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October 13, 2015

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budget, classics, lunch, one-pot, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, soup, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

no fussin’ tomato soup

Watching old episodes of 999 instead of doing what I’m supposed to do tonight, and I love this classic bit of British understatement. A chap who was a passenger in a stunt plane had a calamity when, at 10,000ft, during a loop-de-loop, his chair worked loose and he FELL OUT OF THE PLANE. He survived, and the show cut to him talking to camera where he says ‘I realised something had gone wrong when I wasn’t in the plane anymore’. You think?! Jeesus. If that was me you’d have been able to spot me across three countries as my carcass, and the stream of faeces where I’d shit myself, fell to Earth.

A friend in our facebook group pointed out something today – we’ve been going for OVER A YEAR. We started this blog on September 20, 2014 – quick, go back and look at our lack of humour and earnest WE WILL LOSE WEIGHT THIS TIME prose. The first post is right here. Looking at the blog stats, we’ve published 250 posts and I’ve had over 2,000,000 views – that’s averaging over 5,000 views a day, and recently, it’s been sitting around the 7,000 – 8,000 mark. We’ve got twenty two thousand followers on Facebook, 7,000 or so in our group and over 3,800 folks who have actually signed up to let me enter their inbox on a daily basis. If the average post is around 1,000 words which is what I am for, that means I’ve sat here and typed out 250,000 or so words about us two fat buggers who don’t really do anything at all.

To me, that is absolute fucking insanity. I’ll tell you why.

We never see anything through. Our house is a shrine to unfinished projects, passing interests and enthusiastic but ultimately pointless endeavours which have bubbled away to nothing – for example, we have:

a £200 GPS receiver which we bought to go geocaching and then put in a drawer when we realised we didn’t have the batteries for it – never been used;
ten disco caches – essentially kooky little containers that we were going to hide all over Newcastle…and didn’t;
a second computer which we bought to help us enter competitions faster when we were going through our comping phase;
a £450 stand mixer when I was going through my ‘baking’ phase (although to be fair, I’d love to bake, it just makes me too fat);
two wonderful pairs of walking boots which still have the tags on;
see above, but with wellies;
see above, but with trainers, gym kit, a gym bag;
a scrapbook which contains two Metro tickets and a receipt for M&Ms;
a year long contract with David Lloyd which we used for a month – though in our defence we quickly grew tired of pipe-cleaner men strutting around the place looking at themselves in the mirror;
a pair of brand new bikes;
jigsaws, after Paul saw a nice one in a dentist’s reception and thought he’d give it a go;
a full suite of decent DIY equipment, which we studiously ignore…

…and so on. We started the blog with the aim of rattling off a few recipes and giving me an outlet to practice my writing (I used to have another blog about health anxiety called shake, rattle and droll, a title I was so proud of it was almost a shame to cast off my health anxiety and thus stop using it), and here we are a year later with over 200 recipes and lovely folk all around the UK, and indeed outside the UK, sending us lovely messages and reading about Paul’s helmet on facebook. It’s a mad world.

Anyway, the reason for all this babble is just to say – thank you. Seriously. I’d write and chuckle away to myself even if no bugger in the world read what I wrote but the fact that so many do really cheers my butter-filled heart. I might come across as a brassy, bolshy, confident tart on here but I’m actually quite shy. Put me in a lift with strangers and I’d prefer to stick my finger in the exposed wiring than make ‘polite conversation’. So each comment, each like, each share, each thank you – that makes it worthwhile. OH GOD I’M WELLING UP.

to make syn-free tomato soup:

as many ripe and squishy tomatoes as you can get – go to a market at the end of the day and you can pick up crates of the buggers for next to nowt;
one strong onion;
one small potato;
two cloves of garlic

And that’s it! All you need to do is to slice the onion, fry it in a little oil, add the cubed potato and grated garlic and then chop up all the tomatoes and throw them in a pan. You don’t need to add stock, the tomatoes will have enough liquid in (if they are ripe) to make a soup – and leave to cook low and slow for as long as you can. Better it takes four hours on a low heat than one hour on a hot ring. Haha, ring. Just keep an eye on it. When it comes to serving, just blend it with a stick blender and if you’re boring or you don’t like your poo to look like a sesame bun, sieve it to get rid of the seeds and skin. By adding nothing but simple things, it tastes so much nicer.

Enjoy! Tomorrow (hopefully) I’ll type up more Corsica shenanigans, though as I say that a little alarm is ringing to suggest there’s something I’m supposed to be doing tomorrow night too. Hmm.

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chubbycubs

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July 2, 2015

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pulses and grains, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

bulgur wheat salad with superfree veg

Just a quick post tonight because, frankly, we’re pooped. James started screeching at half-one this morning about a plinky-plonky noise coming from the guttering and a bright light (it was either the thunderstorm outside or he was having a stroke) and I just couldn’t settle after that. To be fair, normally it’s me who keeps us awake with my excessive flatus or the fact I can’t sleep without pouring half of my fat over James like the world’s sweatiest blanket. He loves it.

So – just a quick ‘un and tonight it’s a rather nice summer delight – lots of bright colours and perfect for the hot weather. It’s also very filling and piss easy to make. Not going to lie, this only came about because the packet of bulgur wheat left over from the other week kept falling out of the cupboard and we were too lazy to transfer it into a Kilner jar.

This salad would be handy to take in for a working lunch (if you’re a working girl) (haha) as it keeps the flavour very well indeed, but, I think it would be best served alongside something with a bit of sauce – why not use it to mop up that “delicious” Slimming World curry that Iceland do? Anyway.

