Category Archives: rice

Rice recipes

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October 9, 2015

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

turkey biryani and Corsica shenanigans

Three things before we set off:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Casa_Julia_LowRes_Sept14_SH_02

living_dining_terrace master_bedroom_2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

turkey biryani

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

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

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

then to make the turkey biryani, you should:

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

Yum. I am so tired now.

J

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October 4, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, indian, kebab shop, poultry, recipe card, rice

tandoori chicken with roasted romanesco

Roasted Romanesco sounds like the title of a high-class porno, doesn’t it? Join sweet Romanesco as she joins college and gets more than her timetable filled.

Christ, I should write the next 50 Shades of Grey.

Anyway, only a quick entry tonight (see previous sentence) as we’re doing boring domestic things like ironing and re-messing-up our candle drawer, and I only wish that was a joke. 

We’ve spent the day being entirely middle-class and fussy. First we washed the car in what must have been the least erotic car-wash vista imagined – I can’t imagine the sight of Paul and I clad in bubbles and shrieking and screaming our way through cleaning the car with a jet washer would float anyone’s boat, although judging by the search terms people use to find the blog, maybe we’re in the wrong business. Afterwards, I made a tomato sauce from the glut of tomatoes that have fallen onto the greenhouse floor since we went away on holiday – I slide the door open and it’s like I’m on Fun House, slipping and sliding. Then, off to the garden centre where we bought some Christmas cards (!) and a trillion more candles. Finally, off to Alnwick for a drink in a pub whose atmosphere was so forgettable the name already escapes me. There were lots of people clacking dominos though. We ended the day in Barter Books, which is a giant secondhand bookshop in what used to be the old train station. It’s a great shop – all the books smell foisty and everyone looks like they’re on at least two registers, but we normally come away with a car load of books and a scent we can’t shift from our shirts.

Not today though. Gutted – I’m forever reading and I’m certainly not picky as to the content – I’ll cheerfully sit on the netty for a good twenty minutes reading the back of the bog cleaner, but nothing took our fancy. Bookshops are a swizz anyway, they’re full of people who all desperately want to look at the low-rent stuff like JK Rowling and Stephen King, but instead feel the need to stand there stroking their facepubes and nodding at a book about the sewing trends of 1900s’ Liechtenstein. I, hand-on-heart, heard a lass say to her boyfriend (using both of those syllables exceptionally generously) that ‘would he really want a cookbook with pictures?’. She spat out the ‘…with pictures’ bit like he’d picked up a book about how best to chargrill newborn babies. Oh fuck off. Fuck off with your look-at-me hair and the same ‘unique and individual’ tattoo style that I’ve seen on countless other mouthbreathers clattering out of Newcastle University. So pretentious. I almost spat out my organic lapsang souchong into the section on Armenian cooking.

Perhaps that was what put me in such a fettle that we left without any books. We cheered ourselves up by making a quick stopover on the way home to look close-up at the giant golfball up on the moors. This thing:

Cloudy_Crags_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1497819

We (my sister and I) used to ask my parents what it was every time we were taken on our bi-monthly trip to Seahouses to eat chips, have the back of our legs slapped and play in the arcade. We were never told, so it’s always been a mystery to me. To be fair, my parents were probably tired of us telling them to floor it down ‘the bumpy road’ (which Paul and I did – the DS3 was in the air so long someone came out of the boot with a trolley of cigarettes and perfume) or asking where we were going. Their reply to that question was always ‘there and back to see how far it is’. How infuriating. Anyway, it’s an RAF listening station or something. Naturally, being keen explorers, we managed to find a little road which, after many ignored signs, took us all the way to the entrance. However, naturally, being cowardly British people, we didn’t want to cause any fuss by asking the armed guard what the deal was, so we promptly span the car around and thundered back to the main road. And, remember, we’d just cleaned the car. BASTARDS.

Anyway christ man, I said a quick entry, and I’ve spent 700 words telling you about a trip to a bookshop. I’m such a tart.

Tonight’s recipe is tandoori chicken, served with onion rice and roasted romanesco. Romanesco is that pretty vegetable that looks like a crazy science experiment but you can swap it out easily enough for broccoli or cauliflower. Roasting any veg in spices makes it tasty. FACT.

tandoori chicken slimming world

to make tandoori chicken, you’ll need:

  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • 1/2 red onion, chopped
  • 2 chicken breasts (remember, you can get loads of chicken as part of our meat deal! CLICK HERE)
  • 150g fat-free greek style yoghurt
  • 1/2 inch piece of ginger, grated
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1/3 tsp garam masala
  • 1/3 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp chilli powder
  • pinch of turmeric

for the rice:

  • the other half of the red onion
  • enough basmati rice to fill your belly
  • handful of frozen peas
  • pinch of turmeric

for the romanesco:

  • one large romanesco
  • pinch of mustard seeds, cumin, salt, pepper, garam masala
  • thumb sized knob of ginger
  • few squirts of olive oil spray

to make tandoori chicken, then:

  • FOR THE RICE: cook the onion, throw the peas into the same pan and add a bit of turmeric – cook your rice at the same time, then mix it all together
  • FOR THE ROMANESCO: chop it up into little florets, put on an oven tray, squirt with a bit of oil (syn it if you want, but we’re talking less than a syn), cover with spices, shake, and bake in the oven for thirty minutes or so at 180 degrees
  • FOR THE TANDOORI CHICKEN: mix together the lemon juice and paprika
  • cut three slashes into each chicken breast and place in a large, shallow dish
  • pour the juice mixture over the chicken, add the chopped onion and toss well to combine, and set aside
  • meanwhile, mix together the yoghurt, ginger, garlic, garam masala, cumin, chilli powder and turmeric
  • mix together the mixture with the chicken and toss well to coat, leave to marinade for at least an hour, but as we all know, the longer the better
  • when you’re ready to roll, preheat the grill to medium high and cook the chicken until charred and no pink meat remains, turning halfway through

Done! I’m going to have to really work on this ‘quick post’ business, aren’t I?

J

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October 3, 2015

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

bang bang chicken – sort of

Just a recipe post tonight (remember we promised you eighty five recipes before Christmas, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let you down) (can’t you have comfort eating and blaming me, can we?). Doctor Who is already waiting to be watched, though I’ve managed to pause the TV on an especially filthy moment from Strictly Come Dancing. Here’s a wee fact for you – I’ve never seen more than five minutes of that show. I can’t bear dancing – either dancing myself or watching others – and the idea of watching someone who was a market inspector in Eastenders in the nineties cha-cha-chaing doesn’t set my blood pumping. Strictly Come Dancing? Strictly Fuck Off. 

So, slimming world style bang bang chicken then. Ours didn’t turn out exactly right – it’s supposed to be more of a glaze as opposed to the gonorrheah-esque ‘sauce’ that appears in the photo below. It’s tasty, though.

bang bang chicken

to make slimming world bang bang chicken, you’ll need:

and to make slimming world bang bang chicken, you should:

  • in a small bowl, mix together the yoghurt, sriracha, rice vinegar, paprika and onion powder with 2 tbsp of water (the water is needed to thin the sauce so it makes a shiny glaze rather than a creamy mixture – as ours did!) and set aside
  • in another bowl, mix together the egg and milk
  • in yet another shallow dish, mix together the flour, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, garlic and basil
  • spread the chicken out onto a clean tea towel and pat dry
  • in small batches dip the chicken into the egg mixture and then the breadcrumbs, and set aside on a plate
  • heat a large saucepan over a medium high heat and spray with a little firelight
  • cook the chicken until golden
  • place the cooked chicken into a large bowl and pour the sauce mixture over the top – toss well to coat
  • serve with rice and peas and sprinkle some spring onions on top – oh how classy!

Easy. I know 97% of you won’t share this but the 3% of those with a heart will!!!!111111

J

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September 8, 2015

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low syn, pork, pork joints, recipe card, rice

cuban mojito pork with pineapple salsa

Firstly let me apologise for any spelling errors that may arise during this post – we have finally unpacked our super shiny iMac and I’m not used to the tiny keyboard. I feel it is made for delicate, straw-like fingers to dance over, not having my hairy sausage digits pummel away at it like a sailor applying lip gloss to a £10 hooker. WOW there’s a sentence you didn’t expect.

