Category Archives: savoury snacks

Savoury snack recipes

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August 3, 2016

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

stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken

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

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

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

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

Speaking of meat…

Web

Right, let’s get to the chicken!

stuffed 'n' rolled crunchy chicken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

poultrysmall

Cheers!

J

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July 24, 2016

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

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

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

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

slimming world bbq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

advert - summer-01

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

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

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

We’ll take whatever we can!

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

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

slimming world bbq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

slimming world bbq

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

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

to make amazing loaded potato salad, you should:

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

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

slimming world bbq

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

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

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

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

Drink lots and be merry, folks.

J

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July 22, 2016

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american, barbecue, dips, drinks, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, vegetarian

slimming world BBQ: perfect rainbow coleslaw, onion jam, hotdogs and frozen margaritas!

The next part of our series on what to put on a Slimming World BBQ is right here. For once, you’re not going to have to wade through all of my guff to get to it because well, time’s a factor. Paul and I have decided to have a day off together, partly because we had the idea that our garden furniture was going to arrive today. That didn’t happen, but ah well, could be worse, could be dead. We hopped into the car and shot off to see Ghostbusters and you know, it was great! Well-acted, fun, colourful – hit of all my buttons!

It’s a shame that Leslie Jones has been getting  shit thrown at her on Twitter as a result of being in the movie. She’s been called all sorts of vile things for simply putting herself forward and making people laugh. It’s depressing, and it’s not as though the world isn’t depressing enough as it is. It’s getting to the point where I could open my curtains in the morning and notice a mushroom cloud billowing towards me and I’d shrug and meh and go back to watching whatever atrocity is blazing across the TV.

That’s the problem with the Internet, it gives a voice to all those gimps with no self-confidence and no tact. I should know, I’ve made a healthy sideline from it. You see the most vile of comments left on the most innocuous of posts and articles – I’ve seen someone wish another woman a miscarriage because they disagreed over how much sweetener to put in a recipe, for goodness sake – and the answer to that one, by the way, is none at all. You have people who wouldn’t say boo to a goose blurting out vile rhetoric and for what? No other reason than to wound and upset. I genuinely don’t understand the mentality, and I love a sly dig every now and then – but I couldn’t take pleasure in actually breaking someone’s spirit.

We have a local paper up here called the Evening Chronicle, and it really is the go-to paper if you want to know who someone from Geordie Shore had up her snatch the previous day or perhaps a picture of a local councillor pointing furiously at some potholes with a face like he’s trying desperately not to shit himself on camera It’s entirely pointless but generally harmless, although they’re not averse to strumming up a bit of racial tension to get their comments counter overflowing. Anyway, they posted a story about some poor bugger who had climbed up an electricity pylon and was threatening to hurl himself onto the live wires. He was suicidal and as a result, the power folks had to turn off the juice. The story was full of comments like ‘shocking behaviour’ and ‘I hope he was charged’, which, whilst crass and insensitive, is harmless enough. We’re all guilty of a bit of black humour. However, topping off the comments was ‘So glad it didn’t hit my area i’f be raging if I’d missed the soaps!!’. For fucks sake. We’re not talking about someone nicking a bit of copper wire, we’re talking about someone being so fucked in the head that they think the best option is the pain of burning alive, and this claybrained footlicker is more concerned about missing Eastenders.

I despair. Not in a sanctimonious oh-aren’t-I-wonderful way but just as a human, how can you lack the compassion? Also, as an adult, how the fuck do you not know that it is I’d not i’f – and that’s after editing her comments. Urgh. Listen, I’m depressing myself now, so let’s just jump to the recipes. Bit of a hard segue to make though…so let’s chuck in a bit about our Musclefood deal first – so tasteful!

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

We used the sausages in the above pack to make the hotdogs – you can buy syn-free sausages but they taste like someone stuffed an old sock full of shredded carpet and whatever’s been swept up off the floor at the Schwartz factory. I’ve tasted other people’s burps that I’ve enjoyed more than the Slimming World sausages, plus these Musclefood sausages don’t look like pickled willies when they’re cooked, so there’s that. Slimming World do a lot of tasty food don’t get me wrong, but I prefer a sausage I can eat rather than one I can shave with. Whack them in your healthy extra bun allowance and they are only half a syn. We haven’t used healthy extra buns in the picture but hell, it’s the summer and a hotdog isn’t the same in a wholemeal bun. The buns in the pictures are six syns each – Tesco finger buns – and well, I’ve always preferred a couple of fingers over a nice pair of baps. Boom boom.