Here’s what to do:

you’ll need this

340g bulgur wheat (or quinoa if you’re a ponce, but we can’t get away with quinoa since James said they look like tiny bleached bumholes)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
1″ piece of ginger, peeled and grated
1 carrot, chopped into tiny cubes
1 red/orange pepper, chopped
handful of frozen peas
100g mushrooms, chopped
salt

and you’ll need to do this:

rinse the bulgur wheat (or quinoa) in a sieve and add to a pan of cold water
bring to a boil, chuck in either a veg stock cube or a chicken stock cube, then cover and reduce the heat and simmer for fifteen minutes (or until cooked)
in a separate pan gently cook the chopped onion in a little oil over a medium heat until slightly golden
add the ginger and stir gently for about thirty seconds
add the chopped mushroom to the pan and cook until softened
add the peas and carrots along with a pinch of salt, stirring frequently
add the peppers to the pan and continue to stir
once everything has softened add the drained bulgur wheat (or quinoa) and mix well
serve with some mint to garnish

Enjoy!

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chubbycubs

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June 13, 2015

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budget, dressings, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chive vinegar – a syn-free flavourful dressing

We got into an argument today in the car-park of a fucking farm-shop. I mean seriously, a farm-shop, it doesn’t get any more middle-class-on-a-Saturday than that. To complete the scene, we had only stopped to see if they sold duck eggs. Anyway, we had parked Paul’s little Micra between the lines of the bay as any normal, educated people would do. Some Red-Leicester-coloured, wrinkly, pendulum-tittied tart got out her car to the left and crashed her door into the side of ours. ‘Accidentally’. And didn’t apologise. I was foaming – not so much for any possible damage to the car (there was a bit of a scrape, but it’s our ‘scrappy’ car so I don’t mind, it only adds to the character) but more for her nonchalance.

When I pointed out that she’d hit our car, she told me (quote) “the fucking wind caught my door”. Looking at her, her face had clearly caught a fucking sandstorm, but that’s by the by. I asked her to be more careful only to be met with a volley of abuse as she stomped off into the shop. Seriously now what happened to manners? It wouldn’t really look too good having two big bald men shouting at one woman so we couldn’t continue, but it took all of my good breeding not to climb on top of her shitty Ford Ka (missing the letters AAAHNT) and take a dump on her windscreen.

I can’t bear people like that. Accidents happen – she did – but fucking apologise, for crying out loud. Since when did it become OK to waltz through life without any personal responsibility? £10 says she’s the type who thinks acting classy is hanging a Magic Tree from her inevitable clit-ring before she sets off for a prison visit. Gah. Anyway. Recipe.

Now you might think this is a bit of a cheek as it isn’t really much of a recipe, but look, one thing I find Slimming World can fall down on is flavour, and this is a nice, simple way of injecting a bit of flavour into a meal – the chive flowers create a subtle onion taste and the vinegar can be combined with a touch of oil to make a decent salad dressing. I have to admit, it looks pretty sitting there in its Kilner jar, but please don’t be tempted to give something like this as a gift. I know that Nigella lassie pretends that she goes around to her friends on the bus with a box of handmade chutney, but this is real-life, and no-one will thank you for some onion vinegar, Kilner or no.

Chive flowers grow on the top of chives, obviously, and you can eat them raw or cut up into a salad. If you don’t have chive flowers, don’t worry – you won’t be able to make this just yet, but chives are the easiest plant to grow. Get yourself to a garden centre, knock all the hairy-chinned old biddies into the flowerbeds, pick up a chive plant and drop it into a container of soil. As long as you remember to occasionally water it and don’t cover it in salt or bleach, it’ll come along nicely, and you can use chives wherever the recipe calls for a subtle onion taste.

chive vinegar

you’ll be needing these:

2 or 3 chive flowers
Enough white vinegar to fill up your jar
A suitably pretentious jar

and you’ll need to do this:

Fill your jar with vinegar
Push the chive flowers in
Seal and leave to sit for a couple of days
Once the vinegar has gone a suitably camp pink, use a toothpick to fish out the chive flowers – or leave them in if you like a strong onion flavour

Enjoy!

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chubbycubs

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June 12, 2015

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budget, fakeaways, lunch, persian, recipe card, savoury snacks, slow cooker, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

red lentil dahl – syn-free and it’ll make you pump

See, told you we’d be going daily with the recipes! Tonight’s recipe is a red lentil dahl might not look incredibly appetitising but it’s the easiest thing in the world to make and full of low-fat, tasty goodness. Plus, without wanting to be crass (oh why not, I always am), it’ll really help things move along. So, if you’re having trouble down below, which is a very common side effect with the SW diet, this recipe will have you releasing an otter in no time at all.

red lentil dahl

to make red lentil dahl, you’ll need:

you’ll need a slow cooker for this recipe
500g of dried red lentils
4 garlic cloves, minced
a lump of fresh ginger about the size of half a thumb, minced
300g frozen spinach
1tsp ground cumin
1tsp ground coriander
1tbsp curry powder – choose from mild, hot, very hot or OH CHRIST MY RING
1tsp of mustard seeds (optional)
Pinch of salt and pepper
1000ml of chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you’re vegetarian – and don’t be tight and use the cheapest stock you can find, it’s a main ingredient here so splash out a little)
LOOK – one thing I always say to you is to buy yourself a microplane grater. You’ll never look back, you can mince garlic and ginger in no time at all. Yes, they’re a bit pricey if you compare it to a bog standard grater, but treat yourself. You’re only fat once. Click here to do the honours

to make red lentil dahl, you should:

once you’ve weighed out your lentils, give them a rinse in the sink to get the dust off them (that’s what I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
chuck absolutely everything into the slow cooker, set it to low and cook for 6-7 hours
keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get too thick (something else I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
serve with curried vegetables, rice or whatever you like!
This does well as a side dish but we take it in for lunch sometimes on its own – like an extra-thick soup. Tasty!