We bought the Mac because we are pretentious, shallow bastards it is a lot easier to edit the blog photos on, which means you better hurry along and buy a billion copies of my book to pay for the fucker. It wasn’t hard to win Paul round – he has such a love of polished metal and smooth edges that I’m surprised he isn’t dryhumping the Micra on the side. But everything about using a Mac is different from a Windows computer. Even navigating using this tiny mouse is proving a bloody chore, yes it’s fair enough taking away the buttons and relying on me using gestures but so far the only gesture I’ve managed is calling it a dick and scratching my foot with it.

In fact, it almost looks like a sex toy, all slick and polished – but it would be a boring person’s sex toy, something slipped into a pastel handbag and wheeled out between  accountancy seminars at various Days Inn across the country. It would be called something yawnsome like ‘Pleasure Max’ or ‘Orb’. Amateurs. Everyone knows a good sex toy needs to be tapped into the National Grid and come with an instruction manual on DVD, called something like ‘The Ripper’ or ‘Uvula-nudga’. Anyway. One thing I do like is how sharp everything looks – it’s in 5k, which is apparently like HD but even better. Even better than 4k. Great, now when I watch Jeremy Kyle on catch-up I’ll actually be able to see the sheen of smugness that he has in every pore. I just hope the ultra high definition doesn’t turn online pornography (a healthy part of any modern marriage) into a disturbingly accurate affair – god knows bumholes aren’t pretty to look at in soft-focus, let alone splayed in billions of colours and filling the screen like a flattened sea anenome.

The Mac does look good in our new living room, and the good news is that we’re almost finished with decorating. We’ve got someone coming around to hang our artwork on the wall, fix the TV to the wall and various other little odds and sods, someone coming around to fix the alarm and then finally, the house is our own and we don’t have to make small-talk with anyone but the cats every again. Yesterday was a painful case in point – we had a chap around to install new blinds throughout and because I’d responded to his question of ‘How do you like them hung’ with ‘Well’, Paul retired me to the kitchen to research recipes.

What this actually meant was I got to eavesdrop on Paul making small-talk and the good news is that he’s even worse than me at it. Clearly both Paul and the blinds man were hard of hearing because every sentence by one of them was met with a ‘pardon’ from the other, then an ‘EH’, then Paul clearly doing that thing where he hasn’t heard a word of what was said but is too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it. At one point, he answered the question ‘What do you do for a living’ with ‘absolute junkies’ and that killed the conversation dead. Like the good husband that I am, I just spent the two hours laughing into my fist and trying not to fart too loudly.

One thing we’ve learned from all of this decorating is that buying furniture is a bloody chore. We can’t buy stuff in shops because we’re too common for the posh shops and too posh for B&M, so we’re stuck buying things online, which is fine to a point until you order what you think is a cushion and you get a 7ft beanbag delivered. I mean it looks nice enough but work don’t half raise their eyebrows when they have to hoick that into the lift. We’ve bought most of our new stuff from made.com which has been a revelation, but we’ve tried shopping local for all the accessories and bits and bobs. What a waste of time. Since when did it become acceptable to half-arsedly rub a bit of sandpaper over a shitty chest of drawers from IKEA and call it vintage or even worse, distressed. Distressed? I certainly was, I could barely stop the tears. There’s a shop near us absolutely rammed full of the sort of trinkets and sculptures you’d imagine someone who has the word ‘healer’ in their job-title to have littering their house and it is quite genuinely one of the worst places I’ve ever been to. And I’ve been to Southend, remember. (I’m joking, before I get any barely-understandable voicemails left). Who decides that what they really need for their house is a friggin’ incense burner made from a rusty tin and a feeling of malaise? 

My mother, god love her, looks a bit of chintz and tat, saying it makes a home – well, that’s one gene that didn’t make it down the line to me, I can tell you. For a woman of normal, reasonable taste, she refused for all of my teenage life to throw away what I consider to be the ugliest statue I’ve ever seen. It was a grinning monkey dressed as a waiter holding a tray. It looked to all the world like the final thing a demented mind might see before the hands of hell grabbed your ankle. I dreamed of kicking it down the stairs or accidentally setting fire to it (I’m not sure how well stone would burn in a Hotpoint oven but fuck me I longed for the chance to try) but my mother was fair attached to it. A quick look online suggests I can buy one for around £150, which might actually be money well spent if it meant I could fulfil a fantasy. I note you can buy a similar statue in the shape of a rooster – that would certainly be more suited to our house, given how much we’re fans of large cocks in our bedroom, but still.

Mother, if you’re reading this, it really is your only decorating faux-pas.

Tonight’s recipe then. As part of Musclefood’s generous care package, we were given some of their pork loin steaks to try. I struggle with pork, I always think that unless it is done really well, you might as well chew your arm. It’s what I imagine human flesh to taste like. Nevertheless, these steaks looked juicy and plump, just how we liked them. You can buy Musclefood’s pork steaks right here along with all their other marvellous meats. It’ll open in a new tab, don’t worry. I know I might sound like a corporate shill but I promise you, if they tasted like farts and nothingness, I’d tell you. As it is, they’re thick as a sadist’s slipper and juicier than a happy orange. Or something. Actually thinking about it, they’re no more expensive for pork than Tesco, so you’ll be reet. Take a look!

A bit of research was done as to what we can cook with them and Paul came up with a recipe for ‘Cuban Mojito pork’. The only thing I associate with Cuba, because I always revert lazily to stereotypes, is cigars. They’re about the only thing I occasionally miss about smoking. Before I joined my current job, I almost took up a job managing a cigar and pipe shop in Newcastle. How different my life could have been, dispensing cherry tobacco to whiskery old buggers and burning my eyebrows with the cigar lighters. 

Paul and I used to be members of a mail order cigar club that would send out a variety of different cigars every month – I always remember one month they sent a cigar that looked like a bloody roll of carpet – I could barely get it in my mouth, and let me tell you, that’s a problem I almost never have. It took about ten minutes to light the bugger (I had to use the grill function on the oven) and it was enjoyable for approximately sixteen seconds before the emphysema kicked in. There’s something inherently butch about cigars, well, decent cigars – mincing along with a Café Crème  that you’ve lit with a novelty lighter shaped like a phallus doesn’t quite have the same gravitas. 

Oh, if you’re wondering how this is mojito, well, I dunno. It has mint in it. There’s no alcohol in it, so if you’re shaking your way through this blog entry in the hope of getting a fix, have yourself a morning gin and a packet of Polos and get a grip.

cuban mojito pork

to make cuban mojito pork, you’re gonna need:

  • 1 tbsp olive oil (6 syns)
  • 1 tbsp orange zest
  • 150ml of orange juice (we use Tropicano 50/50, which is 1 syn per 100ml) (1.5 syns)
  • 50g coriander leaves  (a good handful)
  • 5g mint leaves  (about 8 big leaves)
  • 8 garlic cloves
  • 2 tsp dried oregano
  • 2 tsp cumin
  • salt and pepper
  • pack of pork steaks

to make cuban mojito pork, you should:

  • add all of the ingredients (except the pork, salt and pepper) into a food processor and pulse until everything is finely chopped into a nice green paste that you definitely wouldn’t like oozing out of any hole on your body
  • if you don’t have a food processor simply chop the coriander and mint, and grate the garlic and mix together
  • pour the mixture a into a sandwich bag or sealed container, add the pork and mix everything together
  • leave for a few hours, or overnight in the fridge
  • when ready to cook, preheat the oven to 220 degrees
  • remove the pork from the mixture and discard the remaining marinade (you’ll actually lose a few syns this way, hence I’m only putting this down as 1.5 syns each)
  • place the pork onto a rack over a baking tray and add salt and pepper, just a pinch of each mind
  • roast the pork for around twenty minutes until it is lightly browned
  • reduce the heat to 190 degrees and cook for another ten minutes
  • transfer the meat onto a chopping board, cover with foil and let it rest for twenty minutes – don’t worry if it’s black – that’s intentional!
  • serve with plain rice and pineapple salsa.

hang on, pineapple salsa? shit-a-doo, forgot to give you that recipe. OK, you’ll need:

  • a few rings of fresh pineapple (use the rest in a fruit salad)
  • two ripe tomatoes
  • half an onion, chopped
  • handful of coriander leaves
  • one green chilli
  • 1/2tsp of cumin
  • 1/2tsp of salt to taste
  • 1 minced garlic clove

to make pineapple salsa, you’ll need to:

  • chop everything into uniform small cubes
  • mix
  • put in your mouth
  • enjoy
  • turn into poo

Easy!

