Category Archives: speciality ingredients

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December 1, 2015

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american, beef, beef mince, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, kebab shop, low syn, lunch, panko, pizza, recipe card, speciality ingredients

low syn meaty pizza fingers

Before we start and I get to the recipe for meaty pizza fingers, a message for the chap who found this blog by searching for “local herbs to bewitch and win local elections” – I’m sorry if my recipe for red lentil dahl wasn’t quite what you were looking for. But all the very best to you.

Gosh, all terribly exciting this morning in Newcastle. Looked out of my office window to see a big column of black smoke billowing into the air and my first thought was sheer stricken terror at the thought it might have been Paul’s mother arriving.

Just kidding, don’t strike me off the Christmas list yet.

No, a great fire was busy raging at one of a shop in Newcastle and it looks like it has completely gutted the building. An awful thing to happen, and they have been unable to account for the whereabouts of one chap. Hopefully he’ll be found. Watching the local press heralded such treats as ‘there is a smell of smoke in the air’ and ‘the firemen are putting water on the fire’. Really? Not petrol? Perhaps hurl a chip pan through the window and see if that’ll calm the flames? Christ.

It made me realise how cosseted and safe my job is, and how frightening it must be to be a fireman. Imagine having to enter a building where you can’t see, the structure is unsafe and IT’S ON BLOODY FIRE. I get nervous turning the thermostat up, let alone having to battle an inferno to rescue someone from being roasted alive. I just can’t imagine it. I used to be absolutely terrified of fire. No wonder, looking back, with three memories sticking in my mind like smouldering ashes.

Firstly, chip pans. To watch 999 and the like you’d think a chip pan – a proper one mind, full of fat and bubbling on the hob – was akin to a grenade sat there with the pin taken out. Because we were Northern and geet hard we’d have chips for nearly every meal, and my parents were forever putting the pan on and ‘having a lie down’ in front of Countdown, or taking the washing out, or driving over to the next village for a twenty deck of Lambert and Butler, leaving me sat in the living room just waiting for the invariable explosion and the feeling of my skin melting off my face. Clearly they knew what they were doing but good lord, I used to be terrified. Never quite put me off eating the chips afterwards, mind.

Next, anyone have a coal fire? For those who aren’t a fan of bringing coal in from the outdoors and developing COPD over the course of a childhood, you often needed to make the fire ‘blaze’ at the start – essentially you’d cover the fire up with a solid object / covering, which in turn caused the air from the chimney to pull through the fire and ‘get it going’ (or, indeed, to go all Tim Healy-haway-Pet on you, ‘take ahad’). One morning whilst we were playing at a friend’s house (I remember the board game, it was a knock-off version of Frustration where you had to shake the dice yourself instead of popping the dome – probably called Inconvenient or For Fuck’s Sake) and her mother decided to light the fire. Being a proper countrywoman that took no time at all and she decided that instead of using something sensible to make the fire blaze, she covered it up with A SHEET OF NEWSPAPER. She couldn’t have chosen a more stupid material if she tried – I’m surprised she didn’t swap out the logs for canisters of Elnett. To put the cherry on the massive third-degree burns, the child-hating witch then left the house to go up the street to make a phonecall, presumably to her lover. Of course, simple physics took place, the newspaper set alight and promptly fell apart, scattering little burning embers into the air, onto chairs, in my hair, all over the living room, leaving us children to try and stamp them all out. We did, but that made my heart race faster than any game of bloody Frustration.

Finally, anyone who has grown up in the countryside will remember the colossal pyramids of round hay bales that used to be scattered around. Well, my sister and I were cheerfully ignoring my mother’s stern-faced admonishments about playing on the bales and sitting atop a gigantic pile when we heard a terribly loud WHOOMPH and the whole pile went up in flames. Well, you’ve never seen two pairs of Naf-Naf trainers move so quickly. Turns out that tightly-packed hay holds a LOT of heat and only needs the slightest encouragement to burst into flames. Who knew? We certainly didn’t – we were only ever worried about being crushed under the weight of the bales, and well, that never stopped us rolling them down the field and crashing them through the fences at the bottom and into the stream. Oops. Turns out that it was a small broken bottle focussing the sun’s rays onto the hay which started the fire. We were just the little dirty-faced urchins who just happened to be nearby.

I realise that my descriptive ways of talking about anything from my childhood makes it sound like we were the rough family from every single Catherine Cookson novel but of course, I always add that slight air of exaggeration into my description. My dad wasn’t Robson Green and I don’t think I ever had pleurisy from working down t’pit. Here’s a little fact though – up until the age of…I dunno, whenever I discovered masturbation and thus had something else to occupy my thoughts alone in the night, I used to have a ‘procedure’ I had to do before I went to sleep to make sure the house didn’t burn down – blink eight times in a row, whirl my eyes around in my head and then shut my eyes and go to sleep. Interesting how a child’s mind works.

Anyway, enough puff and nonsense from me. Here’s tonight’s recipe. I agonised for ages over what on earth to call them – ‘twochubbycubs’ meaty fingers’ sounds like a sex toy, whereas bolognese burgers just sounds awful and like something you’d get in a Wetherspoons between your second pint and having your teeth kicked out by a walking collection of steroids and inadequacies. Confession – I found this recipe on the internet a while back and copied down the recipe but not the link, so if it’s yours, I apologise. I tweaked it for Slimming World though so I’ve done my bit. I put the word ‘longboy’ down on the page (I handwrite everything, I’m such a fusspot) which, upon further googling (googling which probably put me on some sort of Yewtree watchlist as soon as I typed “+longboy +meat +fingers” into google) sounds like the proper name. Who knows. 

This makes enough for four (two halves each).

IMG_2311

to make meaty pizza fingers, you’ll need:

  • 4 wholemeal sub rolls (60g – HeA)
  • 50g panko (9 syns) – optional but dead tasty (before you ask: panko is a dried breadcrumb available from most supermarkets, you don’t NEED it, and if you don’t use it, drop the syns down to half a syn!)
  • 400g lean minced beef (we used a pack from our twochubbycubs’ meat hamper – just one pack, and it’s amazing meat)
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 2 tbsp tomato sauce (2 syns)
  • handful of chopped chillis
  • 30g low-fat cheese, grated (HeB)

Here’s the thing. We used mini submarine rolls instead of a ‘bun’. They’re exactly the same thing and ours weighed 64g instead of 60g. I refuse to syn them, and I’m using one as a healthy extra. If you’re going to be Captain Anal about it, use a normal wholemeal bun. No need to shit the bed. You get two ‘fingers’ each for 3 syns, or 0.5 syn if you don’t use panko.

to make meaty pizza fingers, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 230 degrees celsius
  • slice the rolls in half and place on a baking sheet, cut side up
  • bake in the oven for about 5 minutes – when finished, reduce the heat of the oven to 190 degrees whilst you complete the next step
  • meanwhile, mix together the minced beef, panko, onion, worcestershire sauce, thyme, garlic, egg, salt and pepper in a large bowl
  • spread the mixture onto the bread rolls – make sure it goes all the way to the edge to stop the bread from burning
  • mix together 2 tbsp of tomato sauce with 2 tbsp of water and brush over the meat
  • bake in the oven at 190 degrees for about 20-25 minutes
  • remove from the oven and scatter over the sliced chillis and cheese, and bake for another five minutes
  • finish under the grill for a few minutes to brown it all off
  • serve and enjoy!

If you enjoyed this, can I recommend another pizza recipe? For mature cheddar, leeks and pulled pork pizza? You’ll adore it. Promise.

Remember to share.

J

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November 25, 2015

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american, breast, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, pasta, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese

That awkward moment when you’re about to start a blog post, you open your blinds for inspiration and just over the road is the sight of a neighbour getting changed with his curtains open. I hope he doesn’t think I was peeking – I’d get more sexual gratification from reading the ingredients list on a Rustlers burger. It’s only fair, they’ve seen Paul and I in the altogether enough time to draw a timelapse of our bodies from memory, like a particularly gruesome version of the Take on Me video. They’d certainly need a big pencil. Fnar fnar.

I’m somewhat tetchy as sleep hasn’t been especially forthcoming lately. No dramatic reason – Monday night I was awoken by Paul farting so loudly I thought someone had been shot. I couldn’t decide whether my heart was beating so quickly due to the shock or because my body was trying desperately to dilate my nostrils as quick as possible in the hope of getting some fresh air. I appreciate that’s crass but honestly, I couldn’t drift off for another four hours. I had to get up and wash the dishes.

Last night was the worst, though. Went to bed full of good intentions and Chinese food at an entirely appropriate midnight. The blinds were drawn, our ceiling awash with stars from the little projector we have. All very serene. I was asleep before you could say ‘Oh I wouldn’t love, it’s like a ploughed field back there’.

