First let me begin this post by apologising to everyone because I know I am very, very late with my usual apology about not posting enough and the subsequent fervent and well-meant and then entirely ignored promise to post more. But for once we have a genuine excuse above and beyond I saw something shiny on the floor or we’ve been on holiday. See, and I know most of you will know this, we have welcomed our third child DINNER TIME into the world. I mean technically it’s our fourth child but the planner doesn’t count because I think Paul ate some lead during cooking it up. Actually that is very unfair, the planner remains a hidden joy!
Our baby!
But yes! DINNER TIME launched a couple of weeks ago – our third proper cookbook and an absolute riot of colour and taste. I’m always incredibly nervous and stressed before a book launch because you always worry that it’ll fall on its arse and reveal us for the shambling quims that we really are, but no, thankfully, it’s been well-received. It sat near the top of the Amazon charts and – somewhat inexplicably – became a number one Sunday Times Bestseller. If you’ll forgive me a moment of treacle-thick mush, and you must understand I’m doing my best to keep that to a minimum at the moment, it’s just the most validating, exciting and wonderful feeling. Being at the top of various lists is one thing, seeing the sales figures another, but nothing hits us in the feels more than seeing people proudly waving their copy around, cooking from it and letting us know they love it. So much work goes into making each book different from the last – writing the wee stories, doing the recipe testing, our team making all the photos look delicious – that you never truly know how it’ll do. We delayed the publication of DINNER TIME six months this time because we wanted to make sure it was a winner – it would be easy for us to pump out the recipe books like we’re shelling peas but then you just end up with the same old same old books.
And we didn’t want that.
So! Before we get to the various questions we get asked a lot, just a big thank you to everyone who has bought the book – we do love you all and remain incredibly grateful for everything you do for us. If you have the book, please do consider taking a moment to leave us a review, because every last one helps us out. We don’t ask for a lot! The questions then!
What recipes are in the book?
There’s 120 recipes in book three – 100 full meals and twenty side ideas. I prepared a full list which you can view by clicking here – it’ll open in a new window. Although the theme of the book is evening meals, and certainly they’re designed to fill that void of an evening when you wonder what on Earth to cook, they translate very easily to lunches and leftovers and for more than a few of them, breakfasts too.
Any complicated ingredients or difficult cooking methods?
Lordy no. Paul and I are both very lazy and very tight and as a result, there’s nothing in this cookbook (or indeed our other two) which you can’t find in Tesco or any other major supermarket. We never buy an ingredient to use just once because that’s a poor economy. Similarly, neither of us are chefs and nothing in the book is difficult to throw together. If you’re unsure of your cooking ability, you need not worry with our books.
Do you cater for vegetarians?
Yes, you can eat the pages. No we jest – we have made a special effort with this book to make sure that there’s a good mixture of vegetarian recipes – over a third of the book – and that those veggie recipes aren’t just meat recipes with Quorn stuffed in. Most of my favourites come from the vegetarian sections. We have asked fans of our facebook pages whether we managed to cater for vegetarians and it was a resounding yes. So don’t hesitate!
I am gluten / dairy free – are the recipes suitable?
We have included a very clear key as to what recipes are suitable for those with gluten or dairy allergies. For the recipes that don’t fit the bill, we encourage you to make smart swaps to make them work. Neither Paul or I have an allergy so it would be tricky for us to do a full GF/DF book but given the simplicity of the recipes, you should hopefully find something that works!
Is it suitable for Slimming World / Weight Watchers etc?
As many of you know, we moved away from Slimming World a year or so ago to go ‘low calorie’ – so the recipes do not have syn values or Weight Watchers points. They’re all under 500 calories though and will slip into a calorie controlled plan very easily. We have heard from people on both plans that the recipes translate very easily though!
Where can I pick it up?
WH Smith, Waterstones, lots of independent bookstores, Amazon (currently £10 at time of writing), supermarkets (ASDA stocking it at a tenner too!)
Is the calorie count per meal or per portion?
Per portion. We’re actually calling book four ‘TWOCHUBBYCUBS: IT’S PER PORTION’. I wish a dish that serves four would be less than 500 calories, trust me!
£10/12 is steep for me at the moment – will the price drop?
We aren’t sure – previous years Amazon have stuck us on a Prime Day deal, but we simply don’t know. However, if times are tight, please don’t rush out and buy the book – it’ll appear in libraries soon and failing that, our second book has been consistently around £8 for the last few months on Amazon. And if that is too much, don’t fret – take a gander through this website where you’ll find over 750 recipes for free. You don’t need to spend money to find good recipes! Whatever works for you. The blog recipes will resume soon when I’m not dealing with so much admin and feedback and we have some stonkers coming up.
Hope this helps! Remember the £10 price point will probably shift back to £12 soon enough, so if you’re on the fence, do pick it up. Everyone else, if you have it, please do leave a review, it would be a huge help for us!
Hello hello! I hope you are all keeping well – cheese and ham boaties await you at the bottom of this blog but I must warn and caution you – please, take a seat first lest your legs go – that today’s blog entry is an awfully long one. See we went off to that Canada place and so a holiday blog follows and you know what I’m like – why take one bottle into the shower when you can take ALL THE BOTTLES. If you’re in the market for a quick, cheap and easy dinner though you will find joy untold in this recipe – so please do scroll until I’ve finished blathering to see it.
ONLY TWO WEEKS TO GO! That’s right, a fortnight until our hot pink satisfier is in your hands! If you’re looking for something delicious then our book will satisfy every urge. Anyway, if you have pre-ordered it, don’t you forget for a hot second that you can enter a competition to win things. Just show your pre-order and be in with a chance. If you have pre-ordered click here to enter. If you haven’t pre-ordered, well, bairn’s crying thanks. Luckily you can put that right by pre-ordering now!
OK, if you’re still with me, let’s go!
As you know, I adore writing the travel stories and lord knows it’s been a long time since we have been able to do it. Paul and I travelled to Canada for a month back in 2018 and have ached to go back ever since: it truly is my most favourite place on the Earth. Well, that and the hand car-wash place up in Blyth, but I confess that’s more for the rough-hewn men blundering about with their slick, soapy fingers. It’s hard to drive upside down and with my cheeks poking out the driver-side window but somehow I manage. Canada though: it truly is a country of inexhaustible beauty and surprises and we saw it in the most perfect way, travelling eastwards from Vancouver across the country via trains, planes and automobiles before we ended up in Toronto. Every stop was a delight, every road a wonder. Plus, to tie this to a weight loss blog, there’s parts of Canada where the gravity isn’t as strong as other places on the Earth so those bathroom scales will always be a touch kinder to you. Great for your confidence.
Now because we both ache for times past Paul and I talk of this holiday often, whether it was the time Paul threw his leftover beef stew into the forest behind our campervan in the middle of bear season, the time we decided the best way to combat my fear of turbulent water was to wear a bin-liner and go crashing about the Lachine Rapids of Montreal in a boat held together with duct tape, or perhaps the zip-lining across dizzyingly deep canyons where to this day the sound of ‘aaaaah Paul you absolute cunnnnnnnnn….‘ echoes around the stones. Yet for all the exciting parts, my favourite Canadian memory of all was the night we sat outside our van on the edge of Cowichan Lake, talking and drinking beer with the skies above us awash with stars.
Well, stars and later, smoke, given a good chunk of Vancouver Island had decided to set itself on fire the moment we got off the ferry. I chose not to take that personally.
However, that holiday did end on an unexpected note. We met a bloke for ‘dinner and drinks’ in Calgary who was so taken with my conversational skills (I presume that’s what he meant by great oral) that he flew to Toronto to meet us for the final three days of the holiday. This was fine – we did indeed have an enjoyable time and it was lovely for someone new to have to make pained faces whilst Paul and I shouted at each other – but it did mean we didn’t get to do Toronto the way Paul and I like to approach a new city, that is, walk about and explore and see what happens. I remember standing in a branch of Zara whilst our new friend fussed and minced about trying on coats and feeling unhappy about the holiday ending like it did. To cheer myself up I resolved there and then that Paul and I would return to Toronto ourselves and see what all the fuss was aboot. Then I bought myself a new coat.