Fuck me ragged, that was a long entry, was it not? I spoil you.

J

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September 6, 2015

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beef, chinese, diced beef, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, rice, steak

Mongolian beef

Firstly, big welcome to all the new subscribers! I’ve noticed one hell of a spike over the weekend – good to see you all! I hope you’re fans of knob gags and decent food, because that’s what you’ll be getting. Something I keep meaning to mention – if you leave a comment and I don’t reply or it doesn’t appear immediately, don’t worry, I’ve seen it – I’m just not at my desk to reply to it! But I always get around to it and because I’m an arrogant lover, I like hearing from you all. So, you know…

Here, can we all agree that the silly woman in that bloody Oral B advert can fuck right off with her ‘go pro with my toothpaste’ schtick? It’s been a long time since an advert annoyed me so. I can’t decide if it’s because of the way she delivers her lines like one of those gap-yah knobbers who inflect every syllable upwards like they’re asking questions, or whether it’s because we’re supposed to give the shiniest of shites about her dentist appointment? Perhaps it’s the fact SHE HAS NO FUCKING TOOTHPASTE ON HER BRUSH WHEN SHE’S BRUSHING HER TEETH. Plus the toothpaste must have one hell of an anaesthetic in it given she seems to paralyse one side of her face after brushing, the smug twatapotamus that she is. Anyway.

Today’s been the first quiet day in a long while, hence you’re getting a blog post. Yesterday we had to have our electrician around as an emergency because the bathroom lights (installed three years ago) had been merrily trying to set the house on fire. Drama! That’s all fixed, but I could have done without him knocking on the door at 9am (instead of the agreed 10.30am) as it meant I had to go from fast-asleep to fresh-faced within twenty seconds. Those days are behind me – I look like I’ve fallen face-first into a fire for a good half hour in the morning until I’ve freshened up with a shower and four tankards of coffee.

Lucky I didn’t have morning glory, though I suppose could have given him somewhere to hang his cabling. He barrelled into the bathroom before I had a chance to check whether Paul had left one of his trademark ‘freshly-ploughed field’ skidders on the toilet, so I just went back to bed and left Paul to deal with any potential embarrassment. We’ve had top luck with all of our ‘tradespeople’ so far, luckily. Certainly no-one has felt they’ve needed to do the whole ‘TITS AND FOOTBALL’ chatter that never washes with us, although I did manage to embarrass myself with the joiner who has been fitting out our wardrobes by asking him if he had wood. I should have just committed and leered at him instead of letting the tops of my ears go red.

So today we’ve had a lie-in – well, Paul did, I got woken up by one of the cats who, yet again, decided that the very first thing I needed to see when I woke up was her puckered bumhole glaring at me as she fussed about on the duvet. It’s not fair, Paul would sleep through a gas explosion whereas I wake up if someone sighs in Darlington. I reckon Sola knows that and decided that 9am was when she wanted her food, so I needed to be up. Ah well. After two hours of me making increasingly loud noises in the kitchen, Paul rolled out of bed and we were on our way to the cat and dog shelter.

Regular readers will know that Paul and I regularly walk dogs at our local cat and dog shelter, Brysons. It’s an easy way to get a bit of body magic and the dogs bloody love it. Brysons do amazing work with so little funding so we’re happy to help, plus we had a bucketload of extra donated food that my work had put in for, so all was great. We were given this little beauty:

tansie

Aww. I’m not a fan of small dogs – especially yappy breeds – but she was adorable, even if I did pick her up for a photo only for her to lick so excitedly at my face that her tongue actually went into my mouth. I don’t know who came off worse in that situation frankly, but if the bitch doesn’t buy me some flowers and arrange a second date I’ll be fizzing.

After the dog was walked, we decided (against better judgement) to have a spin out in the car and go to Dalton Park, which is a local outlet centre. We apparently didn’t learn our lesson from our jaunt to Royal Quays, which was incredibly disappointing (link opens in a new window). We need some new shoes, shorts and shirts before we go to Corsica, and apparently there is a Cotton Traders there which is suitable for our vast frames.

Well, honestly. What a heap of shite. For one thing, it was absolutely rammed to the point where we were struggling to park – and this was at 3.30pm on a Sunday afternoon. Who the hell wakes up on a Sunday and decides that what they really want to do on their day off is look around an M&S outlet centre, buy a factory-seconds bag of Turkish Delight and enjoy a sun-warmed fly-buzzed potato in Spud-u-Like? I was immediately seething at the temerity of everyone else for bringing their bloody children along. Shopping should be a pleasurable experience and not feel like I’m on Total Wipeout trying to reach the tills with screaming children snottily orbiting my ankles. BAH. Still, I spotted a ‘The Works’.

I love The Works, it’s like someone created a load of nonsense books for a bet and put them out to see if they’d sell. Crotcheting the Norfolk Broads with Wincey Willis? The Better Sex Guide with the late Wendy Richards? Painting with Mist? Absolute tut! That said, we somehow managed to spend £50 on yet more cookbooks that will languish on our shelves unread and unloved until we have a fit and decide to donate them to charity. I swear we keep our local Scope exceptionally well-stocked for books, no wonder the lady who runs the shop drives a Mercedes and has a Radley bag which I BET someone donated. Scandal!

The lady behind the counter at The Works decided that no, putting eight hardback books into seperate bags was an entirely silly idea and really we would best be able to manage by putting all the books into one carrier bag and then quadruple-bagging it, meaning I had to struggle around the bloody shopping arcade like Sisyphus, trying desperately to mask my hard breathing and tomato face. Great fun. 

We did pop into Sports Direct for roughly fifteen seconds which was fourteen seconds longer than we needed to be reminded of why we never venture in there. It was awash – nay, it was crawling – with the slackjawed masses you see in the paper for shoplifting buying themselves new accessories to match their grey sweatpants.  Men shouldn’t be allowed to wear those grey sweatpants that hug every wrinkle and vein, it removes all the mystery for Paul and I as gay men, like knowing your Christmas present in advance. 

We ducked next door into the Adidas outlet and asked (well, no, interrupted the chat about football between him and a co-worker) the first member of staff we saw whether they had any size 12 trainers in stock. Well jesus, you’d think we’d asked him why sheep don’t shrink in the rain, he looked so dumbfounded. It’s not the most unusual of questions to ask in a fucking shoe-shop but hey, clearly when God was handing out brains he was off getting a second helping of mouth, so that was that. We gave up at this point and went home, stopping for a consolation McDonalds on the way home. I know I know, but if you won’t tell Margaret, nor will we.

Tell you what though, if you’re itching to tell Margaret anything, you could give her the recipe for this bloody lovely Mongolian beef.

mongolian beef

We served it on instant rice, for shame, with broccoli on the side, but the star of the show really is the beef – sticky, salty and delicious. 

to make Mongolian beef, you’ll need: 

  • 450g beef steak, sliced thinly – now you can buy decent enough stuff from Tesco, but remember, we’re big fans of Musclefood and you can buy stir fry strips of extra lean beef from there that are perfect for this dish by clicking here)
  • 25g corn flour (4.5 syns)
  • ½ tsp grated ginger (remember to put it in the bloody freezer after, don’t be buying new ginger every time!)
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced (use a microplane grater for your garlic and ginger and your fingers won’t smell so bad – buy one from Amazon for £9)
  • 120ml low sodium soy sauce (seriously now, use low sodium because otherwise it’s gonna be too salty and bad for your ticker)
  • 25g brown sugar (5 syns) (worth it – makes it sticky – this makes enough for four) (don’t bloody use sweetener, it won’t work)
  • ¾ tsp chilli pepper flakes
  • 3 spring onions, sliced (remember – leave an inch or so of root and then pot them into water – the onions will grow again!)

to make Mongolian beef, you oughta:

  • place the beef onto a clean, dry tea towel (or kitchen roll) in a single layer and pat dry – you want it drier than a nun’s gusset
  • add the meat to a bowl and sprinkle over the corn flour – toss (the flour) until evenly coated
  • heat a little oil / frylight in a large pan over a medium high heat
  • add the garlic and ginger and stir for a few minutes until it is nicely coloured
  • add the soy sauce, brown sugar, red pepper flakes and 120ml water to the pan and cook the mixture for about two minutes to thicken, then pour into a jug and set aside
  • heat the pan to high, add a little more frylight / oil  and cook the beef until browned on all sides
  • pour the sauce back into the pan and cook until the meat is thick, shiny and just waiting to be slid into your mouth
  • add the spring onions, reserving some to garnish, stir and serve on rice with a bit of onion on top

That’s Mongolian beef. IT’S JUST THAT EASY.