No, the recipe is for onion jam and perfect coleslaw, two little additions for the side of the BBQ that will make everything taste that much better…

slimming world bbq

to make slimming world BBQ: onion jam and perfect rainbow coleslaw, you’ll need:

  • for the onion jam:
    • 250g of red onions
    • 50ml of balsamic vinegar
    • 75ml of apple / cider vinegar
    • a clove of garlic
    • salt and pepper
    • 1 tsp of sweetener if you want it syn free, but I use a teaspoon of honey which is technically a syn but meh…
  • for the coleslaw
    • a butternut squash
    • one large carrot
    • a bunch of spring onions
    • small white cabbage and a small purple cabbage
    • 200g (1 syn) of greek yoghurt, fat free
    • lots of black pepper
    • pinch of salt

to make slimming world BBQ: onion jam and perfect rainbow coleslaw, you should:

  • for the onion jam:
    • cut up your onions nice and small and uniform
    • finely mince your garlic using one of these so you’re not known as Stinky Fingers McGee (again)
    • throw everything into a pan on a low heat
    • cover and allow to simmer for ages – you want it to reduce slowly into a nice sticky sauce
    • easy!
  • for the perfect rainbow coleslaw
    • shred your cabbage nice and fine – whether you use a grater or, as we do, one of these fancy gadgets
    • don’t grate your carrot or butternut squash – use a potato peeler to cut small ribbons instead – you want nice chunks, not miles of the stuff
    • if you have leftover butternut squash, make my butternut squash macaroni and never look back
    • finely dice your onion
    • mix it all together with the yoghurt, pinch of salt and lots of pepper
    • the key is to make the different vegetables roughly the same size (bar the onion) so you get plenty of crunch and taste – it makes everything go a bit further
    • we were actually cheeky and grated one HEA of Parmesan into ours – gives it a bit extra kick but fine to leave out

That makes enough for four, so it’s 0.25 syns. If you want to syn that, shoot for the moon.

Now, the accompanying cocktail in our series on drinks that may use a few syns but last bloody ages and get you pissed is a frozen margarita. You’ll need a blender but this is amazing on a hot day, trust me. This makes enough for two BIG glasses – not going to lie and say we didn’t double the shots for our own version, but we like them strong. It puts hairs on your arse, this.

slimming world bbq

to make a tasty frozen margarita:

  • chuck a load of ice, 60ml of freshly squeezed lime juice, 50ml of tequila (6 syns)  and 25ml of triple sec (4 syns) into a blender. Blend like your life is on the line. Tip into chilled martini glasses and serve – it’s strong, but it’ll last for ages and tastes gorgeous – don’t be frightened to spend the syns!

Easy! Enjoy. If you want more recipes for sausages or snacks, hit the buttons below!

sausagessmallsnackssmall

Done!

J

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July 4, 2016

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budget, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

james’ any old shite salad

What an alluring name! But my any old shite salad is so called because I literally dice up and chuck in any old shite that I have lying in the back of the fridge. I’m on a bit of a drive to stop wasting so much food – something that is quite difficult when running a food blog given how many new recipes we have to come up with. Plus, I spend £3 a day on Subway for my lunch and thought this would be cheaper, plus I don’t have to stare angrily at the back of some poor lad’s head whilst he umms and aaars his way through the choices.