Woke up at 1am by the heating. Yes, the heating. Our house is now controlled by a tiny Nest thermostat which is apparently learning when we’d like the house to be warm and when we want it colder than a mother in law’s kiss. For whatever reason, it decided that at 1am on a Wednesday morning I’d like to be cremated, because, not kidding, I woke up so hot I almost set off the smoke alarm. If Paul had hurled a pan of boiling sugar in my face I’d have been refreshed. I didn’t even know our house could get to that temperature but somehow it managed it. I went to shake Paul awake because well, I wasn’t going to get up, but touching him was like trying to catch a fish in a barrel full of lube, he was so slick with sweat. He’s lucky, he could sleep through a plane crash. I wandered into the hallway to be bathed in light from our ‘reassuring’ smoke alarm (seriously, it lights up the hallway when you go for a piss so you don’t stub your toe, how thoughtful), clocked the cat having a Solero to cool down, and adjusted the heating from ‘Magma’. Perhaps it’s trying to kill us.

I retired back to bed, after bailing all of Paul’s sweat out of the bed and onto the floor, and drifted back off, comforted by the sound of my skin blistering as I slept.

At 1.45am, the cat, clearly refreshed, thought it was altogether too unfair that I had briefly teased him an hour ago, and proceeded to climb onto my pillow and start doing that ‘knead-knead-purr’ thing that cats do when they want your attention / want feeding. He was immediately (delicately) shot-putted out of the window (we live in a bungalow, it’s fine, he bounces) and I tried to return to the Land of Nod.

Nope.

At around 2.30am, the cat came back through the cat-flap with such ferocity that he must have nudged the sensor on the back door just enough to set the house alarm caterwauling. Paul slept on, I stumbled out of bed calling the world a c*nt, turned the alarm off and then furiously made myself a cup of tea. It’s amazing how much rage you can funnel into boiling a kettle, honestly. At this point, after my tea, there was little chance of sleeping, not least because I wasn’t entirely unconvinced I wasn’t being pranked by the Big Man Upstairs (God, not some gimp we keep in the attic – though I don’t believe in either). I had the impression that had I gone to sleep, the bed would have burst ‘hilariously’ into flames or someone would have driven a car through the window. I lay in bed, reached for my iPad, clicked it on and was immediately castigated by Paul who claimed the tiny ‘tick’ noise had woken him up ‘AND IT’S NO BLOODY WONDER YOU DON’T SLEEP WITH THAT THING BLARING AWAY’. Blaring away! This from a man who would cheerfully sleep through someone cutting off his leg with a fucking butter knife. So naturally I stabbed him to death and buried him in the garden. 

I lay in bed some more, contemplating death and/or sleep. Neither came. I read somewhere that masturbation is nature’s sedative but given Paul was on HIGH ALERT from the sound of one finger hitting a glass screen, ten minutes of my wrist fwapping away wouldn’t have helped. It might have been worth it just to get revenge of Paul and give him a face mask for the morning, but no.  I got my headphones, put on a podcast about funfairs in the vain hope that the polite chatter would lull me away, but no, ten minutes in and I was awaken by the sound of screaming kids on a rollercoaster channeled directly into my ear. At this point, I gave up entirely, had a bath for two hours, stared at Paul in the darkness and watched Jeremy Kyle with the subtitles on and someone gurning away in the corner. A signer, not Graham. I’ve never been so sick of my life as I was this morning, with dawn creeping in.

Still, other people have it worse, don’t they?

Tonight’s recipe is simple enough to make – it’s macaroni cheese, but poshed up a bit with the addition of roasted garlic and a sauce made from goat cheese and Quark. Oh and there’s rosemary, for that ostentatious-bastard look.

IMG_2277

Look, it’s really hard to make a white dish on a white plate look attractive. It did taste good though! This serves four. There’s a lot of garlic in there but it adds so much flavour, and garlic cooked slowly loses a lot of potency, You could leave it out if you don’t want to be Stinky McGee though.

so to make rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

  • 400g pasta
  • 100g soft goats cheese (14 syns between four)
  • 4 chicken breasts, cut into small chunks
  • 115g quark
  • 3 tbs dried rosemary
  • a head of garlic

so to make rosemary and goat cheese macaroni cheese, you should:

  • cut a head of garlic in half horizontally, rub on a bit of oil, put on a tray and put in the oven on a low heat for an hour or so, then scoop out all the sugary, sticky garlic and put to one side
  • heat a large pan of boiling water and cook the pasta according to instructions – reserving about 200ml of the pasta water, and drain and set aside
  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the chicken, cooking until golden
  • reduce the heat to low and add the cheese, quark and rosemary and stir well to combine, adding in the soft sticky garlic flesh from earlier
  • add the mixture to the drained pasta, adding a little pasta water as necessary to loosen the sauce and serve

 

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November 7, 2015

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american, breast, burgers, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, panko, poultry, recipe card, speciality ingredients

2CC zinger tower burger

Tonight’s recipe is a Slimming World friendly version of the Zinger Tower Burger from KFC. The original weighs in at 33 syns. And I’m sorry, look at the clip of it. We ordered one so we knew what to make, and it looks awful. Scroll past all of the chat below if you just need the recipe!

IMG_2212

We were supposed to be going to Hexham to see the fireworks but see it’s been raining like a pissing cow, so we didn’t bother. I can tolerate sliding around in the mud with a group of men waiting for a banger to explode behind me and a large rocket to go off in my face – hell, that’s 3am on a Sunday morning for Paul and I – but the thought of having to drive along the country roads in this weather, invariably stuck behind Arthur and Martha Pissknickers in their 40mph-at-all-costs Astra…well that was just too much to bear.

We didn’t get a chance to lie in this morning, saying as Paul had helpfully booked his little Micra in to have a tyre changed at 9am in the bloody morning. On a Saturday! I was calm and collected when he told me the news and then asked me to take the car – I left him with two working teeth, so all was well. Paul goes through car tyres like most of us go through excuses as to why we’ve put on weight. I swear Paul’s car spends more time up on the ramp than it does on our drive, blocking the neighbour’s view of the road (eee, no wonder she struggles so much). Nevertheless, I forced myself out of bed at 8am, had a half-hearted shower and a twenty minute morning piss, and I was on my way. I said goodbye to Paul the only way I could, by silently creeping into our bedroom, pulling down my trousers and letting out a particularly noxious fart out a millimetre away from his face. Still didn’t wake him mind, though his tongue died.

I drove to Ashington (oh the glamour) in the pissing rain, eyes full of sleep and mind full of cotton-wool. I don’t wake up in the morning until I’ve had at least three cups of coffee and a Double Decker. The trip was as uneventful as driving with about 5% of your brain awake normally is – red lights missed, cyclists to prise off the bonnet, the usual (OK, I really AM joking on that one). At one point I felt a rumble in my nethers and, forgetting my destination, I let rip with a fart that could have parted the sea. Even the car sped up of its own accord. Of course, I hadn’t remembered where I was going – a garage where doubtless some fancy-dan in overalls would want to clamber around in my car – and as it turned out, I was only 600 yards from arriving. This led to me having to do several extra laps of the estate with the windows down and me tilting my bulk to one side each time I went around a corner to try and displace any remaining air-pockets of stink. Paul’s Yankee Candle air-freshener did nothing, though I’d genuinely rather smell what billows out of my arse of a morning than the insipid sickliness of ‘A Child’s Wish’.

Realising that I’d done all I can to dissipate the smell other than calling in an exorcist, I confidently turned into the garage, and ignoring the street-long garage forecourt, promptly drove down someone’s drive just to the left. Realising my mistake and forgetting how shit the gearbox was on the Micra, I spent a minute or so doing a tiny 533-point-turn and turning around, the mechanics in the garage giving me eye as I did so. Having parked, the mistakes continued to pile up – I walked into the back office and announced myself as the Micra driver only to be told to go to the reception and that ‘this was a staff room’ (which is a rather extravagant thing to call somewhere consisting of a settee and copies of the Daily Sport). Signing the car over, I was told to take a seat – I demurred, saying I’d never fit it in the boot* – and went to get myself a coffee from the machine.

Irma Grese behind the reception counter looked at me like I was muck on her shoe and waited until I’d upended all the Splenda and taken a stirrer to tell me that ‘coffee was a pound’. I looked down at the watery brown liquid I had in my hand and had to bite my tongue not to reply ‘how much for this stool sample?’. I explained I didn’t carry cash (I really don’t) and she, after quickly checking with Google as to the legality of having me taken out and shot behind the tyres, ‘let me off’. By god though, did she let me know she’d done me a favour – she spent the next forty minutes sighing and snorting so much that I almost called for oxygen.

Aside from her theatrics, the time passed quickly enough, with me alternating between cursing myself for leaving my phone at home and finally catching up on Jordan’s love life via the various Heat magazines littered around. I did half expect to see at least one mechanic being taken away on a stretcher after venturing into the car’s Cloud of Death’, but no, all was well, and the mechanic ushered me over to ‘take a look’. Take a look? At what? Unless he’d accidentally fitted a Domino’s pizza or a ship’s wheel instead of a tyre, what could I say? Nevertheless, because he was manly and I’m not, I pointed at the tyre and made appropriately straight-man remarks, like ‘cracking job’ and ‘ah yes it looks so much better now’, until he pointed out that it was the back tyre on the other side of the car.

