Another breakfast recipe in the form of ham and egg breakfast bites – these couldn’t be simpler to make and the recipe will take no time at all to type, so let me rattle something else off. I was in the bath earlier (what can I say, I thought I’d make an effort for work tomorrow and, after hours of hard gardening, my bollock-consommé was particularly strong) when I happened across a chapter in Bill Bryson’s newest book where he listed ten of his irrational dislikes. First thought? The cheeky faced bearded bugger had clearly read my previous blog entry and nicked the idea. Second thought? As if a wonder like Bill Bryson would read my blog. I love Bill – my favourite author in the world. If I can get to 60 and be as witty and verbose as him, I’ll be a happy, better-bearded man. My previous irrational dislikes can be found here, but here’s a few more…
spitting in public
Spitting should never happen. It’s a vile process – unless you’ve ingested some kind of poison, there’s no reason to blow great chunks of lungbutter out onto the street. You’ll see people walking along spitting away merrily like they’ve got a mouthful of cat hair and it’s all I can do not to reach across and set their face on fire. Apparently I’m the one in the wrong if I do that. Pfft. I’m tempted to add spitting in private onto the list but I can think of at least one situation where someone may prefer to spit rather than swallow. Amateurs. I gargle.
baby on board stickers
The most pointless, self-indulgent little sticker known to man, other than the picture of Alan Shearer grinning his big smug smile in the 1997 football sticker album. I can’t bear Alan Shearer – I’ve met him, and he’s a boring, self-aggrandising arse. Anyway, what’s the point of these baby on board stickers? Do you think I was planning to drive onto your backseat and through your headrests until I saw your pink Comic Sans sticker of shite and decided against it? Some say it’s for the fire brigade to know immediately in a crash that there’s a baby somewhere in the crushed metal. I dare say that if an accident was so severe that the fire brigade couldn’t spot your baby mewling away in the back then chances are no-one is walking away from it anyway.
mothers using their pushchairs to stop traffic
Oddly specific one this. I drive to work down the same street every day, which coincides with when the parents are taking their adorable children to school. I say adorable children like one might say adorable terminal illness or adorable mass genocide. More often than not, some vacant-looking, red-eyed pyjama-clad monstrosity will, instead of crossing at the many safe crossing points, just push her pushchair into the road to try and cross. Nevermind teaching your kid how to cross the road safely, nevermind almost causing an accident because you’re too selfish to cross in the right place, you just get out there. Bah!
self-appointed traffic wardens who wear cameras
This is a difficult one. I absolutely understand why cyclists and cars have those cameras which record the road in front of you – there’s that many bell-ends on the road to justify it. But what makes me seethe is when you overtake a cyclist, leave plenty of room, indicate back in and they STILL tap their helmet and wag their fingers like I’m a dog who has shat on the carpet. You know that if you watch it back on Youtube later it’ll be accompanied by someone’s thin reedy voice reading out your registration and the sticky noise of someone masturbating furiously.
dings
I swear, everything in my house dings and dongs and bleeps at me. Put something on the fancy induction hob? It’ll do a little chirrup. Our smoke alarm system occasionally decides to launch a test with a brash American woman saying ‘THIS IS JUST A TEST’ – presumably a test to see how much blood can pour from my ears before I dismantle her. Our fridge beeps if we leave the door open for more than a second and it blares if the ice-dispenser gets too full or if the freezer is too full. The washing machine beeps each time it reaches a new stage in the cycle. My Wii U flashes when there’s a new notification and my Mac beeps whenever someone leaves us a facebook comment, or an email, or every time Siri has a shite. TwoChubbyCubs Towers is beginning to look and sound like a NASA control room and it vexes me.
people who stir their hot drink like they’re whisking eggs
There’s no need! Just give it a couple of stirs with your spoon and sit the fuck down. It makes my teeth rattle and my blood boil when they go at it like they’re trying to squeeze every last molecule of tea or take the finish off the cup, not least because I have decent Le Creuset cups and I don’t want bloody scratches on them.
stupid comments
Look, 99.9% of comments we get via the blog and facebook are wonderful, funny or useful, but we get some proper humdingers too. No: we won’t explain every facet of the plan to you, we’re not paid and we’re not consultants. Also, don’t have a pop at us if your Tesco in Wolverhampton didn’t have any 5% mince, it’s not our ruddy fault. And if you’re the lady with sand in her vag because I mentioned having to get up constantly in a cinema to let someone nip outside to the toilet and you took that as a full-scale assault on the incontinent, well, kiss my boobs. I knew the person I was getting up for and she’s only verbally incontinent.
takeaway menus
Whenever we are on a diet, three things happen: Dominos have their 50% off week, Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream goes to £2 a tub and we start getting a tsunami of takeaway leaflets through the door – all with the same dodgy photos of their food downloaded from google images, all with the same balloon fonts and all with the worst spelling mistakes. I like my nan (or rather I did, bless her, she’s dead now) but the thought of a free hot and spicy nan with my korma puts me right off. These will be the same type of places where you get a) tins of pop rather than cans of coke and b) roughly fingered for a free kebab.
air-fresheners
I might have touched on this before with my many moans about scented bloody candles and their pointless bloody names (A Child’s Fucking Wish, am I right?) but hell, it bears repeating. I’m yet to smell an air-freshener that doesn’t make my nose crinkle. They’re universally awful. Fair enough, if you spend decent money you can buy a decent candle with a reasonable smell (something like The White Company) but otherwise, open a bloody window. Those little hissy air-fresheners in public loos that smell ostensibly of pine? A load of bollocks! I’m not transported to a crisp and verdant forest with a tiny hiss, no, instead it smells like I’ve shit in a grass-clippings bin.
That’s 10, I could go on. But let’s call it a day. Ham and egg breakfast bites, then:
to make ham and egg breakfast bites, you’ll need (making enough for twelve, just scale back down if you want less)
a pack of decent wafer thin ham
12 large eggs
a tin of baked beans
salt and pepper
a muffin tin greased with a few squirts of olive oil or some Frylight
to make ham and egg breakfast bites, you should:
layer a few slices of ham over each hole of the muffin tin and push in, so a ‘cup’ forms in each hole
put a small spoonful of beans in there
gently, crack an egg over the top – you might find it easier to crack an egg into a glass and pour it on, othewise you’re going to leave slimy residue all over the worktop and your partner will think you’ve been paying lip service to yourself in the kitchen, you filthy bugger
crack a bit of pepper on top if you like and put in the oven
cook for around 25 minutes, though you might like to let them cook a bit longer to firm them up
once they’re done, let them cool – they’ll keep in a sealed box in the fridge for a couple of days
Yep, you’re getting two recipes for the price of one with this post for loaded bacon and cheese wedges and philly cheese steak sliders. We’re really spoiling you lately. Least you could do is show willing and buy my ruddy book or a meat-box! Haha.
I’m in a bit of a huff tonight, if I’m honest. Came home to find a big bill waiting for me on the doormat. Normally I never say no to bending down for a Big Bill but this one was our council tax and it’s fucking £1700! What the hell for? They’ve turned off our street lights, driving on the roads feels like I’m playing Moon Patrol and they only pick up the bins when there is a full solar eclipse. There’s more chance of me getting pregnant than getting a book that doesn’t have Katie Price on the front cover out of our local library and if you fancy a stroll in the park, best get used to the dogshit and litter billowing around your feet like the shittiest version of the Crystal Dome. I don’t know why they don’t push all the dog-sausages into the fucking potholes in the road, at least that way I wouldn’t get out of the car with my neck canted a forty-five degree angle from being clattered off the roof of my car.
MOAN MOAN MOAN. But seriously, it would be a bloody welcome change if they said oh James, you work hard, here, enjoy your wage to do whatever you want with it, instead of grasping it out of my cold, cruel hands. I’m paying into a pension and being sensible by saving, but what’s the use? So when I get to seventy the Government can take away my house and stick me in a care home? Fuck that. We’ve already decided that when we get to seventy, if we’re both alive and capable of getting lob-ons, the house is getting sold and we’re getting two lithe twenty year olds to rub our bunions and change our oxygen tanks. BAH.
I might start a go-fund-me accompanied by a picture of Paul looking sadly into middle-distance and footage of me looking through photo albums. Maybe.
Can I just take a second to remind you of something? We have a list of every recipe we’ve EVER done right here. I worry that some people don’t know where it is. Use it, it’ll serve you well!