Of course, once you’re home and you’ve washed the maple syrup off your knees, such rash promises tend to get forgotten, like when you say you’ll keep in touch with folks you’ve met on holiday and then realise you’d sooner boil your face in a chip pan than listen to their stories without the anaesthetic effect of free hotel liquor. Then something terribly exciting happened: we won a competition. You must understand that this is a miracle in itself: we’ve already won two lotteries between us – me with my looks and Paul with his husband, so we shouldn’t really have expected more. But no, the god of travel and adventure was smiling on us and we won a paid-for trip to a ‘corner of the Earth’ with srprs.me. Incidentally, the god of travel was Hermes, same as the prior name of the parcel company: the absolute irony of naming yourself after the god of travel when the concept of walking down a garden path and knocking on a door is so dizzyingly bewildering to (some of the) couriers never did register with them, did it? That was February 2020 and we were ever so excited to go away.
But of course, no such luck: the world caught COVID and our house caught fire in quick succession and the plans were shelved. We didn’t anticipate srprs.me honouring the competition because lord knows the travel industry has been on its arse for the last two years and quite honestly, had they said it wasn’t going to happen, we would have absolutely understood. But no – they kept in touch, moving the holiday three or four times to accommodate lockdowns and travel restrictions until eventually we settled on a trip at the end of March 2022.
Now, I ought to quickly explain srprs.me to people who are new to the blog or haven’t seen the helpful videos we have done on the process so far. Essentially, they book a surprise holiday for you where you don’t know where you’ll end up – you select a duration and date, star-rating for your hotel, departure airport and any extras and once you’re happy with the price, the agents will take care of the rest. You do not know where you are going until you turn up at the airport and reveal your destination. You can rule out a few cities or, in our case, make a couple of requests – we never want to travel somewhere that isn’t welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks, for example. Plus we wanted somewhere cold if possible, because heat brings out our fussiness. The agents will make sure you have any visa requirements in place and, especially at the moment, they will notify you of what you need in terms of COVID protection too. A week or so before you depart you will be given the forecast for your destination so you can pack accordingly and that, dear readers, is all you will get. We’ve used them a few times before and ended up in Hamburg, Kraków, Bordeaux and Malaga – all in good hotels in the city centre. That, coupled with terrific customer service and the novelty of surprise, make for an excellent adventure.
I should say at this point: we aren’t getting paid to promote srprs.me – just personal experience.
So it was then, after three weeks of putting ourselves in a strict lockdown because frankly if either of us had caught COVID before our holiday I’d have set the world on fire, our holiday was nearly upon us. Two days before departure we were given the chance to hand over £200 between us for the opportunity of doing a COVID test of which we had boxes of at home but this was different because it was Official and Government-approved and definitely not a money making racket, oh heavens no. Don’t get me wrong, the person doing the test was ever so polite, but if I’m paying someone £200 to shove stuff up my nose I expect at least a handie after. Anyway, pipe down James, now isn’t the time to get into that. COVID test clear, and devastation abound that they never called for coffee, we were all set. We dropped my car in the long-stay parking at Newcastle, making sure to note the fact we were parked a couple of miles south of Carlisle, and made to check-in. We would find out our final destination the next day at Heathrow which necessitated a quick flight down the day before, given the only surprise occurring if srprs.me had flown from Newcastle would have been the plane dropping us back off at our house.
Every picture we take together now I look like Paul’s Dad – here I am dropping him off for footie practice with *checks notes* Almirante Brown
Newcastle Airport is a funny place: it always feels spectacularly empty and desolate yet still manages to have queues for the obvious things: security checks, buying a pint in the airport bar, the stottie and string vest exchange. Today was no different save for the fact the British Airways self-check-in kiosks weren’t working and they had drafted a check-in agent to manage the one open desk. Let it be said he was a delight to deal with but he seemed utterly mystified by each person approaching his desk, as though he had only sat down to tie his shoelaces and had somehow been roped into doing a shift. As a result each encounter took approximately four years and the queue didn’t so much stand still as quietly rot. At one point we all joined together to sing someone Happy Birthday and were gearing up to help deliver a queue-baby when we were called forward.
I’ll say this: nothing makes you look more suspicious and curious than answering the ‘where are you flying to’ question with ‘oh I don’t know, we’re going to get a text at the airport with further instructions tomorrow’. That’s probably why I was patted down so thoroughly in security – it can’t just be my devastating good looks, after all.
I do always enjoy the flight to London with British Airways though – it’s a very short flight with barely enough time to gaze out of the window and wonder how they’ve got the nerve to serve what is effectively a fun-size packet of crisps. They took away the free food a couple of years ago to much consternation, then reinstated it recently in tiny miniature form in the interests of improving service. It is a welcome touch, it really is, but I’ve never had crisps served to me in instalments. Paul, a man so wee he described his height as ‘throwable’ on the shag profile that lured me into him, must have felt like a giant. I ate his crisps too, naturally, for we simply can’t have him being spoiled. Cabin crew with British Airways are always utter treasures though, although I do sometimes wonder about the chap we managed to offend on our previous Vancouver flight by asking for his advice on the gay scene. Call it an inkling but the exceptionally dramatic flounce and hurried mince-off suggested we weren’t entirely on the wrong track with our suspicions he would be the right person to ask such an innocent enough question of.
We barely had enough time to take four layers of skin off our lips from the coffee they served (don’t worry, I didn’t waste it – I popped it into the seat pocket in front to give it a chance to cool down enough for my flight back the week after) before we had landed at Heathrow and collected our suitcases, pausing momentarily to argue about whether to get a taxi to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn at Terminal 2. The argument was short as Paul had spotted a bus service to Terminal 2 which would ‘doubtless’ drop us off near to the hotel and I just needed to ‘trust him’ because he ‘knew what he was doing’ and I was being a fusspot for wanting to get a taxi.
It won’t surprise you at all to learn that this didn’t happen. After a wonderfully exhilarating tour of various cargo warehouses, back roads and catering depots – and you must understand I did welcome the chance to check my car was alright – Paul gamely leapt to his feet at Terminal 2 and alighted the bus, with me making very loud noises of disapproval behind him. I’d spotted our hotel on the drive and it was very clear that we were getting off far too early. Terminal 2 was closed. Our hotel was a good fifteen minute walk along roads and through car-parks and for one arresting moment, across the main bus lanes, and please do imagine how good-spirited and jolly our conversation was as we made our way there.
Paul, to his credit, does usually have a decent sense of navigation and if he makes a mistake, will hold his hands up and admit to it, but not this time: he had pressed his lips so thin it was like someone had drawn his mouth on with a Sharpie and there was no chance of contrition. Once we had checked in to our hotel (making the lady on the desk feel awkward when I requested a good divorce lawyer in response to her breezy ‘can I get you anything else’) we were heading to the lifts when we saw our original bus swoosh past reception. I made to helpfully point this out to Paul but he seemed especially keen to read the lift maintenance record and wouldn’t meet my gaze.
The dinner that saved a marriage
A Ploughman’s lunch in the hotel bar melted the frost between us and we slept very well indeed, this time getting a taxi back to the airport in the morning lest our marriage shattered under the strain of more mishap. After standing outside vaping so much that they had to take two runways out of service, it was time to reveal our destination. On previous trips srprs.me have sent a scratchcard with a code hidden underneath – once the time to unlock your holiday came up, you’d reveal the code, input it into the website and your destination would reveal itself. They’re fancier now: you have to draw an outline of a top hat to unlock it on the app. I let Paul, my very own top-hat, do this, but his forever-slick-with-butter fingers couldn’t do it. We tried every way we could think of before it popped and revealed Toronto as our destination.
We were delighted! We had an inkling we were going to Canada based on the weather reports and our requirements for it to be a gay-friendly place, but even so – very exciting! Unfortunately the ‘surprise selfie’ that the app takes when it reveals the destination is not one for the photo book – I had a giant coffee covering my face and Paul is pulling an expression that if you walked into a room and saw him sat in a chair with this face on, you’d send for an ambulance. Every part of his face looked like it was arguing with its equivalent point on the back of his head. We hastily completed our ‘So You’re Coming to Canada, Ay’ visa requirements (dead easy) and went to check in at the Air Canada desks.
The face of someone who just LOVES not having any control
Catastrophe: the self check-in kiosks weren’t working, and I don’t know if you can remember what the queues were like at Heathrow a few weeks ago, but it made the Newcastle check-in queue look like a line for people wanting to be punched in the bollocks by a disagreeable rhino. If we had all spontaneously started doing the conga we’d have been a shoo-in for the Guinness World Records. We were alright – we had nothing but time – but watching people get increasingly fraught and rude with the airport staff who were doing their best made for a stressful experience.