Until next time, lovers.

J

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August 31, 2015

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, pork, pork mince, recipe card, rice, sauces

sweet and sour pork meatballs

James is busy trying to be all macho with his dad putting together our new utility room but there’s no manly way to hold a handheld Dyson or use a microfibre cloth. So tonight’s post comes from me (Paul). Sorry about that.

Blimey. What a day. I knew there was something the matter with us when we starting planning our day at IKEA. ON A BASTARD BANK HOLIDAY. IKEA is pure hell at the best of times – one of these places that makes you think you’re going to have a wonderful day bouncing about on sofa cushions and bean bags and being one big giggling family with a hot dog and an ice cream at the end, when the reality is actually you spending one floor staring intensely into the back of someone’s head because they’re walking far too slowly, and the second floor wanting to just die because you’re SICK OF THIS SHIT ALREADY. So, against our better judgement, that’s what we did today.

But with a difference.

After having the Ikea experience on multiple occasions for big projects (like the kitchen) we’ve eventually got this all down to a tee. So, down to the second, we had the whole day planned out that minimised any interaction with slow-walking, gormless members of the public, ordered a new living room set, refunded a dodgy kitchen door (that I accidentally drilled through – eeehwhatamilike) and threw in a breakfast for good measure. Well, you need that energy if you’re going to mutter ‘FUCKING MOVE’ under your breath every ten seconds.

We arrived on the dot, just as the revolving door started to move and slyly minced our way through all the shortcuts to get straight to the restaurant – the most important part of the day. Once James had wiped away his tears after noticing they’d gotten rid of the potato cake (NOOOOOOOOOOOO) we were straight to the BESTÅ stand to fuck around on some crappy little computer bunging cupboards on walls. If you’ve ever fancied having a sob into some KUNTÅ sidetable go ahead and try and plan your living room on their online planner. It’s what I imagine it’d be like to be Stephen Hawking on speed trying to describe the texture of Quark on that little Atari he’s got strapped to his chair. Stressful isn’t the word. You might as well etch your design it into your arm with a compass and present it the warehouse staff.

I’d fantasised about at least ten ways of dispatching multiple rough sorts on the way to the lighting section. I can never understand the mentality of people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to just stop in the middle of an aisle when there’s practically a stampede of guffawing Geordies rampaging towards you (not unlike that scene in the Lion King but with a lot more polyester and teenage pregnancies). I bet those people are also those that pull their trolley across in a supermarket like a barrier. I’m far too polite (cowardly) though to ever say anything. I just stare at them like I’m trying to burn through them with laser-beam eyes. James isn’t quite so composed and will just barge through shouting at people to ‘MOVE!’, like a hairy snow plough. He almost ran someone off the road simply for having the temerity of having a mauve car.

Fortunately though the whole day was a success, despite all the eejits and lack of an ice cream at the end and we got everything sorted. They even managed to refund us the drawer and door that I ballsed up without a receipt. God love ‘em. As a thank you I was sure to press the green smiley face button that measures people’s happiness as many times as I could. I’d like to think it made a difference.

One way we always make our IKEA experience a little more fun is to watch out for any couples that are eyeing up a particular piece of furniture. If either of them makes a muttering that they quite like it we’ll always come up behind them and then start slagging it off. ‘Oh that’s fucking gopping’, or, “Oh lord, I’ve never seen anything as tacky as THAT in my life’. They’ll soon walk off and have a tiff a little further on. Oh we’re such terrors.

But that’s enough yak. In the spirit all things IKEA we’ve managed to bring together a delicious meatball recipe that’ll cure any takeaway pangs you have… here’s our take on Sweet & Sour Pork Meatballs.

IMG_1935

to make our sweet and sour pork meatballs, you’ll need:

for the meatballs:

  • 500g pork mince
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 2 spring onions, finely sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ½ salt
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • half a pineapple, cut into small chunks (0.25cm)

for the sweet and sour sauce:

  • 1 red onion, finely sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic minded
  • ½ large red pepper, sliced
  • ½ green pepper, sliced
  • 3 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • half a pineapple, cut into chunks (halve again into two separate portions)
  • 115g tomato puree
  • 1 tbsp cornflour (1 syn)
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp honey (5 syns)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp pepper

and this is how you make it:

  • preheat your oven to 180°c and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper
  • heat a small saucepan over a medium heat and add a little oil
  • add the minced garlic and spring onions and cook for 4-5 minutes until softened and slightly browned. set aside
  • in a large bowl mix together the mince, carrot, peppers, egg, basil, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, pineapple pieces and the spring onions
  • roll the mixture into even sized balls – squeezing out the liquid if you need to – don’t worry if it seems too wet (fnar), they’ll keep their shape if you squeeze enough liquid out (fnar)
  • place the meatballs onto the baking sheet and spray with a little Frylight
  • cook for about thirty minutes or until golden brown
  • whilst the meatballs are cooking you can make the fruity sauce
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and add a little oil
  • add the sliced red onion and garlic and stir frequently until the onion is slightly caramelised
  • add the peppers one of the pineapple portions and cook for a few minutes until softened
  • add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and keep cooking, stirring frequently
  • using a sieve, crush down the other half of the pineapple chunks portion into a jug to get the juice
  • add the cornflour to the pineapple juice and stir until dissolved
  • add the tomato paste, honey, cider vinegar, lemon juice and 120ml water to the jug and mix well
  • pour this mixture into the frying pan, bring to a boil and simmer for about ten minutes until the mixture thickens
  • serve the meatballs and pour the sauce over the top

Please don’t be put off by the long ingredient list – you’ll probably have a lot of it already in your cupboards and if not, go get some! It’ll all be dead cheap and useful to you for future recipes. Also, don’t be put off by the syn values – yes, this uses honey and cornflour but divided by four this only comes in at 1.5 syns, which is nothing compared to a takeaway. And, it’ll finally give you a reason to use that pineapple you keep buying and leaving to rot on your windowsill…

Technically, because you’re squeezing the juice out of a quarter of a pineapple you could syn it if you’re anal about such things. We didn’t because we take a more common sense approach to tweaking. You can if you wish – I reckon it’d be about half a syn’s worth (if that).

Smaklig måltid!

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July 23, 2015

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beef, chinese, diced beef, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, rice, steak

beef in a honey and black pepper sauce

Remember me twittering on about our fancy lights? We’ve went and bought a new gadget – it’s a NEST smoke alarm. We need a new smoke alarm – we’ve been using our old one to prop the dishwasher up, and given the amount of vodka and aftershave in our house, it’s too risky not to have a working system. Now, this isn’t just a smoke alarm. It’s fancy. Real fancy. Our house is becoming the gadget city we always wanted, see. This smoke alarm hooks into my WiFi and will alert me if the batteries are low or if it detects smoke. And how does it do this? IT BLOODY WELL TALKS. Admittedly it’s in a plummy ‘don’t be scared, but you’re about to be cremated’ voice, whereas if I’m about to die, I want a fucking air-raid siren, not Joanna Lumley whispering me to the grave. If I’m honest, we only bought it because it a) works with our thermostat (it’ll thoughtfully turn the boiler off if it’s pumping out more poisonous smoke than the shelter outside a Mecca Bingo at the interlude) and b) it glows. It will momentarily glow green when you shut all the lights off so you know it works. It’ll glow red if you’re on fire. It’ll even glow white for 20 seconds in the hallway if you get up for a piss, which is handy if you’re like us and your bathroom lights are so intense that your helmet blisters as you urinate. 