Enjoy!

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chubbycubs

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May 17, 2015

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breakfast, desserts, drinks, low syn, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

easy mint chocolate chip smoothie

Right, before we even get started, I’ll need to put up the banner:

Today’s recipe is a major tweak session. Listen, I know, I know it’s not the Slimming World way, but this is something I disagree with them on. All of the ingredients used are syn free AND very good for you, and the only synned item is some dark chocolate, but what’s life without a little risk, eh? I’ve made my feelings quite clear on tweaking before and I’m not going to change for anyone! HARRUMPH. But before we get to that, here’s a little ramble…

The reason for the title of the post being ‘Good Morning Australia’ is because we’ve discovered a new app on our iPad – Wakie! Essentially it’s an alarm clock but one that actually connects you to the person who wants waking up. For example, some bronzed god in Australia may want waking up because he has to go to work at 11am, and I’m sitting in the UK available to make the call, and the app will connect the two of us. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s just like making a phone call, and we LOVE it. At first we were shy – lots of ‘So what’s the weather like where you are’ and ‘what you getting up for’, but now we wake people up by telling them jokes, or my most favourite, using the soundboard of Roy Walker’s catchphrases that we found on the internet from the old Radio 1 days. Imagine that – you’re fast asleep in New Zealand, your phone goes, you blearily answer it and you get ‘GOOD MORNING CONTESTANT’ blaring at you, followed by ‘IT’S A GOOD GUESS, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT’. Haha! It works the other way too, we had a wake-up call from someone in America this morning, who told us a joke and then farted down the phone. She sounds like just our type of girl to be honest. It’s completely anonymous so there’s never a way of finding out who you spoke to, but it’s just great fun. Perhaps you should download it – you’ll know if you get through to us because it’ll be a litany of blue jokes, shrieks of laughter and ten seconds of Paul trying to press the hang up button and missing because he hasn’t got his glasses on and there’s four iPads in his field of vision.

Anyway, the good news is we’ve had no altercations with anyone today and it’s been an altogether pleasant day, even though all we’ve done is our grocery shopping and beetled about in the car. Are we the only couple who go out in the car just for a drive? I mean, I know the price of fuel means arranging a small mortgage beforehand, but there’s nothing better than just heading out on a sunny day, not knowing where you are going to end up. I think I get that from growing up with my parents, who would take us out on a drive to nowhere and always reply to the question of ‘where are we going’ with ‘there and back to see how far it is’. Helpful. To be fair to them, my sister and I were proper nightmares in the back of the car. Not as bad as Paul, mind you. He kicked his sister so hard in the side of her head for turning off his 911 CD that she spent a car journey from Glencoe to Aberdeen with ringing ears. To be fair, I’d have ringing ears if I had to listen to Paul’s music choices for more than ten minutes – I spend less time changing gears than I do pressing the ‘Skip Track’ button on my steering wheel to try and get past his Tracy Chapman nonsense. It’s no wonder the clutch in the Micra is fucked.

I’M SORRY: TRACY CHAPMAN SOUNDS LIKE A BEE WITH A COLD TRAPPED IN A BOTTLE.

Actually, my parents once thought it would be a great idea to transport my sister, me, a tent and two week’s worth of camping impedimenta in a scalding hot Ford Escort to the bottom of France (from Newcastle). It wasn’t, and I think my sister and I started fighting from the second my dad started backing the car down the lane from our house. Bearing in mind that we were quite fractious siblings at the best of times (though we’re close now) this was a recipe for disaster. Anyway, clearly sick of remonstrating with us and smacking our arses, our parents threatened to leave us by the side of a road in the middle of rural France at some backwater petrol station. Of course, being kids, we were full of bravado, and we knew they wouldn’t dare. But they did – they bundled us out of the car at the petrol station and proceeded to drive to the exit ramp. Now, let me clarify, I believe their intention was to give us a little fright and stop a moment or two down the ramp and pick us back up. Only they hadn’t factored in the massive lorry that pulled out behind them, clearly with Paris’ entire shipment of Gauloises in the back and no time to wait for my parents to teach us a lesson in good behaviour. Being a one lane exit ramp they had no other alternative than to carry on down onto the motorway and leave us stranded, bawling. Oops. They came back around from the other side around fifteen minutes later after they’d driven like they had a bomb up their arse to the next junction and turned around and we were completely silent for the next couple of hours. So I suppose the threat worked. Anyway, don’t judge, they are great parents.

So today’s recipe is…gasp…wait for it…get Mag’s number dialled ready to press…A SMOOTHIE. Quick! Get the amyl nitrates and bring her around!

This makes four decent sized smoothies, so give a couple to the kids or just enjoy two!

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you’ll need:

25g of dark chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker which are 6 syns, so 1.5 syns a serving), 80g of uncooked spinach, 40g of mint leaves, four frozen bananas, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 750ml of almond milk (either use it as part of your HEA – you’re allowed 875ml of Blue Diamond almond milk, and you can use it in coffee – or syn it as 3 syns, or less than a syn per smoothie). You’ll also need a blender or some way of making it mush together, and we chucked in some ice for shits and giggles.