One braying, hooting family in particular kept loudly announcing that they had a very important skiiing holiday (holidaaaaah) to attend and simply must make their flight, as though everyone else in the queue had just joined it on the off-chance of getting a rosette at the end for good behaviour. When passengers from our flight were called to jump the queue we were given the chance to walk past them and you best believe I took the opportunity to look at them with a ‘I just can’t believe how lucky we are‘ smile. I know it doesn’t do to wear your spitefulness on your sleeve but I do hope a bottle of talcum powder had burst open in her rucksack when they went through security.
Security itself was fast and efficient and thanks to the previous queue at check-in, we didn’t need to wait about to board. The last time we had flown from Heathrow we were off to Tokyo and I had somehow managed to ignore the amount of time it would take to get from the fancy airport lounges to the departure gate, meaning we had to do a full Home Alone-esque sprint through the airport to catch our flight. It’s the little mishaps like that of my own that remind me that I mustn’t be too harsh on Paul. We were flying (as a strict one-off and only because we had so many Avios points) in first class that day anyway so they would have held the plane I’m sure, and if not, the pilot would have nipped back to pick us up. No such luck with our Air Canada flight though: we were sat in economy, in the middle of a row of four. I did have a slight panic as I get claustrophobic if I’m penned in, but luckily we had an absolute DILF on either side so that made climbing over them that much easier. He did touch Paul’s hand at one point and apologised for being married once Paul had ‘gone for some peanuts’ for the eighth time.
The flight was uneventful but very comfortable – about seven hours which by the time you’ve had your dinner, watched a couple of movies and had a doze, passes in no time. I did miss having a window to gaze out of – I love looking down at the world below and imagining all of those people looking up and wondering where we are going. Plus I wanted to check my car was still where I had left it as we flew over Greenland, but no such luck.
The highlight for me on any long-haul flight is the food: there’s something about being served two trays of food (as Paul doesn’t like to eat on an aeroplane as he can get a bit poorly) that utterly delights me. I like never knowing whether to start my meal with a breadbun you could buff scratches out on a car with or a tiny bottle of warm water. Do you leave the salad right at the start or keep it to one side to leave it later? The hot meal was pasta for Paul and a chicken dish for me but once you peeled back the foil and poked inside with a fork, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a difference. I’ve never known food exist in such duality – it was both overcooked and undercooked at the same time. But listen: this sounds like I’m bellyaching, and I’m not: I bloody LOVE aeroplane food and ate the lot. Paul’s lack of appetite didn’t extend to leaving me his chocolate orange ganache however and you best believe his Sharpie-mouth was back when I suggested such a rich treat would be ill-advised for his delicate tummy. Nevermind. They did come round a few hours later to give us a vegetable pasty that they’d been storing on top of the landing gear but even that was delicious, once I’d gummed it like a rusk.
Chicken? Pasta? Beef or cow?
We did have an exciting landing though! It had been snowing a little and very windy at Toronto Airport and we were advised the approach might be a little bumpy. As it happens, it wasn’t, but the pilot didn’t so much land the plane as throw it on the runway and hope for the best. We bounced, skidded and came to a stop with more than one scream, very much like our annual ‘I suppose we had better, if only to run the pipes through’ tender lovemaking we reserve for our anniversary. Of course, as someone who has watched at least four episodes of Air Crash Investigation per week whilst not doing the ironing, I knew this was perfectly routine when there is a risk of slipping on the runway – they land ‘hard’ to make sure contact is made. I explained all of this to the lovely chap sitting next to me as I lifted my teary face from the nape of his neck. Paul’s thin lips were back.
Readers, we were in Canada! And what better place to leave this first entry. I do promise to come back and finish this one because – as you can probably tell by the 3,400 essay about our Canada trip where we have only been in Canada for one sentence of it – I adore writing these. If anything, it’s just nice to have a written account we can look back in a couple of years from our respective homes on opposite sides of the world and reminisce. I’ll be back.
Hiya – y’alright? Got everything you need? If you jumped straight to this bit then well, here’s your recipe and I hope you choke on your cruelty. I jest I jest, do buy our books.
Here we find the cheese and ham boaties all stacked up – lovely
We serve our cheese and ham boaties with beans and a bad attitude
Put chilli sauce or pickle in your cheese and ham boaties for a taste ADVENTURE
Yeah that’s the cheese and ham boaties money shot right there!
I can't tell you how easy these are to make - well I can, it would be a gash blog entry if I couldn't, but if you're looking for something cheap and easy to make then these are the badgers. Customise them to your heart's content - we used shredded ham hock because we had some leftover from a previous recipe. Add extra veg into the mash. Triple the amount of cheese. Hoover the roof! We don't care or mind.
OH! Mustard added is a treat too.
Anyway enough pre-amble: the calories here are for two 'boaties' and as ever, approximate. Your mileage may vary. See the tips bit.
Ingredients
one packet of the soft stand and stuff El Paso boat thingies you can get some the supermarket, you get eight in one pack and they're smaller than you think
three large potatoes or a good quantity of leftover mash
one egg
two large onions, diced fine
one teaspoon of garlic puree
salt and pepper
100g shredded ham hock or chopped ham chopped finely, hence the chopped, see
125g of extra mature cheese
Instructions
make the mash up - either reheating leftovers or chopping your tatties and mashing when soft, making sure to add an egg yolk into the mash with plenty of salt and pepper
fry off your diced onion in a little oil until softened and golden, adding the garlic a minute or two before the end
mash everything together - cheese, ham, potato and onions, until well-mixed, but keep some cheese aside to throw on the top
or do as we do, and just add more cheese - all the cheese, all of it
pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
in an oiled baking tray, stack your taco shells and then carefully spoon the mixture inside
top with the remaining cheese and drizzle with hot sauce if you like
cook in the oven until the cheese is crunchy on the top
Serve with beans or a salad. Or eat six at once and blame the dog for getting up on the worktop when Paul goes to get an extra one.
Notes
Recipe
these are perfect for freezing - once they have cooled, take them off the baking sheet, wrap them in foil and pop them in the freezer - they'll need a good thirty minutes in the oven when you go to reheat, or let them defrost overnight and cook for a few minutes or in the microwave
they're also delicious cold
Books
twochubbycubs: Dinner Time is our new book and it's out in two weeks and we can not wait for you to see it - it is honestly our funniest, more delicious book yet - you can pre-order here!
twochubbycubs: Fast & Filling is awash with over 100 tasty, speedy meals for all occasions, all under 500 calories and so bright it'll make your eyes boil: order yours here!
twochubbycubs: the cookbook is our first book and there's no first child syndrome here - it's the perfect book to start you off: click here to order
we also have a gorgeous planner to assist with your weight loss: here
Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, as it is Goombella's birthday this week and whilst I was content getting him a new chew toy, Paul has decreed he needs to take dog-friendly cakes into work. Called Wuffins. As someone who loves saving money, I'm cross. As someone who loves a pun, I am delighted!
Coursesevening meals
Cuisineas I said, evening meals
Well, I think that’s where we can leave this. If you’re after more recipes, please do take a look through our recipe index. It’s achingly out of date but there really is a treasure trove on there!
Sometimes I look back over the blog recipes of old and wonder what on Earth we were thinking. This was definitely one of those instances but in the spirit of making sure we hadn’t gone fully doolally-tap back in 2016, we decided to revisit these cheesy meaty fingers. Partly for the name, partly for the fact they’re essentially squished burgers topped with cheese and if that doesn’t give you a dewpoint in your knickers, whatever will?
Imagine a future where a flash of pink doesn’t mean you’ll be eating out (cough) but instead, staying in to try a delicious recipe from our wonderfully rainbow new cookbook DINNER TIME. It’s a wonderful thought no? We’ve talked about the new recipes, the funny intros, but one of the things we’re most excited by is how utterly gorgeous the new book is. So many cookbooks out there are as dull as dishwater to look at but ours is a technicolour explosion and an utter treat for your eyes. You’d be a fool not to bring the sunshine home! Luckily you can put that right by pre-ordering now!