Speaking of bright, they say you should always look on the bright side of life. I generally do. My days aren’t often filled with wonder and drama but they’re always littered with tiny moments of joy or laughter, and that’s a nice way to live. For example, I take great solace in, every day at one attosecond past five’o’clock, I hurtle out of my work office, straight to my car on the 11th floor of the car-park, throw ‘The Final Countdown’ onto Spotify and hurtle down the ramps as fast I can so that as my car pulls out of the car-park, ‘IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN’ plays. There’s just enough time to do it as long as no-one gets in my way. That said, more often than enough, I’ll get stuck behind someone who’s as thick as a submarine door and is trying to operate the barrier by inserting her Boots Advantage card and calling for help on a box of Lillets. But it’s still good fun – a simple pleasure, but a pleasure none the less. I mean, that happiness normally dissipates a second later as I’m stuck behind some numpty in a BMW who thinks the indicator stalks are somewhere to rest her ankles when she’s got a client in the back-seat.

The reason I mentioned happiness is because I actually got myself upset earlier – and you need to realise, I have a heart of solid black granite. The only time I get upset is when Paul eats more than half of the Ben and Jerry’s. GOD-DAMN IT. No, I was reading an article on the BBC News (link) about a young Iraqi gay lad who was forced to leave his country simply because he was gay. His own dad told him that he would be happy for ISIS to chuck him off a tall building to his death, or burn him alive, simply because of his biological leanings. I couldn’t comprehend it. Men are being sent into the desert with their arseholes glued shut so that they die an incredibly painful death just because they like a bit of cock. All very distressing and we shouldn’t linger on the details.

What it did make me think though was how bloody lucky I am / we are to live in a country where being gay just isn’t a problem. Not really, not on the scale it once was. The fact that I can live with my husband in the middle of Menopauseville, Northumberland and no-one really bats an eye is testament to how far we’ve come. My nana, god bless her, told all the old wrinklies at the WI about my wedding and challenged anyone who had a problem with it. She literally took all comments on her whiskery chin. I can’t personally remember the last time I experienced any sort of homophobia.

Sure, there’s the well-meant but incredibly offensive comments – I was told once by a colleague that ‘my religion doesn’t agree with gays, but don’t worry, I can tolerate you’ – like I was a bad smell, or an ingrown toenail. I resisted the urge to snip back that I don’t agree with grown men in frocks putting their holy willies into little boy’s bottoms, but what’s the use. You also get a lot of people asking ‘how it works’, like there is a hidden user guide (a gayde?) that explains all the mechanics (when he pushes, so do you), but that’s fair enough. I don’t mind answering questions as long as you’re comfortable with vivid descriptions and use of the term santorum. It’s a given now that if I’m filling out a form, I’ll be able to choose ‘Civil Partnered’ or ‘Married’ as opposed to ‘Living with Partner’, which was simply a euphemism for being a chutney-ferret.

Actually, the most devastating thing about filling out forms these days is that I’ve gone up an age-bracket – I now fall into the 30-34 category. Sniff. Might as well order myself some piss-knickers now. Sigh.

iPad running slowly now, clearly don’t feel with my sass. So let me chuck you a recipe like the decadent bitch that I am.

beef in honey and black pepper sauce

you’ll need these (serves two fatties):

  • 2 tbsp honey (5 syns)
  • 3 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce
  • 2 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 600g dried noodles
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 400g diced beef
  • 1 broccoli, cut into florets
  • half a cabbage head, chopped

 

and you’ll need to do this

  • soak/cook the noodles according to the instructions
  • put a pan of water on and boil the broccoli and cabbage for about 5 minutes, drain and set aside.
  • honey,  soy sauce, fish sauce, mirin and black pepper gets whisked together next, and set aside
  • into a pan goes a little oil or Frylight and heat until it starts to smoke
  • next, add the onion and reduce the heat immediately to medium-high
  • cook for about a minute
  • throw in the beef and cook it however you like it (we always prefer a bit of pink meat…)
  • empty the pan of the beef and onion and set aside
  • return the pan to the heat
  • final stage now – add the sauce mixture to the pan and thicken into a syrup
  • add the broccoli and cabbage to the pan, and stir
  • chuck in the noodles and the beef to the pan and mix well
  • enjoy!

Mmmm!

J

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July 10, 2015

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beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, lunch, recipe card, rice, steak, syn free

philly cheesesteak stuffed peppers

Sorry sorry, don’t worry, we’re extending American week for a few days to make up for the gaps. See I went to see Terminator Genisys last night after a cheeky Nandos. IT WASN’T CHEEKY. IT WASN’T COCK-A-DOODIE CHEEKY AT ALL. Sorry but I can’t abide the use of the word cheeky. Having a glass of warm prosecco in a beer garden surrounded by people with red shoulders is not cheeky. An ice-cream amongst the dog turds on the beach isn’t cheeky. Jack Whitehall is cheeky. My arse is literally cheeky. STOP FUCKING SAYING CHEEKY AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH MAN.

So yes, Terminator. It was excellent, in a ‘pop your brain in your bag and enjoy the show’ sort of way. Lots of explosions, people melting, ridiculous action scenes and Arnold Schwarzenegger still looking like a varnished lamp-post with mumps. I really like him as an actor, he doesn’t give a shit and we can all respect that. If you read the snotty “official” reviews you’d think it was about as much fun as watching a beloved dog being put down in front of a crying child, but as long as you don’t go in expecting Peer bloody Gynt you’ll be tickety boo.

I also managed to swizz an extra scoop of Ben & Jerry’s (SYNNED) by telling the charming lady behind the till it was my birthday. I don’t think she fell for it, but rather just wanted me to move away from the counter and stop going ‘aaaah’ and ‘uuuum’ like an old inkjet printer.

Anyway that’s quite enough from me tonight. Remember this week is my time off! Today’s American entry is super long and the recipe is RIGHT at the bottom, so scroll scroll scroll. I’d apologise, but a gay man never apologies for length. If you want to buy the rest of the book. I’m still #1, woohoo, it’s right here. Go! 

 

Day 21 and 22 – lots of bits and pieces

OK, I’m going to cheat a little on these days. I didn’t take any notes and we didn’t go anywhere ‘special’, just mopped up the activities on International Drive and lazed about in the hotel. Remember, we’d been going non-stop for a good twenty days – we needed to rest! To make things easier for me, I’m going to write it as ‘one day’ where we travelled from one activity to the next. We did this, just spread over two days with lots of sleeping and honeymoon-happiness in between. So, this is going to be a long one… cue wavy lines of retrospective…

Breakfast first, and Sizzler here we come. You can’t fault somewhere where you can get an all-you-can-eat heart attack and all the British Fury (in the form of the Daily Mail) you could ever need for less than $10 a head. We should confess – if something is all you can eat, it’s all we can do not to push ourselves past the point of no return. I think it’s because I’m so tight with money that I like to feel I’m getting my money’s worth. That said, it still repulses me to see all the American land-cows loading their plate with chunks of brownies, rashers of bacon and those tiny twiglet-like sausages all in one go. I mean, at least separate the items that simply don’t belong together. I’ve seen people come back from the buffet with plates piled high like a Frank Gehry building, walking slowly lest a stray bit of food drops to the floor. There’s no need! Mind you, I’m up on my soapbox, I’m still the one who smuggles a few pastries out under my moobs to snack on later.

Go-Karting next. There’s a go-karting er…track up by Wet ‘n’ Wild, and we had passed it many a time thinking we would never be able to squeeze our voluptuous rears into the karts. This time round, we didn’t care, and in no time at all were squashed into the kart with ne’ry a seatbelt and a strong smell of petrol in our nostrils. The man in charge was the double of Kenan from Kenan and Kel and this led to me being late off the starting line whilst I wildly gesticulated to Paul to try and point this out. Ah well. I still managed to lap him. Tell you what mind, the amount of blue smoke that must have been pouring out the back of the karts as they chugged Paul and I up the hills must have been terrific. I remember being on holiday in Ayia Napa (before it went all WKD) with my family about ten years ago  – my parents hired two scooters to take us all over the island. My sister and mother jumped on one scooter and zipped merrily right up the steep hill to the hotel, whereas the scooter holding me and my dad struggled for about ten minutes at 2mph, pumping out more blue smoke than the smoking shelter outside Mecca Bingo. Bless. I’ve never been lithe.

Go-karting is good fun though for a few minutes, so might be worth a look. One of the things I want to do when I return is to learn to drive – if this is a benchmark of my driving then bring it on! We moved on, over the road to Tiki Volcano Golf Course, or whatever the devil it is called.