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you should:

only thing to do is to prepare the bananas by freezing them – top tip, slice them first and lay all the slices out flat on a chopping board, and then freeze like that – that way you’re not having to cut up a frozen banana
blend the whole lot into a nice green blend
serve in a normal glass like a level-headed, reasonable person, or pop it in a fucking milk bottle
enjoy!

Two caveats – you DON’T need to be a complete bellend and serve these smoothies up in milk bottles like some vexing bearded hipster, but I’ll say this somewhat begrudgingly, they do look rather nice. We bought ours from Lakeland on Amazon – they’re pretty, but expensive. Click here for a link and there are cheaper alternatives!

Also, it might not sound especially nice, but this tasted delicious, like a mint milkshake. You can’t taste the spinach but it adds a lovely green and the health benefits are obvious. We had ours at noon and I’m not hungry yet so I’m going to say this can be used for a breakfast. Yes: technically it’s a tweak. But look at it this way. The banana is syn free. The spinach is a speed food. Mint makes your breath fresh and hot men will kiss you. Dark chocolate is good for the ticker and if you’re feeling particularly virtuous, just leave it out. You’re not drinking a bathtub of this stuff, you’re using it as a meal or a snack. Enjoy it, please!

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chubbycubs

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May 9, 2015

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bacon, breakfast, burgers, dressings, low syn, lunch, mince, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

BLTE bap, hot tuna salad and larb burger

So here’s the thing. I get a lot of people telling me to write a book, and I’ve always wanted to, but never really had the right idea or the inclination to do research and gain the appropriate knowledge. Then, as it happens, Paul decided to stroke my ego in the car today (and we weren’t pulled over in a layby flashing our interior lights at lorry drivers, which is normally what we’re doing in the car together – honestly, I hope Eddie Stobart’s drivers aren’t epileptic, it looks like an Eighties disco in our car) and told me I really should get on with it. Well, I love writing, I adore writing this blog (for the most part) and because I’m massively egocentric, what better topic to write about than what is happening in our lives? That would be great for me – but boring(ish) for you.

Here’s my idea: I am going to write a book – it’s going to be in the same format as what we’re doing now with the blog posts, but with fictional stuff interwoven amongst the nonsense. It won’t be a slimming book, simply because I don’t want Margaret coming after me with her Lynda la Plante weave all awry and her gang of Slimming World lawyers straining on the leash to do me in for copyright law. But I’ll put a few of my favourite recipes in there too. It’ll be like Bridget Jones Diary, only massively less successful. Renee Zellweger could totally play me though, if she put 180lb on and fell face-first into a fire. Naturally the blog remains at the forefront of my writing, and this side project will be something I’ll be tinkering on with for the next few months. In the meantime, if you fancy reading more of our writing, don’t forget we have a book on Amazon which is an account of our four weeks in Orlando: read about how I spent the first two days of the holiday tinted blue thanks to cheap sunscreen, or how I exposed my not unsubstantial arse to a crowd in a waterpark. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by paying only £1.20, you’ll keep Paul and I in replacement ped-eggs. That can be found here.

Right, so with that announcement over, let’s start with day four of SP! Tomorrow I’m going to explain SP in a bit more detail and also tell you exactly what I think of it. I’ll give you a clue: I think it’s a load of horse’s arse. And I’m not even going to mark that as a protein, either.

BREAKFAST

BLTE

The E stands for egg (P), obviously. Plus lettuce (S) and tomato (S). There’s not an awful lot to say about this, other than:

we totally didn’t have two each *cough/splutter*
I got Paul out of bed to make this (because I was hungry) by setting off the smoke alarm and then hiding in the kitchen – he came dashing in completely nude like the world’s cuddliest fireman and then proceeded to tell me off for about five minutes, the whole while I’m standing there agreeing solemnly with everything he said and pushing the packet of bacon closer and closer to him. I know one day our actifry is going to burst into flame through overuse and we’ll both perish in the fire because we’ve played too many pranks with the smoke alarm. I bet Paul manages to die with a pious ‘see I told you’ expression on his face
there’s a certain type of wholemeal bread roll you’re allowed – I think it’s a Weight Watchers one – but we only had these little buns in the freezer and after waking Paul up by tricking him into thinking he was in The Towering Inferno, I didn’t have the temerity to tell him to go to the shop…so we just used these. They’re about the same size.

LUNCH

Hot, hot tuna salad

So good I named it twice, see. No, it’s hot in both senses of the word – hot because of the added chilli and also, served hot. Usually tuna salad is served cold and, to someone who doesn’t like fish, isn’t especially appetising. Hell, I’ll make Paul wash Little Paul in the bathroom sink before he gets his birthday gobble.

Christ can I say as an aside I realise that this post is making it sound like Paul has an awful life, like some hairy Little Mo to my Trevor. Honestly, it’s not that bad, no-one needs to call Relate for us just yet. The only time he’s raised an iron in anger is when our ironing lady was off for two weeks having something done with her ovaries. Having them out I think, not wallpapered.