Now, before we get to the recipe, my apologies: there’s the final part of our London trip to get through. No I know, but I am determined to finish a bloody holiday trip on here! If you’re hankering for the food just swoosh straight down to the photos. You can find part one here and part two right here.
Rather than write out a big wall of flowing narrative about what else we did in London, I’m going to write out some random bits and bobs because that’s the fresh, forward thinking style you have come to expect from a blog that probably still has Realplayer adverts sitting on the server. Plus it’s been nine years since we were in London and I have only my scribbled notes on my phone to work from. Don’t like it? TOUGH TITTY. (Spoiler edit: I totally didn’t end up doing this, but I’ve left it in to show you my optimism)
We did a fabulous escape room in Shepherds Bush – an officially licensed Sherlock themed room starring the actors themselves. Well videos of them, Benedict Pumpmysnatch wasn’t taking a break from filming Doctor Strange to show me where the fire exits were. It was possibly one of the best rooms we have done to date, even if we did get off to a bumpy start by being paired up momentarily with a very argumentative couple who insisted on sniping at one another through the introduction. I’m not sure if they thought they had come along to a Relate session – my perfect marriage to Paul must have shot jealousy straight into their souls – but after the story had been discussed (you’ve got 60 minutes to…evil Moriarty this…don’t CLIMB ON THE WALLS ROFLMAO…if there’s a fire WE WON’T JUST LEAVE YOU TO BURN OMG LOLZ) we were sent into separate rooms. The puzzles were complex and well done, culminating in a room where you had four puzzles requiring some physical dexterity. Somehow we avoided the urge to push the fire alarm button and let ourselves out, persevered and – hooray – completed the room.
We left the room to have a look around the gift shop – I’m always glad of a chance to purse my lips and say ‘I think the fuck not’ – when the rowing couple also emerged into the gift shop, still bickering, and were told they hadn’t managed to complete the room. Naturally Paul and I took all of four zeptoseconds to announce we had completed the room with a couple of minutes left over with the smuggest grins you can imagine. The girlfriend of the couple came back with the most curious of responses though – she pointed at her partner and told us, thin-lipped and accusatorially, that he ‘had diabetes’. What do you say to that? I just nodded sagely in a manner I hoped conveyed both understanding to her and a ‘get away from her, as far as you can, and if you can’t then don’t buy a rabbit’ to him. Anyway, the room was mint, and I encourage you to give it a go – your ability or otherwise to produce insulin really doesn’t have a bearing on it. You can find more details here.
We spent an hour walking around the Tate Modern, as ever waiting for inspiration to strike, and left the same uncultured swines that we always are. I’ve put many words into explaining the desire of both Paul and I to finally have an epiphany in an art gallery and for us to both finally ‘get’ art, but the only thing we got from our visit was sore cankles and a telling off from someone with a clipboard and a failing art degree (I guarantee it) because we stood in the wrong spot on the unmarked floor. There was a faintly interesting exhibition of an open room with some white powder nicely arranged on the floor (they must have had one hell of a giant credit card just behind the curtain) but once we realised that we could replicate this at home by not hoovering up after Paul has been ped-egging his feet, we left. Thing is, we probably would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t have been rammed with the type of insufferable arse and their utterly awful children all running around screaming and getting in the way. Now that I am now officially middle-aged I am all for parents being told to leave their children in a locker when they enter such places but even then, those big halls would still echo with the strangulated vowels and upward inflections and pseudo-intellectualism bollocks that doesn’t so much set my teeth on edge as set them on fire inside my own angry mouth and demand I bite the flames out with malice. Ever since I twatted myself off the side of an installation by Yoko Ono I’ve been immoderately angry about art galleries and this looks set to continue ever onwards.
We were lucky enough to have our publishers put us up in the Sea Containers hotel for two days over Valentines – this was very thoughtful as they must have realised we always like to argue somewhere ritzy on Valentines Day – and it really was something else. Paul and I aren’t fancy people – I’ve only just managed to persuade Paul to stop brushing his teeth with reeds from the garden – but it was a beautiful room and a wonderful treat. Our publishers had kindly indicated that we could claim expenses and we did take advantage of that by enjoying the minibar, ordering room service and tipping everything that wasn’t nailed down into a suitcase. Paul had to hold me back from nipping down to Screwfix for a set of wrenches to take the television off the wall. What can I say, I’m a terror. We did laugh the shrill laugh of the long-married at the ‘Lover’s Kit’ included in the room which consisted of flavoured lubes, condoms, a pair of fluffy handcuffs and my personal favourite, those dice with ‘actions’ on one die and bodily parts on the other. So you may roll ‘LICK’ and ‘ELBOW’ to make ‘lick elbow’ (I realise I picked the worst pairing of words there but I’ll be damned if I’m going back to change it) and sexy shenanigans would ensue. We were tempted to give it a go but as I say, we’ve been married fifteen years now and unless ‘THE IRONING’ came up after ‘DO’ or ‘SHOP ELSEWHERE FOR’ came before ‘PENIS’ we’d both be left disappointed. We consoled ourselves with a £6.50 packet of £1.50 Haribo and then went for dinner downstairs.
And what a dinner – possibly one of the best meals we have ever had, although Paul counts a burger he had on an aeroplane as the nicest meal he has ever had so I’m not sure we have an especially high benchmark. As we weren’t paying we took great pains to walk our way through the extensive cocktail menu which was a delight, though we couldn’t help but notice an uptick in service once the snotty waiter had realised that despite our George at Asda shoes we weren’t just going to order tap water and a bread basket. I had bone marrow for starters (and again later, well, it was Valentines) and Paul had some especially good fried chicken which made your arteries crinkle just looking at it. Of course, wat wiv it being ded posh like, you only got enough of a portion to mollify a churchmouse’s hunger pains, so we didn’t feel too stuffed with a heavy starter. I somewhat rashly ordered an oyster when Paul nipped off to the loo, knowing full well I don’t like them but keen for Paul to try. When it arrived he somewhat blithely reminded me that he went to Cambridge University and they had oysters all the time, presumably to keep up their strength for knocking homeless folks about. He refused to try it, citing the fact he had half of the spirits from the bar rolling in his stomach, so it was up to me to take one for the team. I remain resolute in my dislike: there is nothing redeemable about an oyster. The texture, the taste, the look: it’s like a sea captain hockled in my mouth during rough sex. I swallowed, dry-heaved politely into my elbow and spent the next five minutes chewing my way through some roasted padron peppers to take the shame away.
Nothing about that says eat me does it?
The rest of the meal was an utter triumph though: I had a length of pork loin that I’d have blanched at had it slid through a gloryhole and Paul had ribs that went on for days. Halfway through the main course the table next to us was filled by an especially embonpoint banker and his by-the-hour date. I’m not even being catty: we were treated to him asking what his money got him almost as soon as the waiter had brought the water. Happily she played the game very well and ordered the most expensive dish on the menu accompanied by some very costly wine. Speaking of a classy whine, Paul was complaining that he hadn’t left enough room for dessert. I reminded him that in all the time we have been together I’ve never known him not be a greedy pig – he remains the only person I know to ask for a side-dish along with his barium enema – and as soon as the waiter appeared Paul was ordering food without a care. The dessert was the shining star though: two cheesecakes formed into imitation Magnum ice-creams served with jelly rose petals and other exciting flimflam. It was that good that I took great pains to explain to Paul that he was simply too full to enjoy it properly but he was having none of my transparent attempt to steal it. He’s a poor sport. As it happens, halfway through eating his it melted and fell on the floor. You know in the Lion King when we all bubbled and sobbed when Mufasa went tombstoning off the hyena gorge? It was just like that. We asked for the bill, shrieked loudly, charged it to our room and went twirling into the night.
I think, from memory, we ended up back in the Kings Arms which was full of dating couples and all terribly sweet. Paul and I discuss this with (probably worrying) regularity – we’ve been together so long that the idea of being single and going out on dates terrifies us both. Paul is wrong to worry though: if I die, I expect him to dress in black for the rest of his life and become one of those crazy folks who spend their days shouting at the skies about the injustice of a life taken from them. If the unthinkable happens and Paul shuffles off first, we have agreed that I’ll try and keep my knickers on until at least the police officers who came over to break the sad news have left. The dating couples were a keen contrast to the night before which was karaoke night – you’ve never lived until you’ve seen a bloke the size of a transit van caterwaul his way through Think Twice by Celine Dion whilst a hundred other gays hold their lighters in the air until the barman shouts at them for almost setting off the sprinklers. To be fair there were so many open bottles of poppers on the go I’m surprised the whole thing didn’t end up like Backdraft.