For fuck’s sake. If I can find a way to make a tit of myself, I’ll do it, I really will. I paid up, left with a flounce of my coat, and promptly climbed into the passenger side of the car. I wish I could say I’m exaggerating, but I’m genuinely not. When I realised my mistake I tried to make it look like I was just getting something but they knew – you don’t put your foot in when reaching for the glove compartment, do you? And so with all that over I finally managed to get myself into the right seat – and then stalled it, because I’m not used to Paul’s car.

SO, I won’t be going back there.

Tonight’s recipe then is KFC chicken DONE WELL. Our local KFC is a hovel, no fibbing. We went through the drive-through (I’m sorry, but I’m not putting thru, I’m just not) once and had to wait by the intercom whilst the chickenkicker finished her rollie in front of us before lumbering back into the shop (I’m sorry, but I’m not putting restaurant, I’m just not) and phlegming her way through our order.

In the photo below we’ve used a white bread bun instead of a wholemeal bun – but that’s because wholemeal buns look so boring. You must use your HEB to keep it low in syns. We’ve used panko to coat the chicken, panko being a dried breadcrumb you’ll find in most larger supermarkets, but you can just use a whizzed up breadbun if you prefer. The key is – although we’ve synned the full amount, you’ll not use it all to coat your chicken, so it’s actually less than three syns for the whole thing! I’m going to give you the recipe to make hash browns and the chicken, and then you assemble it however you want – ours is breadbun, bit of ketchup (up to you if you syn it, but we use a tiny amount so don’t bother), chicken, slice of cheese (Tesco Edam slice used here as a HEA) (there are others!) (or grate some cheese), hash brown, lettuce, bit of reduced fat mayo (again, syn or not syn, up to you) and top the breadbun. I’m giving the recipe as enough for one, so just double or triple the ingredients if you want more. SO…

IMG_2213 IMG_2214 (1)

to make twochubbycubs’ zinger tower burger, you’ll need:

  • 1 large chicken breast (remember folks, if you like big, pouting breasts, you’ll find an awful lot of them in our £40 box of meat through Musclefood – along with mince, bacon, sausages, steak…click HERE for that deal)
  • 1 wholemeal roll (HEB)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/4 tsp dried basil (not essential, but nice)
  • pinch of salt and black pepper
  • 1/4 tsp chilli powder
  • 1/8 tsp sage (again, not essential, but nice – substitute in a pinch of mixed herbs)
  • 1/4 tsp onion powder
  • 1/2 lamb or beef stock cube, crumbled
  • 12g panko (2.5 syns)
  • 1 medium-size potato
  • pinch of salt and pepper
  • bit of tomato ketchup or mayo (I’ve counted half a syn here, because we use so little)
  • we served with chips and beans because we’re so common, but you could have a bit of sweetcorn if you’re feeling fruity)

to make twochubbycubs’ zinger tower burger, you should:

  • an hour or so before you want to eat, make the hash-browns by grating the potato into a bowl and fill with cold water to cover it – this step is necessary to stop them going grey
  • allow to sit for about an hour before draining the water
  • squeeze as much liquid out of the potato as you can – it helps if you tip it into a dry, clean tea towel, bundle it up and squeeze – or, what we do, pile the potato on a chopping board, put another chopping board on top and then press down as hard as you can – the drier the potato the better the hash brown
  • press the potato into round moulds (we use one of these, makes things so much easier – and look, that’s two recipes I’ve used it in lately, this and the bubble and squeak) and cook in a frying pan (don’t use oil if you’ve got a good frying pan, but if you haven’t, a bit of Frylight or similar should be used) over a medium-high heat until golden, turning once
  • in a large, shallow dish mix together all of the breadcrumb ingredients
  • beat the egg in another bowl, dip your breasts in the egg mixture and roll in the breadcrumb mixture until well coated – you might need to press some of it on to make it stick
  • bake in the oven at 190 degrees for about 25-30 minutes, until golden
  • assemble your burger!

Easy! 

J

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October 17, 2015

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bacon, classics, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas

quick carbonara (sort of)

Going to rattle off a quick lunch for you today – it’s carbonara, but without the double cream and lovely cheese and egg – instead, using a bit of Quark and egg yolk to mix it through. Before I get to that, and I’ll need to be quick as I’ve got a Doctor Who appointment in fifteen minutes, I confess myself disappointed. See we’ve been furiously buying new books to populate our massive bookcase and I thought, you know, let’s have a trip down Memory Lane. It can’t all be Nigella Lawson and Bill Bryson books. So I nipped onto Amazon to buy the two books I used to love as a nipper – Martin’s Mice by Dick King Smith and My Best Fiend by Sheila Lavelle. Well, honestly. I appreciate I’m viewing them with the jaundiced eye of an adult, but they’re bobbins. I’d finished both books in the time it took to fill my bath. 

And that saddens me. Obviously there are things we experience as a child that we don’t want to feel again as an adult – getting your bottom wiped, or the gentle caress of a whispering vicar, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have at least enjoyed a book that used to bring me so much joy. It also means I’m stuck on new books to buy, because I can’t face having my heart broken again by some insipid story or turgid bit of fiction. Paul’s easy enough – he buys intellectual books full of big words and covers that look like they’d give chartered accountants an erection. To demonstrate, I looked at the last two books we bought from Amazon: I shelled out for a second-hand copy of Delia’s How To Be Frugal, Paul spent his hard-earned money on ‘Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain’, a book that frankly sounds so boring that I drifted off halfway through reading out the title and started thinking about cats. Put another way, we have two magazine subscriptions that get delivered here – one is Viz magazine, the other is Private Eye. Tsk. Snob. I have everything Stephen King has ever published, Paul has a book on tunnels. I suppose they say opposites attract.

Anyway enough of that – tonight’s recipe:

sorta carbonara

to make cheat’s carbonara, you will need:

  • 200g pasta (we used tagliatelle)
  • 6 bacon medallions chopped neatly (you can use up your bacon from our meat box deal with Musclefood – click here for that!)
  • three tablespoons of Quark
  • 30g parmesan
  • 2 tablespoons of fromage frais
  • bit of cheddar
  • two egg yolks

to make cheat’s carbonara, you should:

  • boil the pasta and cook the bacon off
  • mix together everything else
  • then mix EVERYTHING together

I know, simple, but still…!

J

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October 16, 2015

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classics, fakeaways, greek, lamb, lamb mince, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, travel

slimming world moussaka

Good evening. Hey, it’s been a while since we chatted, just you and me. Well, that’ll have to wait – The Returned is back on TV tonight and I can’t wait to get a glimpse of that Frenchman’s knob lose myself in the mysterious world of the returning dead and impossibly pretty girls saying ‘Poob’. Ah yes. Paul is making moussaka, so I’m simply going to write until either a) it’s 9pm or b) my shoulders hurt or c) Paul forgets to bring me my hourly coffee and I have to set about his face with a claw hammer. He’s in good spirits today because he’s left his job – don’t get me wrong, he loved it, but it’s a new adventure see? I’ll touch on that another time because tonight I want to chunter on about our holiday. Can I remember the details? Of CORSICAN. It’s exactly that level of shit-hot humour you bloody love.

The last time I wittered on about Corsica, I told you about how lovely the villa was, how appalling my French was and how I managed to make a complete tit of myself in the middle of a French supermarket only to be shouted at and admonished by a merrily-whiskered lady behind the till. I’m not going to write chronologically about what we did going forward because frankly, we spent an awful amount of time sitting around doing nothing other than eating bread and relaxing in the sun.

That was my first downfall. See, I managed to burn myself in the sun. I’m always so careful to protect myself against the sun (health anxiety, remember), and despite previous times when I’ve turned myself blue by applying too much sun-screen, I slicked it on with gay abandon. Listen, I’m a Geordie – we don’t do bronzed and golden, we do either Philip Schofield’s hair white or alarming-boil-red. There’s no middle ground. I’m a big guy and I take a lot of sunscreen to cover me (I did think it would be quicker to use one of those hoses so dramatically employed in decontamination chambers) but I thought I had it licked. Nope. After three hours of merrily splashing around in the pool and sizzling gently on the sun-lounger, I noticed that my right buttock was a trifle sore.

This isn’t uncommon – I use my bum-cheeks most of the day, so a little tenderness can be expected. Normally Paul just needs to tilt me to relieve the pressure. But no, this was a more serious pain – I had managed to half of my arse a charming post-box red. You genuinely don’t realise how much your arse touches something until it feels like it’s been pressed against the door of an industrial kiln for a few moments. Every sit was uncomfortable, every walk a mixture of chaffing and sadness. Plus, in my mind, my arse now resembled a block of Neapolitan ice-cream, only far less delicious. Paul had to spend five minutes gently kneading my buttocks with after-sun to bring comfort – it may have looked slightly erotic if it wasn’t for me yelling that he was catching my arse-hair in the metal clasps of his watch.