Anyway, yes, tuna salad:

to make hot, hot tuna salad you will need:

several big fuck-off lettuce leaves (S) – I grow mine in the greenhouse and honest to God, it’s like Day of the Triffids in there at the moment. I’m lucky I have a retractable hose-pipe – if I get lost amongst the lettuce, I just pull myself free. Yep. You’ll also need two tins of tuna (P), two large sweet peppers cut into chunks (S), three shallots sliced thinly (S), two tomatoes cut into chunks (S), 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of oil.

to make hot, hot tuna salad you should:

mix the tuna together with all the spices and salt and set aside
fry the onion and pepper in a dab of oil or some frylight until soft
chuck the tuna in and heat through – why not add a bit of chilli sauce if you like your hoop to look like a deflated liferaft
serve up on the giant lettuce leaves
to eat, fold the lettuce into neat parcels and chew

DETOX WATER

Mandarin

My favourite water so far! It tasted like sunshine in a glass. Well no, not quite, but it’s just one ingredient:

mandarin – which is excellent for vitamin C, which is handy for preventing skin wrinkling.

Don’t forget, if you want a gloriously ostentatious way of serving up your water (and don’t think for a second that come Eurovision night that isn’t going to be full of punch) you can buy one from Amazon. I will say this, we’ve certainly consumed a lot more water since we bought it, but that’s more because I’m such a tight-arse that I’m determined not to lose face and see it consigned to the back of the cupboard along with the lollipop maker and the ravioli crimper.

Haha, crimper.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – GEOCACHING

geocachingday42

Ah geocaching. I’ve rumbled on about geocaching before – it’s essentially a giant treasure hunt where no-one wins. But you don’t need to win a prize to enjoy it, it’s fantastic fun if you’re GIANT NERDS like us. People have hidden containers all over the world (and I’d bet my savings there’s probably at least five within easy walking distance from your house right now) and you use your GPS or an app on your smartphone to find them. Then you sign the book and put it back. It’s a great way of:

livening up a charming walk out in the country; and
making the British public think you’re loitering in the bushes with your knob out ready to strike.

See, part of geocaching is that you have to be subtle – some of the containers are hidden in plain sight, so you have to try and swipe them without people seeing, which can be difficult when you’re stumbling around in the trees like a flannel-shirted rapist. We had a lovely walk around a nature reserve and ended up on one of Northumberland’s fantastic beaches. Just look at that scene above. See, the North is so much more than child-beating and whippets. That picture of the rock at the top – that’s called a disco cache, where the logbook is hidden inside a container designed to look like something completely different. They’re extra hard – I’ve hid caches myself inside golf balls, birds nest and even a fake blob of chewing gum. It’s all free of charge and hey, if you’ve got kids, get them involved too.

Everyone I ever explain geocaching to wrinkles their nose and asks me what is the point, but it’s great fun. You’ll end up enjoying yourself, trust me. Visit www.geocaching.com, pop in your postcode and go and find the closest one to you.

DINNER

Larb burgers

Told you I was getting the use out of my lettuce! Note: I used a carrot and ginger dressing from Tesco on this which works out at almost a syn for two tablespoons. But you can use fat-free vinaigrette if you dare not sacrifice a syn.

to make larb burgers you will need:

500g of turkey mince or three chicken breasts (if you’re using breasts, then you’ll need a mincer – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that?), 3 shallots (S) (one thickly sliced, the other two thinly), 3 cloves of garlic (S), a few lime leaves (get them from Tesco’s world food bit), 1 small stalk of lemongrass, a dash of fish sauce, a bit of ginger (you only need a little knob to really taste it – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that), a lime (S), pickled cabbage (S I think) and the ubiquitous giant lettuce leaves (S).

to make larb burgers you should:

get your food processor or blender or what have you on the go
throw in the thickly cut shallot, garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and a pinch of salt and pulse to a paste
add the meat and pulse so it’s nicely mixed up with the spices
shape into six burgers
heat a griddle pan with a drop of oil or some Frylight and get it medium hot
add the burgers and cook hard – you want to get some sear lines into the burger for that classy bitches look
turn over and repeat on the other side – we cooked them for seven minutes each side to really cook them through – always be careful with chicken
if they look a bit dry, throw some lime juice into the pan
in the same griddle pan, put the finely sliced shallots in to fry off in the juice of the meat and lime
once cooked through, assemble onto the lettuce leaves, add some pickled cabbage and the shallots, and serve (you can add dressing if you want, I found it wasn’t necessary.

Enjoy! Oooh it’s like you in a tropical paradise, right?

DAY FOUR DONE.

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chubbycubs

Posted on

May 6, 2015

Posted under

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.

‘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

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

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

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

daytwobody

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.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 5, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, breast, classics, fakeaways, indian, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata

Right, so remember we’re structuring the posts a little different this week – it’s pure diet. No sass. Oh fuck off, this is me, I can’t sign my name without a 500 word critique of someone’s hairy top lip and an anecdote about peas. I heard something I haven’t heard in years today: ‘Oh, you’ll know him, he’s gay too’. I mean, it’s a harmless enough comment and it was certainly meant with no malice, but it does tickle me. I like the idea of there being a gay psychic link that becomes activated the very second you turn to someone who shares the same approximate genitals as you (so to speak) and say, oh we’ll give it a go. A yellow pages but in lavender. I suppose it works on the same idea as ‘having a gaydar’ which I DO think there’s a grain of truth in. Paul and I can normally spot the other gay couples wandering around the garden centre or fingering the strawberries in Waitrose, but it never extends to anything more than a tiny smirk and a colossal leer at the cucumber in their trolley. Half the time I walk around like I’ve had a stroke because I’m trying not to wink at them.

In fact, this is what happens when you’re not looking.

Anyway, hush. So how are we going to do this? Easy! I’m going to mark speed foods with a S and protein-rich foods with a P.