We ordered breakfast the next day to take the edge off our hangovers. It was delicious, see?
It felt unusual to have a hotel breakfast where a battery of children, or an oversized man-child, hadn’t sneezed into the sausage tureen
The final thing to talk about with this trip to London is the fact we got to film some recipes ahead of the book launch, something which is always a delight because working with our publishers and the camera chap is great fun. However, it doesn’t half hammer home how difficult it is to actually ‘cook to camera’ – neither Paul or I have the coordination, grace or ability to not mutter ‘for fucks sake’ under our breath to master it. I’m fairly confident speaking to most people but stick a camera in front of me and I lose the ability to speak with any sort of coherence. Paul is worse, he freezes and worries about making a boob of himself, which he really shouldn’t because he always comes across so well. Even if it does look a little like I’m operating him like a glove-puppet. Which to be fair, I usually am. However, you will hopefully enjoy this little blooper reel of ours.
I will never tire, never, of the bit at 1:23 where Paul cracks up at my little boop noise in his ear.
And that, as they say, was that – our trip to London. We made our way back on the late train to Newcastle, thoroughly exhausted but having had a wonderful time. Naturally, because we were looking like we had been freshly dug up, not one but two people recognised us and wanted a photo. This is the weirdest feeling of them all, not going to lie, but we don’t mind in the slightest – if anything, I like to imagine someone showing their partner a photo of us and said partner asking what it was like to meet Hale & Pace. We arrived home safe, delighted to see Goomba had managed to figure out how to use a tin-opener and feed himself, and off to bed. All in all, a bloody fun weekend!
Now, shall we look at the cheesy meaty fingers? It’s so weird looking back and seeing recipes where we dithered about whether to use a bread roll that was 64g instead of the prerequisite 60g Slimming World used to allow. That said, if you are following SW, then you could still use a wee wholemeal breadbun, so no harm no foul.
I’m going to say it: these don’t photograph well! They look like the pure junk food that they are. But you know what? They’re delicious. The type of food you need sometimes to leave your chin greasy. Serve with chips on the side if you really want to trouble your cardio system.
Side note: the article that accompanied the old recipe was a walkthrough of my pyrophobia of old. I mention that growing up my biggest fear was the house burning down and that I used to have a little routine that my young self had to do before going to sleep to stop such a thing. Thankfully growing out of that tic had no real consequence. Still, we gotta be strong, and we need to be brave [high note intensifies]
We recommend making sure the pepperoni is totally under the cheese if you don’t like it cremated. But I do, and these cheesy meaty fingers are mine, so swivel
Add green chilli if you like your bum troubled with cheesy meaty fingers
Add chilli sauce to your cheesy meaty fingers if you REALLY like your bum troubled
Cheesy meaty fingers then. As always the calorie counts are approximate - you can lower them depending on what bread roll you use, how much cheese you put on vs how much you say you put on, whether or not you bother with the sauces...just a guide folks. This makes eight halves and the calorie count is for two, so one submarine roll.
Ingredients
500g of extra lean beef mince
four submarine rolls - we used the bog standard Tesco white rolls, but you can drop the calories by using wholemeal or smaller buns if you want
50g panko or other breadcrumbs
one egg, beaten
one medium onion, diced fine
one teaspoon each of thyme, garlic powder, pepper
half a teaspoon of salt
two tablespoons of tomato ketchup
one tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
green chilli sliced finely (or use jalapenos)
50g of mixed grated cheese - we used spicy because we're scum
a few slices of pepperoni
Instructions
preheat the oven to 220 degrees
slice the submarine buns along the horizontal and pop on a baking sheet with the cut side up
bake in the oven until lightly toasted and then remove, turning down the temperature to 190 degrees
mix together the beef, onion, Worcestershire sauce, thyme, garlic, beaten egg, salt and pepper and panko in a bowl until nicely combined
spread the beef across the top of the buns, making sure to cover all the edges so the buns don't burn
spread the tomato sauce on top with a little egg brusher
bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, making sure the beef is cooked through at the end by breaking a bit off and checking it isn't pink
remove from the oven, add the pepperoni, chilli, then top with cheese and grill until bubbling and lovely
drizzle with chilli sauce and serve
Notes
Recipe
as discussed, feel free to jettison the pepperoni, extra cheese or chillis to control the heat and calories of this dish. I mean we both know you won't but isn't it a pleasure to do the dance
Books
twochubbycubs: Dinner Time is coming out soon and will give you satisfaction every night, unlike whatever it is that you bought from lovehoney which you need to power with a car battery - you can pre-order here!
our second book, Fast and Filling, is full of recipes that are either quick to make or super filling - well actually, they're all both of them and then some: order yours here!
our first cookbook might not have a sexy cover but there's so many classic recipes in there you'll be cooking for days: click here to order
if you're struggling with keeping on track, get yourself a planner - there's cartoons of us to colour in and everything: here
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I know, we’re fabulous. Looking for something else to fill your gob? Try these! 510 calories for a sloppy mince. I mean haway! Click the picture to go to the recipe.
‘Cause when you’re half-way up, you’re always half-way down (sing it Celine!)
Hello sorry yes we haven’t died and to celebrate we’re posting an Irish stew recipe that we cobbled together in our pressure cooker.
Of course the real peril with posting an Irish stew recipe is that we’ll invariably get messages telling us that Irish stew shouldn’t have this, that or the other in it – and listen, we love feedback, but please do not be that person. We’re calling it an Irish stew because it’s a stew and it has Guinness in it and frankly, that’s enough for us. You ought to be grateful that I didn’t open this blog entry with some crass joke about the last time an Irish Stu filled my hole and left gravy around my gob, but thankfully we aren’t that type of crass blog.
Oh hi! Normally I’d use this little pink paragraph to extol the wonders of our newest cookbook DINNER TIME, walking you through some of the dinners available, telling you how good the food is. Well, not today. All I’m saying is that if you haven’t pre-ordered it, we’re going to tell Goomba and he will sit in his crate looking all mournful and sad like he’s in an RSPCA advert. How could you do that to him? Those big baleful brown eyes scanning the horizon for the postman bringing new toys as celebration for our book sales, but he never arrives. That Sarah McLachlan song ‘…in the aaaaarms of an angel’ song swells in the background as his little granny-lips quiver. Honestly, you’re a monster for even allowing it. You can put right your absolute shadiness by ordering it here
Of course, when I said we haven’t died at the top of the post, the grim reality is that of course, we actually nearly have. I mean yes there may be a touch of hypochondriac melodrama on that sentence but here is how the last couple of weeks have unfolded. We returned back from Canada in a pressurised cylinder of 400 people’s farts, coughs and sneezes into a Heathrow airport so rammed and so busy that I physically cheated on my husband seven times just trying to squeeze past people in the queue for Pret a Manger. We then spent the flight back to Newcastle being lightly coated in a miasma of spittle and snot made worse by two sneezing children whose parents were taking a ‘hands off’ approach to parenting, leaving them free to clamber about the seats and coughing in people’s faces. See if that had been my mother I’d have been put in the overhead lockers, albeit not for any sort of punishment but because she’d have wanted to keep her precious cargo of 800 duty-free Lambert & Butler buckled in next to her in case of emergency.
Either way, I got properly ill. Not COVID, I tested, but just the sort of ill which demands you lie in bed wailing and scratching at your throat and falling asleep during Four in a Bed and waking up delirious in the middle of Question Time and wondering why the fuck Priti Patel is reviewing someone’s breakfast. Can you imagine Priti Patel running a B&B? She’d seal you in a windowless room, weld the door shut and spend the evening pushing fancy chocolates into her smirking gob whilst you scrabbled for oxygen. She’s John Kramer in a Karen Millen pencil dress.
Anyway, a few days later Paul started attention-seeking coughing and revealed that he had one-upped me (well holidays do always bring us closer) and had caught COVID. This meant pushing him into our bedroom, bringing the TV in so he had something to occupy himself with and me bringing him all manners of snack trays. However, a few days later, I caught it too, we reunited in the hallway as though we were Desmond and Penny from Lost – and that’s where we are now. Me in the middle of coughing and spluttering and feeling lousy – in particular is the fuzzy-headed brain thing I’ve got going on – Paul emerging from the other end of his COVID like Andy Dufresne popping out of the sewer pipe in The Shawshank Redemption. Luckily the pipe was just full of Covonia and not faeces.
