Category Archives: speciality ingredients

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July 3, 2015

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beef, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, steak, syn free

enchilada fries and a ginger nut

Gosh, it’s been five years since Raoul Moat, our local angry-faced ginger peanut, went on the rampage, shot a policeman and then spent four days shitting in a ditch in Rothbury, until the police came along and cut his hair with a shotgun.

I only mention it because he’s all over our local news again today, which makes a change from pissy-knickered biddies whingeing on about wind turbines. I remember it well – Paul and I were in our Quayside flat and we were out on the balcony, looking fitfully at the bushes below because we were sure that a rampaging murderer would be itching for a riverside view. Our local newspaper Facebook feed is awash with windowlickers saying ‘U CAN’T JUJE HIM HES A HERO’ and ‘U DONT KNOW HOLE STOREY’ and other shite. The walnut-muscled knob shot a fucking defenceless man in the face and the simpletons are making out like he’s misunderstood. Pfft. The human capacity for stupidity knows no bounds.

Hey, tomorrow our week long American week starts. We love a theme week here at twochubbycubs and it seems fitting, being July 4 tomorrow, to have a nice American-themed week. Admittedly we’re bound to cause international eye-rolling with our stereotyping but we’re basing it on our experiences when we were in Florida, where we quite literally had to actively seek out vegetables because the chest pains were getting too much. 

To go alongside this (and to give us a week off from writing) I’m going to post 7 days worth from our honeymoon book as we go along, so if you’ve already been a star and read it, I apologise. If not, buy it now, and keep us in pennies! It can be found here. If you’re a fan of my writing, you should hopefully enjoy it…

We’ve also picked and made contact with the winner of the competition to find all the famous faces – thank you to all who entered and your names gave me a good giggle. God knows where you think I’d hidden Thomas the Tank Engine mind. There will be another competition soon, and just for shits and giggles, I’ve hidden a famous face in tonight’s entry – it’s subtle, see if you can spot her. So here we go, because it’s getting late. These are enchilada fries and really it’s just an even fancier, syn-free version of burger in a bowl, with the added bonus that – unlike burger in a bowl – this doesn’t look like someone’s shot their bolt across a plate of mince and iceberg lettuce.

 

you’ll need these:

for the chips:

  • 900g potatoes

for the guacamole:

  • 180g frozen peas (defrosted)
  • 1 red chilli, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • handful of coriander leaves
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 2 tsp quark
  • juice of 1 lime

for the tomato salad:

  • 3 tomatoes, diced
  • 4 spring onions, sliced
  • juice of half a lime

for the sour cream:

  • 250g fat-free natural yoghurt
  • salt and pepper
  • pinch of paprika
  • 1/2 tsp cajun seasoning
  • 1/2 tsp chilli pepper flakes

for the steak:

  • half a tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 800g beef (in whatever form you like – we chose diced)
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 80g grated reduced-fat cheddar

and you’ll need to do this:

for the chips

  • oh, come on now

for the guacamole:

  • add all the ingredients into a food processor, and blend until smooth

for the tomato salad:

  • mix all of the chopped ingredients together and season to taste

for the sour cream:

  • stir all of the ingredients together

for the steak:

  • heat the chopped tomatoes and puree in a sauce pan over a medium-high heat
  • when the mixture begins to simmer remove from the heat and stir in the beef
  • drain off the excess liquid and cook the beef over a medium-high heat to your preference
  • layer all of the ingredients onto a plate and enjoy!

J

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July 1, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, low syn, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients

comfort food meatballs with onion gravy and mashed potatoes

Before we get started, can I just tell you something which made my piss rattle this morning – I was driving to work on a particularly bendy, twisty bit of road when some log-gobbler came hurtling towards me on the other side of the road, white BMW, naturally, easily doing 30mph more than she should have been – and she was PUTTING ON MASCARA. Mascara! At speed! I only noticed because she was doing that stupid jaw-on-her-tits mascara face that seems to be obligatory. I couldn’t believe it. The urge to turn my car around and ram it into the back of her shitwagon was immense. How dare she put people at risk on the roads just so she can walk around with big cow eyes? With any luck she’d crash into the River Blyth and impale her walnut brain on her Max Factor wand. Bah! I can’t begin to tell you how much it annoys me seeing people use their phones / do their make-up / complete a 1000 piece jigsaw whilst driving. It’s fine if you want to crash and die, but don’t take me with you just because you’re so keen to post ‘ROFL drivin on motoway mad tunes YOLO‘ on fucking facebook, you insipid tart.

Honestly. I was so angry I couldn’t finish my shave.

Anyway, it seems Paul may have been premature with his ‘but the bathroom isn’t leaking at all’ analysis, as the ‘tiny leak’ is clearly still growing. I’ve become fanatical about measuring the spread of this tiny leak – we’ve marked out the water stain on the chipboard in the hallway (we have carpet, but we pulled it up to view the leak, we’re not that common) and I find myself compelled to check it every time I go for a jimmy riddle I’m down on my haunches staring wildly at the floor. So doubtless that’ll need fixing, which is dreadful because it means having yet more workers in the house.

I can’t cope with other people in my house – I get annoyed when I see myself in the mirror, let alone burly men with rough-hewn hands fingering my coving. We’ve got someone coming to plaster all the ceilings in the house soon, finally getting rid of the fucking Artex that haunts our dream. You know how sometimes Artex can be applied delicately in gentle waves? Not ours. No, clearly the old biddy who lived here before had the Artex applied via a fucking fireman’s hose – I feel like a pea looking up at the top of an abandoned freezer. It’s awful.

We’ve also just had a man come round to see about painting the entire house – all the interiors, the doors, the skirting boards, plus the greenhouse, shed and massive fence that runs along the property. He immediately started asking questions about what type of paint I was wanting to use – I fear my non-macho answer of ‘a subtle white with a hint of colour’ has already set us off on a bad footing, because he looked at me witheringly and said ‘No, matt, gloss or satin’. Well I don’t bloody know, I’m very much a man who pays others to do anything taxing.

We’ve got someone coming to flush our radiators (not a euphemism) and another bloke coming to fit a new boiler, taking away the current boiler which I reckon was salvaged from Titanic. There’s a man coming to fit blinds and eventually there’ll be a scrap-man coming to take away various shite we’ve accumulated. The last scrap man spent ten minutes chewing my ear about not being able to work (pronounced wuuurk) because of a “bad back” whilst hoisting a fucking tumble-drier onto his flat-bed lorry like he was shotputting in the Olympics.

Finally, we’ve got carpet fitters coming to recarpet the entire house, which means the cats have a blank canvas to smear birds across and do secret pisses every now and then just to keep us on our toes. Or indeed, in amongst our toes. They’re generally very good cats who know to go outside, down the garden path and into next door’s garden where they can shit with gay abandon, but every now and then they’ll decide that really the only place worth anointing with half a litre of eye-watering cat piss is next to my shoes, or in a drawer, or, perhaps best of all, all over the top of the Sky-Box in a protest against hearing the Jeremy Kyle theme tune for the 655th time that week. We got rid of that cat in the end – she went to a better place. Under the wheels of my car. No no I jest, she’s up the road turning into a footrest with paws, remember?