As an aside, do I win Pickiest Subway Salad award? I get double plain chicken, no cheese, half lettuce, cucumber, no onion or olives, double gherkins, double jalapeno, tomatoes (with a pinch of salt), honey and mustard dressing but the dressing has to go on before all the salad so the leaves are wet. I know, I’m a terror, but I think I get away with it because I’m so unfailingly polite and I bought them a box of Celebrations at Christmas. I’m not convinced the guy behind the till speaks a lick of English – and alas, my Latvian is a little rusty – so he could be calling me worse than muck under his breath and I wouldn’t know. Ah well, them’s the breaks. I prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

Oh, I once got thrown out of a Subway in Southend after getting steaming drunk in Colours in Basildon with my ex who looked like Granitarse from Knightmare and storming in demanding a chicken ticky-licky sandwich and crying when they didn’t understand what I meant. Look, it had been an emotional evening, my ex’s then-partner had caught us…what a slut. I’m not usually such an arsehole when I’m drunk, I hasten to add. I’m not.

Right, anyway, no diversions, we weren’t going to post tonight as we’re in the middle of decorating our bedroom and getting jizz off the ceiling takes a great deal of determination. So: the any old shite salad.

any old shite salad

I’m not going to treat you like a moron and tell you how to prepare any old shite salad, but here’s what is in mine:

  • sliced baby cucumber with the seeds cut out
  • a variety of cherry tomatoes, chopped, salted and drained
  • a handful of baby corn, sliced
  • a fistful of sugarsnap peas
  • a baby’s mitten of gherkins, sliced
  • a cat’s sneeze of new potatoes, diced
  • an extravagant wave of tiny soup pasta
  • a perfunctory sexual act of tiny pickled onions
  • a discarded cigarette packet of olives (which I don’t syn, not the pitted black ones, and that’s not because I’m racist)
  • a blushing smile of tiny pickled red peppers
  • a knee-slapping chortle of broccoli
  • an angry drunken confrontation of asparagus tips
  • a thought of mint leaves
  • a carpet sample of ham – leave out for a veggie option
  • an uprising of chopped red and green pepper
  • a don’t-tell-Margaret-HEA (X2) of crumbled feta cheese
  • an after-coitus-dribble of fat-free dressing (I make mine from balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of dijon mustard and some lemon juice – I don’t syn the mustard either, it’s a tiny amount, but you can go for it)

You can surely tell from my piss-take amounts that there’s no set rules when it comes to amounts. Make as much as you like, vary the ingredients, take out what you don’t like and add stuff you do. I like to cram as many different textures and tastes into each salad because it keeps things interesting. I make enough on a Monday night to fill four large lunchboxes and this carries me through to the end of the week. It keeps well in the fridge because you haven’t saturated it in dressing and actually, the less moisture in the salad, the fresher it seems to stay.

Lunchboxes? Sistema all the way. Cheap but reliable and next to nothing on Amazon – see!

any old shite salad

See, I might have called it any old shite, but it’s a bloody good idea for lunch!

Oh, as a little extra, I made some pickled red onion slices a couple of weeks ago when I made those fancy eggs – nothing special, just a load of very thinly sliced red onion (this is where one of these comes in handy – and ooh, it’s almost half price on Amazon – buy one and you’ll use it lots, I promise), stick them in a sterilised Kilner jar, top up with rice vinegar with a teaspoon of sugar added (heat the vinegar, add the sugar so it dissolves, then take off the heat), throw in some black peppercorns and leave in the jar in the fridge for as long as you need them. Everything goes a pretty colour, as you can see. Up to you whether you syn the sugar – if you do, it’s 1 syn per tsp, but really, it goes into the vinegar and well, you’re not going to eat all the onion in one go). This is lovely on a burger but even better mixed into your any old shite salad!

any old shite salad

Enjoy. If you want more ideas for vegetarian recipes or snacks, click on the buttons below!

vegetariansmallsnackssmall

Thanks!

J

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June 29, 2016

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american, beef, chip shop, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, panko, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, steak, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

crunchy cheesy steak bites and perfect onion rings

Steak bites and onion rings? Good heavens I know. Because this is going to be a super quick entry I’m giving you two recipes at once. You can manage it. Just bite down and push out.

GOOD NEWS: Samsung have been and fixed the hob, hooray, meaning we can bring back proper food to the blog as opposed to food you have to eat with your fingers. Tonight’s recipe was going to be a delicious pork and potato hash but when I went to photograph it, it looked like the top of a burnt knee. I’ll figure out a way to make it work and stick it on next week.