Now now, don’t get preachy, most men have a hairy button, it’s just a fact of life. Paul was once climbing naked into the shower when I ran into the bathroom and clipped a clothes peg to his bum-hair for a laugh. I managed to just nip his sphincter in the peg mechanism. Well, honestly. I’ve never heard him scream so loud – there would have been a less dramatic response had I shot his foot off with a sawn-off shotgun. He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day and it was only after I bought him a 1kg bar of Dairy Milk from Amazon and allowed him to delete all my favourite programmes from the Sky Planner that his frostiness melted. 

That was me injured. Paul’s turn now. Dotted around the pool were three metal ‘hammocks’ which were shaped like open metal balls suspended from a frame. You can see them here:

Casa_Julia_LowRes_Sept14_SH_02 (1)

Lovely yes? I declined to get into them as I was worried the chain would snap under my weight and well, I hate to hear metal scream, but Paul is lighter and more daring so flung himself into one with gay abandon. As if we could manage any other kind of abandon, dearie me. He swung around for a bit until he realised he was going to struggle to get out, given he’s only got little legs and the ball shape didn’t lend itself to an easy exit. I watched as he valiantly declared he’d found a way off only to swing the entire frame over and land, quite literally, flat on his face, with the frame of the hammock smacking his on the back of the head a moment later. I couldn’t tell if the loud ‘ooof’ came from me, his mouth or the air escaping from his fat, but it was hilarious. Me being a conscientious, kind-hearted husband couldn’t do a jot for laughing – indeed, I laughed so much from the deep-end of the pool that I almost drowned myself (that’ll teach me) and he lay for a good few seconds before laughing and moving. I’d be a shit paramedic – anything faintly slapstick and they’d be declaring death whilst I stood around slapping my knees with merriment. Perhaps it was karma from when something similar happened to me in Dobbies – we just don’t do well with hammocks.

Once we’d wiped the tears from our eyes (mine tears of laughter, his tears of blood and ocular fluid) we took a moment to decide what to do and decided on a spot of lunch. I was clearly so upset and fraught with the worry that Paul’s skull was filling with blood from his massive internal injury that it was really all I could do to take myself off for a long shower whilst Paul set about cutting up cheese and putting rocket in a bowl – well, it makes it easier to scrape into the bin later on. It was just as Paul was bending down (naked, remember) to get something from the crisper drawer when our rep appeared at the open living room door with a loud ‘HELLO’. Paul, mortified, spun around on his heel and clutched a tea-towel to his genitals (the same tea-towel I later saw him cleaning my wine glass with – which explains why I wondered if we were having Brie with our sauvignon blanc later on). Paul doesn’t do exhibitionism (even though he should, because he’s lovely), unlike me. I’m not fussed when I’m on holiday, I’ll cheerfully flop it out if it saves me carrying my swimming knickers to the beach.

I don’t swear ‘swimming knickers’ I hasten to add, I just like how that sounds in my head’.

What followed (I had taken a moment to stop murdering Cher’s greatest hits in the shower in order to gleefully listen) was a toe-curling exchange where Paul, frozen behind a breakfast bar with only a tea-towel and a packet of Pringles to hide his modesty, had to exchange polite conversation about how to turn off the pool alarm and where to leave the towels whilst the rep looked absolutely everywhere but his body. The rep was lovely mind, don’t get me wrong, and he had the good grace not to shout ‘YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LET CATTLE IN’ to me as I came out of the shower towelled and pleasant. He then explained that as a gay nudist he had seen it all before, as though Paul was some spectacle designed to be peeped at through a hole in the door. In another world it may have been the beginning of a raunchy Xtube video but not ours – Paul was so shocked and frightened that he had to have half of my sandwich just to calm down. 

I appreciate that this reads like some campy seventies farce but, as Mags is my witness, it’s the truth. Worst part of it all? Paul was so distracted by not accidentally showing the rep his lid that he paid no attention as to how to turn off the pool alarm, and MAN was that alarm sensitive. Each morning we’d be woken by it screeching away if a leaf tumbled in or a water-molecule split. I swear I sighed once in bed at the other end of the villa and it was away, wailing and blaring like a rape alarm. Our poor neighbours. Whilst we couldn’t see anyone nearby – it was forest that surrounded us – we knew there were people close-by by the laughter and sound of cars crunching over gravel. Knowing us, we were probably perched at the end of a housing estate or a nursing home and several dozen Corsican families were being treated daily to the sight of our naked buttocks (mine a fetching red) as we climbed in the pool. Ah well. Not like we’ll ever see them again. 

Final tale before I sign off for the night. We did a very British thing indeed. Perhaps not British, actually, but rather the domain of the bone-idle. We decided halfway through the holiday to have a trip along the island to the port town of Bastia, a good three hour drive away (taking into account Paul’s need to stop every thirty minutes for a dump as we entered somewhere new). We planned the route the night before, made a couple of sandwiches for the car, set the alarm – all ready. We were in the car and making excellent time by around 8am. We’d researched local museums and excellent restaurants to try on our day out, oh what a lovely day. Hmm. The reality of it was that we drove for three hours and then couldn’t find a parking space. Not one. The French seem to park their cars like they’re dashing into maternity wards and haven’t a moment to lose. Every side street is an obstacle course of Corsican Corsas, with cars parked parallel, flush and across the road. I couldn’t understand it and the rage built up in me to such an extent that I yelled ‘WELL FUCK THIS’, did a 76 point turn in the middle of a one-way street and immediately revved the hell out of Bastia. Bastia? More like BASTARD. 

It might have been a lovely town full of curios and wonder, but all we saw of it was the back of a tour bus and the interior of a very large supermarket where we stopped for a calming round of bread and cheese. We’d managed the equivalent of driving to Durham from London, stopping at a Tesco Extra, buying a loaf of bread and driving home. The drive home was fairly silent – Paul slept, and I spent most of the time with my eye twitching and a renewed dislike of the world.  I did switch the radio on but frankly it sounded like I’d tuned into a cockfight so that was snapped off in anger too. 

I was at least reassured that when recounting this tale to a friend that she had done exactly the same, right down to the stopping at the supermarket on the way back. Phew.

We’ll leave it there. French Zombies are here. Before I go, tonight’s recipe is a Slimming World friendly moussaka. You’ll enjoy it! Bit of a clart on making it, no fib, but it’ll be tasty. Serves 4. You could make it with beef mince – lucky we chuck in three big bags of extra lean in our Musclefood deal, found RIGHT HERE (and don’t worry, it opens in a tidy new window so you won’t lose me forever).

slimming world moussaka

to make slimming world moussaka you’ll need:

  • 500g of extra lean minced lamb if you can find it – our butcher does lean lamb and we use that, but they also sell it in Tesco
  • 60g of extra mature cheddar, grated (2 x HEA)
  • 500g pasatta
  • 2 medium aubergines, cut into slices and dipped into lemon juice to stop them going brown
  • a couple of large potatoes
  • 1 bog standard carrot, diced finely
  • tin of tomatoes
  • 1 courgette, diced finely
  • 1 white onion, finely chopped
  • 2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed and minced (yep: USE ONE OF THESE MAN, YOU’LL SAVE SO MUCH)
  • 1/2 tsp of ground chilli, 1/2 of cinnamon, 1/2 of rosemary if you can find it, 1 tsp of oregano and 1 tsp of thyme
  • pinch of salt and pepper
  • beef stock made from a decent stock cube
  • half a tub of bloody Quark
  • 2 tbsp of fromage frais (make sure syn free else Maggie May will be livid)
  • bit more cheese, just to make it nice

and then to make slimming world moussaka you should (deep breath):

  • actually, look, it isn’t so bad, so get on with it
  • peel, slice and par-boil the potatoes until they are soft with a hint of rigidity, like a randy old bloke’s schlong;
  • take your slices of aubergine and stick them up yer arse and grill them in a fancy griddle pan or normal pan until they’re charred
  • hoy a bit of salt on them
  • cook your onions in another pan until soft, then add everything else in – mince, spices, garlic, courgette, stock etc – and cook for thirty minutes low and slow until it’s really thick;
  • whilst doing that, beat together the Quark, fromage frais, some cheese, salt and pepper and the yolk of an egg into a thick pale yellow sauce
  • assemble – mince mixture, then aubergine, potato, bit of white sauce (fnar fnar) rinse and repeat – you might not get many layers if you have a big dish, but so what? Just do what you can
  • throw cheese on the top and put in the oven for around half an hour, making sure it doesn’t burn
  • add more cheese at regular intervals until you’re satisfied and smiling
  • serve!

Coo, I’m knackered.