So this means, for me at least, weeks of making awkward small talk and worrying that anything I say is going to look like I’m trying to seduce them in some kind of awkward Bangbus-esque scenario. Honestly, it’s something I probably shouldn’t worry about but I’ve seen too many jizzflicks to know this is how so many of them start. Plus I can’t make small talk so I stay away but then I worry about looking standoffish so I spend my time in such a state of anxious flux that I almost want to pay them just to go away. Urgh. So pray for me.

Tonight’s recipe is another meatball recipe, but I reckon this is the best beef meatball recipe yet – they come out soft, moist and packed full of flavour, and what more can you want from a meatball? Plus the thick, onion gravy is full of zip and the mash is…well, mash, but you get the drift. Serve with broccoli to keep it simple. I know you might not feel like meatballs, but listen, we’ve got air-conditioning in our house, we need this to keep from freezing. This meal serves a comfortable four people. It also makes your farts smell delicious.

beef meatballs slimming world

you’ll need all of this:

for the meatballs:

  • 500g lean beef mince
  • 60g tomato puree
  • 3 level tsp wholegrain mustard (1.5 syns)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp onion powder

for the gravy:

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 250ml beef stock
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp gravy granules (1 syn)
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree

for the mash:

  • 5 large potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
  • 125ml skimmed milk (1.5 syns, or HexA)
  • 125g quark
  • an egg yolk (optional)
  • salt and pepper to taste

and you’ll need to do this:

  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • mixing together all of the meatball ingredients in a large bowl
  • shape the mixture into 30 evenly sized balls
  • do a little dance
  • place the meatballs onto a non-stick baking sheet (you can spray a little Frylight if you like, or stop being a loser and use some oil) and bake for about 20 minutes
  • meanwhile, add the potato chunks to boiling water and cook until tender (about 20 minutes)
  • make a little love
  • mash together with all of the other mash ingredients, or to however you like it
  • as those are cooking, prepare the gravy mixture
  • get down tonight (ah-ha)
  • in a large saucepan heat a little Frylight/oil over a medium-high heat and gently sweat the onion until it becomes translucent
  • in a jug or bowl, mix together the stock, worcestershire sauce, gravy granules, salt and tomato puree
  • add the gravy to the onions and stir until thickened
  • add the meatballs to the gravy, coating them evenly and serve on top of the mash
  • if you have delusions of grandeur, you can pop in a sprig of parsley and serve to the oohs and aahs of your adoring family

Enjoy! OH I’ll leave you with this.

cat die

J

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June 26, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, panko, pork, recipe card, speciality ingredients

amazing ham, cheese and pea gnocchi

I know what you’re thinking. James, you promised me a post a day, and here we were yesterday crying into our Margaret Miles-Thingy tea-towels and waiting all night long. Well listen, it’s not the first time I’ve left someone unsatisfied long into the night and it won’t be the last.

See, I’m trying to be more social. Remember me saying how lazy I am a few posts back? That also applies to social events. I get asked to go to various things and usually decline because I’m a) shy and b) incredibly fond of lying on my sofa with a cat in my back hair and Paul squeezing my feet. It’s what I live for. But see I could die tomorrow and I don’t want people remembering me as the person who was always “washing his hair”, despite having roughly the same amount of hair found on my head as you’d find in a Phil Mitchell tribute annual.

So in the spirit of socialising and trying not to die alone surrounded by cats and a stuffed Paul carcass grinning lopsidedly at me like a boss-eyed Humpty Dumpty, I went along to a pub quiz with a couple of friends from work and two other ladies, who turned out to be lovely. I’m glad I went, not least because it was hilarious.

For a start, it was awash with teams taking it far too seriously. I love this. It’s a fucking pub quiz – you’re answering questions about Miley Cyrus, if you get it wrong you’re not going to be taken outside and shot by the Gestapo. The prize was £47! Even so, there was table after table of people in dire need of a wash and some love furrowing their brows and furiously debating which two countries has the most nuclear reactors. For the record, we got that answer correct – USA and France. I watch a lot of Discovery Channel.

That said, we didn’t win. We came…second from last. We did however win an extra point for having the best team name: Bender and the Jets. I think you’ll agree that is awesome, and I’m allowed to say bender, I’ve earned the right – I’ve quite literally taken one for the team on that front. Or back. It’s certainly better name than We’re The Winners or Quizmasters. Neither of those teams won anyway, so egg on their face. It’ll go well with the cum stains on their trousers.

Oh, I also totally pulled. Now it goes without saying that I wouldn’t anyway, but even if I’d been tempted by the suggestion, his face put me right off. Some drunken arse, easily into his sixties and with a face like a smashed crab, asked me if I wanted to know the answer to who sang ‘The Joker’ and then licked his lips lasciviously at me like he was the best offer I’d get all night. I’d get more aroused getting chatted up by the cigarette machine. Seriously, he looked like that guy from The Fully Monty who was in Corrie with a perm:

steve-huson-the-full-monty (1)

I wouldn’t care, we got the answer wrong, so maybe I should have just succumbed to his greasy wiles. Boke.

Finally, our group got ‘hushed’ and then told to be ‘bloody quiet’ by some gangster granny with a nicotine fringe and a mean look about her because we had the temerity to talk DURING THE INTERLUDE. She was trying to play card bingo like the top prize was a couple of extra month’s on a drip – I’ve never seen playing cards turned over with such ferociousness. She turned around again and said ‘AH’M TRYING TO HEAR THE ANNOUNCER’ (I could barely hear her through all the phlegm in her voice trying to scramble out) and we were kowtowed into silence. I wouldn’t care, it’s not as if we were tuning up a brass band or felling trees, we were just talking normally (perhaps with a slight bit of shrieking from me, I’d had liquor). Mardy cow. Oh! And she was cheating. She had her phone out during the countries round. The temptation for me to lean over and whisper ‘Do you mind not cheating so loudly, I’m trying to hear the announcer’ was almost too much.

Card bingo, by the way – you get given a few playing cards, the Quiz Man has a full deck (unlike some of the audience), he announces them randomly and when you’ve turned over your lot, you win. Well, you don’t win. You lose. EVERYONE loses at bloody card bingo.

In all though, a really good night! 