When we first came to Orlando, this was all we would do of an evening – crazy golf, eat, sleep. We remembered this course being amazing but I reckon it’s more down to rose-coloured nostalgia as it was…crap. Everything was chipped, sodden or broken. We still enjoyed the challenging holes (story of my life) but the volcano never went off, even when I cheated at the end and used Paul to distract the attendant whilst I reached through the netting and stuck my ball in the hole for the ‘Free Game and Volcano Erupt’. Damn it! Perhaps it was karma for me slicing my ball into the car-park with an overzealous swing…I rather thought the ball was making a bid for freedom but hey. I bet the course isn’t there when we go back in 2013, though. I won, and we left.

We had lunch at Dennys, which was fun. Our waiter was a pleasant enough chap but super-mega-fat, and he had a distractingly sweaty forehead, to the point where I didn’t bother adding salt to my fries because I was sure enough he’d manage to drench them for me wobbling his way from the kitchen to our table. The food wasn’t great, but you don’t go to Dennys expecting to have your mouth blown off with flavour, after all. It’s another one of those ‘meals’ we can cross off our list.

Now, what can two young lads do on International Drive with bulging wallets and a keen eye for history? That’s right! Titanic: The Experience. A wee bit of background – we love Titanic (the movie), it’s so wonderfully cheesy and after both of us suffering it everytime there was a ‘rainy day’ at school, we can quote big old chunks of the movie at each other. For example, on the plane to Orlando, we managed to shoehorn in a ‘Typical, the first class passengers bring their dogs down here to take a shite’ reference when we descended down the mystical stairs from the bubble to look at those wedged into economy. So yes! We love Titanic. In we went.

For those who don’t know, Titanic: The Experience offers visitors an interactive tour around artefacts from the Titanic and tells the story of the doomed ship through a mixture of actors and props. We were given tickets detailing our new job on Titanic and we were told we could find out whether we lived or died at the end. Drama! Everyone knows that fat people survive maritime disasters – we simply bob in the water until we’re hoisted out, our bulbous ankles kicking in the wind. Either that or we beach ourselves and need to be hosed down with gravy. We were greeted by Danny Devito in a smoking jacket who spent the next twenty minutes telling us about the dimensions of the ship and all those who perished then started the tour. In and out of various rooms we went to be shown artefacts not from Titanic but rather her sister ship. Not sure I get the point of this. I understand it is a bit of a swim down to the Titanic but you can’t advertise saying you’ll ‘see bits of Titanic’ then get them in from another ship! Good lord. Half of the tour seemed to enjoy the tour – but – ‘not the better half’. Arf!

Towards the end, things got surreal – you are led into a room to find out whether you lived or died (we both lived – told you!) and then watched a short movie comprising of all the dramatic bits from the movie, all accompanied by O Fortuna (the music used when the judges slither out on The X-Factor). It’s so crass! The only thing missing was Celine Dion warbling away through her 50p-shaped face.

Two minor diversions. As we were bored and a little disappointed by the whole thing, we decided on a bit of mischief, and upon finding the air-conditioning panel hidden away behind a wall, we dropped the building temperature down to a chilly 10 degrees. What can I say? I wanted to do my bit to add to the realism and I’m simply too buxom to carry off a Molly Brown outfit. The other diversion? Redneck fighting. Yep, in a museum devoted to the many victims of Titanic, a fattychops on a mobility scooter started arguing with his equally well-furnished wife about how bored they were. Awesome. They got wheeled out, to a chorus of our tuts and ‘Well I Never’ – missing out on the chance to ‘feel the chill of a real iceberg’.

Yeah – the chill. The final part of this thrilling experience was the chance to experience a real-life iceberg. Exciting! However, all was not what it seemed. We were shepherded into a room to find the iceberg, which was a slab of ice stuck to a box. Disappointment was etched on everyone’s face. I could have stayed at home and opened our freezer door to replicate this experience – granted there wasn’t a box of Crispy Pancakes wedged in the Orlando version, but we would have got the jist. Bah!  All in all, we did not love Titanic: The Experience. I can only assume they’re using ‘Experience’ in the sense that having a smear test is an experience. Not pleasurable and (I imagine) quite cold.  To be honest, if I wanted to spend an hour wandering around a museum devoted to an old wreck full of seamen, I’d break into Katie Price’s house. Yep, I went there.

From one chilling experience to another – the Ice Bar. We had walked past this place many times and always said ‘let’s give it a try’ but when you’ve got theme parks and wonder to take in, the prospect of spending thirty minutes in a freezer with hooray-henrys didn’t rank up there amongst the must-does. Ah well – with time on our hands, we paid the six million dollar entry fee and we given a charming insulated jacket to wear. They don’t suit fatties – I ended up looking like a hot water tank. Nevermind – in we went. Let me say one thing – don’t bloody bother. Yes, it looks good – everything is truly made from ice, from the bar to the chairs, but that’s it. There’s no atmosphere, no excitement, no music (I think) and the ‘fire’ is a collection of twinkly Christmas tree lights. You’re given a free shot of vodka which was nice enough, but I’m Geordie – frozen wastelands don’t excite me, I have to drive past Gateshead every other day. If you want an extra drink, it’s a case of sawing off an arm and a leg to pay for it. Whilst this is doubtless easier as you’re numb from the cold, it isn’t worth it. I don’t think we stayed for our allotted thirty minutes, and we were out of there before we were brayed to death by the chortling poshos. That made me laugh actually – the place was full of people hooting and neighing thinking they were somewhere special, but come on love, you’re in an air-conditioner unit at the back end of International Drive.

Over the road from the Ice Bar is another thing that we have always wanted to do, but always ruled out on safety grounds – the I-Ride Helicopter Tours. I’d love to go in a helicopter but there’s something about the way these guys seem to throw their helicopters to the ground that worries me – like they get rid of one party, chuck another one and away they go – where are the safety checks! The rational side of me knows that a pilot wouldn’t take the risk but still. Or maybe this is all a smokescreen because I was terrified we’d get on board and a light would light up on the dashboard saying ‘Maximum Weight Threshold Reached’ and we’d have to wobble out, shamefaced. Next time we’ll do a proper tour from Disney, methinks. Once I’m slender.

As an aside, I make a lot of jokes about our weight, but we’re not actually that fat. I WAS hugely fat at one point – that, coupled with my long hair, meant I looked like Meat Loaf. I decided to cut my hair (well, I set fire to it lighting a cigarette off a gas hob, which may have accelerated my decision) and lose some weight by joining Slimming World. I lost over seven stone and was in the running for Slimming World: Man of the Year too! However, I lost out when I was asked how I had lost the weight and replied ‘Heroin’. That answer, plus the fact that one of my competitors had a sob-story about being too fat to get onto an operating table, meant I didn’t win. The sods! Since those days, we’ve always been chunky rather than out-and-out fat, and I don’t take my weight seriously. So ignore our self-deprecation, we’ve happy really.

Another golf course – this time, Congo River Golf again. Told you this was our favourite, and despite having done it not so long since, we had to do it again as we hadn’t completed the mini-task of finding things that they offer. We had the course pretty much to ourselves, which led to a few glamorous photos being taken, including a recreation of our famous picture (in our house) where Paul looks bloody horrible – sat staring into the camera with a scrunched up face and smoke billowing out of his nostrils. I think he looks like Albert Steptoe. Undeterred, I got the original photo blown up and framed and I put it in the hallway everytime I know we have an engineer or a gasman coming round. To be fair, Paul counters this by putting up a framed picture of me in a wheelchair at Disney with a scabby leg. I didn’t need the wheelchair, but I was being lazy and wanted to try it out for an hour. I know I know, but we’ve all thought about it. If it makes it better, I didn’t use it to get onto any rides. We thought about stopping at the George and Dragon again just to ram home our dislike of it, but it seemed busy (I think there was a match on) and I hadn’t had my hepatitis vaccinations, we decided against it, and wandered a little further up International Drive in search of somewhere to eat.

We went back to Sweet Tomatoes for our evening meal. I know, we had such a crap experience in there the first time but we went for two reasons – one, we needed some more vitamins, and two, if Andre the Giant (Bumhole) was there, we were hoping he might say something. Sadly, he wasn’t, and we actually had a lovely meal. As I spent most of the last time frothing at the gob and moaning, we could actually enjoy the meal this time around, and I can’t recommend it enough to those who want something other than deep-fried animal and potatoes. Would a Sweet Tomatoes franchise work in the UK I wonder? A salad buffet is a simple idea and all we have over here is the lacklustre fare given at the likes of Pizza Hut where their idea of salad dressing is to sneeze on the lettuce. I guess we don’t have the weather for it. Anyway – we had a good mixed salad (with raw broccoli – oh my yes!), some black bean soup, and an oil-drum full of ice-cream. Delicious! This time around we left a good tip and came away happy.