Anyway look, let’s get to the real reason you’re here. These recipes make enough for four. Each recipe is syn free if you use the appropriate HEAs and HEBs. If you have both of them at the same time, syn the cheese on the wedges – 40g is one HEA or 6 syns, so at most it’ll be 1.5 syns per portion. It’s syn free if you don’t combine the burgers and wedges. I’m just being a slut.
to make loaded bacon and cheese wedges, you’re going to need:
‘wet’ potatoes, like Maris Piper, as many as you dare
a few squirts of olive oil spray (0.5 syn for 7 squirts)
one beef oxo cube
packet of bacon medallions (we used half a pack from our Musclefood freezer filler, because it doesn’t disappear to nowt – proper tasty bacon)
spring onions
lighter mature cheese (40g or one HEA)
optional: hot sauce if you want it
to make loaded bacon and cheese wedges, you should:
cut each potato in half, then cut into each half in a ‘v’ shape, so you’re dividing each half into three triangular wedges – or you know, don’t fuck about and just cut them how you like
tip them into a bowl, sprinkle over the oxo cube and oil, and shake the buggers so they’re coated in a bit of stock cube and oil
put them into an oven for 30 minutes or so to colour and soften
check your wedges – if they’re nearly done, take them out, scatter the bacon and cheese and spring onion over the top, and put back into the oven until the wedges are done and the cheese is crispy and delicious
serve
best get a defibrillator ready, just saying
If you’re looking for something to serve it with, these tiny sliders (fancy word for little ‘burgers’) will do the trick. There’s no speed food on your plate, but fuck it. If you don’t tell Mags, nor will I. This was our treat night after all. Jeez.
to make philly cheese steak sliders, you’ll need:
a big white onion
a big green pepper
one slice of Swiss Gruyere (we buy ours from Waitrose) – 5 syns for a 25g slice, or a HEA
a suitable breadbun for your healthy extra allowance
120ml of beef stock
packet of beef strips (I promise I’m not deliberately over-advertising but we genuinely used our beef strips from our Musclefood freezer filler, and they were tasty as all outdoors)
lots of black pepper
to make philly cheese steak sliders, you should:
cut your onion into decent slices, same with the pepper
soften them in a dot of oil, a few sprays of olive oil or even better, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, or if you’re an imbecile, use Frylight and wreck your pans
once they’re softened, set them aside and throw in the beef, cooking it off and giving it a bit of colour – I use Worcestershire sauce instead of oil because it adds taste
once the meat is browned off, put the stock in plus lots of pepper and whack the heat up, stirring until the stock has cooked off and thickened – give the bottom of the pan a good scrub with your spoon to get all those juices up
assemble your slider – breadbun cut in half, cheese slice, beef strips, peppers and onions
easy!
It doesn’t look terribly exciting but my word these were fantastic.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to perform oral sex in exchange for money. By the time I’ve paid off the council tax I’ll be permanently yawning. 🙁
Long title for what will be a very quick post because damnit, my tea is ready, I have two recipes to post and a weigh-in to report. So let’s wheel out the old knob and see how we’ve done this week…
Oh how cosmopolitan! Classy Paul sent me a text to say ‘Only lost half a pound, but got three pounds of last night’s tea pulling out of the depot as we speak’. It’s always a joy living in this house. We weighed in separately tonight as Paul had to dash home (as much as someone the approximate shape of Saturn can dash) and let the electrician in to fit an outside light in our back garden. See (barely), our local council has taken it upon themselves to tear down the old orange streetlights in our street and replace them with these AWFUL little white LED lamps, which, given how faint and pointless they are, must all be running off the same watch battery. It’s so dark I can look out of the window and see when next door’s TV goes off standby. Actually, that’s a fib, we don’t have immediate neighbours…
…which is lucky, because fuck me is the new light bright. He flicked it on and I half expected Paul to be standing at the fence shaking and bursting into flame like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. Even the cat put a layer of Piz-Buin on before nipping out to shit in the flowerbed – that wasn’t steam coming off her turd, it was smoke. He advised me that we could adjust it if we wanted to but nah, I like to know that if I stumbled home in the dark and lost a contact lens amongst my tomatoes, I could find it in quite literally the blink of an eye. We’ve also had a couple of outdoor sockets fitted, which will just the thing for us to look at occasionally and think about pressure washing the paving stones.
Anyway, the recipes. Let’s start with sizzling rainbow salad, which is really just a colourful salad but with all the goodness and virtue of eating greens taken out and replaced with juicy, delicious cow. If you want to keep it vegetarian that’s fine, but please ask someone to chop for you least your cockle-esque muscles give out. I’m kidding I’m kidding. Please don’t write to me, I won’t read it. I’ll be too busy wiping the cow juice off my chin and cackling wildly. Until I get CJD and Paul has to take me around the back of the house, my legs disco-dancing independently of each other, and push me into a burning pit with a tractor.
to make sizzling rainbow salad, you’ll need:
any steak you like – fillet steak, frying steak, rib-eye steak, miss-steak, Mis-Teeq or Stakeford, I don’t care, as long as it mooed and had children (ouch)
any syn-free noodles
a cucumber, one that if it was a penis, you’d perhaps reach for a dab more Durex Play than you’re used to
a carrot, see above
a few radishes
if you can get them, a candy beetroot and a golden beetroot, if not, regular beetroot
two red chilli peppers
a lime
spring onions
crunchy lettuce of any sort you like
chickpeas from the below recipe
to make sizzling rainbow salad, you should:
cook your noodles
peel and slice the cucumber and carrots into thin ribbons using a potato peeler
very thinly slice the beetroot – I eat it raw, I like the crunch – and I use one of thesemandolins for perfect uniform slices (plus it protects your fingers, you don’t want your piano career ruined by circumcised fingers)
do the same with the radishes
chop the spring onion and chillis
cook your steak however you like and slice it into thin strips – we just used bog-standard steak like this– remember you can add stuff like this on if you buy our freezer-filler-wonder-offer from Musclefood, just add whatever you want as extras into the basket – we cook our steak by getting a pan roaring hot, using worcestershire sauce and pepper instead of oil, quickly cooking it off and serving
assemble in a bowl – noodles, crunchy lettuce, sliced veg, steak, squirt a bit of lime juice over for taste
if you’re making the chickpeas below, scatter them on too for extra crunch
very healthy, I’m sure you will agree
OK, onwards. BEFORE WE START.
We explain what tweaking is right here. Our policy is that it’s better to eat something like this than it is to eat a tube of Pringles. Well no, it’s not better, but it’ll keep the scales happy. Hopefully. Up to you to decide what you want to do. To me, chickpeas are syn free, garlic is syn free, you don’t use enough sprays of the oil to be worth synning it, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to be told off for it. GO.
to make roasted garlic chickpeas, you’ll need:
a bulb of garlic
two big tins of chickpeas
a few squirts of olive oil (which might add up to a syn if you’re lucky, plus I’d hope you’re not going to eat them all)
to make roasted garlic chickpeas, you’ll need:
cut the garlic bulb right through the middle (horizontally left to right rather than straight down the middle) – don’t worry about peeling
sprinkle with a touch of salt
put in a low temperature oven for around half an hour, just to soften the garlic flesh, then scoop out (I just scrunch up the bulb with my hand)
rinse your chickpeas
put them into a bowl with a few squirts of oil, salt, pepper and the softened sticky flesh of the garlic
roll those chickpeas around each other – gently, you’re not panning for bloody gold – but enough to get them coated in some garlic, seasoning and oil
tip out onto a baking tray and bake in a medium oven for around 30-45 minutes, but do keep checking, they can catch quite quickly
eat as a snack or tumbled into salad. Tumbled?! Oh behave James.
You’re here for the popcorn chicken – of course you are. Quite right too, because it’s bloody delicious and has the benefit of not using bloody Smash. But before we get to that, there’s the little problem of getting a New York entry in. As you know, my holiday trip reports are always fairly long, so you might wear out the scroller on your mouse if you’re desperate for the popcorn chicken. Ah well. Send the bill to the good folk at Cry Me A River Inc. and crack on. You’ll find part one of our trip and, if you buy our book, all of our previous holiday reports are there in one place, including Corsica, Ireland and Germany, where I exposed my arse to a whole platform of waiting train passengers. Yes! You can buy that here. By the way – if you’ve already bought the book and enjoyed it, please leave us a review on Amazon – you have no idea how happy that makes me. Not as happy as you buying several copies and giving them out electronically to friends but you know, let’s make do. Let’s head back to New York, then…
twochubbycubs go to New York, part two
After landing at JFK and undergoing the most intimidating entry interview I’ve ever faced (normally I’m not asked many questions prior to anyone admitting me entry, rather just a plea to be gentle and to call them after) (pfft!) (or rather whoooooooo….) (work that out) (jeez, this is a lot of bracketed thoughts), we were on our way. We decided that, rather than paying a billion dollars for a taxi to our hotel, we’d be savvy and streetwise and take the subway, not least because the subway is famous and exciting. I say exciting, there was a TV playing in the station whose main headline was ‘SEVENTH SLEEPING SOUL SLASHED IN SUBWAY’. Now, I’m all for alliteration and sharp headlines, but knife attacks aren’t usually an enticement to travel. Nevertheless, we ploughed on, trying to figure out what ticket we needed to buy for the week to get us from JFK and then afford us travel throughout the network all week. God knows what we bought – I was hustled into buying something in a newsagent by a strident sounding lady who was more weave than woman. The tickets worked in the barrier (after much ‘PUT IT THAT WAY, YOU’VE GOT IT THE WRONG WAY, NO YOU NEED IT PARALLEL TO THE Y-AXIS, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!) and we were on our way. Hooray! At the risk of sounding like a hipster twat, I like to take the subway rather than taxis because I feel it adds to the experience.