Oh – we lost 4lb between us at class, but that’s almost an afterthought these days. But let me tell you what ISN’T an afterthought – this recipe. It was amazing – it couldn’t have been better even if it had been served of the bumcheeks of the fatter brother from Prison Break. Easily one of our favourite recipes yet!

ham and cheese gnocchi

It doesn’t look so pretty on the plate, and that cheese top looks like the kind of knee-scab you’d pick off in the bath and secretly eat. I know what you’re like, don’t try and gussy yourself up for me.

you’ll need these:

  • 250g of syn-free ham – we used the thicker cuts you can buy in a pack from the supermarket, but really any old shite will do
  • one chopped onion
  • 250g of quark (taste the flavour!)
  • clove of garlic (minced) (yep: get one of these!)
  • 100g of frozen peas
  • 1 x HEA Mozzarella
  • 1 x HEA strong cheddar
  • 400g of gnocchi (6 syns, and this serves four) 

and you’ll need to do this:

  • gently cook the onion in a large pan over a medium heat in a little oil until soft
  • add garlic and stir until it starts to turn golden
  • add the ham to the pan and cook until warmed through
  • add the frozen peas to the pan and stir
  • add the quark and continue to stir until it loosens and makes a thick, creamy sauce – add a few tablespoons of water if it becomes too thick
  • add the gnocchi and simmer for 2-3 minutes
  • once the gnocchi is soft, remove from the heat and evenly spread out the cheese over the top
  • place under a medium grill until the cheese turns golden
  • serve!

Now, what we did at this point was to put it in the oven, with the oven still warm from the grill but not switched on, and left it to sit for an hour or so whilst Paul came and bundled me into the car. When we came back, the gnocchi was almost broken down and the sauce really sticky – it was delicious. However, that might not tickle your buds as it were, so feel free to stick to the script.

Technically, you should probably serve with a salad full of superfree stuff. But hell if you can’t let your hair down every now and then…

J

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May 28, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients, syn free

I could be brown, I could be blue! baked spaghetti

Haha, weigh in tonight, and although we couldn’t stay, it was full of surprises – I’ve put on a 1lb after the most dedicated week off you’ve ever seen, which included:

  • more vodka during Eurovision than could be deemed reasonable, despite acts such as Israel and Serbia;
  • two Dominos in one week;
  • a pizza the size of a bus steering wheel followed by ice-cream and sweets and a second dinner when I got home;
  • a complete lack of exercise;
  • cookies, sweets and other nonsense gobbled up at work – and – and this one is shocking;
  • I had CHEESE AND SPICY BEEF on my Subway salad today.

Cheese! I thought since having my pencil sharpened last year I’d seen the end of having cheese on my hot meat, but there you go. Boke. Here, it gets better – Paul actually lost a pound AND he was still wearing his god-awful ‘Yes, I’m a registered sex-offender’ god-awful boots that we bought in the Brantano sale for £2.44. I reckon he’s been stirring ex-lax into his nightly Options. Yes see that’s how rock-n-roll we are in our household – a nightly hot chocolate and then into bed to listen to Radio 4. We do normally fit some blisteringly hardcore gay sex in at some point, all is not lost. Anyway, once we’ve enjoyed the Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, we’re going to have a good run at SW. In the meantime, here’s a bit about my cats that I wrote earlier today.

I really begrudge having to pay £200 to insure two cats who are healthy, worm-free and trackable. Especially when they’re so spoilt they have their own water fountain and bloody ensuite shed.

Of course, insurance wouldn’t be quite so necessary if our cats didn’t dice with death on a daily basis, and entirely through their own choice. See, they recognise the sound of our car approaching, and the very second they see the bumper of my car appearing at the end of the cul-de-sac where we live, they sprint across the front lawn in front of the car and run ahead of us, like we’re the star attraction in a tiny cat parade. They then proceed to run around the tyres, rubbing themselves up against the scalding chassis of the car, until one of us picks them up and they proceed to turn our face into mince with their razor-sharp welcome. I don’t think they feel we’re home until one of them has left an oily paw-print all over our shirts. They’re also forever eating things they shouldn’t and I’ve seen Sola, the tiny cat, fighting a dog and winning. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she smokes.

Sola we retrieved from some chav on an estate who was selling kittens on the basis that if no-one wanted them, she was going to leave them by the side of the road. I’d like to have left her by the side of a road, preferably trapped by her legs in a burning labia-coloured Vauxhall Golf, but I digress. We couldn’t drive at the time so we had to take two buses and by the time we got there, she was the last one, the runt of the litter. She meowed the way home and tried to commit instant suicide by falling off the balcony of our apartment. Thankfully, she only fell one floor onto the balcony below, but that made for a slightly awkward exchange because we weren’t talking to the neighbours at the point since we inadvertently told his girlfriend that he was having an affair with someone else. Genuine mistake. We also thought he was belting his lass too, which was wrong. That made for a few difficult bus journeys on the Quaylink, let me tell you.

They missed out not keeping Sola, for although she’s the most uppity bitch you’ll ever meet, she has the nicest fur you’ll ever feel. It’s the type of fur you can imagine ultra-rich women making gloves from. That’s partly because she never lets you stroke her – probably sick of trying to lick gravy and sweat from her fur to even entertain us. She’s the epitome of aloofness although for all of her delusions of grandeur, she’s certainly not averse to sticking her nose right up Bowser’s arsehole like she’s sniffing for truffles whenever he wanders back in from outside.

Bowser is the other cat, the tom, and we also got him from a very downmarket area. We heard on the grapevine that he was one of about ten trillion cats that had been found living in one of those houses you see on Hoarders. We could only take one and so we took the first cat that came over. If we had our way, we’d have more cats than furniture, but we’re realists – I already begrudge spending so much on Bite ‘n’ Chew, and not just because of that rebarbative little ‘n’. He settled in straight away, walking around like he owned the place and battering the other cats until we had his bollocks cut off. Now he comes in each day missing massive chunks of fur from fighting but touchwood, they haven’t got his eyes yet.

We also used to have Luma, and she was a lovely, fat cat who was painfully shy and used to hide, no matter how much coaxing, fresh tuna and fuss you tried to make of her. She had plenty of personality when she wanted to – she held us ransom for about two weeks by pissing on our Sky box because we had the bare-faced cheek to switch her to Tesco own brand cat food. Perhaps she was trying to electrocute herself, I don’t know, but she managed to break my Doctor Who series link so I sulked for a week. Along similar lines, I was once lying in bed and she came bumbling over, wheezing away in that gentle fashion, for a stroke. Naturally, I made a proper fuss of her in this rare moment of tenderness and she turned around, showed me her tiny cigar-cutter bumhole and sprayed a tiny jet of foul smelling nastiness right in my face, before sauntering off as I screamed like it was ammonia. We gave her away to a family friend in the end because she was fighting with our other cat all of the time and she’s far happier now, by herself, with an octogenerian who is too slow to catch her and rich enough to spoil her, though I did spot a packet of Viagra in his bathroom cabinet when I was dropping her off so god knows what she actually sees. No wonder she looks so haunted when I spot her.

baked spaghetti

to make baked spaghetti, you’ll need:

250g spaghetti, 500g lean beef mince, 6 Slimming World sausages (defrosted), two 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 200ml passata, 200g Quark, 80g reduced fat cheddar (grated), 1 green pepper (diced), 1 onion (diced), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 egg, 250ml chicken stock, 80g reduced fat mozzarella (using up two HEAs), 1tsp mixed herbs, salt and pepper

to make baked spaghetti, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the spaghetti according to instructions and set aside. For those who can’t cook spaghetti, don’t forget to breathe in AND out whilst doing this
  • mix the chopped tomatoes, passata and mixed herbs (and a little salt and pepper if you like) in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer whilst you do the rest…
  • meanwhile, chop the green pepper and onion and mince the garlic cloves
  • spray a little Frylight (heathen! use oil!) into a large saucepan and cook the onion and green pepper over a medium-high heat until softened
  • add the garlic and stir well
  • squeeze the meat from the sausages (the casings should be easy to pull away, given SW sausages are essentially toe clippings, best wishes and old newspapers wrapped in a diaphragm) and place in the pan along with the mince and cook until well browned, remembering to break up any clumps that form
  • in a separate bowl mix together the quark, egg and cheddar with a little salt and pepper until smooth
  • pour the tomato sauce into the cheese mixture and stir well, adding 250ml chicken stock and continue to stir
  • in a large pan or bowl, mix together the spaghetti, meat and sauce until really well mixed – don’t worry if it looks a bit watery, it’s a SW recipe – if you can’t drink it without choking, it’s not SW friendly
  • tip into a large casserole dish, top with the shredded mozzarella and bake for 30 minutes
  • enjoy! It’ll thicken down in the oven. Promise.

J

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May 21, 2015

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

asian chicken nuggets

Both out and about tonight but could we let you down and not give you a recipe? NO. Here’s a failsafe recipe for Asian chicken nuggets. They’re Asian because of the marinade, naturally. I’m in a terrible mood at the moment, not helped by the fact I pulled FUCKING SPAIN out of my OWN Eurovision sweepstake. However: it’s Eurovision this Saturday and I absolutely can’t wait. I love it! My leather cheerio is already relaxing from the fug of amyl nitrate billowing across from Austria. Anyway:

11039879_884336991639905_8735473937034508180_n (1)

3 syns is nowt, but you can make it completely syn-free (the nuggets anyway) by just blending your HEB bread allowance. But balls to that, use panko breadcrumbs instead and live like a king!

to make asian chicken nuggets, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts chopped into nugget sized bits, soy sauce, rice wine (1 syn for two tablespoons, but you only need one, so I’m not counting the syns), 1tsp five spice powder, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, pinch of salt, panko breadcrumbs (Tesco sell these and they come in at 4.5 syns for 25g – you’ll need 50g, so that’s 4.5 syns but as most of it falls off you’d be hard pushed to be anywhere near 4.5 syns, so I’ve said three)

to make asian chicken nuggets, you should:

  • well this is tricky – combine all the wet ingredients and spices with the chicken and leave to marinate – the longer the better, as the actress said to the bishop
  • put your breadcrumbs into a bowl and crunch some black pepper in amongst it all
  • drop each nugget into the breadcrumb, get them covered and pop onto a tray that’s been lined with greaseproof paper
  • bake in the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes, turning them if you can be arsed – we don’t, but we’ve got a fancy tray with little holes in it which bakes from underneath too
  • serve with chips (make your own or just cheat like we do when you can’t be arsed and have McCains Rustic – they’re 1 syn for 100g) and beans

There’s no superfree on this meal but hey, you know what, have yourself a fruit salad and a good pump afterwards. You’ll be OK!

Before anyone asks, I got the basket from Amazon. It looks lovely! Click here for the link.

J

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May 16, 2015

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beef, cured meats, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, steak

cajun steak and cheese pasta

Our cat has betrayed me – normally he sleeps between the two of us if it’s a cold night but he’d gotten up early doors and gone out chasing mice. How the hell he manages to spend a night between the two of us I have no idea – we’re very much a ‘spooning’ couple, constantly intertwining our legs and arms and murmuring nonsense at each other. I actually woke up once with Paul having rolled on top of me, not in a ‘but it’s my birthday’ way but rather out of comfort, like I was an especially squashy lilo. Nevertheless, around 1am Bowser will be padding around our pillow and then crawls between us like a tiny potholer. How he survives I have no idea – the squashing I mentioned above must be bad enough, but the flatulence produced between the two of us vents out right where he sleeps. It must be like trying to sleep with your head stuck in one of those Dyson Airdryers you get in toilets, only one that blows out air that smells of turned corned-beef and death. I swear after a night of our easy chicken curry he’ll disappear under the duvet as a black and white tom and comes back a tortoiseshell who suffers night terrors.

 

Tonight’s recipe has the unfortunate problem of looking exactly like another recipe we did earlier in the week, but what can I say, we’ve missed carbs and we had some steak to use up. Isn’t that a first world problem right there?

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to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you will need:

500g penne pasta, 120g steak (sliced into bite size pieces) 1 onion (chopped), 1 green pepper (chopped), 1 clove of garlic, 300ml skimmed milk, 250g quark, 2 tsp Cajun seasoning, 120g extra mature cheddar (grated), 20g parmesan (grated), 50g chorizo (sliced), breadcrumbs (from half a wholemeal roll)

if you use the wholemeal roll and the cheese as your healthy extras (remember, this serves 4) this will be 3 syns per serving, 1.5 from the chorizo, and 1.5 from the milk.

to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you should: 

  • cook the pasta until al dente (like Al Murray, but less of a cock), drain and set aside
  • in a large frying pan or saucepan soften the onion and green pepper in a little oil over a medium heat for about ten minutes
  • add the Cajun seasoning and stir well
  • slowly pour in the milk and stir continuously
  • add the quark in small amounts and mix until smooth and creamy
  • in a separate frying pan quickly cook the steak and chorizo over a high heat for one minute
  • add the steak and chorizo into the cheese mixture
  • add the cheddar and parmesan to the mixture, remove from the heat and stir continuously until all the cheese has melted
  • add the pasta to the mixture and mix well
  • pour the mixture into a large casserole dish, top with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for ten minutes just to make it sticky.

Now this is proper stick-to-your-ribs cooking and we loved it, but for goodness sake, it serves four. Keep some for your lunch the next day. This with the rice bake from the other day is more than making up our carb deficit and it tasted delicious!

Oh, if you need a casserole dish, get a bloody Le Creuset one. We’ve had ours over two years now and yes, it is very expensive, but we use it daily – as a frying pan, to cook in, to roast in, and it’s never stuck or failed us. They’re £160 on Amazon at the moment. Click here and treat yourself! Do you need something so pricey? No. But you kinda want one…

Cheers!

J

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May 6, 2015

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breakfast, breast, desserts, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, salad, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chicken fattoush

Before we launch into day two, I’ve found a brilliant little feature hidden away in the background of my blog – I’ve got the ability to see what people search for to find my blog. It’s so I can tailor the pages in such a fashion to pick up google searches for SW recipes and the like. All very exciting to a data-nerd like me. But I thought I’d share some of the more…obscure searches that people have used to come across (literally, in some cases) my blog..