J

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October 3, 2015

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

bang bang chicken – sort of

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

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

bang bang chicken

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

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

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

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

J

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October 2, 2015

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fakeaways, low syn, mince, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

slimming world ikea meatballs and gravy

Not going to lie – these were bloody amazing! My favourite bit about going to IKEA, other than causing arguments amongst other couples and farting in cupboards, is getting a plate full of meatballs and chips. I don’t care that the meatballs are probably made from reindeer anus and chipboard, they taste delicious and I’d cheerfully bathe in the gravy. Even the addition of that shitty bit of parsley doesn’t ruin my meal like it normally does, now that I know it serves a purpose (the size of the parsley sprig is used to signify whether you have a large, medium or small portion of meatballs, so that the cashier doesn’t have to count how many meatballs you’ve got!). So Paul was tasked with doing a bit of research and we’ve managed to find a recipe and tailor it so it is possible on Slimming World. Nevermind a platinum Body Magic sticker, I frankly think we should be given an OBE each. Scroll down for the recipe, but if you want, stick around for a bit beforehand – I’ve got more to tell you about our trip to Corsica…

…when I last signed off, we were asleep with a puck of beef resting in our stomach. I reckon it’s still in there. We woke ridiculously early to give us enough time to walk the 27 miles to the Pod, only to have to walk back and get a code from reception before they’d open the gates. Nothing says ‘home comforts’ like a prison gate to get out of your hotel. The Pod remained amazing and we were in Terminal 5 in moments. I’ve never flown from Heathrow despite having done a fair bit of travelling, so it was all very new and exciting. Ah wait no, sorry, it was dull and tedious. I know airports are never the most exciting of places, but I get the impression that unless you were minted, the terminal wasn’t really for you. It’s still better than Newcastle Airport mind, but that’s more due to the fact Newcastle Airport consists of a couple of bars, a duty free shop and some toilets that haven’t been cleaned since the days of me being an early teenager and buying condoms from the machine on the wall because my then-f’buddy was too worried. Ha! Plus it’s invariably full of at least 2,000 pissed up Geordies who think they’re sophisticated because they’ve got a Stella Artois moustache at 4.30am in the morning. Oh honestly you know I’m right.

We decided on a light breakfast in The Pilot’s Lounge, so-called because I went up-a-height when I saw the price. The waitress – a smile wearing a tabard and sensible shoes – forgot to give me my pot of tea, my toast and my hash-brown. It’s alright though, I forgot to give her a tip, so that balances things. You know how I can’t go anywhere without immediately discovering a new enemy? I’d barely buttered Paul’s toast when I overheard an American chap behind me LOUDLY telling everyone south of Manchester how ‘TERRABUL’ the coffee was in England. Oh it was just ‘AWFUL’ (though he was strangling every vowel as he spoke). I couldn’t eat my breakfast because my teeth were grinding so hard diamonds were falling out of my nose. I’m a proper moaner, don’t get me wrong, but I’m awfully British about it – I’ll twist my face to Paul about something that has upset me, but I’ll wait six months and bring it up in the bath or something. He went on – it was all I could do not to hurl Paul’s tea in his oily face. Listen, I’ve been to America and I’ve had what passes for coffee there – it looks, smells and tastes like what I’ve bled out of my radiators. When he wasn’t moaning he was hacking away, coughing up phlegm like it was jet-fuel. No discreet coughs into a hanky for this chap, no, he preferred to let us listen to his chest echo and rattle. No wonder the coffee didn’t taste good, chum, it has to sink through eight yards of lungbutter to get to your stomach. Fucker. 

Having finished breakfast and realised to our absolute horror that there wasn’t so much as an arcade for me to throw a month’s wage into, we settled down for the two hours before our flight. Thankfully, I had my new phone, old phone and iPad to entertain me, so I just sat on one of the departure lounge chairs with them spread out in front of me like I was on the lowest budget version of 24 you could imagine. Paul ate a Toblerone. OF COURSE, though, the horsefucker from the restaurant was on our flight. Of course! So we had two hours of boredom punctuated by him mining for phlegm. Lovely. My sigh of relief when they opened the gate almost blew the Newcastle to London Cityjet service over. The good thing about flying British Airways is the allocated seating – I can’t bear the undignified scramble for seats you get with the likes of easyJet and Ryanair. I don’t understand it – it’s not as if the flight attendants are going to auction off the spare seats if you’re not jammed in the bloody doorway one minute after the gate opens. 

We promptly boarded the plane and, as expected, immediately brought the average age of the passengers on board down by around thirty years – everyone, to an absolute fault, was ancient. I wouldn’t have been surprised if British Airways had removed the back toilet and fitted an onboard crematorium. Normally I watch the safety demonstration like my life depends on it (boom boom) but I didn’t bother – it was clear from the amount of creaking hips and whistling hearing aids that if the engine had caught fire and we needed to evacuate post-haste, both Paul and I would perish in the flames whilst Elsie in 22A blocked the aisle putting her good teeth in and trying to get the inflatable slide to come out of the toilet door. We did have a chuckle when the exceptionally posh older chap sitting behind us dropped something on the floor and burst out with the loudest ‘FUCK’ I’ve ever heard. My ears were still rippling as we flew over Nice. I love it when posh folk swear with gusto. 

The pilot came on the radio (you’d think that would make it hard to grip) and announced that it would be a smooth flight all the way to Corsica and that it was gorgeous and sunny. Excellent! I like to hear the hairs on my leg crinkle when I get off the plane when I’m on holiday. Go hot or go home, or something like that. I don’t know the hip sayings, I’m in my thirties now. Oh fuck I’m old.

As usual when I fly, I spent the entire time on the runway thinking about how it would feel if my face was burned off when the fuel tank exploded or what sound the bones in my leg would make as they were concertinaed by the crumpling metal of a crashing 737, but as soon as we were airborne I was fine and only concerned with making sure I didn’t miss out on the onboard snack, which turned out to be a croissant I could have shaved with and a plastic cup of orange water. Delicious! I still ate every last crumb whilst moaning about it to Paul. Our flight attendant was charming but looked like Missy from Doctor Who, which was a little alarming, because I did expect her to wrest the controls from the pilot and ditch us into the sea. 

The flight itself was uneventful, bar for a tiny bout of turbulence as we flew over the bottom of France which shook a few pair of dentures loose, and we disembarked in Figari after only two hours. Figari Airport is absolutely tiny and only seems to appear once the plane is low enough for me to look for a four-leaf clover amongst the grass. It was in no time at all that we were off the plane and through what was ostensibly called security but actually amounted to nothing more than a very handsome Frenchman saying bonjour to me and oppressing his smirk at my bong-eyed passport photo. Paul held us up with his pressing need to have a poo as soon as we arrive anywhere new (I touched on this when I wrote about our visit to Germany – it’s like a nervous tic he has) and we were forced to wait behind M. Physema in the AVIS car hire queue.

The car hire process was unpleasant, not least because I had to listen to the guy in front churning his lungs for a good thirty minutes before we got anywhere. The unpleasant shrew behind the counter barked at me in what I’m not even sure was French, hurled a set of paperwork at me like I’d murdered her child and then spat in the general direction of a trillion parked cars and sent me on my way. I don’t think I managed one word other than a cheery bonjour which might have caused her ire. We trundled our suitcases down to the little garage only for someone else to shout inexplicably at us. At this point, we were a little deflated, and when someone finally drove a car around to us my spirits didn’t lift. It was a Peugeot 208. A new one, yes, but I’ve had farts with better acceleration. Plus, Paul and I are big guys and a tiny car doesn’t quite suit our ample frames – I’ve never had to pour myself into a car like a glob of wax in a lava-lamp. Nevermind. They clearly hadn’t cleaned the car either given there was someone’s chewed off fingernail sitting on the dash. I made a mental note to leave a skidmark on the back seat and cracked on.

We didn’t have the language skills to argue or beg a better car, plus I got the impression that had I gone back to the rental desk and complained, my face would have been taken off by the tongue of the angry pickled Nana Mouskouri lookalike behind the desk. So we set off, slowly. Oh so slowly. The road away from Figari airport takes you up a fairly steep hill and clearly I overstretched the car because it stalled on the first hill. Superb! Thankfully I was so distracted by trying to master driving this shitbox that I forgot all my worries about driving on the right, which was a relief given I’d built it up into being a terrifying experience in my mind.

Actually, a serious note. If you’re nervous about driving on the other side of the road, don’t be. It comes very naturally – the only thing of concern were the roundabouts, of which there are many, and the fact that absolutely no fucker indicates. Not one! Joining a roundabout becomes a terrifying guessing game of intentions and given the average Corsican drives like the interior of their car is on fire and they’ve got a mouthful of petrol, you really do just need to take your time.

Yes, the driving leaves a lot to be desired (or, another view, they all know the roads so well that they know where they can afford to take chances) – quite often on a mountain pass you’ll be faced with someone hurtling towards you in a little Renault, fag in one hand, phone in the other, steering the car with their blanket of chest hair, leaving you with the choice of a solid wall on one side of the road and nothing but air on the other. Best of all is the look of absolute astonishment that they’ve found someone coming towards them on the opposite side of the road. I’m not a religious man but there were more than a few times I just shut my eyes and prayed for the best. It’s not uncommon for someone to overtake you on a blind corner or on the crest of a hill and to blur alongside the car shouting something terrible. I finally discovered what it must feel like to have me driving up behind you effing and jeffing. What am I like. Our villa awaited, but my fingers are bleeding now, so I’ll stop for the night. Here’s the recipe!