Sadly, I was stabbed in the lung and spent the rest of the holiday in an American hospital being shook from my ankles until the coins fell out of my pocket.
I jest. After a couple of transfers and a brief interlude to watch a genuinely crazy man shouting and bawling into a litter-bin, we arrived at 34th Street – Penn Station. I don’t know what had caused the shouting man such ire but by God that bin had infuriated him. I find it remarkable that Paul and I can find our way around any foreign subway system given all we have to practice on up here is the Tyne and Wear Metro, which consists entirely of two lines and spends more time being apologised for than actually going anywhere. I used it briefly for about two months but eventually made it to my destination. Anyway, I digress. We climbed a set of stairs, exited the station and goodness me, what a shock. Everything is so tall. That may seem ridiculous to you, I don’t know, but I hadn’t realised almost every building in the streets would be so many storeys – it creates the illusion of feeling a bit bunkered down – but not claustrophobic. I was expecting the streets to be busy, and they were, but I never felt as though I was in the way – which when you consider that combined Paul and I take up as much room as a modern housing development, is quite something.
Our hotel, the Wyndham New Yorker, was over the road, and we hastened across, taking care to observe the flashing white man (who wouldn’t?) to permitted us to cross. Given my experience with the officers upon entry I didn’t fancy getting banged up for jaywalking, though it didn’t stop anyone else. The crossing was absolutely filled with cars coming from all directions, pedestrians, suitcases, people asking for money and a horse. Not people asking for a horse, rather, just a horse. Naturally. We had picked the New Yorker on a whim – it looked pleasant enough and the location was perfect, but that was the limit of our research. Well, it was delightful. It’s an art-deco hotel, opened in 1930 and not modernised too much – the lifts are grand, the lobby massive, the staff all well-to-do and pleasant and the plumbing clearly hasn’t been touched since the first brick was put down. I’ll touch on that in a moment. We checked in and were directed to our room on the 27th floor. I was sure that meant a penthouse or a decent suite but that was soon dispelled when we got into the lift and realised there were 43 floors. Boooo! We had sent ahead and mentioned it was our anniversary and I’d gone so far to book the room as Professor J Surname rather than plain old Mr, but nope. Ah well. Our room was perfunctory – pleasant, but nothing you’d write home about. You’d have a hard job given there was no writing desk or pens. The TV was small and the bed was so lumpy that I had to check we weren’t lying on top of the previous guests, but it was clean and warm and had an excellent view. We bravely set about emptying our suitcases into the tiny wardrobe (with four coat-hangers – we had to call down for more, I felt so stereotypical) and then immediately shoving everything we could possibly lift into the suitcase. It’s just the done thing to do.
They did do this to the bed though. D’aww. Don’t worry, the romance didn’t last – the sheets looked like a Jackson Pollock within 10 minutes.
I wish I could tell you that we spent the evening out in the glitz and glamour of New York, but, somewhat jet-lagged, we opted to stay in the room watching Wheel of Fortune and eating Jolly Ranchers. We both feel asleep almost immediately and didn’t wake again until 6am the next morning, where I was alarmed to find a half-sucked blue raspberry Jolly Rancher had tumbled out of my sleep-open mouth and into my hair. I’m a classy guy.
So, at 6am in the city that never sleeps, where do you go? I’m ashamed to say we spent a lot of our holiday time doing the really obvious sites, but listen, you can’t go to New York and not take in the obvious. To that end, this whole trip report will be a series of ticks off the list. We started the day right by nipping into the Tick Tock Diner right next to the hotel for a breakfast – I showed British restraint, having only three eggs, corned beef hash, sausages, bacon (it’s not bloody bacon, it looks like grilled hangnails, but nevermind) and toast on the side. My eggs came covered in cheese which should tell you everything you need to know about breakfasting in New York. It was AMAZING. Paul had pancakes – great big lumps of dough and syrup which he seemed remarkably content with. His eyes glazed over, but I reckon that could have been the maple syrup pushing through from the back like shampoo on a sponge. We finished our meal, paid the bill with a slight grimace (I had forgotten it was obligatory to tip over in America – I nearly always do anyway, even in England, but I do so hate how I’m forced to tip) and we were on our way.
First stop – the Statue of Liberty, which immediately set Paul off going ‘I THINKA CAN SEE THE STACHOO OF LIBERTAAY AL-A-READY‘ like that tiny Italian man from Titanic. There were a lot of Titanic quotes on this day. A good friend of mine had recommended I book everything well in advance, so we had tickets booked for Statue Cruises which set off from Battery Park. Once on the island we had a choice of going up to her crown, just into the general minge level or walking around the outside. We had opted for the minge option (I think they call it Pedestal Level) and were very much looking forward to it, so much so that we arrived an hour early. Oops. I entertained myself by going for a poo in the park toilets, which is always a terrifying experience in America as they like to leave a giant gap down the side of the doors plus make the door itself the size of a postage stamp. This is just awful – you end up desperately trying not to make any eye-contact with passing folks as you’re busy pushing brown. I get that it’s to stop cottaging and drug-taking but come on, people like a bit of privacy whilst they poop. Just look!
Actually, that doesn’t quite convey the creepiness. One sec.
Brrr. After a poo each and a good cup of coffee, we noticed our boat was coming in and so made our way through the security check, removing our belt for what would be the first of many, many times throughout this holiday, and dealing with customer service people who hated their jobs and everyone involved in it. I wear this necklace:
and the charming woman on security held it up for everyone to look at and asked me ‘it’s meaning’. I almost said OOHO IT’S A BIT OF VIV WESTWOOD LOVE’ but didn’t. I wear it because I like it, and it’s quite literally the only piece of designer anything I own. I’m too fat for designer clothes and too poor for designer furniture, so I can only have nice jewellery and shoes. And I buy my shoes from the same place I buy my toilet roll, so, you know. I wasn’t expecting to have to justify it to someone who had clearly only just remembered to have a shave that morning. She waved us through. Paul never gets any bother with security and he’s got half a bloody Meccano set keeping his arm together since he gashed it open on a discarded shopping trolley half-submerged in a ditch in Peterborough, or as they like to call it, a ‘child’s play area’. Our boat docked and about ten thousand people appeared from nowhere to disembark, pitching the boat at a perilous angle where I genuinely thought it was going over. Of course it wasn’t, but what’s life without melodrama. We boarded and were on our way in no time at all.
The cruise, such as it is, takes fifteen minutes, which afforded Paul enough time to discover a snack shop and buy us a cup of coffee that had seemingly come fresh from the sun. My lips blistered just taking the lid off the cup. Let me save you some money – if you’re going to New York, unless you’re massively fussed about seeing the statue up close and finding out more about it in the museum, you don’t need to visit the old bird. Take the Staten Island ferry and see it from the water – it’ll cost you next to nothing and you won’t have to push children overboard indulge in a scrum to get on and off the boat. We love a good nosey around a museum though so we were champion, cooing and oohing our way around various cases and replicas of her giant toes. She certainly didn’t have a problem with an ingrown toenail – oh how I envied her. If you’re squeamish, skip the next paragraph. In fact, I’m going to hide the next paragraph so it’s only visible if you highlight it!
I remember once holidaying in France with an ingrown toenail so bad that my toe actually exploded in my trainer on a hot day, showering my sock with pus and a dead nail. The relief I felt though – no sex has ever come close to that feeling. Not quite grossed out enough? I used to let the family dog clean my toe because I was told a dog’s tongue has antiseptic qualities and he seemed to enjoy it! Eee, that’ll be me straight to hell now. Still, he did a great job until he died of advanced sepsis two months later.
I know, gross right? I’m so sorry. Poor Oscar.