‘carrot cake overnight oats slimming world’

Excellent! One of my favourite recipes. Nice choice, google.

‘dont trust slimming world’

Oh no! What do they know that we don’t? Maybe it’s all a cult – that would explain all the fucking clapping, for sure. Maybe Mags herself is plotting to take over the world one watery curry at a time?

‘look at my chunky pussy’

Good lord. I like the fact that someone typed that into google too, like it was an instruction rather than a question…

‘1000 heartbeats shit’

I couldn’t agree more. Vernon tries his best, god love him, but you’re still essentially watching someone solve wordsearches during an echocardiogram.

‘miniature brown teapot with teapot and bread on’

I bet they were absolutely gutted when this appeared. For the record, I prefer my “teapots” colossal and without a “lid”, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, I’m talking about cocks again.

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‘chocolate in rainbow world’

God knows.

‘stocky hairy men washing each other’

They’d be disappointed. I wash Paul with the extendable hose from outside. However if watching two fat blokes grappling over the ped-egg and yelling nonsense at the TV melts your butter, get in touch.

‘can dogs have baked cod’

Yes, but only if it’s their birthday. 

‘is semen classed as a syn on slimming world’

No, it isn’t – but remember, only sluts gargle. 

‘young chubby has two at once and loves it’

No denying this one. It was the best night I’ve had in a while. Four fingers at once. But that’s a Kitkat for you (11.5 syns).

And my personal favourite:

‘wat syns.cn u see wen sum is busy with evil’

Words fail me. Seems like a good time to start then…

BREAKFAST

day2break

Red berry fruit salad with sweetened Quark

Nothing to this other than it’s a medley of different red berries and, because it’s SP week and you’re not allowed a yoghurt if you’re sticking to it 100% otherwise your consultant will be around to fling a dog-turd off your window, we mixed quark with a little bit of milk and some sweetener. I fail to see the point or the logic to it but we’re fully invested. I can’t imagine my body is going to shut down like Titanic’s furnace the very second a Muller passes my lips but nevertheless. The Quark (P) tasted alright, but…we used frozen mixed berries (all of them (S) foods)on the bottom of the glass that had been allowed to thaw (but not cooked, because christ I can’t handle two moans about bloody tweaking in one post) and chopped strawberries (S) on the top. That masked the taste. Pomegranates aren’t speed though, surprisingly, but you could swap them out for raspberries if you were desperate.

LUNCH

daytwolunch

Chicken fattoush salad

Note: this can easily be syn-free – just omit the olive oil. But I like a bit of oil on my dressing. Up to you…OH and in our haste this morning to make this before work, we forgot to take a picture. But it looked like the one above, trust me.

to make chicken fattoush you will need:

½ cucumber (S), 1 green pepper (S), 3 medium tomatoes (S), 6 spring onions (S), 1-2 chicken breasts grilled and cut into strips (P), handful of chopped coriander, handful of chopped parsley, as much leafy salad as you like, 1 tbsp finely chopped mint, 40ml lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp sumac.

to make chicken fattoush you should: 

  • chop the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds (you don’t have to do this, but it stops it getting soggy)
  • chop the pepper, tomatoes and spring onions into chunks
  • mix all of the above with the salad leaves, herbs and chopped mint and chicken
  • in a separate small bowl, whisk together the sumac and lemon juice until well mixed. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  • pour the dressing over the salad, and eat!

For heaven’s sake though, have a mint after. All that onion!

DETOX WATER

daytwowater

Mint and cucumber

Someone posted a comment on a Facebook group I use about a ‘Sassy Water’ where, if you drink it, the nutrients and wonderful vitamins swimming around in your body would make you lose A POUND AN HOUR. Ridiculous right, and not least because Sassy Water sounds like a particularly ghetto-fabulous drag queen. But what made me more aghast – and I am a man who spends a good two hours of my day with my hand clasped theatrically to my lips with a ‘well fuck me’ expression – PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. People honest to God without theatrics believed it. How?! How do these people remember to breathe in AND breathe out? Imagine if losing weight was as easy as drinking a few glasses of water with the Tesco Reduced Items basket bobbing around in it like a turd in a pier? For goodness sake. Tell you what, maybe that searcher above was right and Slimming World is a big con after all, keeping us fat so we can keeps Mags in Bentleys and Montecristos. 

Just kidding, I love SW really. In the water today then:

  • mint from the garden, chopped up fine; and
  • enough cucumber to make a nun purse her lips.

Cucumber is good for the skin and mint is champion if your breath bleaches people’s hair as you talk. Still tasted like I was drinking a face-mask mind.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – WALKING

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Today’s body magic was walking – into work and back again. I’ve mentioned before that walking into work is a chore (opens in a new window that one, so don’t worry, give it a read) but today was especially tiresome. At 5.00pm, I looked across Newcastle from my office and saw the sun bright in the sky, children playing happily and I could almost hear tinkly laughter from the street below. I got in the lift, travelled seven floors to the bottom, and went outside. It was like The Day After Tomorrow, with horizontal rain and hail. It felt like my face was being powersanded by God himself. Of course, I had a hoodie on, so I was fine, but Paul was immediately caught out by his cheap-o Tesco work shirt turning see-through so everyone could see his dirtypillows. It was an uncomfortable swim home. To top it off, the cows on the town moor thought it would be a jolly jape to start running together over the path with their shitclad tails swishing about, meaning we had to powermince to avoid them, slipping in the cowpats they’d skilfully and carefully left on the path whilst the rain and wind blew all around us. At one point I almost collapsed onto a bench and told Paul to go on without me. It was like Threads, and that shit’s real.

Of course, the rain, wind and bad weather stopped the very second I pressed the door-release on my car keys. 

God, if you’re up there, why do you hate me so? Is it the blasphemy? The sodomy? The fact I look better with a beard? Bah!

Anyway, in total, I walked 7.64 miles throughout the day (including a schlep around Tesco and my many walks to the photocopier) and burned 1308 calories. Paul managed a respectful 3.4 mile walk (into work and back – he forgot to leave his pedometer on). We definitely earned our dinner.

OH WHAT A SEGUE.

DINNER 

Well, this is embarrassing. It’s still in the oven! We’re having oven-baked meatballs but didn’t realise that they took over two hours to slowly cook. Great! I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Promise. Honest. But the recipe…:

ingredients: 2 large onions (S), 500g lean beef mince (P) (or pork, or turkey!), 2tsp dried oregano, 2 garlic cloves (crushed) (S), salt and pepper, 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (S), 400ml passata, 150ml vegetable stock, 2 medium courgettes (S), 1 medium aubergine (S).

recipe:

  • finely chop the two onions and put into a bowl with the mince, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper
  • combine the mixture by hand and roll into twenty or so equal balls
  • titter at the word balls
  • place the meatballs into the fridge to chill, perhaps pipe a bit of Michael Buble in for them
  • trim and chop the courgettes and aubergine into chunks and mix together in a large roasting dish with the tomatoes, passata and vegetable stock
  • cover the dish with foil and cook for 50 minutes at 200 degrees celsius
  • add the meatballs to the dish, recover (the dish, not your dignity) and cook for another 40 minutes
  • serve!