IKEA meatballs

Note that we served this with mashed potatoes, rainbow carrots and tenderstem broccoli. We’re making a bit of an effort with our 1/3 speed rule and if we come up with a fancy recipe for anything like that, I’ll be sure to include it.

to make IKEA meatballs and gravy, you’ll need:

  • 500g turkey mince
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp each of oregano, paprika and rosemary
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp parsley, chopped
  • 2 tbsp quark
  • 450ml stock (made with 2 beef stock cubes)
  • salt
  • pepper
  • 1 tbsp of cornflour (4.5 syns)
  • 1 tsp mustard powder
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce

Don’t sweat it too much regarding the herbs. Go for fresh, always better, but dried is fine! I’m going to call it 1 syn – you don’t use all of the gravy, but it’s up to you.

to make IKEA meatballs and gravy, you should:

  • sort out your sides – potatoes, broccoli, the gayest carrots in the world, whatever you like
  • in a bowl mix together the mince, half the nutmeg, rosemary, oregano, paprika, garlic, salt, pepper and half the parsley then divide the mixture and roll to make about thirty meatballs
  • spray a large frying pan with a little Frylight and cook the meatballs until cooked through and browned – better to cook them nice and hot to get a brown crust – urgh, crust
  • transfer the meatballs to a plate to rest and let the meatballs pan cool a little…then…
  • add the quark and 2 tbsp of the stock
  • mix well until the quark is softened and melted
  • add the mustard powder, worcestershire sauce, the rest of the nutmeg and cornflour
  • mix well until you have a smooth, thick paste
  • add the rest of the stock and cook over a low heat, stirring continuously, until it thickens (you can gradually increase the heat if you wish to speed the process up, but be a kind and gentle lover and watch for signs of the mixture splitting)
  • transfer the meatballs to the pan to warm through
  • serve!

If you feel the need to have a hot-dog for dessert to complete the IKEA experience, I won’t judge.

Though, I’m always judging.

J

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August 26, 2015

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breast, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

chicken and pepper pizza vs goat cheese, spinach and mushroom pizza

Before I get started with my quick tale of two pizzas, I just want make a quick plea. Listen carefully. If you’re on facebook and your finger is about to click the mouse button to share a picture with some trite homespun bit of wisdom, take a moment. Think about what you’re posting. If it’s in Comic Sans, it’ll be bollocks. If it ends ‘97% of my friends won’t share it but TRUE FRIENDS WILL’ then don’t do it. If you actually think there’s some poor little bugger sat in a cancer ward somewhere with doctors standing busily counting likes on a facebook status, with the chemotherapy drugs collecting dust in the corner until a post gets over one million likes, then you’re an actual moron and should be shot with shitty shite.

I raise this because I logged onto facebook before and was confronted with a picture of what looked like a xylophone with a dog’s head on it and turned out to be something even worse – a starved and beaten dog. It was horrific and upsetting and I reacted the same way any decent human being would do by recoiling in disgust. The accompanying caption read ‘SHARE IF YOU ARE AGAINST ANIMAL CRULTY (sic) OR IGNORE IF YOU LOVE IT’.

I mean, what a bloody thing to come out with. First of all, if I was a lover of animal abuse, I don’t think I’d nail my colours to the mast (probably using a dog to bang the nails in) by announcing it on Facebook by actively deciding not to share something. Secondly, it’s an abhorrent thing to use such a shocking photo just to get more likes on a status. It’s like those chain letters that people used to get their clappers in a froth over way back when, only more sinister. Consider that before you share dross and put your friends in a difficult position.

Oh and whilst we’re on the topic of facebook again, if you happen to notice that your profile name contains anything other than your own bloody name, then send yourself to the foot of the stairs and have a think about what you’ve done.

Tonight’s recipe is a comparison – we were given a Musclefood pizza to try (chicken and pepper) as part of our smorgasbord of treats to take for a spin. The idea of pizza on Slimming World is enough to make anyone’s legs quiver, but realistically, you can’t have a ‘decent’ pizza unless you really blow your syns. However, this comes close to being acceptable and I’ll tell you why in a moment. But fear not: because I’m an impartial, generous guy – and also because I didn’t want to share my pizza with Paul, I made an alternative pizza-esque creation which is syn free and equally delicious. So you can make your mind up!

Musclefood chicken pizza

This is the Musclefood pizza, available here. It’s 10.5 syns for the whole pizza and actually isn’t bad! I was expecting something akin to sucking on a square of carpet but no, it tasted like a decent, thin-crust pizza. I’d cheerfully recommend hoying a couple in the freezer and then when you’re desperate for a bit of fast food, give them a whirl. They weren’t cheap with the meat, either. You need to understand that isn’t going to be the same as Dominos, and if you’re like us and when the pizza craving hits you need a pizza the size of a combine harvester’s tyre and more cheese on it than a tramp’s toe, this isn’t going to completely satisfy that itch. But if the ten syns stops you spending forty…

Remember, Musclefood are running a promotion for £144 worth of lean meat for £75. Can’t get vexed at that!

Of course, you can make your own – and I’ve come up with a syn-free version that you can wrap your bristly lips around. See?IMG_1919

 

to make our syn-free pizza, you’ll need:

  • one WW (boo hiss) Love Fibre wholemeal wraps (look for the purple and blue packaging, as you can use this wrap as a HEB)
  • a good handful of spinach
  • a good handful of baby mushrooms
  • 30g of goats cheese
  • half a freshly grated clove of garlic 
  • quark
  • caramelised onions (you’ll find my recipe for those right here!) or, if you can’t be fucked on making those (although it’s totally worth it), just some thinly sliced red onion

to put it all together:

  • thinly slice the mushrooms and drop them into a dry frying pan to let them sweat down
  • add the spinach towards the end and wilt it down
  • take enough quark to cover the wrap and add grated garlic, then spread it over the wrap
  • add dollops of the jam or the red onion, small cubes of the goats cheese, then the spinach, then the mushrooms
  • pop under the grill until the cheese has melted 
  • stuff it down your gob

Listen, you can chuck any old tut onto this pizza. Don’t like mushrooms? FINE. Use chicken. It’s just that easy.

I’m off to watch Bake Off and feel sad that I can’t EAT EVERYTHING.

J

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July 8, 2015

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american, bacon, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients

pimped macaroni cheese

Boo! I had to work late and do overtime tonight so it’s a very quick post from me – just to put today’s American entry where we went to Discovery Cove and we swam with dolphins. Poor bastards. There’s also a wonderful recipe for seriously loaded mac and cheese – nice and American! Of course we had to jazz it up by adding chives, sausages and bacon. Just scroll down.

Hilariously, my book has climbed to #1 in the Amazon’s Gay & Lesbian Travel section. I can’t imagine the competition is especially stiff but still! I KNEW I should have called it ‘Cruising with Gays’. If you haven’t bought it yet, give it a go, it’s a couple of quid and it pays for Paul and I to buy ridiculous nonsense like Thwomp cushions and giant spoons. If you want it, you can buy it here. If not, scroll to get the recipe!

 

day ten – Discovery Cove and swimming with dolphins

Ah, Discovery Cove day. Booked a long time ago, was I looking forward to it? Not really. I know this is almost blasphemy, but dolphins leave me cold. I think it’s because my sister went through a dolphin phase during the 90s, like most girls, and everything was covered in dolphins. I continued the theme in my teenage bedroom, where everything was covered in seamen. Kaboomtish. That, coupled with having to get my baps out, meant I was a little apprehensive. Nevertheless, we got a taxi and were there in good time, turning up a good half hour early. We had read online that it was worth getting there early to get a good dolphin swim slot in the morning, meaning you could relax for the rest of the day. This done, we were booked for the swim at 10.45.

Breakfast first, then. A good choice, but my buffet-shyness prevented me from getting the full amount I wanted. There’s a cooked breakfast option available but the lady behind the counter looked pretty stern, so I didn’t dare ask for me. There’s also the requisite pastries and cereal if you prefer. We took our time before heading over to the lockers. You are given a little net bag which includes a snorkel, good goggles and suncream – as you’re not allowed to use your own suncream lest it pollutes the water. Then, the tough bit. The wetsuit. Men can either choose from a full wet-suit or a lycra ‘top’, which clings to everything. We did try on the top but it pushed my moobs up in such a fashion that I could no longer see my feet. Ditto Paul. We decided to change into a wetsuit. Jesus. Have you ever tried getting into one of these things, particularly if you’re somewhat rubenesque like Paul and I? It’s like to push water through a cheese-grater. However, ten minutes later, once they had greased us up, we were fine, and dare I say it, the wetsuit was actually the far better choice as it compresses everything in. Clearly the fat was being squeezed somewhere else but I didn’t have any especially big lumps appearing, so it was all good!