So the good news: as someone who had convinced himself he would die the second he got COVID, I don’t feel half as bad as I thought. It’s been more knackering having to keep on top of my health anxiety and reassure myself that my tonsils aren’t about to go septic or my sinuses aren’t going to jam up like someone squirted expanding foam up there or that my cough isn’t one hack away from needing to be put on an iron lung. COVID, so far, feels like a bad cold – and make me thankful indeed for two things: I gave up smoking seven weeks ago and I had my vaccines and booster. Now some people – usually those with a degree from the University of Life (i.e. as dense as a Boxing Day dump) on their profiles – may leap to say that the vaccines and boosters do not work given both Paul and I caught COVID in the end. It ought to go without saying that this is bollocks: the vaccine lowers the chances of serious complications and touch wood, that’s very true. The first time Paul had COVID was dreadful – partly because I couldn’t see him, partly because he was a perfect sphere – whereas this time around he’s just been a sniffly-snotty mess. That’s as good a reason as you should need if you’re still sitting on the fence a year later. Think of your poor bum!
So, assuming this COVID doesn’t turn into something terrible, we are at least back in the country and cooking again, with all the blog entries that entails. Which is nice. To that end, shall we cut to the chase and sort out this best ever Irish stew? But of course.
How about that bowl of Irish stew to put hair on your gebs?
Lovely lovely Irish stew ingredients!
Chuck all the ingredients in for this Irish stew and you’re laughing
Now we've used an Instant Pot for this because we're fancy and it saves farting about with the hob, but this will do just fine cooked in a heavy-duty iron pot for a few hours. We've portioned it up as four large servings at around 390 calories a time - we usually just have ours in a bowl but feel free to serve it with whatever.
As ever, calories are approximate and do rather depend on your mix of vegetables and what have you.
Finally, see the note on lamb!
Ingredients
400g lamb - we used chopped lamb neck which you can get from most butchers - it's a dirt cheap bit of meat too so won't break the bank
two large onions
one teaspoon of minced garlic
one teaspoon of tomato puree
about 400g of chopped carrot
300g of chopped celery
tin of chopped tomatoes
400g new potatoes, halved
330ml bottle of Guinness
400ml of beef stock
pinch of dried chives, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper
Instructions
slice the onions into fine half-moon slices and then:
if using an Instant Pot, select saute and fry them gently until golden, adding the garlic and thyme a minute or two before everything is done
if on the hob, well, same as above, but on the hob
tip all of the other ingredients into the Instant Pot and set to pressure cook on low for about 30 minutes, making sure the valve is set to seal - once done, allow to vent pressure and serve
if making it on the hob, put everything into the pan and allow to bubble away on a medium heat for at least a couple of hours until everything has thickened
serve with whatever you like
Notes
Recipe
lamb neck is cheap and tasty, but if you're not a fan, swap out for diced beef
if Guinness isn't up your street, just use more beef stock
the recipe freezes very well indeed
Books
dinner time and the weather is easy - like all of our amazing recipes - you can pre-order here!
second time was always a charm but also fast and filling - order yours here!
cookbook one was where it all began all those years ago: click here to order
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Come for the beef and broccoli, stay for the stories. And there’s a sock to wipe up the first bit of that sentence, you filthy cow. Fans of my rotation will note that this should be a retrorecipe post but the thing is, my Fanny has been shut away for a few days and I haven’t had time to slap it out and give it an airing. The retro recipes will be back, we promise, as they’re as much fun to write as they are to cook, but for now, just a recipe reacharound to tide you over.
As of today, our new cookbook DINNER TIME is at the printers getting turned into hundreds of thousands of copies. It’s a super exciting point of the process for us – we can’t change what has gone in: the i’s are dotted, the t’s are delicious. Now begins the two months or so where we spend it fretting that you’ll all hate it and send us angry letters or we’ve made some massive faux-pas that’ll set our windows put through and Paul crying on a ten minute long apology video. But fingers crossed that doesn’t happen. Of course, to alleviate our imposter syndrome, feel free to buy the book and make us feel more secure about putting down a deposit on a holiday. You can order it here
The good news is my arm is better and I can go back to typing one handed purely in incognito mode as opposed to having to wince my way through doing blog entries. I’m sure I used to laugh off such aches and pains (after spending four hours googling symptoms and demanding an MRI) but I’m taking it as yet another sign of my advancing years. Actually, on that googling thing, I broke my own health-anxiety rule and was busy googling whether or not my arm was anything to worry about when it suggested blood poisoning as a result of muscle tearing and had to stop.
Speaking of advancing years though, it’s my birthday next week and quite frankly I thoroughly intend to mark it because for the last two years, I’ve ‘cancelled’ it – we were in lockdown in 2020 and in that awful semi-lockdown in 2021 so it didn’t feel worth celebrating but I’m 37 and let’s be honest, pretty unlikely to stumble my way anywhere near to living past 74. So I’m treating this as my mid-life point and I won’t be told otherwise. Historically I’ve always been a bit down in the mouth about my birthday, seeing it as a personal affront when the numbers on the left side of my age tick higher than the right, but I’ve been listening to a podcast by Derren Brown of all people which touches on how we mustn’t be fazed by the passage of time nor the advancement of age because there will come a time when you’d give anything to be right back here in this moment with the people and health and tchotchkes you have around you right now. Unusually for me, that actually sunk in, presumably because I was concentrating hard listening to him in the vain hope he was trying to put me under and lead me to some evil bidding.
He also promotes the concept of philocaly – finding beauty in the small things you tend to overlook – and I happen to think that’s a charming way to live. For my part, I’ve stopped swearing and throwing my arms around like I’m conducting an orchestra when I’m stuck behind some old dear doing 25mph on a 60mph road – they might be a nervous driver, they may have things on their mind – plus they’ll be dead soon enough. It’s really quite easy when you tune in to your feelings.
Anyway: just a short blog entry today because I want to take Goo out now that it’s getting light at night. It’s just so much easier chasing after his poo-walking with a bag thin enough to see through when the sun is shining. This recipe was originally on the blog from 2015 and comes with a very sweet, very innocent trip report from our last visit to Berlin. Heavens.
but in the end he needs a little more than me, beeeeeeeeeeef and broccoliiiiiiiiiiii
Is it even a plate of beef and broccoli if you don’t over-saturate the picture so it looks as though you’re serving it up on a nuclear moon and spill gravy all over the place?
recipe reacharound: beef and broccoli (300 calories)
Prep
Cook
Total
Authortwochubbycubs
Yield4servings
This little fakeaway dish might not exactly scream excitement and flavour, but listen here slick - it's one that we keep coming back to when we can't be arsed with anything flash. So check your attitude at the door and crack on.
Calories (300 of them), as ever, are approximate. Don't be tempted to skip on the cornflour, it's needed for the sauce to thicken, and if you have a dodgy ticker or high blood pressure, and yes Susan, I do mean you, perhaps switch to low-sodium soy sauce. Because the thing is, well, close up, he was almost purple.
Ingredients
500g of diced beef - now we just buy the ready diced stuff from the supermarket, but feel free to get steak and chop it up, you heartless monster
75ml of light soy sauce
1 tsp of cornflour
one large onion, diced finely
two tsps of garlic paste
same again of ginger paste
look, we know you can use fresh, and that's fine if you prefer, but this is a lazy dinner
250g of broccoli, chopped into tiny little trees
pinch of chilli flakes if you like your arse all-a-tingle
250ml of good beef stock
Instructions
over a high heat and with a little bit of oil, fry off the beef for a minute or so with two tablespoons of soy sauce until browned on all sides, then set aside
in the same pan, add a little more oil if needed and saute, on a medium heat, the onion until golden, adding the ginger and garlic towards the end
add the broccoli and chilli flakes and keep frying off for a minute or two more
mix together the cornflour, beef stock and remainder of the soy sauce, making sure there's no lumps or so help me god
add the beef and the liquid above into the pan and bubble away on a high heat until cooked and thickened and what have you
serve with rice
Notes
Recipe
we prefer our broccoli with a bit of crunch but if you're of the generation that believes a vegetable ready for tea should be set away boiling seven months before because you'd take rickets over vitamins, then parboil the broccoli before hand
but seriously, get out of that habit, enjoy some flavour
add peppers into this to bulk it out - chopped into fat strips and thrown in with the onion
buy your broccoli pre-chopped by all means, but it's easier to just cut your own. Well no easier no, but certainly less bougie
Books
100 dinner time favourites for your perusal in our newest cookbook DINNER TIME, launching in May - you can pre-order here!
perhaps you prefer things fast and filling - well there's over 100 speedy recipes in cookbook two: order yours here!
you want somewhere to track your successes - try our diet planner: here
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Now listen: Paul and I are taking a short break – only a couple of weeks, and then we’ll be back with more content. Until then, look after the place, feed the cats, blast the skidders off the netty. Back April 5.