We’re having ours with turnip and green beans because that’s the only thing left after we made sassy water.

DAY TWO DONE.

J

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April 15, 2015

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classics, desserts, low syn, quark, recipe card, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks

slimming world classics – slimming world roulade

James here – before Paul rambles on about exercise, just a quick note to say that this is the final recipe in the Slimming World Classics week, where we took on seven Slimming World classics and tried them out. I’ll say this – for the most part, they were pretty tasty, but as with anything to do with Slimming World, you need to cook the buggery out of the sauce to make it thicker and add more taste. Unless you happen to like your dinner to look like the kind of shite-on-wheels that Ronnie Corbett is selling these days. The theme week was fun to do and we’ve got a few more pencilled in – but for now at least, it’s back to business as usual – five posts a week and a weigh-in! Enjoy.

If you’ve missed the Slimming World classics, here’s some handy links, but do read on afterwards…

I’m actually doing overtime tonight so I’m handing over to Paul, who wants to drone on about exercise. Go him! I’ll pop my head (the top one) through at the end to sass you to sleep.

Paul now. Tonight I’m gonna be talking about that awful, awful thing that we probably all despise (otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position) – EXERCISE. I know, I know. I dry heaved a bit too. Don’t worry, it’ll pass.

Body Magic, the fancy-dan name that Slimming World gives it, is such an essential part of the programme but the one that is most overlooked for some reason, apart from a glistening sticker that gives waved momentarily under your nose now and again. This is something I never really understood. Exercise, alongside Food Optimising will surely yield even more impressive results – so why not make more of a song and dance about it? I suppose they probably know full well that our fatties balk at the idea of doing any kind of movement and like to shy away from it just so it doesn’t put us off. A shiny sticker now and again though helps keep that sweaty finger in that quark-filled pie.

I’ve always had a funny relationship with exercise. No, funny isn’t the right world. Negligent. Avoidant. Fearful. Even as a young lad (and I’ve pretty much always been big) I absolutely detested exercise of any form which wasn’t really that easy growing up in a farming town where all the stuff to do was hidden away in fields a mile or two from the house or up a tree or hay bale. I once told my (let’s admit it, dim) friend that there was a speed limit on the paths just so I could bike a bit slower and stop my chunky little thighs from chafing.

There have been certain sports over the years, surprisingly, that I actually have really bloody loved, even if it made my chest ache, and when I played them I couldn’t get enough and no amount of truffle-shufflin’ could get in my way. Shinty, for example (no it’s a real thing – I promise. It’s like a gayer version of hockey) I REALLY loved but after only a few lessons of it in school it buggered off and was replaced with ‘apparatus’.  It may also be because me and my bong eye managed to hurtle the ball through a pane of the caretakers greenhouse. Still the manliest thing I’ve ever done in my life). I had a brief fling with Rugby too which I also loved (some for obvious reasons) but various things, namely fags and laziness, stopped this in its track. So, apart from that I’ve never really been that into exercise.

We did join a gym last year though. A big, fancy one called David Lloyd. We paid for the whole year upfront with the thought that if we did so we’d be more inclined to use it (and because she gave us a giant custard cream). We went every day without fail for about five weeks and then never went back. A shame because we both really enjoyed going and I missed it when we didn’t go, and unfortunately the motivation to go back just hasn’t come either.

A few people at work play netball (I work with a lot of ladies) which I used to love as well, but again, too gay. But all of this got me thinking – exactly WHAT will get us motivated to exercise more? I can’t help but think that at some point we’ll need to start putting in some serious exercise to shift some weight – as men we tend to ‘plateau’ with our weight loss. A few things come into my mind – I’d like to start going to the gym again, but a nice, comfortable one. David Lloyd was fancy but it was full of ‘roided up chavs or posh folk that scoffed and sneered as us fatties shuffled into the room. It was like a Smell-o-Vision porno, except all the sexy action was next door and you were just left with the moist air and Piz Buin. Going back to rugby would be a good choice too but that’s something for the future – heaven knows I’ll have to shift a lot more tit if I don’t want to be confused for an advertising hoarding or the entire scrum every time I slow down to catch my breath. I bent down to tie my shoelaces the other day and someone stuck a ‘VOTE UKIP’ poster on my left arse-flank. Aaah.

Team sports I think are definitely the future for us. We aren’t the most sociable of people at the best of times (Bowser has more contact with the neighbours just by shitting in their flowerbeds) so it’ll definitely help with our socialising abilities. I quite fancy the idea of lawn bowls but James has completely put the kibosh on that, saying we’re too common and we’d only get asked to leave once we started carrying on and doing Janice Battersby impressions at each other at top volume. Spoilsport. A shame really as I’d already picked out a lovely cream cardigan for just the occasion.

So the hunt will go on. For now, we’ll probably continue with what we’re doing – doing a thirty minute or so walk to and from work in the mornings and evenings. Nice and gentle and easy is the ticket – I used to walk 6 miles a day to and from work which I could only sustain for a week at the time before either a hole was worn in the thigh of my tracksuit bottoms, my feet went on strike or I broke the shower tray in the cubicle at work (oops – my bad) so all of that was pretty self-defeating.

And so on that note, if exercise is the enemy of the fatty the antidote is the friend – CAAAKKE. Here, if you’ve ever wanted to be me, this is exactly what it sounds like when I call James from the supermarket and tell him I’ve used the Nectar points on a chocolate finger.

The remix overeggs the pudding a little but christ, James even looks like Brendan. SPEAKING OF OVER-EGGING THE PUDDING…

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James may have put a slight editorial bias on the picture. But, plot twist, it’s actually James typing now, so on we go.

to make slimming world roulade, you’ll need:

4 eggs, 1 tub of quark, 5 tbsp artificial sweetener, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp vanilla essence, fruit (we used strawberries).

to make slimming world roulade, you should:

  • take all of your expectations of this being a taste sensation and put them in the nearest bin
  • oven onto 180°
  • seperate the yolks from the egg whites which is an absolute piece of piss with one of these egg separators!
  • whisk together the four egg yolks, half the tub of quark, four tablespoons of artificial sweetener, baking powder (hence half a syn) and vanilla essence, set aside
  • whisk together the egg whites until it’s stiff enough to satisfy – whisk half into the egg yolk slop and then fold in the rest – you need to be delicate here, you’re not trying to put out a burning tramp – you want to keep the air in, see
  • line a baking sheet with paper, pour the mixture in, spread it finely and bake for 15-20 minutes
  • use the time to think about your life and what the hell makes you think this is going to taste like anything other than a sweetened omelette with the consistency of a pump-filled cloud
  • once it’s done, allow to cool – you’ll not get the full effect of the flavour if you go in warm
  • mix the rest of the quark with the tablespoon of the sweetener and spread it over the cake, dot it with strawberries and roll it up like an eggy bifta
  • enjoy.