We bought a tiny replica of the statue, took a few upskirt pictures of the old bird and then fannied about with the telescopes for a bit. It was a lovely day – warm but springlike and fresh, perfect for the massive wool coat I was wearing. At least I had my magma-esque coffee to cool me off. Then, back onto the boat for a short hop over to Ellis Island, an optional freebie excursion where you can see the famous Immigrant Inspection Station and the housing and suchlike. It was all very interesting indeed but at this point our crippling obesity was beginning to play havoc with our ankles and we needed a good old fashioned sit-down, so we went into the little restuarant and seemingly emptied my wallet in exchange for two club sandwiches the size of my arm. We sat down and immediately regretted it as we had a talker immediately to our left, an octogenarian with a lot to say. We couldn’t ignore him because he seemed lonely. ‘So where you guys from’ was his opening gambit, and when I replied with ‘Newcastle, England’ he took such a gasp of air that I almost gave him his last rites, thinking perhaps an errant crisp had lodged in his windpipe. No, it was just genuine surprise which didn’t subside when I explained it really wasn’t that far and we didn’t row across the Atlantic. He then kept us at the table for a good half hour, clutching my arm every time we made to leave. To be fair, he was actually very interesting and my ability to make small-talk never failed me, so the time flew by, but we did miss our boat back, meaning we had to spend another hour on the tiny island, trying to keep out of view of this old chap. I felt like I was sneaking into America myself.
After Ellis Island we got the boat back over to Battery Park and decided to take a walk over to where the Twin Towers used to be and where the new One World Trade Centre tower now stood. Let me say this – although it is easier to walk to places in New York rather than fannying about on their labyrithine subway system, make sure you gauge the distances before you set off. We ended up with feet like corned beef by the end of the holiday. It’s more interesting though, seeing a city on foot. That’s what I told Paul as he poured blood out of his shoes.
Nothing can be said on the Twin Towers disaster that hasn’t already been said, but I’ll add my own thoughts. It’s always been something abstract – images on the TV or in the papers – and whilst utterly horrific and downright barbaric, I’ve never been able to actually get my head around it. Standing there then in the shadow of the new tower, with the two massive memorial pools in front of us, it actually hit home. Imagining not one but two of these towers falling into the street and the absolute mayhem and terror that would bring, well, we both actually got emotional. You need to understand – the only time I think I’ve seen Paul cry was when I hid his selection box at Christmas or when I clipped a peg onto his bumhair and accidentally nicked his sphincter. You stand at the bottom of this tower and look up and you can’t see the top. Imagine that the other way around and knowing you had to jump down to your death or burn. Horrendous.
We entered the new tower and boarded the lift up to the 102nd floor which was an experience all in itself – 102 floors in less than 60 seconds, with the lifts being made from a 360 degree set of TV screens which model New York in front of you. I’ve done a shit job of explaining that, so here, take a look:
Come on now, that was something special. After leaving the lift, you’re taken to a row of cardboard cut-outs of skyscrapers in a darkened room, upon which a cheesy video about New York was projected. Naturally, being a cynic, I was about to moan to Paul that we’d paid $100 to watch a movie when suddenly everything in front of us rose out of view and was replaced with floor to ceiling glass windows, affording us the most incredible view. My flabber could not have been more gasted. It’s initially very disorientating as you forget you’re so high up until New York is revealed before you like a magician’s trick, but it’s genuinely wonderful. We spent an age walking around taking pictures that we’ll never look at again, like everyone else, before nipping up to the bar for a cocktail.
Are you sitting down? Our two cocktails cost $58. Yes, you could get a glass of tap water but fuck it, we were on holiday and it was money well-spent, although such very strong alcohol combined with the natural swaying of the building leads to a slightly unsettling experience. Here’s a couple of pictures.
The lift down was as fun as the lift going up and let me tell you, we were genuinely impressed with the whole experience. There was no gung-ho over-the-top patriotism like we expected, we weren’t forced to pay extra for stuff time and time again, and the views made it completely worthwhile. I’d recommend this in a heartbeat. We spent half an hour looking around the memorial pools and that’s another thing that seems odd – it’s so quiet. No-one is shouting or running around, just quietly paying respects. Roses are left pushed into people’s names that have been etched into the shiny black marble that surrounds the pools. It’s tasteful and thought-provoking. Not so much for a couple of very prissy knobheads who decided to treat the experience like a fashion show, lying across the memorials, draping their scarves on one another, squealing and clapping and generally being obnoxious dicks (and hell, that’s my job on holiday, surely?). We ruined a good number of their photographs as a petty revenge, walking behind them and into shot with stupid expressions on our faces, until I tired of the game and whispered loudly as we walked past that ‘they should show some fucking respect and stop being selfish boys’. I may not have used the word boys. I might have said something that rhymed with punts. The photographer of the two went squealing over to the other and they stalked off in a huff. Way man. A bit of respect, that’s all.
OK goodness me, we’ve hit the 3000 word mark. Let’s stop there! Popcorn chicken, then…this makes enough for two.
1 tsp of onion powder which you can buy in most supermarkets, trust me
2 tbsp of flour (4 syns)
1 tsp of cajun seasoning or paprika
pinch of salt and pepper
to make baked popcorn chicken, you should:
stick the oven onto 170 degrees and get it warm
cook the quinoa by tipping it into a pan with the stock, bringing to the boil and then covering and simmering for around 15 minutes until the liquid is absorbed – keep an eye on it mind
meanwhile, prepare a sandwich bag with your flour, onion powder, salt and pepper inside, beat your egg in a bowl and cut up your chicken into tiny bites
once the quinoa is done, let it cool for five minutes and then fluff the fuck out of it with a fork
then, begin the assembly – dip the chicken in the egg, then the flour and spice mix, then the quinoa, mashing it onto the chicken
place all your coated chicken pieces on a grease-proof paper lined tray (or frylight it) and bake for fifteen minutes or so
serve with sides of your choice – we went with BBQ beans and chips
if you’re wondering where we got the fancy little chip basket, it was on Amazon – click here!
YES. You could make this with Smash but so what? You could build a house using dildoes and toothpaste, doesn’t mean you should. Follow the recipe and enjoy!
Ah, hello there. Come for the chicken souvlakia recipe? Then please, wait a moment. I’ll get to it. But first, it’s weigh in day, and well, goodness me…
Whilst I’m here, I forgot to post last week’s cockometer too!
I shall make a page of them all on. I find myself thinking of new themes for each knob.
Hooray! 32lb over eight weeks, including the time we put 11lb back on in New York, is good enough for me! Our aim has always been to lose 2lb a week. I get so frustrated when I read comments online where people kvetch and moan about only losing a couple of pounds – that’s the healthy way to do it – slowly and sensibly. I sometimes think Slimming World puts a bit too much emphasis on big losses (like Slimmer of the Week) as it is and it creates disappointment. Mind, my frustration soon builds to sheer eye-popping rage when I see people saying that they’re stuck for ideas on what to cook. You’re using the Internet, the world’s biggest cookbook – it isn’t just used for watching jizz vids and bloody asos.com, you know. I do sometimes think it boils down to laziness – people can’t be arsed to cook but that in itself is a shame, because so many of our recipes for example cook in no time at all. Anyway, no time for soapbox, dinner is almost ready, and I need to post the bloody recipe.
It’s a chicken recipe to celebrate our brilliant new Musclefood deal – I’m going to talk about it in full over the weekend, but we now have a decent, plain deal – around 25 chicken breasts (and each one is huge and doesn’t shrink!), 2kg of extra lean beef mince, 2 big packs of fat fee bacon medallions and two packs of beef strips. For £50, delivered. And mind it’s not delivered the usual online way, where it gets stuffed into a jiffy bag, driven across the country by a lorry driver who has only had three hours sleep, then chucked in your wheelie bin as a “safe place”. Nope, this is a trackable, chilled delivery. Normally £80, haggled it down to £50. We all it our freezer filler, partly because they wouldn’t let me call it a box-stretcher. Click here for this deal and our fancy new Musclefood page!
So, chicken souvlakia!
Just look at it, it’s tasty, juicy and actually, so easy to make. Let’s go. This makes enough for four if you use four chicken breasts. And fuck me, if you needed that explaining, perhaps you’d be better off with a packet of crisps and a sit-down.
NEW SNACK IDEA: avocado devilled eggs. In a rush today so only a little post, but after the success of those teeny tiny teriyaki tasters that we suggested for taster nights a few days ago, I’ve decided to make a new snack idea recipe. Gotta be worth a go! It vexes me that avocado is so ridiculously high in syns – I appreciate it is ‘fats’ but haway, it’s so much better for you than ten Muller Lights. That’s another Slimming World mystery I suppose. There’s quite a few of those around. My favourite is the speed food conundrum. People get themselves in such a froth in the race to tell people THEY MUST HAVE SPEED FOOD on their plate, and I can’t really understand why. It’s there as a suggestion, not a rule. We’ll always try and have speed food on the side but it isn’t because Mags is holding a gun to our heads, but rather, eating more vegetables can’t be a bad thing. I do wonder though why speed foods became such a necessity – I remember back in the hazy days of red and green days and speed food was never suggested. Suppose that’s because the diet was different, but hmm. Nevermind. I’m still sore about losing out on Man of the Year 2004 to some bugger with a black foot and a lot of wheezing.