If you think I’ve called this recipe sloppier cubs simply because between that and the word reacharound anyone googling it is going to get a filthy surprise, well, you’d be gosh-damn right, Susan. But this little trip down into the recipe archives is a hot take on our bacon cheeseburger sloppy cubs recipe from 2017 and frankly, it’s one that we ought to have revisited a lot sooner BECAUSE THEY ARE BLOODY AMAZING. Seriously, if you like sloppy mince between your buns – and once you’ve finished sending me your number / nudes – you need to try this. But first…
What do you call your evening meal? Whether you’re an ASDA sort who calls it tea, a Marks and Spencer sort who calls it dinner, a Waitrose type who calls it supper or a Juice Newton who calls it Angel in the Morning, it hardly matters. We’ve got 100+ evening meal ideas in our new book which is bursting with colours and flavours and you just need it. You do! You really do. You can order it here
Oh I know, I’m never off!
I do want you to know – and I am not trying to guilt trip you, mind – that I am writing this blog in an unusual amount of pain, even for a hypochondriac like me. In a misguided effort to lose some weight before we go on holiday, I’ve been attending our local Elite classes again. For those that div-not-knaa, they’re high intensity fitness workouts where you get thrown about and shouted at for forty-five minutes three times a week. I’m making them sound awful when in reality, I bloody love doing them when I can actually motivate myself to get out of the car (currently at a 50/50 split on that success). Anyway, one of the recent classes involved a fitness test where you pair up with someone else and do as many reps of various exercises as you can in a minute. Paul is actually attending a different class so there’s no slacking off for me, which I feel is a sign of our crumbling marriage.
The problem is, I’m a dangerously competitive person in situations like this and as a result, as soon as I have to get as many things done in a minute, I have to really, really push myself, way past what I should ordinarily do. That’s fine if it is eating skittles or satisfying Lederväters in a dark room, but not when it comes to mountain-climbers and bicep curls. I ought to clarify, given my reputation, mountain-climbers is that exercise where you get on all fours and bring your legs up your chin, like you are running on all fours. That’s all well and good if you’re skinny and lithe but I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve kicked my own tits into my teeth. Plus I’m always a bit self-conscious doing that pose whilst someone behind me shouts ‘HURRY UP’ and ‘PUSH YOURSELF’ and ‘FEEL THE BURN’ because it takes all I can do not to shout ‘YES, DADDY, YEEEEES‘ back at them.
It was those exercises which have done me in though: I actually felt something twang in my right elbow at the end and since then, it hurts like absolute buggery to straighten my arm. Typing hurts. Ironing is a knacker. I may as well forget about my fantasy of being picked up by a rough lorry driver whilst out hitch-hiking. I’ve had to look at Paul with a pained face more than once and explain that I couldn’tpossibly do the hoovering because I’m clearly dying. See also: taking the dog for a walk, cleaning the glass in the shower, marital relations.
I’ve taken to walking around with my hand wedged into my coat pocket as a makeshift sling because it hurts to let the arm flap around too much. That was fine until yesterday afternoon when I had to go to a jewellers to get my ring finger measured and I strolled in looking like I had a shooter and was about to turn the place over. The look of panic on the poor lady’s face soon dissipated when I tried to explain I needed my ring measuring and burst out laughing when she cautioned that ‘as you warm up, your ring will expand’, which was a relief to all concerned.
Still, at least I got through the actual class without any major incident. The last time I did an actual bleep test was back in high school where I got put in detention for a week for telling my PE teacher to ‘fuck right off’ when he screamed at me to keep running. In my defence, he was absolutely one of those PE teachers who wanted to be in the police, failed because he got angry trying to spell his name without a prompt, and decided to buy a whistle and bully schoolchildren instead. I hated him and he hated me just because I didn’t treat football as something worth turning my face beetroot for. And listen, it’s not that I minded an authoritarian teacher – my favourite teacher of all was a tiny little bloke who once thew a football boot at me for talking – but this bloke was just a knob. Still, who’s laughing now.
So yes, please do keep me in your thoughts, because clearly I’m one moment away from death (or I’ll be better once I rub whatever knock-off Voltarol Paul brings me back from Tesco) – and if I do die, I ask for only modest floral tributes and minimal wailing at your windows to remember me by.
Now, let’s do the sloppier cubs, shall we? Well, you do it, my arm hurts.
At only 510 calories each, these sloppier cubs burgers will fill you right up!
Sloppier cubs, but with branding (siiiiiiiigh) – lovely
We only took two photos of the sloppier cubs burgers but when I typed burger into google photos, this popped up – look how wee he was!
If we're entirely honest, we haven't had to make a lot of changes to this recipe - just added a few bits and pieces in. But what you have here is a proper sloppy burger that'll make a right mess of your front, but that's just fine because it tastes so good. Plus: we've added more bacon into the recipe this time, and that's never a bad thing.
We've also cooked the cheese straight into the sauce because, and you'll need to trust me, it makes the dish absolutely perfect.
Calorie counts, like my level of current partners, are approximate.
Ingredients
four brioche buns - you can use normal buns if you want, but why would you
400g lean beef mince
teaspoon of garlic paste
1 large onion, diced
1 carton of passata
4 tbsp of that sweet, lurid yellow American mustard
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
8 rashers of bacon
125ml beef stock
100g of reduced fat extra mature cheese, grated
Instructions
cook off your bacon, setting aside half for the burgers at the end and chopping the rest into small pieces
fry off your onion until golden, add the garlic and cook for a minute or two more, then add the beef mince and cook until browned and lovely
add the bacon, passata, stock, mustard and Worcestershire sauce, stir, and allow to simmer right down and thicken up
once nearly done, tip all that cheese in and stir through, and cook until gloopy
slice your buns, add the cooked bacon, then pour the mince on top
You could serve this with chips. But then you could just do a lot of things if you tried.
Notes
Recipe
a tin of chopped tomatoes would be fine here, as long as you let everything break down and simmer
although we didn't add them, chopped gherkins would also be a bloody winner
Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, because see, there was this emperor, and he asks this shepherd's boy, "how many seconds in eternity?" and the shepherd's boy says, "there's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it! Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed" You must think that's a hell of a long time, but I don't care, that bloody sparrow owes me a fiver and he's gonna be ages yet. Sick of this.
Coursesburgers
Cuisineburgers man, I literally just told you
Enjoy! Oh and we’ve done another video recipe! Remember to like and subscribe otherwise Paul cries his tears of hot gravy.
Just a super quick post to mention that we have started doing video recipes – we plan to do a new video from either the book recipes or the blog recipes every week, but no promises! We get a lot of people who mention that they aren’t very good cooks and are nervous about trying new things. We want to show you that our recipes are an absolute doddle to make and require very little in the way of complicated cooking or mystery ingredients.
We aren’t flashy and we’re just filming in our kitchen using an iPhone so there’s no high production values but hell, that’s us in a nutshell!
We have typed out the captions for those that need them or may find it easier to use them – and the full ingredient lists can be found in our cookbooks, though if you watch the video you can pretty much guess what goes where.
It would really mean a lot if you would subscribe to our channel and like our videos – it’s quite difficult gaining momentum on Youtube these days so anything is helpful! And finally, if you have any feedback on things we could do better or stuff you want to see, please do let us know!
To the recipes then!
Mongolian Beef (from book one)
We had to do it really. You don’t need to stick to beef – people have tried mushrooms, chicken, pork, all sorts. What you will note from our recipe is that there’s no sweetener in there – because why would there be? Use proper ingredients!