Now – time for a serious thought. I read a lot of posts on here about people feeling shy about being fat and not wanting to plod about with it all on show. I’m the same, despite my cool and sexy exterior – quite shy about my jiggly bits. But if you take anything from my trip reports aside from a slight queasiness, know this – you don’t need to worry. I have seen some proper gargantuan heifers over here and no-one ever comments. People might think things in their head but let’s be honest, we all do it. Just remember that you’re never going to see these people again and let it all swing out. Life, and your holiday, is too short to worry about what you look like. But – that said – don’t be setting up a chip pan on the beach, that’s just common.

We spent an hour just drifting around in the lazy river, using our snorkels. The river itself gets to about 8ft in places, but as long as you make sure you can snorkel, you’ll be fine even if you’re a weak swimmer. Paul got the hang of it fairly quickly, but I can’t say I helped him out by sticking my finger in his snorkel-hole. Well, it is a honeymoon. The worst part about being able to breathe and see underwater? Well, you know in programmes like Fat Families or other diet shows, they always show the fat person swimming and all their fat is rippling underwater like an epileptic lava-lamp? That was Paul and I. People didn’t need to throw fish at us whilst we basked, mind.

The river is lovely, full of…stones. Yep, I do think they could gee it up a bit by sticking some little nooks and crannies and things to look at under the water, but it was still a wonderful way to relax. Then – it was time for the dolphin swim. You’re taken into a little tent with your other swimmers, made to sign a disclaimer form to say that any damage or penetration is not Discovery Cove’s problem and then, oh my, the cheesiest video about dolphins ever. It was in this tent that we realised that we were getting proper stink-eye from a woman. She would not let up. I can only assume one of two things:

  • she was jealous because her short, bald husband was not nearly as attractive as mine; or
  • she had finally realised that she was the absolute double of the lampshade-haired cow from those insufferably smug BT adverts – and I really hate those adverts.

Naturally, as Paul and I can’t get through a day without making an enemy, she became ours, and we spent the rest of the day pulling faces at her whenever she passed. Cow. We were led to our dolphin – Calypso – and our trainer. We stroked the dolphin’s belly, avoided her bajingo which was clearly on show, had flapped at and learnt all about the dolphin. It was a fun half-hour, but as we were alongside a family, most of the attention was spent on the little girls getting to stroke the dolphin and what have you. Which is fair enough, I guess. It didn’t help that their father was a proper knob though, he kept asking really smart-arse questions of the trainer and then correcting her! I can’t bear that kind of attitude, there’s no need for it. Thankfully, our British reserve won through, and we were exceptionally polite. My only lament – I didn’t get to throw a fish in its mouth. But to be honest, I get enough of that at home throwing Skittles at Paul to get him to move. After 20 minutes of tricks and chat, it was time for Calypso to pull us back to shore. You swim out about 50ft into deep water, and the dolphin pulls you back in. It was good fun, and Calypso managed valiantly with both Paul and I, though she did have to be put on oxygen afterwards.

After the swim, you’re ushered into another tent to view photos of the happy day. It’s not hard sell as such, but I do feel it could have been done more subtly, especially given the price of the photos. If you have kids, perhaps it would be best to leave them outside at this point so you don’t feel pressured – as I was with Paul, I had no such luck, and we ended up buying four photos. They’re really good as it happens, so it’s fair enough. After our swim, an early lunch. The food is terrific mind, very healthy and fresh. I had a Cobb salad, purely so I could say to Paul that I had a cob on, little realising the size and scale of the salad. In England, I remember when a salad was thick sliced tomato, cucumber, iceberg lettuce and loads of vinegar. Over here, you need to set aside forty minutes just to plow your way through. Delicious mind.

The other two draws for Discovery Cove are the snorkelling bay, where you can swim around with loads of tropical fish and spotted rays underneath you, and the ray pool, where rays swim around your feet. They’re both excellent, save for the fact that Paul got slapped across the arm by an angry ray, which apparently really hurt. Whilst I was laughing, the ray got me too – and it DOES hurt! We got out of there because we could see it was kicking off. There’s plenty of photos we took with an underwater camera, but I can’t stick them online. They’re all very blurry and blue anyway. I did notice some show-offs with fancy underwater cameras. I admit to being jealous of their superior technology, so next time I’m going to navigate the fish pool in an underwater sub. Might mince a few fish whilst I’m doing it, but ah well.

That is how the remainder of the day passed – swimming, sunbathing, getting lots of free ice-cream and beer, and snorkelling about. There isn’t too much to write about because it was just all relaxing, no being dramas or the like. The only notable event was at the end of the day, when we were getting changed – when I pulled the wetsuit from my body it made a massive, loud, wet fart sound, to which Paul – to his credit, stealing a Phoenix Nights joke, shouted ‘And I’ll name that tune in one’ from the shower cubicle next door. Good lad. Shuttle to Seaworld and then onto the I-Ride trolley back to the Four Points, where the night was spent watching Unstoppable on the PPV TV. Good film that. Day over! 

Over and out.

pimped macaroni cheese

serves 4 (generously)

to make pimped macaroni cheese, you’ll need:

  • 250g macaroni (or any type of pasta – we used spirali)
  • 1 brown onion
  • 6 Slimming World sausages, defrosted, skins removed
  • 5 rashers of back bacon, fat removed and chopped into small chunks
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 400ml skimmed milk (6 syns)
  • 200ml chicken stock
  • 160g reduced fat cheddar cheese, grated (4x HexA)
  • 125g quark
  • 1 wholemeal brown roll, blitzed into breadcrumbs
  • bunch of chives
  • salt and pepper

and when you’ve got all that, you’d better

  • cook the pasta according to instructions, drain and set aside
  • heat a large pan over a medium high heat and cook the onion until softened
  • add the bacon and sausage meat, stirring frequently to stop the sausage meat from clumping – I used a potato masher to keep the mixture loose
  • add the oregano, paprika and garlic, stir well and remove from the heat
  • in a separate pan add the milk, stock cheese and quark and cook over a medium-low heat, whisking continuously until the mixture is smooth – don’t be tempted to increase the heat – it needs to be quite low
  • add salt and pepper to taste
  • combine all of the ingredients together, mix well and pour into a large baking dish
  • sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and chopped chives
  • cook at 190 degrees for about 20-30 minutes

Serve! 

If you want to save syns, we made a macaroni cheese where the creamy sauce came from butternut squash which was equally as delicious – you can find it here!

J

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July 4, 2015

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american, bacon, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, low syn, pork, quark, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free

american week: bacon wrapped hotdogs

I feel I should warn you – this is a long one. But if you relax, grit your teeth and just persevere, you’ll enjoy it all the way to the end.

Wah-hey! It’s American week, we’ve got our fancy new banner, and you’re actually getting two recipes today, both of which are easy to make. Before we get started though, just something quick. I found a vest in the reduced bin at Tesco today for £2. I don’t wear vests because I don’t have fabulous arms and I feel the world can do without seeing my milky white, hairy shoulders catching the sun. Nevertheless, it’s good for dossing around the house, but the very moment Paul saw me in it he said I looked like Onslow from Keeping up Appearances. So that’s nice, bearing Onslow was a man in his late fifties who had yellow teeth and a very ‘lived in’ face.

The recipes are at the bottom of this page!

American week means I get to step back from writing and rest my fingers for a bit – so in the meantime, I’m going to post seven days from my honeymoon book. We travelled to Florida for four weeks and it was amazing, and I kept a diary because I didn’t want to forget any of it. I know, mushy. If you enjoy it, please do consider buying it – it means a few extra pennies for our Iceland jar see. And it’s only £2. Click here! So, this is day zero…

 

Day 0 – our wedding and travelling to Florida

Given I’m going to prattle on about Paul and I for oooh…about 50000 words, it seems prudent to introduce us properly, and what better way to illustrate who we are then to talk you through the day I accepted Paul’s ring. Yes, the wedding. We’re not exactly Wills and Kate, though I do have a fabulous arse, but it was a lovely day full of smiles and the perfect start to our honeymoon full of sin, sarcasm and blue sunscreen.

Way back in 2009, also at Disney, I proposed to my stout little barrel of a man and he gleefully accepted. I think it was the fact we were in the middle of a lake and I’d be watching an awful lot of Dead Calm recently that hastened his positive reply. We got honked at by a passing Disney ferry whose inhabitants thought I was down on my knees doing something other than proposing. The nerve. I mean, it wasn’t Christmas! Zip forward to 3 January 2011 and the day before our wedding. Well, the glamour started right from the off with one of the cats deciding to do a dirty protest in the car whilst we ferried him over to my sister to look after. You’ve never seen someone wind a window down quicker than us that day, and because the cat is fearless and would have jumped, he stayed in his messy box all the way to my sisters. It was with tears in our eyes (and Vicks under our nose) to see our pooey little furball depart, but there you have it.