The final evening at the Four Points was spent washing and ironing all of our clothes, looking out the window at the derelict lots over the road and watching lots of nonsense on the TV. We were tinged by sadness a little – after all, this was now the last leg of the holiday, and the prospect of going home was coming ever closer. That said, we were to finish on a high – Harry Potter, the Universal parks and best of all – Hard Rock Hotel!

A quick review of the Four Points – we thought it was terrific. It’s an unusual hotel which seems to attract an eclectic mix of people – the amount of ‘dashing’ pilots coming through reception would be enough to warrant taking an extra HRT pill amongst the older women, whereas the amount of rich Mexicans coming back with their Mall at Millenia bags may mean you’ll need ear-plugs. The rooms are large, the hallways well-appointed, and the whole hotel polished and clean. It would have been nicer to get a room higher up for the views but as it stood, we could still watch Rip Ride Rockit barrel around at Universal from our room, which helped build the anticipation. The only downsides that I can think of? The pool is TINY. Yes – if you’re a family, I’d think twice about this if you have water-babies, as it really is only big enough for about 10 people. Perhaps I’m biased as the last time I took a swim in it, I was getting eyed up (and that’s not me being arrogant, she was making it blatant) by this well..alright, I’ll be mean, facially-challenged porker. To be fair to her, I’m not sure she was eyeing me up in retrospect – she did have one eye going to the shop and one eye coming back with the change, so who knows. The other downer was the tiny laundry facilities but who comes on holiday to worry about laundry? Not this mincer! Anyway. Phew. I’m knackered. That’s all folks! Universal love tomorrow!

philly cheesesteak stuffed peppers

to make philli cheesesteak stuffed peppers, you’ll need

  • 600g beef steak
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • ¼ tsp black pepper
  • 4 peppers
  • 100g brown rice
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 80g reduced fat mozarella (65g is one HEA)
  • handful of chopped chives

and you’ll need to do this:

  • rinse the rice under cold water to get all dust off
  • bring 325ml cold water to the boil in a small pan
  • add the rice to the boiling water, reduce heat, cover the pan and simmer for 45 minutes (keep an eye, but this is brown rice so it’s got to be boiled in magma until your soul departs)
  • with about 20 minutes left on the rice, rub the beef with the garlic, onion powder and black pepper and cook the beef steak to however you like it – generally with beef we just wipe its arse and wave a match over it and it’s done
  • leave the meat to rest for five minutes
  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • slice the meat into thin, bitesize chunks and place in a bowl to rest a little more
  • cut the top off the peppers and scoop out the seeds
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and cook the onions in a little oil until golden brown and translucent
  • add the onions to the same bowl as the steak
  • using a sieve squeeze as much water as you can out of the rice
  • add the rice to the bowl with the steak and onions
  • tear up the mozarella into small pieces and mix half into the steak mixture, keeping the other half aside
  • place the four peppers into a baking dish and spoon the mixture evenly into each one
  • top with the remaining mozzarella
  • bake in the oven for about 20 minutes
  • top with the chopped chives

We served with tenderstem broccoli. This makes enough mixture easily for four big peppers and then plenty left over, so I reckon you could make six or seven.

J

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May 13, 2015

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, rice

cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake

I’m writing in a bit of a huff.

See, I’m going to have to go to the dentist. A year or so ago I cracked my back tooth chewing on a hairbrush, which sounds fabulously fun but it hurt like hell. My dentist took one look, took it out and sent me on my way, with only a stiff jaw and a modest NHS bill to accompany me. All good. However, one of my wisdom teeth has clearly seen the gap left by my departed tooth and thought to himself that he would really rather like to move in. And it hurts. Not the tooth but rather a tiny bit of gum that I keep catching with my teeth as I shut my mouth. How can it heal if I keep biting into the bloody thing? It’s bad enough that I have to sit with my mouth slightly open at all times like a pensioner stuck on her Sudoku, but now I have to go to the dentist to fix it? Bah.

It’s not that I’m scared of dentists…well, no, that’s a fib. I am, but who isn’t, you can’t get a kick out of a man pumping a tool in and out of your gob and finishing it off with a squirt of something acidic to set your teeth on edge. OR CAN YOU. No. Oddly, the drill I can deal with because it doesn’t hurt, but when they use that little air-sprayer thingy I just want to bite his nipple off as he hangs over me in his dainty tunic. My skin is crawling up my back as we speak. I know where the unease about my dentist comes from – I had to have a tooth out when I was little after I (again!) cracked one eating nuts. I swear my teeth are made of glass. Anyway, the dentist I had back then clearly hated life, children and smiles, so set about me with all the care and precision one might elect to us knocking down a brick wall. I remember even now his pock-marked face being within kissing distance from mine, his bloodshot eyes darting around and spittle-flecked lips pursed as he yanked the tooth out. It wouldn’t come, so naturally he decided to put his entire bodyweight onto me, using his elbow in my chest as leverage. Fair enough, he got the tooth in the end, but he had to stop after forty minutes to have his brow mopped with a towel and Lucozade brought in and I had a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. No wonder I’m scared, though I’m not scared of much else. Rollercoasters? High as you like. Water? Chuck me in. Enclosed spaces? Pfft. As long as I don’t get stuck and have to be ‘popped out’ of the tight space by a team of firemen, I’ll be fine. That said…

Spiders bother us both, though Paul more than me. We once ran screaming from our Quayside flat when a spider the size of a small motorcar came trundling out from under the fridge. We were on the cusp of checking into a hotel when we realised our wallets were still in the flat, and without those, we’d be screwed. So we dutifully went back in only to see it, bold as brass, sitting in the middle of the laminate flooring. I swear if my vision had been good enough I would have been able to see his tiny little finger sticking up at me in defiance. Action was needed, so, screaming all the while, Paul ran to the balcony doors and flung them open as I dashed (I was skinny back then, I could dash) into the little office, got the giant (expensive) John Lewis waste-paper bin, emptied the contents on the floor, ran back into the living room (still screaming), trapped the little fucker and promptly ran to the balcony and threw him, the bin and almost myself over the bloody edge. I was surprised the little bastard didn’t have a parachute and a distress flare he was that big. Good times. The bin disappeared down onto a road somewhere and when we picked it up the next morning, an electric bus had run over it. Serves me right eh.

Paul’s also scared of all the boring things like being buried alive, and he doesn’t like the idea of drowning or burning, which seems an altogether reasonable way to live, whereas all my fears are quite silly. For one, I’m scared of dams. Terrified. Even looking at the word makes my teeth jitter a bit (which doesn’t help my sore gum). It’s not the fear of them breaking – oh no – it’s just how alien and unsettling they look. They have no business being there. Having a parent who works for the local water company means I have an unflinching and comprehensive knowledge of all the creepy things and secret pipes hidden just below the ground, ready to suck you away into oblivion. He once told me that a family crashed their car into a reservoir and the suction on an intake pipe held all the doors shut so they couldn’t get out. Yikes. Sewers too. Pennywise I could handle, but the sluice gate at the end would have me sucking on Kalms like there was no tomorrow.

I’m also genuinely frightened of irregular holes. Har-de-har not bumholes, no, but irregular clusters of holes sets me on edge. If I have a crumpet, I have to have it upside down otherwise I can’t eat it, and sponges make me feel uneasy if I look at them. I feel like I could have myself a story in Chat magazine surrounded by sponges, biting my nails, but alas I saw someone has beaten me to it. Things like sieves are alright because the holes are organised and clean, but I reckon I’m probably the only person ever to almost faint looking at Swiss cheese. Ah, aren’t phobias daft.

Tell you what’s not daft though – tonight’s evening meal idea, which uses up all the scraggly old broccoli you have lying around.

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chicken, broccoli and rice bake

REMEMBER: this serves eight! It uses four HEAs and half a HEB. But the meal freezes nicely and will do for lunches and makes a good whack. The recipes doesn’t make a gloopy dish, it actually cooks right down and is more sticky than anything else. tasty!