BREAKFAST

Poached eggs on marmite toast with baked beans

Now come on, you don’t really need me to talk you through this, but it’s a HE of wholemeal bread (the small loaf, don’t be putting two eggs on a doorstep of bread and come crying to me next week) slathered with marmite, baked beans (P) and eggs (P). I can poach an egg properly no problem but time is always a factor, especially now I have to contend with the worry of not getting a reflection of my knob in the pictures (we’re always naked during breakfast, saves showering twice when I invariably spill my cornflakes into my chest hair). So we bought one of these egg-poachers – It’s the easy and lazy way to cook poached eggs in the microwave. £4.99 on Amazon, steal. You half fill each compartment, microwave for forty seconds, crack your egg in, microwave for another 30 seconds and you are done. Normally you get the runny yolk but I was sidetracked scratching Paul’s back this morning so forgot to take them out. Anyway, done!

Oh, be careful – whilst I’ve never experienced this, it can be slightly dangerous to microwave an egg. Perhaps prick the yolk. Up to you. If you happen to like goo blasting across your face in the morning, well then you’re my type of reader.

LUNCH

This makes enough for six servings, or if we’re being realistic about the type of people that we are, two servings and a bit leftover to pick at in tears whilst you hang that too-skinny pair of jeans back into the wardrobe. WE’LL GET THERE.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you will need:

: one big bugger leek (sliced) (S), a handful of samphire (S), handful of sugarsnap peas (S), mushrooms (sliced) (S), salt and pepper, garlic, 30g of parmesan (optional – HEA choice but don’t forget this serves two/three) eight eggs and a frying pan that is a) non-stick and b) capable of going in the oven.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you should:

slice and prepare your veg and chuck it all into a frying pan
cook off the bacon medallions under the grill (or normal bacon, but chuck away that fat) then chop and add
beat all the eggs into submission in a jug, adding a good sprinkle of salt, pepper and garlic (grated)
pour egg into the bacon and veg mix and give it a good shake and mix to let the egg soak through
pop onto a medium heat for around ten minutes or so until things start to firm up – the top will be runny though
add the grated parmesan here if you’re using it
whack it into the oven for ten minutes or so on around 180 degrees – you want it firm but not overcooked
leave to cool and then slice and serve with salad – it transports well so it’s good for lunch

top tip: you really can chuck any old shite into a frittata, it’s really very forgiving. Any flimflam you have sitting in the bottom of the fridge will easily taste delicious in a frittata. Get it done!

DETOX WATER

Full disclosure – I really think detox waters are a load of piss. Well, not immediately, but they’ll get there. Your body is a detoxing machine! However, that said, drinking water is always a wonderful thing. Click here for the Kilner water dispenser. You don’t need one. You really don’t. But it’s summer soon. Cheaper alternatives are available, by the way. This water contains:

two sliced limes (S) (can help prevent kidney stones)
one sliced lemon (S) (because you don’t want scurvy, your legs will bend when you get on the scales)
half a sliced grapefruit (S) (strengthens the immune system)
pineapple sage leaf.

Pineapple sage leaf? Totally unnecessary. But it’s amazing. You may recall I started a herb garden a few posts ago and this little bugger is growing merrily away – the leaves taste like sweet pineapple and smell amazing. You could brew it in a tea, if you’re the type of arty-farty person who thinks such a thing is a sensible idea.

The water was refreshing and ‘clean’. But then what do you expect, we have plumbed in filtered water and an ice-dispenser. FAT MEN LIVING THE DREAM. Of course, I needed it after my body magic…

BODY MAGIC – GARDENING

I had timetabled four miles of walking for the body magic today, but when we got up it was absolutely chucking it down. I would have been drier had I swam to work down the Tyne. Plus the cows are back on the Town Moor, and they terrify me with their cold, dead eyes and shitty tails. So instead, we spent a good hour or so gardening – from top to bottom:

repotted our baby leeks
potted out our tomatoes into their automatic watering beds
trimmed back our lettuce monster
FINALLY planted all the early potatoes!

Google tells me that gardening comes in at around 300 calories for an hour of medium graft. Personally, I reckon 295 of that calorie spend comes from me constantly yanking up my trousers to stop the neighbours over the road being able to see my bumhole everytime I planted a potato. I live in perpetual and unending fear of my top of my arse-crack being exposed.

Never gardened before? You’re missing out. I’m no Charlie Dimmock, despite having her tits and then some. Even if you’ve only got a tiny bit of land to potter in, you can grow your lettuce and herbs easy enough. Tomatoes are more of a fart-on but worth the effort. But start small. Nothing tastes better than something you’ve grown yourself.

Finally…

Does anyone have Margaret’s number? Seriously, I feel like ringing up and congratulating her. I’ve FINALLY found a Slimming World curry recipe that doesn’t taste like someone’s sneezed a curry stock cube onto some chicken and wrung a dishcloth over it. It was tasty, though I made some adjustments! And SP friendly. So without a moment of hesitation…

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you will need:

one red onion (chopped) (S), 2 garlic cloves (grated) (S), one chicken breast (makes enough for two) (P), 1 tbsp of korma powder, 6tbsp of tomato puree, 200g of passata, a half teaspoon of turmeric, 400ml of chicken stock, chopped red pepper (S), spinach (S), bit of coriander so you can pretend you’re out somewhere dead fancy. For the broccoli you’ll need some tenderstem broccoli (S) and a 1tbsp of tandoori curry powder

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you should:

gently cook the onion, chopped red pepper and garlic in a drop of oil or a few squirts of everyone’s favourite pan-ruiner, Frylight
chuck in the diced chicken and cook hard and fast until there’s not a squeak of pink chicken
add everything else – powder, puree, stock and passata, bring to the boil and then reduce to a low heat and cook for twenty minutes or so until the sauce has thickened, throwing in the spinach for five minutes near the end;
whilst that’s happening, throw your broccoli into boiling water and cook the very life out of it for 3 minutes or so – you still want it firm, if you have to gum it to enjoy it you’ve gone too far;
drain the broccoli and whilst it is still damp, sprinkle that tandoori powder all over it
heat up a griddle pan – again, tiny bit of oil or frylight, and griddle the hell out of that broccoli for a couple of minutes
serve up – add a dainty bit of coriander that’ll sit mournfully on the side of your plate until the cat eats it.