BAD NEWS: there’s only one more day left on our Musclefood sale – 10% off. If you’re sitting on the fence, please don’t. You’re running out of time, you’ll give yourself piles and let’s be honest, a wooden fence can only take so much stress. We’ve never seen so many orders come from one deal so don’t miss out 10% off our already amazing value freezer box! It’s a delivered chilled box of wonder – with 24/26 big fat chicken breasts, 800g of extra lean beef chunks, 2kg of extra lean beef mince and lots and lots of bacon. It’s usually £50 – which is cheap when compared to what you’d pay in the shop – but we’ve knocked off 10% for ONE WEEK ONLY. This brings it down to £45 – the cheapest it has ever been. Remember you can choose the date of delivery and payment doesn’t come out until your chosen date, so you can order in advance. To order, just click this link, add to basket, add the code TCCFREEZER and choose standard delivery – £45! Easy! But this is for ONE WEEK ONLY.

GOOD NEWS: We haven’t given up on the gym just yet. You know what’s sad though? We tend to go at around 11pm and the gym is full of the type of folk who are too shy to exercise with the skinny-minnies and the ultra-fit. I don’t see why and it makes me feel a bit sad. Admittedly, the music volume has to be doubled to counter the sound of the treadmills being splintered under hefty foot. Come on fatties, don’t be shy. You’re still doing better than anyone else just by being there. 

BAD NEWS: I’ve picked up the most annoying verbal tic, and I blame it all on a work colleague, who uses the ‘eh’ sound like one might reasonably use a full-stop. She makes me laugh all day long so I can quite forgive her but after doing it back as a joke, it’s now fallen into my daily rotation and I find myself saying EH really loudly mid-sentence. My dad is an absolute bugger for this – Paul swears my dad once interrupted himself mid-sentence by asking himself eh – and it seems I’m destined to follow in his footsteps.

Emma and I are engaged in a fierce game of pranks – I poured a load of red glitter into the seat of her office chair, meaning every time she sat down she coated her arse in red shiny glitter. She responded by leaving me a telephone message that a Mr Kipling called with an urgent message and to call a number which turned out to be the Mr Kipling cake factory. No wonder the receptionist seemed a little cross when I insisted I had an urgent message from the boss. As revenge for that, I stole the ‘e’ from her keyboard, so she filled my man-bag (murse?) with almonds. I retaliated by filling all of her coat pockets with the tiny bits of paper from inside a hole-punch, so she stuck watermelon post-it notes all over my desk when I was away logging off.  I’m not sure what happens next but I’m a bit worried this is going to escalate into her torching my house for a laugh and me holding her children hostage. Still, makes the wheel of the working day spin that little bit faster, and like I said, she’s an absolute love.

Anyway, the recipe please, gentlemen.

onion rings and steak bites

to make crunchy cheesy steak bites you will need:

to make crunchy cheesy steak bites you should:

  • bring the steak to room temperature
  • meanwhile, turn up the oven to 180 degrees
  • spread the pumpkin seeds out onto a baking sheet or ovenproof dish, spray with olive oil spray and sprinkle over a pinch of paprika
  • bake in the oven for ten minutes and allow to cool, and then grind in a pestle and mortar or chop them up with a big knife
  • mix together the salt and pepper and spread out onto a chopping board
  • gently dab each side of the steak cubes into the spice mixture and set aside
  • heat a large pan over a high heat and chuck in some sprays of oil
  • throw in the steak cubes and cook on each side for no more than 30 seconds – if they don’t sizzle, yer pan isn’t hot enough
  • take out of the pan and onto a chopping board and gently balance a mozzarella cube on top
  • quickly grill under a high heat until the cheese has melted
  • sprinkle on the pumpkin dust and serve

Not a fan of pumpkin seeds? Don’t need to add them. We won’t tell. We found a really nice smoked mozzarella in Tesco which we used and oh god, I’ve bored myself to death.

