, only to say I genuinely struggle to understand some of the more far out terms and, personally, I think there’s a chance that identity problems won’t be taken as seriously when someone describes themselves as identifying as an otherkin or as a ze (someone who believes ‘he’ has negative connotations of gender, apparently). I get gender fluidity, I think (i.e. I think I understand it) but when someone describes as a non-cis pivotgender being, it just makes my head hurt. To be quite honest, it makes me feel old and confused. Perhaps that’s my own ignorance though. Hmm.

Anyway look, I’m not here to reflect on my life as a shirtlifter. I really just wanted to crack a joke about tan/brown hankies! Let’s get the recipe out!

This recipe makes more than enough to completely stuff 4 large chicken breasts, and we served it with broccoli and roast potatoes (chuck some baby potatoes into your Actify with some worcestershire sauce and allow to tumble around – it’s that easy!). Don’t have an Actifry? Then, foolish person, buy one now. Especially when they’re cheap on Amazon! We picked up the idea for the recipe via a lovely blog called Macheesmo – we’ve turned it Slimming World friendly and tweaked it, but full credit to the bloke and his beard for the inspiration! If there’s only the two of you, halve the ingredients. Dur.

tasty quinoa stuffed chicken

to make tasty quinoa stuffed chicken, you’re going to need:

  • 4 large chicken breasts – the breasts that come in our Musclefood bundle – where you get about 24/26 per package – are ideal. They’re juicy and not full of water like the supermarkets! Take a gander by clicking here.
  • 200g of quinoa, rinsed under cold water
  • a few big handfuls of spinach
  • 90g of feta (45g is your HEA, or syn it at 6 syns – but as this serves four, it’ll be three syns per breasts. You keeping up here, Vorderman?)
  • a few grinds of your pepper
  • pinch of salt
  • just a cautious wee nip of red chilli flakes
  • spray oil – not spray plastic, say no to Frylight!
  • 25g of dried sun-dried tomatoes – these are an easy way to add the taste of sun-dried tomatoes – they are dried tomatoes and can usually be found in Tesco – apparently they’re 2 syns for 25g which is bloody ridiculous as they are just dried tomatoes without the oil, so up to you if you want to count the syns – 0.5 per breast) (you can swap out for tomatoes in oil which are seemingly 1.5 syns per 25g). How does that work then eh? If they’re soaked in oil, they are less syns than tomatoes dried out and then rehydrated in water? What a load of absolute nonsense, piss and shite. I’m not synning it, but you can. Anyway…

and then to make tasty quinoa stuffed chicken, you should:

  • if you’re using dried tomatoes, rehydrate them by dropping them into boiling hot water and letting them steep
  • put the oven onto 180 degrees
  • cook your quinoa – follow the instructions on the pack – we use chicken stock instead of water, cook for twenty minutes with the lid on, then take off the heat and fluff with a fork
  • cook your spinach in a little pan, no need to add oil just a drop or two of water and let it wilt right down, adding the salt and chilli flakes to season
  • blend the spinach and tomatoes and feta – not to a fine paste, just a lumpy mix – and then stir into the quinoa along with the pepper
  • now the fun part – cut horizontally through each chicken breast but not all of the way through – you want to be able to open it up like a book
  • place each opened chicken breast onto cling film or a very clean tea-towel, cover with more cling film and then bash the bejesus out of it – actually no, just give it a good pounding until they are nice and evenly thick
  • spoon the quinoa stuffing into each chicken breast, fold over the top of the breast and then secure with cocktail sticks or skewers
  • take your pan that you used for spinach (or another one, I’m not keeping that much of an eye on you), squirt some oil in, get it nice and hot and carefully place each breast into the pan for a few minutes on either side – you’re searing the outside of it
  • once this is done, put them onto a tray and into the oven for about 20-25 minutes until they’re cooked through
  • serve with your sides

Don’t cry if the quinoa falls out a bit or it doesn’t look super attractive and tidy – I mean, I don’t look super attractive or tidy either, and I get plenty!