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you will need:

370g uncooked long grain rice, 500ml chicken stock, 500ml skimmed milk, 250ml water, 1 bay leaf, sage rosemary and thyme leaves (or dried), 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 25g plain flour (4.5 syns), 250g fat free greek yoghurt, ½ tsp chili powder, 2 chicken breasts (cooked and chopped), 90g Gruyere cheese (or cheddar) (3 x HEA), 40g light feta cheese, salt and pepper, one head of broccoli, half of a wholemeal roll (as breadcrumbs) (half a HEB), handful of cheddar (HEA).

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you should:

  • measure out and rinse the rice. set aside
  • cook the chicken breasts and shred like they’re incriminating documents
  • pour the chicken stock, milk, water, bay leaf and sprigs of herbs into a saucepan over a medium heat for a few minutes then put to one side
  • spray a large frying pan with Frylight and cook the onions for a few minutes until softened
  • add the flour and coat the onions well
  • add the liquid mixture to the frying pan and stir well until there are no lumps
  • reduce the heat to low and add the yoghurt, chicken, chili powder and cheese and stir continuously until well mixed and the cheese has melted
  • transfer the mixture into a large casserole dish with a tight lid (or cover with foil) and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes
  • meanwhile, chop the broccoli into small florets – the smaller the better
  • stir the broccoli into the casserole dish along with the rice and mix well
  • re-cover, and bake for another 15 minutes
  • sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a little leftover cheese and place under a medium grill for just a few minutes until golden brown, texture like sun

ENJOY ENJOY.

By the way, I know we have the last two days of 7777 week to publish – that’ll probably be this weekend!

J

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April 26, 2015

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lunch, pork, pork mince, recipe card, rice, syn free

cabbage rolls

First of all, today’s recipe is cabbage rolls, which couldn’t sound less appetising if they tried. Plus, I tried to take a decent photo of them, but they invariably look like something you’d see hanging off a tramp’s foot in the summer. They tasted wonderful though and, well, it’s something different! And here, it’s a Romanian recipe so that gives us an excuse to dust off the old flagmaker, rattle off this banner and declare twochubbycubs’ European Tour back on. OK so it may not be weekly but we’re only two men.

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But first, today. We’re mulling over whether or not to move house. I know, the people in the street would be bereft not seeing my knob hanging out of the front of my boxers as I absent-mindedly put the bins out on a Monday, but since we had some strange lads in our back passage a few days ago (not invited through Grindr, either, unusually) it’s made us a bit unsettled. We don’t think they were trying to break in, because there was an open window into our bedroom (though admittedly the flashing neon red light was turned off at the time) and they didn’t do anything…but still. It makes you feel uneasy. Though saying that, had they climbed in through the bedroom window, they would have fallen onto our bed – and all I’m saying is I wouldn’t have needed Tony Martin’s shotgun to make them bleed from behind. The little smackrats. This is a nice part of the world!

So yes, we bundled into the car and decided to go have a look at some of the new estates that are being build, and to take the opportunity to view the showhomes. Well, they were awful. It didn’t help that the chap on the front desk took one look at us – physically looked us up and down, mind you, taking in our dog-walking trainers, shaved heads and George jeans – and clearly decided we were there to steal the copper wiring and good silver. His opening gambit was that ‘these houses are very difficult to get’ and that we’d need excellent credit to get an appropriate mortgage. The cheeky, oily little oik – we own our house outright with no mortgage and I’ve got better credit than the Queen. Paul hasn’t, because he bought a stereo from Kays catalogue on tick and then forgot all about it over ten years ago, but there you go. Always trust a Geordie with money. We spent ten minutes looking around and then left with a disdainful look at Captain Acne behind the desk and told him it was far too small and there were altogether too many Audis on the estate.

We didn’t manage to leave quietly though as I managed to back the car over a child’s football that had been discarded in the middle of the road, resulting in an surprisingly loud bang echoing around the estate which probably sounded like the car backfiring, which I suppose didn’t help our image. We trundled over to The Parents and spent half an hour oohing and aahing at how well my nephew is coming along (I make him sound like a tomato plant) – without so much as a cup of tea mind, mother – and the highlight of that being when he pointed at Paul and called him Uncle Fatty. The kid has style!

After my parents came IKEA, and good lord IKEA is stressful at the best of times but even more so when you’re breaking the rules and going anti-clockwise with seemingly all of Gateshead’s unwashed masses bearing down on you, it’s hell on Earth. Especially because when the weather is warm enough not to leave an icicle on your tit, everyone decides to throw on a scraggy t-shirt exposing their Neapolitan-ice-cream skin to the sun – blistered red from being out under a SKOL umbrella all afternoon, yellow from nicotine and jaundice, streaky brown wherever the Poundstretcher Fake-Bake took hold. 

And the stopping! I know everyone needs a moment to sniff their eighty-dozen orange-scented KLIT tea-lights but for goodness sake, do it to the side. I genuinely think there should be two lanes in places like this – one of those who can glide with purpose and one for those dolts who walk like they have a ball-bearing stuck in their socks. I’m being glib, I appreciate that people have disabilities and of course, they’re exempt, but if you can’t move quickly simply because you’re too much of a clot to remember to put one foot in front of the other in a reasonably rhythmic pattern, then just do everyone a favour and stay at home and have someone else pick up your ÖRGI bookshelf. Bastards. I didn’t even get a bloody hot-dog at the end because I couldn’t bear the thought of having my face stripped by someone’s eye-watering B.O for ten minutes in the queue whilst I had nothing to do than count the skin tags on their neck.

Hark listen to me, you’d think I was Adonis. But Paul says I am, so there.

Costco next – and if you think IKEA is bad, then Costco is even worse. Here the aforementioned numpties are armed with a trolley big enough to fit a hot-tub and enough baked beans to keep a Toby Carvery going for a financial quarter. Oh and it gets worse – it was bloody tasting day, which meant crowds of people all pushing and pulling at one another with their 4×4 trolleys in a nugatory attempt to get their cracked hands on a postage stamp of lasagne or a bit of brioche you could start a fire with. We bought our usual forty tins of tomato puree, sack of pasta and catering jar of gherkins, which were crashed through the till by the cashier with all the care and panache you’d expect from someone who had tattooed her eyelashes on, and we were on our way to the final test – Tesco at 3.40pm on a Sunday afternoon.

Which, remarkably, was a fairly sedate experience, despite me shrieking at Paul ‘STOP PLAYING WITH YOURSELF THERE ARE KIDS ABOUT’ when he was adjusting his belt in the reductions aisle. I’m surprised he had room, the usual ballaches were waiting to tackle the poor Tesco lackey to the floor for their 35p breadbuns. I genuinely can’t stand greed of this sort – but I’ve rambled on about these shitgibbons before who fill their trolley because they can, not because they need to. Nobody needs fifteen discount cauliflowers at 4pm on a Sunday. Take one, and fuck off.

So that was today. Goodness me.

Today’s recipe then: cabbage rolls!

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to make cabbage rolls you will need:

1 medium white cabbage, 160g cooked rice, 1 egg (beaten), 60ml skimmed milk, half an onion (chopped), 500g pork mince, ½ tsp pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, 500ml passata, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tbsp lemon juice, ½ tsp black pepper, a good dollop of sauerkraut (optional but delicious but by gaw it’ll make your bum windy)

to make cabbage rolls you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (gas mark 4)
  • remove the core from the head of the cabbage
  • boil the whole head of cabbage for ten minutes
  • drain the cabbage and leave to cool
  • in a large bowl mix together the cooked rice, mince egg, milk, chopped onion, crushed garlic and pepper
  • peel away 12 or so leaves from the cabbage – they need to be a good size but the smaller ones will still be okay, just use less for the next step. Shake off any excess water, nobody loves a moist cabbage
  • scoop roughly two-tablespoons worth of the mince and rice mixture and plop into the centre of a cabbage leaf
  • fold the bottom ends up and the sides to make a small parcel
  • place roll seam-side down into a baking dish that has been sprayed with a little FryLight if you’re a tasteless buffoon or a drop of oil if you’re sensible
  • in a separate bowl mix together the passata, tinned tomatoes, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over the cabbage rolls
  • cover the dish with tin foil and bake for an hour
  • serve with anything you like, but we had new potatoes because they were the easiest thing to grab

Enjoy!