For our recipes, we’ll more often than not incorporate speed food into the ‘main dish’ so although it may not look like we’ve hit our speed quota, we normally have. We’ll never lecture you on whether or not you need it. If you have any concerns, feel free to hoy some broccoli or a tin of carrots on the side.
Anyway, the recipe:
to make avocado devilled eggs, you’ll need:
8 eggs
1 avocado – now, 100g of avocado flesh is a ridiculous 9.5 syns, and I used a 100g avocado, but minus the weight of the skin and the stone, I reckoned about 80g of flesh, so 8 syns
4 rashers of bacon with the fat cut off, or some of our fabulous bacon from the twochubbycubs musclefood deal, cooked and cut into tiny chunks
rocket
one tomato, chopped finely
black pepper and a pinch of salt
to make avocado devilled eggs, you should:
boil your eggs – I always go for around fourteen minutes because you want everything to be nice and solid
plunge them straight into icy cold water and then peel the buggers, but don’t go all hamfisted with it, nice and gentle
cut your avocado open, get rid of the stone, and scoop that juicy flesh into a bowl
mix in the chopped bacon and chopped tomatoes, saving a little of each for the top
add a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper
cut your eggs in half, drop the yolks into the avocado bow, and then mix the whole lot like buggery
using a teaspoon, put the mixture into the empty eggs where their yolks used to be
decorate with the leftover bacon and tomato and another twist of pepper
Enjoy! Note, if you’re making these for a taster session, the avocado will discolour a little if you leave it for too long. For the best taste, make them nice and fresh or add a bit of lemon juice into the mix!
Here for the teeny tiny teriyaki tasters which are perfect for those awful taster nights where everyone brings in food? You’ll find them just below the picture. But naturally, because it’s us, there’s going to be a bit of guff before we get to that point.
Firstly, this is important: you know how we have our fabulous deal with Musclefood, where you can choose from our meat-filled big box or a smaller, still meaty, freezer filler? This one? They’re currently out of stock at the moment though. Booo! Well, they’re also running a deal right now where you get 5kg of their marvellous chicken breasts for £18 instead of £32.85. You’ll need to click here, add it to your basket and use the code GREATCHICK in the promo codes bit in your basket. The chicken breasts are colossal – we usually use one where two supermarket chicken breasts would do. Tasty too.
Usual guff applies, the minimum order is £25 and delivery is £3.95, but if you fill out your order with the usual staples ofextra lean beef mince you’ll be fine. Enjoy!
Right, secondly, couple of boring admin things – we get asked a lot how many servings our meals will do – unless we say otherwise, assume four. We’re very big eaters, always have been, and our meals could comfortably serve four unless we go out of our way to say it’ll be six or two or whatever. I’ve got no time for tiny portions whether during mealtimes or sex. Also, we’ve got so many lovely, warm comments in our comment queue, we’re going to try and get through them today. Please don’t be disenheartened that it takes such an age to clear them – we read each one as it comes in and it touches us right in our special no-no places. To give you an idea how much admin that is, there’s 156 comments waiting for us to approve and comment on, and I only cleared the queue before we went to New York! Goodness me!
So yes, today’s recipe is designed for all those people who spill their vowels down their front and ask us ‘WOT CAN I TAKE TO TASTA NITE‘. I’ll include some more links at the bottom for other snack suggestions, but seriously, if you take these bad boys to class, I’d be surprised if your consultant doesn’t give you Slimmer of the Year right there and fill your book with so many stickers it looks like a Panini 1998 World Cup album, only with Mags playing centre forward instead of Les Ferdinand. God I’d pay good money for that.
Buffets as a rule leave me cold, but these have put me in mind of a recent visit to a carvery. See, before we set off anew on this diet a few weeks ago, we had a little list of things to cram down our necks before we had to be strict again and exist on kale and misery (recipe for kale and misery stew will be online shortly, prep your tears now). They included something delicious from McDonalds (an abstract thought if ever there was one), all manner of beige nonsense from Iceland and a visit to a carvery – perhaps more precisely, a Toby Carvery. I’ve never been, but I feel I’ve been vicariously through all the frothy-mouthed praising I’ve seen people on the internet do. Apparently they’re delicious, the sort of place you would go for a final meal, a Sunday dinner done right at any time of the week – having seen the fervent delirium that swims over the eyes of their fans I was half expecting to be fellated under the table as I worked my way through my roast.
Well, that didn’t happen. We stumbled into the Kingston Park Toby Carvery and although the staff were pleasant, the food was awful and most of the customers were clearly determined to get the value out of their £5.99 and to hell with decency. Listen, I’m a fat bloke, but show a bit of restraint man – people were coming back to the table with plates piled so high with heat-lamp warm veg that their glazed-over eyes were barely visible over the top of them. I think it’s a very British thing, confusing quantity with quality, but it made me feel a bit queasy. Just because you can eat as much as you like, doesn’t mean you should. It’s not a challenge, you’re not on the Krypton Factor or up against a timer – they’ll still let you out if you’re capable of breathing under your own steam.
The food wasn’t all that, considering the rapturous praise it seems to elicit from various people online. The meat was so leathery and tough that I could have reheeled my shoes with it. The mash and roast potatoes were so dry that I almost asked for a bowl of those little silica gel balls for dessert just to grab a bit of moisture. Because the food is kept under heatlamps and customers are allowed to ‘help themselves’, everything ends up slightly mixed together so you get cauliflower cheese mixed in with the peas and queasy droplets of horseradish blobbing on the top of the gravy. Finally, their famous Yorkshire puddings? I could have sanded a brick wall with the buggers. Bah! The staff were lovely, mind.
I see the same thing when I walk down Stowell Street in Newcastle to my car, which is awash with all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurants with the same folk piling their plates high with all sorts of salty nonsense. I can put it away myself, don’t you worry, but I’ve never felt it necessary to combine starter, main and dessert on one plate, especially when you can go back up if you want more. It always ends up tasting the same and I can’t bear seeing people eat without actually tasting the food they’re pouring into their maw. They look like cows in a field chewing the cud, quite possibly with the same levels of methane barrelling out of their arses.
Admittedly, I’m being slightly hypocritical. I don’t mean to be. I’d love to make a pig of myself at a buffet but I suffer from buffet-anxiety, or premature mastication if you prefer. I’ll go up, fill my plate with about two thirds of the amount I actually want, and then cry inside at the sight of everyone else’s plate, which is normally full of the things I wanted but didn’t dare pick up in case some snotty cow yelled ‘SPOON OF MINIATURE TRIFLE EH? WITH YOUR TITS?’ or similar. We’ve all been there.
Moral of the story? Calm the fuck down at buffets.
Right, recipe!
This makes enough for 36 sticky teeny tiny teriyaki tasters (fnar fnar), if you make them bigger, adjust the syns per ball. There’s 12 syns in the overall recipe.
to make teeny tiny teriyaki tasters, you’ll need:
500g lean pork mince
250g lean beef mince
1 egg yolk
60ml light soy sauce
60ml white wine (2 syns)
2 tbsp sherry (1.5 syns)
1 tbsp honey (2.5 syns)
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
15g of a mix of black and white sesame seeds (6 syns, as 25g is 8 syns – and to be honest, you’ll not use all of these because a lot will end up on the chopping board, but let’s err on the side of caution)
to make teeny tiny teriyaki tasters, you should:
in a large bowl mix together the pork and the beef mince with the egg yolk
using a tablespoon, scoop out a spoon-size ball and roll into meatballs – do this for all of the mixture (you’ll need about 36 – if you want, you could weigh out each ball at around 27g each…but life’s too short)
heat a large pan over a medium high heat and add a couple of squirts of spray oil or, urgh, Frylight, bleurgh
cook the meatballs until browned all over and cooked right through – you WILL need to do them in batches
place cooked meatballs onto a baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm whilst you cook the rest
when done, mix together the soy sauce, white wine, sherry, honey and ginger in a small jug and pour into the same pan you used to cook the meatballs and reduce the heat to medium
cook for a few minutes until the sauce has reduced and thickened
add the meatballs back into the pan and stir carefully to coat – I find it easier to tumble the meatballs in and then pick up the pan and gently slosh them around rather than trying to stir with a spoon
serve on cocktail sticks and sprinkle over the seeds – don’t sweat it if you can’t find these, you could easily leave them off and that brings the syn count to 1 syn for six – even better – but they look so pretty with the seeds on
Get used to people going OOOOOH and slapping you on the back. Hell, you’ve earned it.