If you’re looking for more chicken recipes, why not click on the button below and be taken straight there?

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Until the next time,

J

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June 9, 2016

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american, beef, beef mince, breast, chip shop, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, kebab shop, lunch, pizza, pork, pork joints, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

chilli and cheesy fries pizza

I know, chilli and cheesy fries pizza. I’m about two steps away from my recipes being ‘tip everything in the fridge into a Nutribullet, blend, drink’. Even then I’d get someone with lips like a balloon-knot furiously messaging me to tell me that a blend of bacon, the cat’s ear medicine and seven bags of forgotten/ignored kale has syns because Margaret Mags says so in that little book of dreams. But see we had a tub of leftover chilli from the time we made slow-cooked pulled pork chilli and we haven’t done a pizza for a long while. Aside from the Dominos we had the other night, but listen, Paul had come on or something and needed something to comfort eat. It’s either that or have Lil-lets tumbling around in my bathroom. This is the type of tea you need at the end of an emotional or busy day – something stodgy, admittedly not full of speed food, but something that feels naughty and has the added bonus of invariably smearing all down whatever shirt you’re wearing. I’m not even joking, it’s gotten to the stage where we almost undress one another before a meal so we don’t wreck another shirt. It creates an odd image for a curious neighbour, who might glance through our kitchen window from afar and think two shaved bison are mincing about taking pictures of fucking risotto. Meh, let them drool I say.

Anyway, it’s exactly the type of food I could do with today – I had two ‘OH SHIT’ moments at my work. You know that awful feeling when you’ve cocked something up and your heart sinks and your bumhole starts unpicking the seams of your trousers? That clamminess of the brow and the shooting pains down your left arm? That’s happened twice today. First time I was looking at a deadline for an important piece of work and worked out that I’d missed the filing deadline by three days. I’ve only been in my current role for three months but surely that’s long enough to be packed out of the door with a flea in my ear? I took myself to the gents toilet down a few floors, took a few deep breaths to compose myself (and learn this readers – never, ever go to a busy shitter to take a deep breath – it’s a pretty safe bet that I’ve got advanced mesothelioma as a result) and work out my apology. Ashen-faced, I made my way back to my desk only to realise that it’s June, not fucking July, and that I have a whole five weeks to crack on with things. Phew. I nervously laughed and carried on with my day, with my heart-rate only taking three hours to return back to it’s normal thwomp-thwomp-stutter-seize-thwomp pattern. Thank Christ I’m defibrillator trained, though I reckon they’d frown upon self-use. Plus the smell of my burning chest hair would condemn the building.

Oh, and the second time? I thought I’d missed out on a cupcake. Christ, I almost booked a meeting room out for a good cry.

Anyway come on, let’s get cracking.

chilli and cheesy fries pizza

This makes enough for one wrap – just double up. Credit for the original idea for the recipe goes to realfoodbydad, we’ve tweaked it to make it SW friendly!

to make chilli and cheesy fries pizza you will need:

  • 6 tbsp leftover chilli, spaghetti bolognese, pulled pork or whatever you’ve got
  • 1 BFree Multigrain Wrap (HeB) or whichever other wrap you find that is a) your HEB and b) doesn’t taste like a verruca sock (if you don’t want to use your HEB, this wrap is only 4.5 syns)
  • 50g reduced fat grated mozarella (HeA) (again, swap out this for any cheese you like, or syn some, hey, I’m not fussy – if you don’t want to use your HEA, 50g of mozzarella is 6.5 syns)
  • two good handfuls of Slimming World chips (an Actifry is your best bet for this job – buy one and never look back!) (and yes, you can use leftovers – leftover chips haha, like any of us have trouble breathing unassisted at night because we leave leftovers)
  • 2 tbsp of sliced jalapenos
  • 1 spring onion, sliced

to make chilli and cheesy fries pizza you should:

  • preheat the oven to 240 degrees
  • spread over your base sauce over the wrap, leaving  gap of about 1cm around the edge
  • spread the chips out over the wrap, as evenly spaced as you can manage whilst you’re cramming them into your mouth
  • sprinkle over the cheese and top with the jalapenos and spring onion
  • bake in the oven for about 5 minutes, or until the cheese has melted

Easy, really. Now of course we’ve made some wonderful pizzas before, you see…

 

Really, what’s not to love? For more fakeaway recipe ideas, click on the link below!

fakeawayssmall

J

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May 23, 2016

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breast, chinese, cured meats, dips, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, noodles, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, sauces, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

fresh spring rolls and dipping sauce

Was it my fresh spring rolls and dipping sauce that caught your eye? Well scroll on down, you filthy buggers. Fair warning, tonight’s entry is a little saucy.

Before we get to the recipe, I’m going to do something unusual. See, in the facebook group that accompanies this blog are a load of funny buggers, each more crass and hilarious than the last. I can rattle off a blue joke and a knob gag no worries, but well, I struggle to get women’s problems correct. It’s all so complicated, and well, if you get it wrong, you’re liable to end up with a clit around the ear and a flap in the face. Wah-wah.

Anyway, I decided it would be a gas to ask people if they wanted to write an ‘article’ for the blog – no catches, write what you want, and if I have a recipe but can’t be buggered to type up one of my usual why-use-one-word-when-forty-paragraphs will do, I can post one up! If you’re interested in having a go, let me know in the comments. Readers, please remember that these articles are people wanting to try their hand at writing a blog post but don’t have the confidence to set up a full blog. Be kind. If you’re thinking negative comments, keep them ssh. If you enjoy the article, let’s hear from you!

Tonight’s entry is by the charming Clarabell, who lists the ability to say the alphabet backwards and having a creepy double-jointed hand as her party trick. Don’t believe me? Take a look!

20160522_174459

Goodness. Least she never struggles to get the last Pringle out of the tube, eh? I’d better make sure that isn’t the image that shows up when you post this to facebook. Over to Clarabell…

sweatbox: a tale by Clarabell

Now, we’re all used to the candid craic from James and Paul about douche bulbs, all things in the downstairs department, and of course the post that mentioned bukkake…which I had to google. On a work laptop. Upon which I forgot to delete the history. Cheers guys! So I figured that with a gaggle of MAINLY female readers that my post would have to be about some nether region tale of the female variety. Something we’ve probably all experienced at one point. Perhaps not James and Paul. (James edit: NOT TRUE! I’ve been there and it was all very charming, but not for me. That’s what keeps the world interesting, different opinions, apropos of nothing I don’t like potted ox tongue either).

I’ve been fed up lately, I’ve been getting bouts of cystitis, antibiotics, thrush, cystitis….repeat. I’ve had a scan and there’s nothing wrong with me other than I don’t drink enough water, and have self-created this cycle of misery.

Resigned to buying the thrush cream, after the standard tactic of ‘ignore it and it might not be there’ stopped working, off I went to the local shopping centre, my purse hovering on the thick air in front of me. I’m in Asda but I can’t see what I want on the shelves, and I’m quickly narked that the chemist is the other side of the centre, only because when your regions are on fire, that’s a long walk to do, simultaneously avoiding the urge for a scratch, and walking like there’s stones in your shoes. But! In a flash of delight, I remember that they took out half of the checkouts, to make an optician that no-one goes in, and…. a PHARMACY! Whoop! There’s nothing like the delight of knowing you can get minge cream at the same time as your linguine.

“I’d like some Canesten Oral Duo” I say bravely– pointing to the bottom shelf. Worryingly, he looks like he doesn’t have a clue what I’m asking for. He follows my finger to the bottom shelf, and picks up some Sea Legs, examines box, puts it back and repeats – he does this a few times with a box of Rennie, and some headlice solution, and eventually comes across the thrush ‘range’ glowing on the shelf like a barber’s pole in full red and white glory. I’m wondering at this point if he is the pharmacist, or whether he’s mugged the rightful medicine man of his Asda badge and strolled behind the desk in the manner of an imposter, hoping to get first nab of the nearby ‘Whoops’ range, but he comes across the requested item at last. Not literally, you’d really struggle to pick the box up if he did that.