Paul thinks it tastes ‘OK’. I think it tastes exactly like what it is – an eggy, hyper-sweet TURD. 

If you’re short on time, there’s a far quicker recipe:

  • nip to ASDA and buy a pack of these:

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  • smear a Muller-fucking-Light on the top
  • enjoy whilst crying tears of shame.

Look – Slimming World has syns, use them on a slice of bloody cake and enjoy it. Fair enough, choking this down might get you your Body Magic award, but COME ON.

I think I’ve managed to hide my disdain well.

J & P

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April 10, 2015

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beef, beef mince, budget, classics, fakeaways, italian, pasta, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free, travel

baked bean lasagna

Usual drill – recipe at the bottom of this post. This week’s Slimming World Classic is baked bean lasagne, just in case there wasn’t a strong enough stench of death blowing out your arse of an evening. It’s actually pretty tasty, though we’ve added mince because we’re such incorrigible rogues…by the way, I’m never 100% sure whether to use lasagna or lasagne, so pick one and roll with it.

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You may remember that I said I wasn’t going to talk in a chronological fashion about our trip to Ireland? Well there’s a reason – me saying that we went out driving each day doesn’t sound alluring, so, here’s some more random scattershot thoughts about our holiday, in no particular order.

The first town that we visited was a tiny little village called Waterville, which was actually quite charming. However, it didn’t bode especially well given everything was shut bar one fish shop (I don’t do fish) and a ‘crafts’ shop. I can’t stand ‘crafts’. I just can’t. Everything about craft shops wind me up, from the nonsense tat on offer to the twiddley-dee music playing to the judgemental looks that your leather shoes get from Astrid Moonglow behind the counter. But who buys this shit anyway? Who has ever walked into a craft shop and said ‘Now that’s just what I’ve been looking for – the entire works of B*Witched played on a pan-pipe and fiddle’ or, to that end, what sums up a holiday more than an shamrock-shaped ashtray with ‘I ❤ Ireland’ emblazoned on it in flaking gold Mistral? I’ve never felt the need to fragrance my home with incense sticks which smell like lavender and burning hair and nor do I feel the need to dry my dishes with a teatowel with Daniel O’Donnell’s slightly warped face on it. Frankly, I wouldn’t dry my arse with a picture of Daniel O’Donnell but that’s entirely beside the point. We did the very ‘us’ thing of tutting at the window as we walked past and spent a good five minutes wondering how the hell a craft shop in the arse-end of Ireland stays profitable enough to remain open on a grey, dismal day when suddenly our questions were answered by the sight of an David Urquhart coach straining over the horizon and about 300 Chinese tourists bustling out to take pictures of an inexplicable Charlie Chaplin statue.

As an aside, I had to google David Urquhart there to check the spelling and amongst reviews of his coach company, I found reviews for a Pontins resort which were titled ‘NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD HAV BEEN’ (spelling hers, not mine). Is there ever a sentence that sums up a shit holiday more than that? And the reviews and photos are ghastly – it looks like a prison camp. That said, Paul and I are definitely going to one of these places, if only so I can practice my ‘well isn’t that just LOVELY’ face for a week’.

We also visited Sneem, which to me sounds like an especially complicated part of the penis – you know, like ‘Hannah found Geoffrey would agree to anything, especially when she flicked his sneem and prodded his barse’. It was lovely, although I caused immediate and swift embarrassment to poor Paul when he got out of the car to avail of the public lavatory, as I whirred the window down, shouted ‘I HOPE THERE’S NO BLOOD IN YOUR SHIT THIS TIME HUN’ and drove off down the street, much to the disgusted and aghasted looks of the nearby tourists. He only started talking to me once I’d bought him a Nutella ice-cream. Paul’s easy to win around in an argument (tickle his sneem) – basically, the naughtier I’ve been, the more saturated fats have got to be pumped into him – like a blood transfusion but with a bag of Starmix hanging on the drip stand. In fact, Sneem had rather a lot of lovely places to eat – we tried The Village Kitchen (twice) and it was amazing – they serve black pudding on the pizza, and what’s not to like about that? Mmm. Irontacular.

Fun fact – Sneem’s own website actually describes the village as ‘The Knot in the Ring of Kerry’. Now come on, someone’s having a laugh there, surely? You might as well twin the place with Twatt up in the Shetlands and be done. I’m not even kidding – look for yourself at www.sneem.com. I warn you, the website seems to have been designed on a Game Boy Colour by Stevie Wonder.

We had to leave Sneem as we were told, in hushed, dramatic tones like someone imparting a nuclear code or warning of an oncoming plague, that there was a tractor rally happening and the roads would be chaos. Good heavens – why there wasn’t a full BBC News crew there I still don’t know. I tease I tease, I know you need to find excitement where you can in a place like that – trust me, I grew up in a tiny village where the only excitement was the fortnightly library and wanking, though not at the same time, and certainly not with the librarian as she had a bigger beard than I did.

Whilst I’m here, driving around Ireland – and in particular, the Ring of Kerry, was an unending joy. The rain (which we love, so didn’t bother us) kept most of the other tourists at bay and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. They could do with levelling out some of the roads though because good lord it was bumpy (not helped by the fact that as usual I was driving like I’d stolen the car from the Garda). I was always told to drive like I had a pint of milk on the dashboard and I didn’t want to spill it – by the time I’d finished it would have been butter. I did show a little restraint after a particularly pronounced bump in the road where I almost turned the car into a convertible using nought but my own head.

I did manage to get stuck behind a caravan – almost inevitably – and immediately started turning the air blue due to the fact I couldn’t get past. I’m not against caravans – it’s nice that the happily celibate and doubly incontinent have a place to rest their heads – but I could have parked my car, lay down in the road and farted my way home and it would have been quicker. Every turn in the road required shifting down to first and piloting his Shitbox 3000 round the corner like it was made out of tissue and the branches on the tree were broken glass. I managed to overtake with Paul holding my left hand down so I couldn’t stick my fingers up at him as I went past. There’s no need to drive so bloody slowly!

That burst of anger seems like a good place to leave it, actually.

Tonight’s classic is baked bean lasagne. Confession time: we’ve made this before, but, as per usual with slimming world recipes, it didn’t taste that good. I’m a firm believer in taking proper recipes and slimming them down, remember? So we’ve jazzed it up a bit by adding mince, but you could just as easily leave that out. I’m not your keeper, for goodness sake.