OK, so fair enough, our photography skills let us down on this one and our cherry coke float doesn’t look great, but look, it’s a decent idea for a low syn pudding! Plus, won’t you feel like a classy sort getting your knickerbocker glasses out? We’re the gift that keeps on giving.
I’m feeling a little rough this monring. I was out last night and my plan of having a single gin and tonic and then coming home for a delicious meal and warm conversation became sinking several pints over a few hours and pretty much pushing my face into chips and nachos. Yes: chips and machos. I can almost hear the air whistling through Mags’ teeth as she sucks a breath in disapprovingly. Sorry, but life is for living, after all.
We had drinks in the Tyneside Cinema bar in Newcastle and it was all very lovely and to-do, although there was a distressing amount of people taking up all the tables when we arrived. Due to my imposing bulk and unwelcome face I was given the task of spotting a table becoming free which of course, I attended to with aplomb. A couple had no sooner dabbed at their lips with their hankies before I started subtly (as subtly as someone of my frame can do) leaning into their table. She gave me a waspish look and said YES WE’RE LEAVING NOW like I’d sat down on her lap. Well, I’m sorry, don’t sit at a table designed for six people just to eat your peanuts. The night was merry, although my unique talent of being unable to go somewhere without attracting an odd character didn’t fail me – I nipped to the gents to undrink my lager when some cloud-haired-buffoon who was dressed as the Fourth Doctor from Doctor Who leered at me in the queue for the ONE urinal (really!) and said ‘AAAH YES MY MAN, US CHAPS OF A CERTAIN AGE FIND THEMSELVES FOREVER IN THE TOILET DON’T WE!’ like I was his age and has a prostate like a ruddy cauliflower! The cheek. I can hold my water for ages! I presumed it wasn’t some sort of clumsy come-on so just smiled politely, did a ‘Oh you’ shake of the head (the one on my neck) and disappeared into a trap instead.
I hope I become like him when I’m old, booming away in toilets about my need to piss.
Anyway come on, let’s get this cherry cola float out of the way. Have you noticed we’re making a bit more effort to post regularly? You should!
Our cherry coke float is below – it looked so much better in real-life but we were drunk when we made it and I didn’t focus the camera very well. Ooops. We got the idea from another blog (found right here) and hers looks a lot better than mine! Haha. Ah well. Listen we can’t all be winners! Paul seemed bemused at the idea of a coke float but it was a regular dessert in our house when I was young. Mind, Paul’s idea of a luxury dessert back in the day was one of those no-name choc-ices where the chocolate was all cracked and the ‘ice cream’ tasted like that oasis stuff you stick dried flowers into.
Looking for buffalo chicken loaded potatoes and don’t want any of my nonsense? Then scroll down to the picture, enjoy the recipe and all the best of luck to you.
Have they gone? GOOD. Didn’t they smell of foist and Muller yoghurts? Booooo! Anyway, with it being Valentines Day, are you expecting a romance filled, warm-hearted gaze at our love-life? Well, you’re shit out of luck! No, although we’ve had a lovely day (where I may have accidentally ruined someone’s marriage proposal – oops) (more on that another time), tonight’s entry is going to be the last post about Iceland, just to tie it off neatly. See, every time we’ve gone on holiday, I always forget to write up the last day for ages and then end up looking screw-eyed at my notes trying to remember what we did. That’s more difficult than you can imagine, because usually I’m in such a sulk about having to come home that my notes consist of ‘EATING BREAKFAST’ ‘MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD’ and ‘PAUL’S BEING A KNOB’. Bless him, he’s never a knob. Aside from when we’re engaging in gland to gland combat. Let’s get started then!
OK, confession. At this point, our holiday was lots of little snippets of activities, so I’ll cover them off briefly. I can’t remember the chronology but look, I don’t claim to be a travel writer, so don’t bust your buns getting in a flap about it.
First, the Phallological Museum. We made it on our second visit and it was…interesting. Essentially a few rooms filled with all sorts of knobs, from tiny little mouse knobs to big old American knobs holding giant cameras who think that they are the only ones interested in taking photos. Silly man, you’ll find the c*nt museum is next door. Yes, I’m asterisking that, because I can’t bear the thought of Mags clutching her pearls and choking on her pint of Gordons.
It’s no secret that Paul and I are both committed fans of the penis, but even so, there’s only so many you can see in one place before they all start blending into one. There’s precious little in the way of human willies, although there is a fine metal casting of all of the knobs of the Icelandic ice hockey team, covering everything from the goalie to the puck, who seemingly had enough foreskin for the rest of the team. The whole display would make for a unique present for a lady to hang her necklaces, that’s for sure. We learned that the biggest penis in all of the world belongs to the blue whale, measuring over 16ft long. Gosh! The biggest cock I’ve ever seen was 6ft 3″, but I stopped dating him after a couple of weeks. Boom boom. After twenty minutes of stroking our chins and various wooden willies, we hastened to the gift shop where, out of a mixture of British politeness and a love of tat, we bought an wooden ashtray shaped like a giant willy. We don’t even smoke. It’s currently sat in our games room, where doubtless when our house burns down it’ll be dragged from the rubble and held aloft for the papers as a sign of our deviant lifestyle.
Second, we went out drinking one night, which was great fun though FUCK ME was it expensive. I’m by no means an expensive date but hell, we ended up emptying my wallet twice over and all we were drinking was their local beer and vodka. We found a bar which gave us flights of beer, essentially four different third-pints and a shot of vodka in order to “try them out”. Well, we were absolutely wankered in no time at all. At some point in the evening we ended up in a sports bar hollering at the TV with all of the locals at some sport of the TV that even now, with a sober mind, I can’t tell you what they were playing. We bumped into another couple of blokes who recognised us from the hotel (presumably we flashed up on their radar as the fat fuckers who kept eating all the bread at breakfast), immediately agreed we’d join in with their pub-crawl, and then almost as immediately Paul and I buggered off around the corner and lost them. We stopped for a crêpe from one of the many food trucks scattered around (because, let’s be honest, adding cream, eggs and chocolate onto a belly full of dark beer and vodka is always a clever idea) and Paul asked to use her toilet. It took almost five minutes of her explaining that there was no toilet in her tiny food-truck before Paul stopped looking at her owlishly and staggered off to find one of the many loos scattered around the streets, a big chocolate smear halfway up his face. I apologised for us, called us typical Brits, and hastened off after him.
After many more drinks we decided to stagger back to the hotel along the seafront (a 50 minute walk when sober) and, on the way, spotted a Dominos pizza. Well, we had to try an Icelandic Dominos, surely, so in we went, ordering two large pizzas with the strict instruction that they couldn’t deliver back to the hotel until after forty minutes had passed, giving us enough time to saunter back cool and collected. Nope. No, realising that the walk was altogether much further than we had anticipated (not least because we were both careering around drunk), we had to really pick up the pace, and that’s how the good folk of Reykjavik were treated to the sight of two large, fat blokes, drunk as all outdoors, staggering, sliding and powermincing along the icy roads. I tumbled into a grass verge at one point and Paul might have been sick in a bin. What can I say, we ooze class. Once we stumbled into the hotel lobby, the pizza guy was waiting with a scowl – clearly the sight of us wheezing and lolling about didn’t amuse him. Poor sport. I slipped some notes into his pocket like he was a ten-quid prossie, apologised profusely in that earnest drunken voice that we all hate, and retrieved Paul from the concierge office, which he’d mistaken for a lift.
Oh, and those two pizzas? Cost us £70 by the time we’d tipped the poor bloke standing in the lobby. But they tasted delicious.
We spent our final day shopping, eating chips, walking around and just soaking in the place. It’s truly remarkable. A slightly bizarre moment in a tiny little coffee shop where I witnessed a young, buxom lady having a coffee with what I presumed to be her father until she stood up, almost straddled him and gave him the wettest, longest, most committed French kiss I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if she had a real thing for the taste of Steradent but it was so unexpected and bizarre that I barely had time to pull my phone out. Good on the old chap for getting some, I suppose, but it sounded like someone had pulled a plug out of a bath filled with wet hair. We made a swift exit and carried on. Paul fell on his arse again into a large puddle and I knocked over a shop’s display of stuffed puffins (accidentally, naturally) but in no time at all it was time to walk back to the hotel to catch our bus to the airport. Naturally, we immediately got lost, and went on possibly the most convoluted trip ever, taking in their central motorway, what I’m sure was a red-light district, a park that looked like something out of Dangerous Minds and a car dealership. It took us almost three hours – with flat phones, no less – to get back to the hotel, twenty minutes before the bus departed. We did ask the one old man who didn’t look like he’d knife us as soon as look at us for directions, but he spoke no English (quite right) and we spoke no Icelandic, though I reckon if I’d started choking on a Strepsil at that very second he might have made sense of it.