“Is it for you?” he asks. Christ on a bike…look mate, it’s fifteen flaming quid…I am not about to raffle it off in the Slimmer of the Week basket I don’t say this, instead I go with “yes” and 100% resting bitch face. Oh but he isn’t finished, “have you used it before?”…panic! What’s the correct answer to this? ‘Yes’ and appear like some serial offender, someone who can’t control their rancid ways and lifting minnie?! Or ‘no’ and risk a declined purchase, or worse, some sort of lecture on best application practice and/or side effects?! I go with “yes” quickly followed up with “a while ago…” He gives a small nod. He knows I’m baking bread. Phew, home and dry, which is good because another customer has joined me and she has the smug privacy of a prescription, which is her ticket to a no question transaction.  What is it with these useless questions?

However, there can be none more useless than the question I once got asked buying antihistamines for hayfever, “drowsy or non-drowsy” I was asked! Really?! Erm..let me check my diary…nope, nothing on the afternoon, drowsy for me please, I’m fine to lounge around spaced out and sleepy, I was not planning on driving and the only ‘machinery’ I’ll be operating will be the telly, so yup, drowsy will do just do fine…ah wait, no consuming alcohol? Poop.

Anyway, Ahmed walks to the till, and promptly stops and stands above it doing jazz hands, and of course he just remembered he doesn’t know how to use it. Suddenly, “Doreen!” he shouts WAVING THE CANESTEN BOX IN THE AIR! “Doreen, can you ring this in for me please”! I swear the smug-prescription-holder does the smirking shimmy, that tiny little wobble that comes only with an inner titter.  I throw her some side-ways shade, which is code for ‘look lady, we’ve all been there, and you will one day (maybe soon after that prescription for antibiotics teehee!) also have to stand here and deal with this lovely bloke, showing the world his arm pit sweat patch whilst at the same time holding aloft the solution to your itchy snatch’.

Goodness me! I once had a flatmate who had perpetual thrush, brought on by the fact her extra-endowed boyfriend  seemed hellbent on hammering her cervix over her back-teeth. Not even kidding there, she showed me a photo he’d sent and what I thought was his arm holding the camera definitely wasn’t. At one point our fridge was more cranberry juice than anything else. I still can’t have a cranberry sour without thinking of her undercarriage. I remember we once had a full stand-up row over the fact I refused to boil tea-towels in a saucepan on the hob to sterilise them. Awfully judgemental for someone with a little too much glue on their envelope.

Now listen, before anyone starts writing their ‘ANGRY OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS’ letters and getting themselves in a tizz, don’t. I know it’s perfectly natural and I know people get all sorts of things but do you know, if we can’t laugh at ourselves, what can we do? Let’s not live in a joyless vacuum.

Right, to the food!

 fresh spring rolls

These are one of those tasty little dishes that look complicated to make, but they’re really not. We used Blue Dragon Rice Pancakes for these which SW say are one syn each (ridiculous) – you can buy rice pancakes from any Asian supermarket too. The joy with these is that you can ram them absolutely chock-full of speed vegetables and lovely free things. 

to make fresh spring rolls, you’ll need:

to make fresh spring rolls, you should:

  • get a plate and fill it with warm water, you’ll obviously not need a lot
  • chop all your veg up – this is where a mandolin will save you so much time and make everything neat and wonderful – click here to buy one of those
  • get everything ready to hand
  • take one pancake, push it into the water, allow to rehydrate a little
  • take out, shake off the water and lay it on a tea-towel or better, a nice clean worktop
  • if you imagine it in thirds, you want to place a big amount of filling at the top of the bottom third – or really, just below the middle of the pancake
  • fold in the sides
  • fold in the bottom
  • roll – keep it nice and tight with your hands (fnar fnar)
  • place on a chopping board and cut with a very sharp knife

You’re done! We served ours with a dipping sauce where we took low sodium soy sauce (6 tbsp), a couple of tablespoons of hoisin (4 syns), a few chilli flakes, a drop of honey (1 syn) and some passata. Stir and serve!