Phew! Enjoy that did we? I hope so!

SPEED FOODS USED TODAY: red pepper, spinach, leeks, broccoli, grapefruit, lime, lemon, garlic, onion, mushrooms, samphire, sugarsnap peas (12).

Before I go, there’s a competition running this week. I’ll announce it tomorrow (if I remember) but it’ll reward those with keen eyes…

Please do share this blog as far and as wide as you can.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 21, 2015

Posted under

budget, lunch, one-pot, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, soup, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

carrot, swede and potato soup

Because that’s when good neighbours become good friends!

I can’t quite believe Neighbours is still going, let alone celebrating 30 years on the air. I was always a Home and Away man myself, partly because as a fat child I couldn’t be bothered getting up to turn the channel over after Fun House. I remember the great disasters like it was yesterday – the big flood, the earthquake, Evil Ailsa, telling my mum she looked like Irene who used to run the diner. Good times! I spotted the 30th anniversary trailer for Neighbours before on TV and I’m happy to confirm that yes, I DO still look like Harold. Mind, that would make Paul Madge, so that really quite tickles me.

Oh, speaking of being tickled, I’ve had a great ten minutes. See, we use something called Spotify which allows you to listen to thousands and thousands of different music tracks. All very exciting. We’ve got Premium which means you can access your playlists on the move and Paul’s phone syncs his music through his car. However, I’ve learned that I can log in from home and change the music playing in his car whilst he’s out and about. Anyway, he’s out driving people to a young Marxist meeting, and I’ve been making all sorts play in the car (Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel by Tavares, Lovin’ You by Minnie Ripperton and my personal favourite, Can You Feel The Love Tonight from The Lion King). His response was a smidge curt:

Eee, I hope he doesn’t kiss his mother with that mouth. Although that would explain his stubble burn.

Anyway, yes, Neighbours – or indeed neighbours, was what has been on my mind.

When Paul and I first started ~~shagging~~ ‘going steady’, we moved into a flat on Newcastle’s Quayside, seduced by the fabulous views of a concrete factory and the Millennium bridge. It was lovely but the entire block of flats were taken up by the kind of pretentious, rah-rah-rah knobheads who we both loathe with a passion. We had a homeless man living in the bin store, shitting everywhere, and someone set up a ‘collection point’ for him. Now, I’m a liberal guy, I really am, but I don’t want to tread in human shit every time I put my bins out. It’s not a lot to ask. Our neighbour downstairs used to have cracking arguments with his girlfriend mind which provided much hilarity until we thought he had belted her and so we called the police. They never talked to us again after that. Well, briefly – Paul had been drying some boxer shorts on the balcony when the wind caught a particularly well-worn pair and blew them over the edge and sadly, because the girlfriend of the lad downstairs was out smoking on her balcony, they landed right on the top of her head. She thought we had done it deliberately and launched an absolute torrent of abuse, we probably didn’t help by shutting the balcony door and screaming with laughter. Oh dear. We only lasted two years there before moving out, with the prevalent memory of the place being the black suede headboard in the master bedroom. Well, it wasn’t black when we left, let me tell you. It looked like a Jackson Pollock painting – what can I say, we were young and keen in those days, and who the fuck chooses black suede as a headboard? Frankly, we needed something laminated.

We then moved to Gosforth into a Tyneside flat, which was slightly less salubrious but a lot more homely. The only problem was our neighbour upstairs, who came down for a vodka when we moved in and then turned completely mad. She was the type who’d happily clatter around on her cheap lino in her best Primarni heels when she rolled in at 3am with that night’s bus-stop encounter gelling on her thigh, but would hammer on the floor and yell about the noise if I so much as yawned. For a good few weeks we crept about underneath like the fucking Borrowers, which was incredibly difficult for two twenty stone blokes to do, before realising that we weren’t being unreasonably noisy, she was, and that we should really get our revenge. Lucky, that was fairly easy.

In our bedroom was a grand, open fireplace which had been somewhat shoddily sealed off by someone putting a slab of stone just above the grate. Her bedroom, immediately above ours, shared the same chimney. Sound was usually muffled thanks to the stone but, after we moved it slightly, we were able to get up to all sorts of mischief. We’d wait until we knew she was in bed, move the stone a tiny bit, and fart up the chimney. As I said before, we are big blokes, and frankly, we fart like bulls at the best of times, but we used to store them up to the point of stomach pains just so we could blow them up the chimney. It must have sounded like someone was practicising the tuba in the chimney stack, especially given how the sound would amplify. We’d also make off-putting sex noises if she had anyone round and, in what I think was the most inspired move, we played a load of Roy Walker sound-clips (like Chris Moyles’ Car Park Catchphrase) when she had her mother around. She moved out about a month afterwards and silence fell. When she left, we felt able to tidy up the patch outside the house, and planted lots of nice flowers which was grand until the snooty moo to the left of us came downstairs and criticised our cheap pots. Cheap! We were on a budget back then, and anyway, it was the rougher end of Gosforth, not bloody somewhere posh. Our retalliation was swift – we went to Poundland, bought all manner of garish gnomes, plastic frogs, tatty windmills and other such flimflam until our garden looks like a roadside memorial to a boy-racer. She never talked to us after that, although I drove past the flat the other day and there’s still a god-awful, sun-bleached frog in the front garden so whoever has the house now must have THE worst taste ever.