It was with a heavy heart that we boarded our bus back to the airport, after a minor panic after we were told that the front desk staff at the hotel hadn’t actually organised our transfer. They sorted it out after much raising of eyebrows and strangling sounds. Naturally, we both immediately fell asleep on the bus, but well, it’s only got one destination so you can’t go too wrong. Did have a moment of despair when I spotted that there were almost 50 wee Scottish schoolchildren ahead of us in the queue to check-in, but actually, they were very well behaved and a credit to their school. I was disappointed, I had a perfect 140-character passive aggressive tweet all set ready to go to their school when landing in the UK. Bah. There’s fuck all to do in the airport other than lose your passports and buy alcohol, although we did manage to cobble together two year’s worth of annual salary between us which allowed us to buy a burger that, if needed, could have been used as a landing wheel for our approaching plane. Who knew moisture was optional?
The flight itself was uneventful, save for the captain coming on to say that if we were lucky, we’d see the Northern Lights through the window, which caused the wheezing behemoth in front of me to pitch her seat back pretty much into my lap. Apparently this afforded her a better view of the inky blackness and the engine lights, for she didn’t shift an inch for the rest of the flight. No, honestly, what I really want to look at for the duration of my flight are your split-ends and cheap home hair-dye job, you inconsiderate cow.
We landed smoothly, picked up our car and made our way through the night back to Newcastle. It was a lovely drive, punctuated only by a midnight stop at McDonalds for sustenance and a hurried crap about forty minutes later to dispatch aforementioned McDonalds into the murky brown yonder. Now, let us take a quick dirty diversion here. Those of a prudish disposition might want to alight for a couple of paragraphs and join us later.
Toilets, namely public toilets, I don’t understand the sexual appeal. We stopped at some toilets in the middle of Fuck-All, Nowhere and every conceivable surface was covered in the type of graffiti that made even me blush. But this toilet wasn’t some plush outbuilding with comfortable ledges and a decent hand-drier for blowing the last drips off, no, this looked like something out of a Saw movie. There was more piss on the floor than there was in the sewer below, most of the lights were burnt out and three out of the four traps contained toilets that looked like someone had drawn an intricate map of the local A and B roads using faeces. Dirty doesn’t begin to describe them! So who is willingly getting down on their knees in a place like that? It doesn’t bear thinking about. For long. Brrr.
However, our practical reason for visiting these toilets couldn’t be avoided and I risked death and urine burns to ‘drop the kids off’, as quickly and as delicately as I could. Whilst hovering above the pan like I was riding an invisible magic carpet, a peculiar bit of graffiti caught my eye – a bold (admittedly in very nice handwriting) statement declaring that a gloryhole could be found in the ladies toilet. Hmm.
Anyway, I once heard of a chap who had his knob sliced with a knife when he put it through a gloryhole, like the world’s most budget circumcision, and another who had a cigarette put out on it. If I ever find myself in a lavatory and a knob that isn’t my own suddenly appears, I’ll be using it to hang the toilet roll on.
OK, prudish folk, come on back.
We made it home for around 3am, made a fuss out of our cats who, of course, totally ignored us and acted like we’d betrayed them in the worst possible way by daring to go away, and went straight to bed. Iceland done. Let’s sum up.
Pros
absolutely beautiful – now I know that almost goes without saying, but honestly, it’s so alien and unusual and unlike anywhere we’ve been before that we’d recommend it just for that experience alone;
so much to do – and even as two fat blokes, we never struggled with any of the activities, it’s all very accessible
tonnes of history, even if their museums are a smidge dry
amazing food, especially all of their snack stations and tiny little places to eat
the Northern Lights, I mean, come on
not rammed full of either trashy British tourists or massive touring groups
Cons
incredibly expensive, and it’s not even easy to get around this – snacks and drinks are expensive, meals and nights out even more so – be prepared to spend
if you’re not a fan of sitting on buses to get to places, you’ll struggle, but even then the buses are comfortable, WiFi enabled and warm, so it’s a hard one to ‘con’
the occasional standoffishness, but hell, you’re going to get that anywhere
Go. We can’t recommend it enough! If you don’t love it, we’ll be amazed!
We travelled with easyJet from Edinburgh to Reykjavik, landing early in the evening. We stayed at the Edinburgh Airport (Newbridge) Premier Inn the night before and then the Grand Hotel in Reykjavik. We organised all of our excursions directly with Grey Line Excursions or Reykjavik Excursions, including our airport transfers. All wonderful to deal with!
Right. So you lot want a recipe for buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, eh? Then shall we begin? This recipe makes enough for four large potatoes cut in half, with a person having two halves. Easy! Also, these sit well to eat the day after for a lunch and I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t be frozen, so get on that.
to make buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, you’ll need:
15g reduced-fat feta cheese (optional for sprinkling – it’s up to you if you syn this, it really is a tiny amount)
Really, this is actually quarter of a syn for each serving of two potato halves, but we added on that extra quarter syn for the tiny bit of reduced fat feta. You can leave it off. Look, either way, you’re not going to be Ten Tonne Tessie from eating these, OK? These could be made syn free if you omitted the sauce, and indeed, if you’re not a fan of having an arsehole like the Japanese flag, why not try leaving it out?
to make buffalo chicken loaded potatoes, you should:
cook the potatoes as you would for a jacket potato
in a small jug, mix together the Buffalo sauce, white vinegar and tabasco sauce and set aside
cook the chicken breasts until done – under the grill, in the oven, in a pan, using the acid breath of a hated relative…however you prefer
when cooked, pull the chicken apart using two forks
when the potatoes are cooked, cut in half, allow to cool a little and scoop out all of the flesh into a separate bowl
add the chicken, cheddar cheese and Buffalo sauce mix to the potato flesh and mash until well combined
scoop the potato flesh back into the potato skins
cook under a hot grill for a few minutes until nicely browned
sprinkle on the feta (if you’re using) and enjoy!
It’s up to you if you want to serve this with some speed food or just beans like we did. I’m not the boss!
OK, so the recipe for cheesy bacon burger fries is a bit of a hybrid between two favourites – our tater tots recipe and our enchilada steak fries. Both wonderful recipes, but if you combine the two, well, it looks awful on a plate, but tastes delicious. Honest guv, promise. Scroll down if all you’re here for are the recipes. Sob.
Meanwhile, here’s part three of our Iceland trip! You’ll find parts one and two right here and here. Run, don’t walk. Remember, more travel stuff in our new book which can be bought for the tiny sum of £4.99 right here!
twochubbycubs go to iceland: part three
Tired from yesterday’s day of looking into cracks, dealing with spurting geysers and admiring a foamy gush, we decided to spend the day mincing about in Reykjavik, seeing the sights, buying tat. As you do. We filled up on an early breakfast and walked the thirty or so minutes along the seafront into the town centre. It feels so peculiar to be shopping and walking around with everyone at 10am, with the sky still inky black and the very first fingers of sunlight just poking through. We could cheerfully live there – we don’t need the light – already got arthritis, might as well go for rickets and get the fullhouse. We stopped (shamefully) for a coffee in Dunkin’ Donuts. I know, I know, eat local, blah blah, but in our defence they had a gorgeous selection of donuts and we wanted to nick their WiFi. The hotel wifi was crap – almost like being back in 2000 and trying to watch porn on a dial-up modem. That was an awful experience, let me tell you. We decided on a rough schedule of the National Museum, the church, shops and then Escape the Room. After finishing our coffee, tutting at children and other tourists, we were on our way.
We walked through the parks and headed up to the National Museum of Iceland, full of vim and joy and wonder from the beautiful snow-filled parks and the frozen lake, pausing only briefly to try and find a toilet. There were signs everywhere but no visible toilet block – presumably because, if Iceland was anything like England, as soon as you enclose three toilets in concrete and asbestos, you’ll have a seedy man with a hand-crank drilling a glory hole and putting his name on the wall. After much looking, we eventually found one of those tiny automatic toilets that look like a TARDIS, with the spinning door and scary buttons. Unlike England, you didn’t need to pay 20p for the privilege of pissing, and Paul was soon merrily enclosed in this tiny metal tube having a wee. He didn’t bank on me hiding around the back and screaming in his face as he emerged, but well, we like to keep things fresh. You’ll see these all over Reykjavik. We were at the museum in no time at all.
Well, let me just say this – for all that we heard that Icelandic folk were friendly, welcoming and pleasant (and, to be fair, they were for the most part), every last member of staff in the museum had a face like they’d seen their arse and didn’t like the colour of it. Clearly smiling and pleasantries were off the menu. I’ve never felt such guilt for asking for a bloody welcome leaflet.