Although these are a syn each, these fresh spring rolls are very, very filling and a brilliant way of getting fresh veg into you. I’m a big fat pig and only managed four! If you wanted to keep it vegetarian, swap out the meat for cooked egg or mushrooms.

Enjoy.

J

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May 8, 2016

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breast, low syn, poultry, recipe card, travel

honey and rosemary chicken

Here for the honey and rosemary chicken? Then scroll down. I need to get something off my chest (aside from the eight stone of suffocating fat) and that’s a recount of our trip to Land’s End. I did say I’m going to do our tale of Cornwall a little differently and well, this day out needs a post all of its own. So here we go…

twochubbycubs go to Cornwall: Land’s End

You can’t go to Cornwall and not visit Land’s End – it’s like going to London and not seeing the Queen, or going to Southend and not getting roughly fingered under the pier by someone more hair gel than teeth. Oh I know, Southend is lovely and charming and really, what’s a severe physical assault when you’ve got the glitz of the Rendezvous casino and the chance to spot a Subaru doing doughnuts in a McDonalds car park? I digress. I imagined Lands End to be some quaint little village right on the tip of southern England, full of darling tea-shops and people laughing gaily.

Well, it fucking wasn’t.

Excuse my swearing, but I’ve genuinely never been more disappointed with a place in my life. And I’ve been to Hartlepool. On a bus. What should have been a fairly tasteful and certainly interesting place to visit was nothing more than a tacky, ill-designed, grasping tourist trap, comprising of poorly thought out exhibitions and miserable staff. We had chortled our way down the A30 on a brisk, drizzly English day – all roads in Cornwall seem to go via the A30, I reckon I could drive it blindfolded now – and our hearts were lifted as the Sat Nav, inexplicably tuned to the voice of Colonel Sanders, told us that the exhibition centre was only half a mile away. I should have clocked there and then – an exhibition centre? Why? Let us look at the cliffs, the signpost and perhaps have a cup of tea and a moan about our knees. Exhibitions aren’t needed – the beauty is exhibition itself. Nevermind. We indicated off into the almost empty car-park only to be waved down by someone who, a touch ironically, had a face like a wet weekend. He informed us that it was £5 for the privilege of parking our car into what looked like a plane crash site, all jagged and cratered. I try to crack a joke that ‘I’m not bringing a coach in’ but he wasn’t having any of that, so we paid up and did the very British thing of sitting in the car bitching on about it.

£5 though. Yes, it’s not a great amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but it’s grasping. Why a fiver? Am I going to tear up five pounds worth of tarmac primly parking my DS3? Was he going to bring it around for me when we left? There’s simply no need for it, especially out of season. Still twisting our faces, we stole a glance at the leaflet, which promised ‘something to do for every member of the family’. Hmph.

I just want you to know that at this point I had an absolutely killer joke lined up but the other half censored it because he said ‘think of the complaints’ – spoilsport. But see we do have limits.