You can use panko for the next recipe. You’ll find panko, a type of dried breadcrumb, in most Asian supermarkets or in that ‘funny bit’ of the supermarket you don’t go into. You should. It’s a world of wonder and taste, although I did feel a bit Gary Glitter as I pushed my bottle of ‘Healthy Boy Sauce’ through the self-checkout. Don’t have panko? Just use an ordinary bun whizzed up, you common harlot.

to make onion rings you will need:

  • one big fuck-off onion sliced into rings
  • lots of black pepper
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 60ml skimmed milk
  • 25g panko (5 syns)
  • 25g breadcrumbs (use half a HeB bread roll)

 

to make onion rings you should:

  • preheat the oven to 230 degrees and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper
  • you’ll need two shallow dishes for this bit – the first one should have your egg and milk and pepper mixed together, and in the second mix together the panko and breadcrumbs (you could use all breadcrumbs if you wanted, but panko is much tastier, and if you use all panko all the better)
  • dip each onion ring into the egg and then into the panko – drag it around a bit so it gets nicely coated
  • place on the baking tray and spray with olive oil spray
  • bake in the oven for twenty minutes but keep an eye on them – you’ll know when they’re ready!

If you want even more taster ideas or snack suggestions, click the link before!

tastersmall

Cheers now. All the best.

J

Enjoy!

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June 28, 2016

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recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

taster night: beetroot pickled eggs

I know, beetroot pickled eggs, it’ll either really butter your muffin or make you gag. But we get asked a lot for snack ideas and also what kind of things we eat at home outside of mealtimes, and well, Paul deemed it unseemly that I keep answering with ‘willies’. Plus, thanks to my mum and dad and their six chickens, I get a quarter-tonne of eggs every week, so here we are. Before we get started, though…

Our Musclefood deal runs for only two more days and judging by the amount of orders, this is one deal that’s proving very popular – but don’t wait – 10% off our already amazing value freezer box! It’s a delivered chilled box of wonder – with 24/26 big fat chicken breasts, 800g of extra lean beef chunks, 2kg of extra lean beef mince and lots and lots of bacon. It’s usually £50 – which is cheap when compared to what you’d pay in the shop – but we’ve knocked off 10% for ONE WEEK ONLY. This brings it down to £45 – the cheapest it has ever been. Remember you can choose the date of delivery and payment doesn’t come out until your chosen date, so you can order in advance. To order, just click this link, add to basket, add the code TCCFREEZER and choose standard delivery – £45! Easy! But this is for ONE WEEK ONLY.

Growing up we had chickens when I was a wee’un but they mysteriously went to live on a farm when we moved house. What was even more weird was the fact we had roast chicken for dinner eight nights on the trot and I remember the meat being particular succulent, but I suppose that’ll have been the tears splashing down on it.

Thinking back, we’ve had quite the menagerie – our first pet was a giant rough long-hair collie called Shannon who I have two single memories of – one of our cousins came to stay for the summer and, whilst walking up the lane to our house, was met with the sight of a dog twice as big as her who tumbled her over and bit her on the arm. Ooops. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds, we added a bit of Listerine into the dog’s water and he was fine. I jest I jest. The other memory is a sad one though (sob) – poor Shannon got loose into the back fields and suffered a nasty chemical burn and was put down. What can I say, living in Bhopal was tough. Nah, it was some weird pesticide, the poor bugger.

We had cats a-plenty – Smokey with the loudest purr who lived a happy life until he decided that the A69 at rush hour was an appropriate place to stop and lick his balls. There was Cleo (went missing) and Tabitha (attacked by foxes). Listen, we grew up in the countryside, these were hard cats but nature always prevails. We did manage to have two cats make it to dotage though, thankfully, despite the efforts of God himself. Salem was my favourite as he was quite genuinely the laziest cat as could be. He had masses of long black hair (hence Salem) and would never clean himself, which, when combined with his tendency to download his Whiskas all over the place without bothering to see if had tangled into the hair on the back of his legs, meant many a fun evening for my mum and the cat hairbrush. She used to throw half a cat’s worth of matted poo-hair onto the coal fire and Christ, you’ve never smelled anything like it in your life. Even now if I take a deep breath I can still smell it.