Finally, we moved to our current house, and it’s perfect – why? Because we’re a detached bungalow!

Speaking of perfect blends, here’s a soup recipe. YES! YES I DID A GOOD SEGUE FOR ONCE!

Look, there’s no way to make that look alluring or inviting, but it tasted good and couldn’t have been simpler to make. No really, it couldn’t. I bought a prepared soup veg mix from Tesco, where the carrot, swede, potato and onion were all cut up. I threw it all in my soup maker with 600ml of chicken (you could use vegetable) stock, some garlic, salt and pepper, pressed a button, came here to type out the bit above and I’d barely stopped chuckling and clutching my sides when it beeped ready. A quick blend – in the same machine – and we were done. Served! You can buy the same soupmaker as the one I use right here. Somewhat annoyingly, it’s reduced from £140 to £90. Worth getting? I think so. It took less than one minute to prepare the soup, 30 minutes to cook and a moment to blend. Plenty of superfree in there too. Very rare that I think a kitchen gadget is worth the money but I would actually recommend a soup maker. If you get one, why don’t you try tomato, fennel and feta soup, super speedy ‘just like Heinz’ tomato soup, super speed soup, cabbage, kidney bean and sausage soup, kale, spinach and broccoli and pesto soup or onion soup.

Enjoy all!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

March 1, 2015

Posted under

budget, low syn, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

balsamic roasted sprouts

For week four, we’re going to…Belgium! Well, sort of. I’ll come to that later…

Admit it, you’ve missed us. I’ve got visions of people wailing and rocking, waiting for the update that just didn’t appear. Well, to be frank, I’m disappointed that there were no Princess Diana-esque walls of flowers created, or that no-one doused themselves in petrol and set themselves on fire on our front lawn. Honestly, people. No, the unglamourous truth was that we’ve both been a little under the weather – and I was out on the piss on Friday night – and needed yesterday to recover.

Now see here, I’m not a big drinker – I tend to be an all or nothing sort of guy, so if I start drinking, I’m on it until I’m bundled into a taxi / arrested for lewd behaviour / do a Winehouse and choke on my vomit. It was supposed to be a civilised night, actually, and it certainly started off that way, with champagne in Hotel Indigo. That civilised chatter lasted about fifteen minutes before talk about bumhole waxing, black fluff and ‘dripping’ got underway and then the night never really got the glamour back. Brilliant night though, even if my mate did end up telling some poor, haggard looking woman with eighties hair and a very cats-arse-mouth (she was tutting at our conversation and rolling her eyes) that she looked like Enya. Taxi!

I like to think I’m a pleasant enough drunk – I’m certainly not an angry drunk or – worse – the moaning, miserable sort – if anything I just become way too affectionate towards Paul. In the interest of full disclosure and to try and prove a point, here’s a screenshot of my texts to Paul on Friday. Bearing in mind I’m the type of person who will chew through his trousers with his own bumhole if someone so much as uses a LOL in a text message to me, I certainly let my standards slip after four bottles of champagne.

God he puts up with a lot, doesn’t he? Look at those times though, I was clearly hammered pretty quickly. In my defence, if there is one, my phone has a smashed glass screen so it’s hard to type properly. Yeah, that’ll be it. I can’t remember anything from after Paul bundled me into the Micra, though he tells me:

I kept falling asleep / passing out on the twenty minute drive home, intermittently burping and slouching over onto his shoulder, meaning he had to keep jerking the car to the left at high speed to tilt me the other way;
I spent a lot of time telling no-one in particular to fuck off; and
when I got home, he opened the car door and I went tearing out like my arse was on fire because I was about to have a technicolour yawn, went headfirst straight into the side of the shed – and then was sick all over our front lawn.

Tell you what mind, I felt right as bloody rain on Saturday after Paul cooked me a low-syn breakfast. Weigh in tomorrow and I think I’ll have put on, but hopefully Paul will have lost. But remember what I always say – we’re aiming to lose weight slowly, so if it goes up or down, it doesn’t matter. I’m certainly in credit. We spent today walking Lester from the cat and dog shelter, but he was clearly Hooch from Turner and Hooch!

Aw. OK, finally, tonight’s recipe. I’ll make a confession – we totally forgot to think of a European recipe this week, so this is a little last minute. It’s a snack idea using brussel sprouts, which to be fair were cultivated in Belgium. We may revisit this one but actually, the sprouts are delicious hot or cold as a snack!

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you will need:

a tablespoon of olive oil, a bag of brussel sprouts, balsamic vinegar, salt

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you should:

top and tail a bag of sprouts (take outer leaves off, cut the stem off the bottom). Get a tablespoon of decent olive oil (6 syns) and a good few glugs of balsamic vinegar. Mix them well and put onto a baking tray and sprinkle with some salt. Into the oven on 180degrees for twenty minutes, give them a shake and then cook for another twenty. Serve hot or cold and keep the windows open, because your bumhole is going to be backfiring like an old car. This easily served us twice over, so the two syns in the picture above could actually be lower (I decided that a serving was 1/3 of a bag of sprouts). Enjoy!

I’M BACK, BITCHES.