Our first stop was to the giant tat shop, which was full of all the lovely things only people in their nineties buy for other people in their nineties that they don’t like – fudge that predates decimalisation, clothes you wouldn’t wear for a bet and all sorts of lead-based paperweights, pencils and cough sweets. I can’t imagine a single soul in their life has desired an ashtray showing people they once went to the absolute arse-end of the country they’re smoking in, but hell, here they were, and cheap at only half your dignity. We sniffed the scented candles with all their wank names: “Cornwall Wash”, “Grasping Bastards” and “Fuck Me, A Fiver?!” all leaving a sour taste in our mouths. The one item I quite fancied, a small slab of designer (!?) chocolate, caught my eye, until I realised it would be cheaper to buy Hotel Chocolat in Newcastle and have someone walk it down to the Cornwall cottage. We did end up parting with coins though – everywhere we go we always get some item of pure unadulterated tat for the games room – and so a lovingly, hand-painted snowglobe was bought, depicting what looks like Dachau in the midst of a wailing snowstorm, but is ostensibly a tiny representation of the visitor centre. Incidentally, Cornwall is the least likely place to get snow in the entire United Kingdom, so it only seemed appropriate that they’d have a huge display of snowglobes. Perhaps it was tiny fivers billowing about under the glass. Again, and there’s going to be a theme here, sorry, but we were served by someone who had all the personality and warmth of an unapologetic fart. She served us like we were inconveniencing her terribly, despite us and a gaggle of equally depressed looking Chinese tourists being the only people in her shop, and she slapped down our produce and money like they were on fire. I’ve never heard have a good day said with such venom. We pressed on.

They describe the opportunity to ‘feel like a giant by visiting our miniature village’. I love stuff like this, it’s such a British thing to do, but once we’d lumbered over there, it was shut for repairs. I looked carefully and didn’t see any 1/16th sized cement mixers going about their business or Subbuteo-sized men in hi-viz jackets standing around scratching their arse. Ah well, there’s other stuff to do, something for everyone remember? We looked at the leaflet and saw we could choose between an ‘Aardman exhibition’ (I’m sure I went to something along those lines in Berlin) or ‘Arthur’s Quest’. Well, nothing says welcome to Cornwall like nosing around claymation and oohing over a bloody animation studio based in er, Bristol. Right. We thought we’d give it a go, not least because it was indoors and it was getting a mite cold so close to the sea, but er, it was shut. Wahey – that fiver’s worth of parking seemed even more reasonable at this point. Being plucky, cheerful Geordies, we sucked up our disappointment and decided to try Arthur’s Quest, which was an interactive maze narrated by Brian Blessed. Even if it was appalling, the fact that Brian was going to be shouting orders at you would make it hilarious. The man has a gift – he could sit me down and tell me my spine was turning to dust and my penis was about to fall off and I’d still walk out of the surgery slapping my knees and guffawing. 

But, it was closed. Three for three of pure disappointment. That left buying a Cornish pasty at the little café but frankly, Paul was beginning to have chest pains through too much pastry so we sacked that off and decided to walk, slowly, to get a picture of the famous sign which points to various destinations around the world – New York 3147 miles, John O’Groats 874 miles, decent tourist attractions anywhere but here. Here’s another cherry on top of this bun of disappointment. You’re expected to pay £9.95 to get your photo taken by the sign and it’s actually chained off so  anyone with the temerity to think this is a bloody ripoff can’t just hop over and take a photo. There’s a passive-aggressive sign saying it’s someone’s family business and to respect that. The man in the little booth glared at us as we took a picture regardless. I would have cheerfully have paid a couple of quid or stuck a smaller note into a charity box but a tenner? For a photo? Haway. It’s possibly the most famous sign in Britain, let people take a photo with it and then they’ll go spend the rest of their money in the eateries and shops around (assuming they’re bloody open) and everyone is a winner! This outrageous nickle-and-diming, prevalent all throughout Cornwall, did my absolute nut in. It’s free to have a photo taken at the other end up at John O’Groats, and I can’t imagine you need to pay to park either. Anyway, I reassured Paul I’d photoshop the two of us seamlessly into the picture and I reckon I’ve done a cracking job:

nailedit

Seriously I should work for Vogue touching up their photos, you can barely tell.