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to make baked bean lasagna, you’ll need:

one onion, 250 of lean mince, 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, nice yellow pepper, any mushrooms that haven’t grown legs yet, 2 tins of baked beans, garlic (powder or cloves, but grate finely if you’re using cloves) salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, dried lasagne sheets (pre-soaked if the packet says to do so, but for fucks sake don’t use fresh lasagne sheets or your consultant will be sticking pins in their voodoo doll of you, tub of quark, 30g of parmesan, 30g of extra strong cheddar (both cheeses being 1 healthy extra each) and an egg. Basil leaves and tomato for the top if you’re a pretentious sort.

to make baked bean lasagna, you should:

  • finely chop the pepper, onion, garlic and mushrooms and hoy in a pan and lightly cook them off for a few minutes in a drop of oil, with the soy sauce and worcestershire sauce added for good measure (a tsp each)
  • add the mince with all the rakish carelessness of a lorry driver dumping a jazz mag in a hedge and brown it off
  • tip the beans and tomatoes into the pot and allow to simmer until the sauce is nice and thick
  • meanwhile, prepare the cheese sauce by whisking violently together the quark, egg and 30g of parmesan, with a good twist or two of salt and pepper
    • if you really want to splash out, buy a cheese sauce mix – this lasagna easily serves four so a 7.5 syn cheese mix (which is what the Schwartz cheese mix is works out at a fraction under 2 syns a serving, and that’s nowt!)
  • layer it in a pyrex dish – mince first (use a slotted spoon to take the mince from the pan to the dish, and that way your lasagne won’t be all sauce…), then the lasagna sheets, then the sauce, then the mince, then the sheets, then the sauce, and then wrap it all in foil and throw it in the oven for 40 minutes on 190 degrees – check on it after 30 minutes to make sure it hasn’t turned to ash
  • take it out, remove the foil, add the grated cheddar and any poncy decoration you like and pop it back in the oven for ten minutes or so until the cheese is golden and crunchy.

You really ought to serve this with a bit of salad but there’s a lot of superfree in there. So up to you.

I’m off now – Transco are sending an engineer around to fit a tap to my arse to relieve the pressure. Enjoy!

J

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March 16, 2015

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desserts, low syn, quark, recipe card, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, vegetarian

tiramisu – 1 syn, 5 syns, take your pick!

James (doing overtime again) says two things: people will never know the trauma of trying to diet with over 200 chocolate eggs surrounding you, and damn – a disappointing new song from Muse. Ah well. Over to Rose West…

Do you know what gets on my wick? And I mean really gets on my wick? Staff tuck shops. You know the ones I mean – some enterprising colleague decides to clear out a filing cabinet drawer and stuff it to the brim with chocolate and crisps and all sorts of delicious treats. These are also the ones that probably send around 30 CC’d emails around the office every other day for some Cake Sale event that going around. Comic Relief. Sports Relief. Colon Relief. That last one was made up, but equally as satisfying, believe me.

Now, I know my anger with this one is misplaced. I’m not angry with the drawer (it’s a very pretty, sleek affair) or with what’s in it – oh no. A slightly-undersized Snickers at hand provides a national service on-par with the NHS in my book. And the cost is entirely reasonable, especially when the menstrual vending machine wants to charge three-times that amount on a battered, broken Twirl. No, my anger on this issue is placed solely at the type of people that do it. Wholly pleasant people, naturally, but they’re always tiny, or skinny. The one in my office is completely lean, not an inch of fat on him and it was the same in my old office. How do they do it?! I can only assume they have complete self-control, something probably unnatural inside them that stops them from diving headfirst into it like Scrooge McDuck does into his pile of money which is exactly what I would do if I didn’t think I’d get stink-eye from the typists.

I managed to stay away from our drawer at work for a whole 14 MONTHS (I refused to be allowed to be told where exactly it was) before succumbing to a 40p can of Diet Coke and since then it’s like an aluminium Mermaid, sending out a siren song, enticing me to just drop a few coins for a roll of Rolo’s with the label in Turkish. Gah, it drives me mad. I try my best to instruct everyone around it to form some sort of Transformers-style Berlin Wall whenever I hoist myself off my orthopaedic chair but it never works. So the fault is entirely theirs that I’m so fat. Yup.

Keeping a mental note of what sweet treats have syn values can be a right fanny-on. I always like to save a copy of those pictures you often see fly around Facebook that has syn values printed over various bars of chocolate. I have to suck air through my teeth as I notice the 5 different notification bars at the top and the MS Word red-squiggly line under some words (one day the world will know how to do these things properly. And I will be happy) but on the whole they’re very useful.

And this got me thinking – how exactly can you enjoy a sweet treat on Slimming World? I’m sure you’d agree with me that desserts are by far the most neglected part of any diet. Dessert for me is the absolute highlight of a meal. I always position myself as close as possible to pregnant ladies on meals out because I know they’ll never let me down and I can at least half-pretend to have a pudding in solidarity. After I’ve spent a week telling them of course that the baby would want a dessert, and have you seen the dessert list? And oooh, you must be craving crumble by now. Never fails. It’s almost worth the effort knocking them all up.

Where was I? Oh yes. Dessert. Or Pudding if you’re rough (just kidding). Like me you’ll probably balk at the idea of a bowl of sliced fruit with a spoon of Splenda slung money-shot style over the top of it, or a bowl of Quark with an Options stirred in. These aren’t all bad, but they always seem to lack that indulgent factor that makes a dessert a dessert. That’s why, with this baby, I’m sure you’ll be pleased. Slimming World Tiramisu! The Cilla Black of the dessert world, granted, but this really was delicious. Just healthy enough to keep you on track, and indulgent enough to make you giggle like a horny housewife at a meter reader. A few elements of this are the standing Slimming World fare– quark, Options, sweetener, but to add a bit of depth to it I’ve added a spoonful of Baileys – one – for a bit of creaminess, two – for a boozy taste that you need for Tiramisu, and three – for a bit of boldness to the flavour. We like to use the mantra that a few syns are good for you – it’s those that keep you on track. A syn-free diet will only lead to ruin. This is great for a weigh-in night treat.

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Here’s the recipe, and this will serve up two big portions, or four small ones.

to make tiramisu, you’ll need:

Tub of Quark (I’d use the Golden Acre or any ‘thicker’ style of Quark – a ‘spoonable’ one won’t quite give you the right texture, unless you put the whole thing in the freezer for an hour or so, so it firms up, two Cappucino Mullerlights, 1tsp sweetener, 2tsp of Camp (one syn), 50ml Bailey’s (eight syns), pinch of sea salt and a pinch of cocoa

to make tiramisu, you should:

Throw the lot together and mix. I used a stand mixer and it was done in less than a minute. Stick a sponge finger at the end and pretend you didn’t eat the rest of the pack whilst it was mixing. 5 syns a portion, or 2.5 if you’re having a smaller one. You could reduce the syn value to just 1 if you’re feeling virtuous if you left out the Bailey’s, but I think it gives it a kick. As always, please give it a go, and let us know what you think!