We spent the evening before the wedding in our first treat, a room at the Hotel du Vin in Newcastle. You may think Newcastle is purely the land of bust noses, bare flesh and broken hymens, but we’re more than capable of bringing the class, and this is one of the nicest hotels in the area. I mean, it has a cigar bar attached, for heaven’s sake. Our very first surprise of the honeymoon? We were upgraded to the best suite in the hotel, the Dom Pérignon suite. It was bloody beautiful. It’s the honeymoon suite and I was overjoyed, especially as I had only paid £68 for the room through my shrewd discount plans. A massive thank you to the staff of the beautiful Hotel du Vin, that’s for sure. The room had two bathtubs in the living room, and I think we were in the room for a grand total of two minutes before they were full of bubbles and we were laid in them watching Deal or no Deal on the giant TV and feeling like kings. The bed was wonderful too – it felt like it was 9ft wide – I could lie in it, stretch myself out and STILL not touch the sides. Sometimes I wonder why Paul married me.

After a meal on the Quayside and a romantic stroll back to our room, we settled down to sleep – our last night as bachelors! Here’s a sweet fact for you – in all the time we’ve been together, we’ve never had a night apart. A good start to the marriage methinks! And so…to the wedding!

We had decided a couple of months previously not to have a big do at all, and just a small registry office affair followed by a good dinner. I wish I could say it was for any other reason than the fact we’re both terribly selfish and Northern and thus the idea of spending money to facilitate other people having a good time appals us. Plus, I wanted to avoid the three horrid old clichés of a civil partnership:

  1. non-Scottish men wearing kilts. We know you’re a Mary but let’s not wear a skirt, eh;
  2. rainbow decorations absolutely anywhere. Paul may be the height of a leprechaun but he doesn’t have the cheeky disposition; and
  3. bloody cupcake towers. Nothing cloys my blood faster than this fad for cupcakes. I’m not Polly bloody Pocket. If I had my way, there would only be two cakes allowed – fruit and urinal.

Bah! I’m not casting aspersions on anyone else’s wedding but it suited us to have a small, tidy, manly do. So we did. Well, we did toy with the idea of dressing up like the sisters from Shakespeare’s Sister’ Stay video but we were talked out of it. We became Husband and Husband in Newcastle Registry Office, presided over by an official who was the spit of Annie Lennox, and watched over by our immediate family and good friends. As an aside, my gran was there, and she’s brilliant – despite being 87, she’s thoroughly accepting of our relationship and is always asking after Paul when I call up. I mean, there are limits to her acceptance – I didn’t dare explain what fisting was when she asked me one day after seeing the word on my phone (I might add, someone had texted it in a joke to me, I’m not that FILTHY). It still felt a little bit too formal for me, as I’m not used to someone addressing a suit-clad Paul without adding ‘the defendant’ afterwards. We decamped to SIX, the faffy little restaurant on top of the Baltic. It’s very posh. NOW, we’re not a posh lot, and class McCains as a ‘fancy potato style’ but you have to let your hair down once and a while, even if (as is the case in all the males at the table) you don’t have any.

So, a suitably lovely meal was had, only enhanced by the snotty waiter looking down his nose at us and rolling his eyes when I ordered a couple of bottles of reasonably-priced champagne. Well, reasonably priced for them – paying £65 for a bottle of fizzy cat pee gave me such a cold sweat that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to calm my shakes. My nana, bless her, didn’t really fancy anything on the menu (I can’t blame her, I’ve never heard two bits of chard, a sliced tomato and a bloody drizzle of balsamic vinegar described as a French Salad before) but they were very good and cooked her up her own individual meal. I stopped short of asking them to put a glass of Banana Complan on ice, though.

After the meal, we went to the pub for an hour, then everyone dearly departed, and our honeymoon officially started. Yes! Back to the flat to really put the bed through its paces by er…putting the suitcases on it and tipping our wardrobe into them. I have to say, it wasn’t the first type of packing that I had planned for the wedding night. We slept, butterflies in our stomach (SIX would call them an amuse bouché) and in no time at all, we were in a taxi being bellowed at by a rather brusque taxi driver who wanted to know the far end of a fart and when it came from. Honestly. I spent the entire trip to the train station trying to hide the fact I was attempting to take a photo of his face on my phone so I would be able to identify who had burgled our house when we were away. Thankfully, that didn’t arise.

Straight onto the train, into the first class carriage (where you too can travel in style with an extra doily and a few crappy biscuits) and we were disappearing over the Queen Elizabeth bridge, saying goodbye to Newcastle from the bridge. Now here’s a tip for you. If you’re coming into Newcastle (or indeed leaving) from the South on the train, don’t look slackjawed to the right and admire all the bridges, but instead, look on the other side of the river, up the Tyne. As you cross the bridge, there’s a little wasteground, and it’s always full of men out ‘badger-hunting’. Yep – whereas most people are taken by the beauty of the moment, Paul and I spent the first minute of our honeymoon journey playing ‘Count the Cruiser’. What larks!

In no time at all, we were in London, our seedy capital. Kings Cross is lovely, yes, but in no time at all we had tubed our way to Victoria and onto the Gatwick Express, heading for the giddy heights of the Gatwick Hilton. What a place! After spending seven years navigating to the hotel from the train station (seriously, we spent so much time walking there that I almost gave up and set up base for the night), we were checked in by a clearly-couldn’t-care-less-customer-divvy and in our room. Grim. I’m not a hotel snob but after spending the night in the Hotel du Vin only two nights ago, the Hilton’s tired brown sheets and tiny bathroom didn’t exactly enamour the soul. After spending only a moment admiring the view (car-parks are just SO fantastic to gaze at), we trekked back to the airport and checked in super-early (is it still Twilight Check-in if it is during the day?) with Virgin Atlantic. We had pre-booked our seats in the bubble but no sooner had we dumped our bags than the lady behind the counter told us we had been moved. Argh! I was too busy trying to work out the best way to hide her body to take in what she was saying, but when I was back at the hotel I checked online and we were RIGHT at the front of the bubble. Get in! Not only do I get to look down at the cattle-class, but I was going to be on first-name terms with the pilot. OK, maybe not THAT close. And we don’t look down our noses at anyone…well…not much.

We spent the evening in the hotel, watching a home movie entitled ‘Britain’s Fattest Man’ starring Timothy Spall. It was very good, even if we didn’t feel a shred of shame stuffing a pork-pie into our gob the very moment he had his fat chopped off. A good nights sleep was had, and we were ready for day 1…introduction over!

 

Oh how we laughed! So the first recipe is for a berry medley breakfast – we were served something very similar at the Polynesian at Disney, so why not replicate it here?

berry medley

There doesn’t really need to be a guide on what to do, really – I just scooped out a giant watermelon and put all that disgusting, rancid watermelon into the bin. That’s really the most important part, because no-one in their right mind can enjoy watermelon – it’s like sucking on a dishcloth. I’ve had farts with more structure, seriously. Then, fill up the hollow with a selection of berries – in this case I used strawberries, raspeberries, blackberries, a Mary Berry, pomegranate seeds, melon balls and blueberries. I then whizzed some raspberries together with the juice of one lime, mixed the whole lot together, and served with chopped mint. This EASILY serves four and is so rammed with superfree food it brings a tear to my eye. Next…

hotdogs

We had loaded hotdogs at Universal Studios – here we have wrapped the hotdog in bacon but you could easily load it with chilli or tonnes of softened onion. Just do it!

to make bacon wrapped hotdogs, you’ll need:

  • a hotdog bun (now look – dig out wholemeal hotdog rolls, ASDA sell them, but we used a white bun because it looked better for the photo – GASP. The hotdog bun was 38g so I’m calling it a HEB. If you don’t want to do that, that’s OK, just swap out the hotdog bun for a normal HEB breadbun and you’ll be laughing)
  • wasn’t that a lot of bold text? Well I’m a bold guy
  • some cocktail sticks
  • 6 rashers of bacon – now you’ll want decent bacon here, not something that looks like the bottom of a flipflop – you want plenty of meat, fat removed
  • an onion
  • hotdogs or sausages – we used Ye Olde Oake hotdogs jumbo, which work out at 2 syns each, but you could use Slimming World sausages instead, think of ALL THAT FLAVOUR
  • 100g of quark
  • your Heathly Extra allowance of strong cheese (we used Red Leicester and only 35g)
  • whatever side you want, we just did ours with chips because we had so much speed food earlier)

then just do this:

  • cut the bacon into inch long strips and wrap gently around the hotdog or sausage (if you’re using sausages, cook them first – don’t incinerate them but get them to ‘almost done’) – secure the bacon with cocktail sticks
  • pop under the grill for ten minutes or so until bacon is lovely and cooked
  • meanwhile, cut your onion up into small bits and gently saute in a drop of oil or Frylight
  • add chopped bacon from your scrappy bits left over, don’t be adding chunks of fat mind or I’ll slap your legs
  • to make the cheese sauce, carefully heat the Quark through and stir in your cheese – you might need to thin it with a drop or two of milk
  • assemble!

Easy. We had two – an extra finger roll being 6.5 syns, but really it was heavy going, so just have one and fill up on sides! If you use ketchup and mustard, you’re looking at a syn extra per tablespoon or so.

Enjoy! WE’RE OFF!

J