You know when you think a place couldn’t get any worse? It managed it – the telescopes to look out to sea were more expense and only sought to bring the fog and mist closer to us. There was a wee lighthouse to look at but I could have had the same magnification effect by moving my glasses an inch down my nose. Paul was inexplicably wearing his sunglasses despite me referring to him as Homocop all day. There was a little bird hide to sit for a bit to see the kittiwakes, but naturally, that was closed too. That especially disappointed me because I was at least hoping for a magnificent shag at this point, given there was no-one around. Bah! We mooched on for a bit more and decided to try and salvage the hour by having a cup of tea in the First & Last House a bit up the hill. I presume that’s been renamed from ‘The Last Place in England’ because they were sick of hearing people saying they’d never drink there again if it were the last place in England. We asked for two cups of tea and were handed two paper cups of hot water with a teabag hanging in it. For not a kick-off-the-arse-of £4. Something which I reckon would cost at maximum 5p to make. Even the milk was in those awful little sealed cups you get on aeroplanes, that jettison their contents all over your trousers if you so much as blink at them. And, yes, the woman serving us was hostile and unpleasant and had a face like a grieving cod.

At this point we’d spent £16.70 for the opportunity to make our own tea, park in a crater and look at some ‘closed’ signs. I was spitting. I’m not a tight-arse when it comes to money, far from it, but there’s got to be a line. I’ll happily put money into a charity pot or buy a magazine or wince my way through an overpriced ice-cream but charging people to park up and then not telling them most of the exhibitions are closed, or to take a photo of a landmark? Ridiculous, and honestly, it’s very much a southern thing. That isn’t some parochial Geordie tubthumping either, but take for example our Angel of the North – you turn up to this massive piece of artwork, park for nowt, can walk all over it, climb on the bugger, hell someone even put a giant Newcastle shirt on it once, and it costs not a penny. There’s occasionally an ice-cream man there peddling 99s but that’s about it. If Anthony Gormley had had a fit of the vapours and plopped his pin in Newquay instead of Newcastle, you’d have the Angel boxed off from sight unless you paid a tenner, someone selling pasties the size and price of a small family car between her legs and an inexplicable (and inevitably closed) exhibition all about something local and relevant like ooh…geisha girls, for an extra forty quid. Bah.

I’ll say one good thing: the cliffs were pretty. But then so are the cliffs at the Ring of Kerry and I didn’t have my pockets patted down there either.

I’ve never driven away from a place so quickly and angrily as I did that afternoon. The sound of gravel and soil churning under my tyres was almost drowned out by the sound of my teeth gnashing. If I can take one comfort from all of this is that I managed to at least use £5 worth of toilet paper dropping off a tod of barely digested pasty in the netty before I went. Take that, you grasping bastards!

low syn honey and rosemary garlic with roasted vegetables

to make honey and rosemary chicken you will need:

  • 4 chicken breasts (look at the size of the chicken breast in that picture – it’s a Musclefood chicken breasts and they’re tasty and plump and pert, like a good breast should be. I’m told. You’ll get loads of them in our fantastic freezer filler box – take a look and see!)
  • 1 tbsp honey (2½ syns)
  • juice of half a lemon
  • 1 tbsp chopped rosemary
  • ½ tsp garlic, chopped finely
  • any vegetables of your choice (we used 1 courgette, 2 peppers, 1 red onion, handful of asparagus spears, handful of black olives, basically any old shite you have tumbling around amongst the chocolate and the crisps)

to make honey and rosemary chicken you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200 degrees and chop your vegetables into large chunks or slices
  • spray with a little frylight (or some Fillipo Berio olive oil – that’s what we do, 7 sprays for half a syn) and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes. you won’t need to turn it – we sometimes add a sprinkle of salt or balsamic vinegar, especially when we’re using tomatoes)
  • meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together the honey, lemon juice, rosemary and chopped garlic
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the chicken breasts 
  • cook for about 10 minutes, and flip over
  • after five minutes, pour the the honey mixture over the chicken and into the pan and cook for another five minutes
  • serve the chicken on top of the roasted vegetables

Easy! And yes, it might be a fraction more than 0.5 syns – perhaps a quarter of a syn more – but buggered if I’m going to shit the bed over a quarter of a syn.

J