Speaking of cat-fires, I was watching a film one night when a spark from a crackling log leapt out of the fire and nestled neatly on the cat’s flank. By the time I’d untangled myself from my blanket and leapt as only a fat man can do from the sofa, there was quite a considerable amount of smoke rising from him. Just as I bounded over he rose to his feet more akin to a cat stretching on a summer’s day and barely looked bothered as I beat his sides to extinguish the fire. He had the same expression as I lowered him into a cold bath to ensure he hadn’t been burnt. He had a great life mind, as all countryside cats do, and died at 15, buried in the garden for ever more. I reckon by now he’s nothing more than bones and a few giant clumps of matted poo-hair.

Salem was joined by Misty a little into his life, and she was an entirely unremarkable but lovely cat who spent most of the time outside, deigning only to visit us when she was hungry, when she was cold or, once, alarmingly, when she was pregnant. We had no idea she was up the cat-duff and it was only when a load of tiny squeaking started up behind an armchair that we realised she was having kittens, and even that was after ten minutes of my dad trying to adjust the telly because he thought the sound on You Bet was playing up. She also lived a long and happy life and padded off around 14 years.

Shannon the dog was replaced by Bracken, who was a discarded greyhound who leapt into my mum’s car on her way back from the Spar shop. We tried giving him away to a farm (he was too athletic to be a house-dog) but apparently the nicotine withdrawals from not passively-chain-smoking 40 Lambert and Butlers a day meant he had to come back. I’ve never seen a dog with a yellow fringe before. Oh christ before I get the RSPCA on the phone (although let’s be honest, they’d only be ringing to ask me to donate to their new director’s Bentley fund), the dog was given away and finished out his days running around chasing chickens. That’s not even a fib I was told to make me feel better, he went to the farm a few doors down!

Bracken was replaced by Oscar, a ginger border collie who was thick as mince and the bane of my life (though I loved him dearly). When I used to take him for walks over the fields and let him off, he’d immediately turn around and belt for home. Every. Single. Time. This would invariably lead to me trying to run (bear in mind I’m fat) after him and catching him just the moment before my ankles snapped. He did calm down a bit and could be trusted to run on his own after a while, but as soon as he heard one of the many bird-scarers go off in the fields away he’d be again, destined for home. It’s a wonder I was so fat as a kid given I spent so much time chasing him.

He wasn’t just dense outside the home, either, oh no. He used to try and shag Salem, the aforementioned tom-cat, who would be wearing the same non-plussed expression noted above even when he had a 20kg dog thrusting its lipstick up and down his back, smearing his back like a slug. My parents thought it was horrible but looking back, what a terribly progressive household we had. I should start a Tumblr about it.

My favourite memory of Oscar was something he did all through his life, though – we would let him out into the garden for a poo, and, after ten minutes of turning around, sniffing, shaking and finally doing that thousand-yard-stare-whilst-defecating, he’d crimp one off. He’d then go absolutely bloody manic, hurtling back into the house and round and round the sofa, almost literally running along the walls like a motorcyclist in a Wall of Death, with the biggest dog-grin you can imagine. I don’t know whether it was sheer relief at passing a stool he was feeling, but Christ, my mother was feeding him Pedigree Chum, not ball-bearings and cement. He did that up until the date of his death at 15, where the poor little bugger had a heart-attack on my parent’s bathroom floor.

To be fair, I grew up walking into the bathroom after my parents, I’m not surprised he had a bloody heart-attack.

Naturally, we had a range of hamsters (Boris, Truffles, Snowy, then we stopped naming them as they invariably escaped and disappeared into the walls) and rabbits. We used to build massive runs for the hamster from Lego until one hamster started filling his cheeks with Lego bricks which put paid to any future construction. Hell, if it hadn’t been for that hamster I could have been the next Frank Gehry. Still, if ifs and buts were sweets and nuts, we’d all have a lot to eat.