I have a bit of a love/hate thing with museums. See I want to be one of those people in coats that smell of eggs that will stand and …hmmm and …oh I see over every exhibit, but try as I might, I just don’t have the attention span. It was all so very dry and boring for a country forged from fire and ice. I was captivated by the sight of some hipster twatknacker doing warm-up exercises in the ‘Vikings’ section. Why? He was making sure all eyes were on him as his silly little man-bun bobbed up and down.
We did happen across a mildly interesting exhibition on women in the workplace, which afforded us the chance to titter at some exposed breasts and make blue remarks, but that was it. There was an old style Bakelite phone sitting on a plinth – Paul picked it up, looked grave and then shouted ‘NO DEAL’, much to the obvious hatred of the stern looking curator. We make our own fun, at least. We took a moment to look around the gift shop but again, the staff seemed so unwelcoming that we put down the little bottle of pink rock salt that we were going to buy and hastened on our way. You’d think judging by her pinched face and obvious expression of blistering hatred that she’d mined the salt herself using her teeth.
In Reykjavik, your eyes are always drawn to a church high up on the hill called Hallgrímskirkja, and despite misgivings about how steep the hill was vs how fat our English little bodies were, we set out to have an explore and a look. Perhaps it was the promise of an exceptionally large organ that enticed us. Forty minutes and much swearing later, we arrived, took the obligatory photos, marvelled at the fact that this church smelled exactly like an English church (foist, farts and cabbage soup) and had a reverent look around.
It was wonderful, it really was. I’m not a religious person – I’m not going down on my knees unless it’s to pick up change, give a blowjob or a bizarre combination of the two – but even I was captivated. The lighting, the architecture, the ten million girls shrieking into their hands and milling around – all wonderful. It was prayer time, so everyone was head-bowed and silent, bar for the vicar who somewhat ruined the placidity by bellowing urgently into his phone from high in the eves. He could have been giving a sermon, I suppose, though it rather sounded like he’d been stabbed in the throat and was calling urgently for help.
We waited until most of the tourists had filtered back out before walking up to the altar. I noticed that neither of us had burst into flames for our wicked sodomising ways, leaving me comfortable enough to inch forward to look at the ornate work on the lectern. I’d barely taken in a detail when a tiny mobile phone on a stick crossed my vision, close enough to part my eyebrows. Well, honestly. A tourist with a selfie stick. I find them pointless at the best of times – why would you go on holiday just to take a photo of your face gazing blankly into middle distance whilst blocking out anything pretty? That happens to me every time I look in the mirror to shave. That, and tears of sadness.
Naturally, Paul and I were so aghast that we spent the next fifteen minutes subtly following this poor lady around the church, making sure we were just in the background of all her shots, grimacing and gurning away. She eventually caught on when I tripped over the edge of a pew in my haste to get the top of my head poking into her shot of the font and her face. We made a sharp exit. I like to think we’ll be on a Facebook page far away – the two fat menaces of Iceland.
As we left, we noticed a lift that we’d missed in our haste to get inside – a lift which took you right to the top of the church tower (and that’s high – the church being the sixth tallest structure in Iceland). Perfect! After paying a small charge to keep the church going, we were in the lift and away, with only a momentary and startling stop halfway up, when the lift stopped and the doors opened on a solid brick wall. I’ve seen Bad Girls, I know this is how it ends, but before I’d had chance to scratch ‘FENNER’ into the bricks the lift rattled away and we were at the top.
Stunning. I could post all manner of fancy photos from the top of here but really, they all look very similar. This photo should give you a chance to see how colourful the houses are and how Reykjavik is laid out.
Taking photos is actually quite difficult, as the little openings which provide the view have bars across them (presumably to stop you hurling yourself out through the shame of ruining someone’s photos), meaning you have to undertake a nail-biting manoeuvre of holding your phone in your hands over a 70m drop. I get the jitters stirring my tea, so seeing Paul waving his phone around had my arse nipping. Mind, not as much as the fact that, completely and utterly oblivious to where I was, I took a moment for quiet reflection and leant against the central column, only to have my eardrums blown through my skull by the giant bell no more than 3ft above my head ringing in 2pm. I said an exceptionally non-church friendly word at the top of my voice, removed my trousers from my sphincter and, somewhat dazed, went to find Paul, who somehow hadn’t managed to either drop his phone or shit himself. Truly, a miracle. Cheers Big G.
The next couple of hours were spent looking around the many, many stores that fill Rekjavic’s main shopping streets, though I’ll say this right now – if I never see another stuffed fucking puffin again I’ll be happy. Or a t-shirt that suggested fat people were great because they can’t outrun polar bears (yeah, but we can eat them, so you overlooked that one). We bought two figurines for the games room and, thanks to Paul leaving my iPad chargers in the old room and the maid being dishonest enough to keep it, a new charger from a knock-off Apple shop where again, we were met with abysmal customer service – waiting almost ten minutes for the bespectacled little spelk to finish his conversation and address the only customers for miles. Listen, don’t take my moaning as evidence that the Icelandic are a frosty (ha-de-ha) bunch, they’re not – aside from the odd knobhead, everyone was charming.
We partook in a couple of traditional ‘street food’ items which were just bloody amazing – fries at Reykjavik Chips and a hotdog from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. The fries place we happened across just off the main shopping street and it was amazing, even though it was just fries and Béarnaise sauce washed down with beer. You get the fries piping hot in a paper cone with sauce dribbled all over them, and you take a seat at a tiny table with a hole drilled in to hold your cone, all served with beer. Something so simple but done right. The hotdog was a weird one – it really was just a bog-standard hotdog – delicious, but I couldn’t understand the fanfare bar the fact that the stand had apparently been there since time immemorial. Perhaps it was the fact that the guy serving officially had Dreamboat status – not our type, heavens no, but he had one of those faces that moisten knickers just with a glance. Bastard.
Once we were full and our wallets empty, we decided it was either time to Escape the Room or go back to the hotel for a Fat Nap. After a bit of deliberation, we decided our time would be best spent walking along to Reykjavik’s version of ‘Escape the Room’, where you’re locked in a room by a sinister figure and told you will never escape. After a short but arresting diversion via the offices of the Chinese Embassy, we arrived. The woman in charge was wonderful – full of good cheer and welcoming bonhomie. We were given a choice between prison, curing cancer or escaping the clutches of an evil abductress. Naturally, we chose prison. The rules were explained – no breaking things, no wresting lights from the ceiling or sockets from the wall, no oil fires – and then we were led into the room.
At this point, the lady in charge told us to get into character and act like we were in prison. Paul look suitably chagrined whilst I immediately skittered a bar of soap along the floor and bent over with a ‘what AM I like’ leer. What can I say, I’m like Pavlov’s dog. Once I’d straightened myself up, tucked my trouser pocket back in and scrubbed off the ‘WING BITCH’ tattoo from my neck, we were on our way.
I can tell you that we escaped, but it was close, with only a few minutes left on the clock. Paul derailed us immediately by finding a key, deciding it wasn’t relevant and putting it away, not realising it was a crucial part of the first clue. We had been given a phone so we can text our ‘captor’ if we got stuck – we only used it three times, and one of those was Paul accidentally ringing her with his buttocks. To be fair, she probably thought the sound of his cheeks slapping together and the odd, low, rasping fart was just his attempt at speaking Icelandic.
After emerging victorious, we were made to stand for a photo with some ‘AREN’T WE CLEVER’ signs – we didn’t buy them because of course, we look awful. We’re not the worst looking people in the world but we just can’t get a good photo together. Between my chins spilling down my chest like an armadillo’s back and Paul’s barely-tuned in eyes, we’re a mess. If we had children, they’d come out looking like Hoggle from Labyrinth viewed through the bottom of a pint glass. Ah well. She did at least have the good grace when taking the photo not to back away too far to get all of our bulk in.
Tuckered out, we headed back to the hotel, dispensed with all our flimflam and ate a very passable meal in the hotel restuarant. Dangerously, we ordered drinks and put them on our room bill rather than paying for it upfront, which made for quite the unpleasant surprise at the end of the trip. REMEMBER: ICELAND = EXPENSIVE.
We slept like logs that night.
Anyway, let’s get this bloody recipe out of the way. You came here for cheesy bacon burger fries and who the fuck am I to deny you such pleasures? It serves four, easily, or two fatties. I tweaked the recipe from another blog for this one – link right here. I’ve made it SW friendly though.
400g lean beef mince (just saying, but we also do a smaller meat package, see? Click here for that– you only need to use up a third of the bacon from here!)
3 tbsp tomato sauce (where the syns come from)
3 tbsp passata
1/2 tsp mustard powder
3 tbsp malt vinegar
100g mature reduced fat cheddar (40g being one HEA)
200g quark
to make cheesy bacon burger fries you should:
cut the potatoes into chips however you liked them – we cut them into thin fries which worked great. crinkle cut would be even better!