Which, after that colossal diversion, brings up back to the pickled eggs. Remember, even if you’re not a fan of pickled eggs, you can make these a week before and take them to taster night where everyone will ooh and aaah whilst shoving the free food in their mouths with giant meat-hands. It’s quite difficult to make a pickled egg look alluring in a photo, so I’ve made it into an open sandwich here. Gives you an idea of something to make for a light snack – take your HEB of bread, some sliced ham, cottage cheese, cress and two pickled eggs, and enjoy.

pickled beetroot eggs

to make beetroot pickled eggs, you’ll need:

  • 12 eggs (or really, as many as you like)
  • a jar of pickling vinegar (I use the Sarson’s malt pickling vinegar you can buy, the big 1 litre jar, as you can then use the jar afterwards)
  • a pack of cooked beetroot – the vacuum packed ones that still have a lot of juice in them
  • a pinch of black peppercorns
  • a tablespoon of sugar (3 syns – but – this is between 12 eggs and the sugar goes into the vinegar, so you won’t be eating it all, and anyway, are you really going to sit and eat 12 eggs? If so, quarter of a syn per egg)
  • a star anise, if you have one sitting about

to make beetroot pickled eggs, you should:

  • hard boil your eggs – normally about 12 minutes for me but do your research
  • peel and put them into cold water
  • heat up all the vinegar in a pan with the peppercorn, star anise and sugar
  • add the juice from the beetroot packet into the vinegar and then grate one of the beetroots into the pan (oooh, messy!)
  • heat it everything through
  • put the eggs into your jar and, once it has cooled a little, pour over the vinegar mix – you want the eggs to be able to move around a little to make sure they’re not touching each other
  • lid on nice and tight and into the fridge – these seem to keep for ages but take about three days to get that deep purple

They taste lovely – a little like beetroot but with the tang of vinegar. Easy! Also, a good way of using up eggs!

If you want more taster ideas, click on the link below and rejoice!

tastersmall

Cheers now. All the best.

J

PS: fair warning, these eggs will make your farts be immediately upgraded from the subtle duck-lifting-weights category to full-on arse-shredders. If you smoke, for fuck’s sake make sure you light up outside.

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June 26, 2016

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lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

caprese frittata – syn free

I was going to post this caprese frittata yesterday, but I couldn’t be fucked on typing it all up after spending the day smacking my head against various walls at the result. We’re already looking at moving to Iceland, so I hope you’re ready for recipes of súrir hrútspungar (sour ram testicles) and delicious gellur (cod tongues). Anyway, busy day ahead, so let’s bang out a breakfast recipe. Due to our lack of hob we had to use a wee little camping hob which was an absolute comedy of errors, I can assure you.

Before I get to that though, remember: our Musclefood deal runs for another couple of days only – 10% off our already amazing value freezer box! It’s a delivered chilled box of wonder – with 24/26 big fat chicken breasts, 800g of extra lean beef chunks, 2kg of extra lean beef mince and lots and lots of bacon. It’s usually £50 – which is cheap when compared to what you’d pay in the shop – but we’ve knocked off 10% for ONE WEEK ONLY. This brings it down to £45 – the cheapest it has ever been. Remember you can choose the date of delivery and payment doesn’t come out until your chosen date, so you can order in advance. To order, just click this link, add to basket, add the code TCCFREEZER and choose standard delivery – £45! Easy! But this is for ONE WEEK ONLY.

I have to confess, I’m not a huge fan of anything omelette/frittata – I don’t like the way eggs squeak when they are cooked, but I saw this recipe online and thought it would be worth a go. It was delicious. Plus, my parents are now keeping chickens so every time I go over I’m gifted eighteen eggs, and well, our arms hurt from hurling them off our exes’ windows. I joke. We just shit in their flowerbeds. Right no time for words, recipe!

caprese frittata

to make caprese frittata you will need:

  • 8 eggs
  • 250g cherry tomatoes, sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced (yes, using one of these...)
  • handful of basil leaves
  • 60ml skimmed milk (that equates to a tbsp of milk per person – syn it if you want to, but we didn’t!)
  • 170g baby spinach
  • 90g ball of reduced fat mozarella, sliced (HeA)

Remember, if you buy a basil plant from the supermarket, keep it in its pot and stand it in water, it’ll last all summer long. UNLIKE OUR ECONOMY AM I RIGHT OR AM I RIGHT.

to make caprese frittata you should:

  • preheat the grill to medium-high
  • heat a large oven-safe pan over a medium-high heat and add a little oil or Frylight – if you’ve got a decent pan, use it, if not, be a bit liberal with the spray oil
  • add the garlic and cook until golden brown, texture like sun
  • add the tomatoes and basil to the pan and continue cooking until the tomatoes become mushy and blistered
  • meanwhile, whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk and a pinch of salt and set aside
  • when the tomatoes are ready, remove half from the pan and set aside on a plate
  • pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir around the tomatoes to get it all mixed together
  • reduce the heat to medium-low and add the spinach and lay on the mozzarella slices
  • cook in the pan until the eggs are almost set – it’ll take about ten minutes, but don’t rush it
  • remove the pan from the hob and place under the grill and cook until the top has browned and it has puffed up
  • remove from the grill and spread the reserved tomatoes and basil mixture on the top

You can add any old shite into this – peppers, mushrooms, bacon, car engines, I don’t care. It tastes good with the trio of basil, mozzarella and tomato, though. This will freeze well and can be eaten cold the next day. If you’re looking for more breakfast ideas, click on the icon below.

breakfastsmall

I’m off to look into growing a beard and becoming a lumberjack in Canada. Hell, I’ve certainly got years of experience dealing with cut wood.

J

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June 18, 2016

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

sticky apricot chicken skewers

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

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

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

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

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

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

sticky apricot chicken skewers

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you will need:

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

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

for the marinade

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

for the sauce

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

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

to make sticky apricot chicken skewers you should:

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

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

fakeawayssmall poultrysmall

Done!

J

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June 12, 2016

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beef, beef mince, cured meats, low syn, lunch, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

mini meat volcanoes – taster night idea

Just a quick post tonight – we’ve got far too much ironing to be fannying on with, and a whole sky box of Jeremy Kyle waiting for us. Don’t fret though, because we’ve got an absolute belter lined up for you which is another notch on the bedpost for a snack, taster night idea AND for a proper meal! I know, I know, we spoil you. Speaking of spoiling, we spent a lovely few hours today out and about at Brysons in Gateshead which is a great local animal shelter – if you’re in the area and looking for a new pet, please do give them a look – they take wonderful care of all their animals and provide a great service. We took the handsome Harvey out for a walk around Eighton Banks and were mesmerised by his wobbling bum. I think any animal becomes a hundred times cuter when they’re a little chubby. We also spent some time getting our hands on some pussy which, believe me, we don’t get to say very often. Our own cats are now in a massive sulk with us and insist on only coming near us to fart. The dirty buggers.

Today’s recipe, then – we got the idea from/ripped it off from one of those videos you see looping and making you shit yourself when the sound starts going off on Facebook – full link here if you want to take a look for yourself. We’ve adapted it slightly to make it more Slimming World friendly. A doddle to make, taste fantastic and a new, interesting way to tart up mince. Oh I know that they’re not especially photogenic, but not everything needs to look like it’s come out of Smug Fucker magazine.

mini meat volcanoes

This makes nine. 1.5 syns for the lot.

to make mini meat volcanoes you will need:

to make mini meat volcanoes you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • carefully cut the slices of ham to make 9 thin slices – they don’t need to be neat, no-one is standing behind you tutting and this isn’t Art Attack
  • in a bowl, mix together the mince, salt, pepper and onion granules
  • divide the mixture into nine and roll into balls
  • loosely wrap the ham around the ball to make a ‘collar’ – making sure the two ends overlap
  • gently push your thumb into the middle and pinch the edges to make a cup shape – do this for all nine
  • place the cups into a large baking tray or yorkshire pudding tin
  • drop a slice of jalapeno into each cup, a small dollop of passata and top with a chunk of mozarella
  • cook in the oven for about twenty minutes

Serve with speed foods, or, if you’re normal, chips. These can also be stuffed in a tupperware box and eaten cold at a taster session. But listen, that’s a lot of meat to be sharing with people who have probably only brought in a rotten banana or made a Mug Shot in the kitchen. Fuck ’em, take a bag of Snack a Jacks instead.

If you’re looking for more beef or taster night ideas, click the buttons below:

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J

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June 9, 2016

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

chilli and cheesy fries pizza

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

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

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

Anyway come on, let’s get cracking.

chilli and cheesy fries pizza

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

to make chilli and cheesy fries pizza you will need:

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

to make chilli and cheesy fries pizza you should:

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

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

 

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

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J