Balsamic chicken (from book two)
The only tip I’ll give you for this recipe is to use the best tomatoes you possibly can – a good mixture of colours and flavours will stand you in very good stead!
I’m going to call this a corned beef bake – it’s absolutely the least photogenic of all of our most recent recipes but I tell you what, if you’re looking for a bowl of stodge to keep you warm, this is the potato dish for you. I don’t know if it is a bake, a hash, some slop in a tray, but it really doesn’t matter. But before we get to the corned beef bake, some EXCITING ADMIN.
OK, so not exciting admin, but I do love writing in this little pink box. Just a reminder that Dinner Time, our third magnificent cookbook, is coming out in May. It’s over 100 recipes of wonderful dinner ideas with the usual smattering of us all over the pages. You can order it here – thank you!
Finally, this is a holiday entry so it’s probably going to be a long one – if you’re in a rush, just scroll straight to the food photos! Right. Back to London.
Because I’m going to talk at length about the next two things, I’ve decided to split London into three parts. I know, I’m a slut. But if you haven’t read part one, you can do so by clicking here. Otherwise, you left us as we’d just finished a marvellous escape room, and so we return.
Monopoly Live
Paul reminded me that we had Monopoly Live booked and we had not one single moment to spare for me to go and make myself look pretty, so we were straight into an Uber. Now here’s the thing with Uber: I remember when you could barely move for them in London – you’d open the app and there would be an Uber at your feet within moments. Nowadays you have to wait five to ten minutes. What happened there? Either way, Paul’s impeccable 5* Uber rating took a hit the other week after we bundled a drunk friend in to take him home and he did something – we don’t know what – which made Paul’s rating drop by .02. Paul is still incredibly sore about that. Coming back to London though, our driver was chatty and lovely, even if neither Paul or I needed to open our mouths for the conversation as it was just a long, long monologue. What does that feel like, readers? We arrived at the venue and he was still chattering merrily to himself as he pulled his Octavia away. We loitered for a moment to see if we could hear him on the wind, failed, and so went inside.
I will say this now: we both audibly gasped when we went in at the sight of the doorman: he was quite genuinely one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen in my life. Tall enough to be continued, dark beard as majestic as Aphrodite’s pubes, arms like sleeping bags full of bowling balls. I’ve never, ever been more tempted to kick off and cause trouble in my life and frankly if he had offered there and then to take me up the Old Kent Road I’d have beaten my own shadow to the back room by a solid ten seconds. I looked at Paul (partly to make sure he was seeing what I was seeing but also to ground myself) and he was similarly slack-jawed, though with him it’s pure muscle memory. It was all I could do not to curtsy but somehow I managed to blurt out our booking reference without being lost in his eyes forever. We had arrived forty minutes early and he assured us this would be no problem but honestly he could have spent those forty minutes calling my mother all the names under the sun and we’d have stood there smiling beatifically and nodding politely.
We were shepherded/slid into the bar to wait for our team to be called and we took the opportunity to have a glance around to see who we might be paired up with. Paul and I are both terrible for making assumptions of people (I bet you’re the same) and we immediately decided we wanted to be with the group of four who appeared to be on a double date. The fact that one of them looked like a chubby version of Aaron from Emmerdale (though you could tell it wasn’t actually him, as he wasn’t crying) had absolutely no bearing on our decision, I can assure you. There was another table of four comprised of people more Tipping Point than Mastermind and we were fretting the whole while that we would be paired up with them. Thankfully, the bar had an extensive range of Monopoly-themed cocktails and after three of those, we were too pissed to care. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a strong old-fashioned in a bar in London, and I doubt it’ll be the last. Paul did make the mistake of taking the tiny decorative £50 note affixed to the cocktail jar and slipping it into his shirt pocket as a memento, failing to realise that it was made from sugar paper and as soon as he started sweating (and Paul starts sweating as soon as he blinks) it melted across his boob and looked like he’d started lactating.
Mascless
At half eight we were all corralled into the next room and given our teams – we were, thankfully, with the handsome team. They finally explained how the whole thing worked and I am going to try and give you the gist here – it sounds way more complicated than it actually is, I promise. You were grouped into teams of six, with a maximum of four teams per board. There were only eighteen of us waiting so it became three groups. A man dressed as Mr Moneybags (and a very enthusiastic actor!) comes out and welcomes you all and sets out the rules. No drinking, no smoking, no-no Nanette, that sort of thing. You’re playing on a giant version of the Monopoly board (there’s four to choose from, and we chose the luxury board because we’re classy) and you roll giant dice and move around accordingly. At each property is a little room which contains a puzzle – very much like The Crystal Maze – and you solve the room within a time limit to win that property. To win the game, you need to build properties on your spaces just like Monopoly, and there’s all the usual buying and selling and stuff going on. It is incredibly fast-paced, easy to follow and very, very fun.
What made the whole experience even better was the fact each team is given a real-life token – that is, rather than playing as the top-hat, you’ll have an actor with you wearing a massive top-hat explaining the rules as you go. Our token was a camp, bearded bloke called Timothy Thimble (I have no idea why he appealed to Paul and I) and he was utterly, utterly brilliant. You know when someone knows they are playing a nonsense role but leans totally into it and makes the whole experience so much better? This was Timothy. He made us laugh the entire way around and he was just what you need to get everyone’s inhibitions down. We went in full of British reserve and came out with aching ribs from laughing.
In terms of the games themselves, you all get a go at doing something. Paul and I won our round by correctly hooking forty keys from a bowl onto the right keyhooks which revealed a code – I confess it felt unusual to be taking keys out of a bowl rather than putting them in, but nevertheless we persisted. There was another room which was dark and involved creeping up behind a bloke to rummage in his pocket – I put myself forward for that but I think the fact I’d already taken my trousers off and started passing poppers around might have put them off, and someone else took charge. Paul spun a lucky wheel of fortune three times and lost, which I feel is very Paul, and then as a team we had to build hotels and houses together against a clock using building blocks. Well goodness me, we were appalling at this part: a combination of alcohol, wandering eyes, distraction and an inability to literally think outside of the box saw us needing Timothy Thimble to step in and ‘help’ more than once. We came second – story of my life – but it was absolutely bloody marvellous. If you’re in London and looking for something unusual to do, we can’t recommend this enough. We paid £98 for two tickets so it certainly isn’t a cheap couple of hours but the theming, fun and sheer inventiveness of the game was worth every quid. You can book it online here.
Us in Mayfair? Not exactly the Reader’s Husbands bit is it
The Crystal Maze Experience
The other ‘big’ experience we had booked was a go on The Crystal Maze Experience near Piccadilly, which promised a perfect replica of what was my favourite TV show growing up, Fun House. RELLOWRELLOWRELLOW. No, The Crystal Maze obviously. I used to have a crystal in my bedroom that I had been told came from The Crystal Maze and I was super damn proud of that. However, in retrospect, it seems obvious that my ‘Auntie’ Elsie – already pushing 95 at the time the show was on – hadn’t hurtled around the maze herself. I mean she couldn’t get out of her chair without a hoist so again, seems unlikely. Turns out the crystals were just paperweights you could buy in tonnes of shops too. It’s always been the lies I can’t handle.
I was never one of those purists who stopped watching when Richard O’Brian left, although I’ll die on the hill that the Industrial zone was far superior to the Ocean zone. I’m all for that derelict factory aesthetic. Paul and I did chuckle watching a re-run a few months ago when we realised one of the games involved sliding a perfect illustration of Paul’s ‘fancy a takeaway’ face around. See?
Also, if you’ll forgive me a moment of nerdiness, it’s the fourth best TV theme of that era after (in reverse order and all opening in new tabs):
the BUGS theme tune (though the way the wire moved in the opening credits always – and still does – creeped me out);
the Going for Gold theme tune (done by the same chap who scored Interstellar, no less) (and that link takes you to the full theme tune if you are wanting some extra cheese on your day); and
Actually sticking that 999 theme tune on when I was finding the link gives me the shivers. When I was young I used to be terrified of the house burning down at night so naturally my parents thought the best way to calm me down was to let me watch a 50 minute programme, upstairs and alone, full of things bursting into flame and people getting javelins thrown through their neck. Funny how simple bits of music can take you back, isn’t it? Mind saying that I blame Gladiators for awakening my love of dick after seeing Rhino prancing about in his leotard. Also, possibly why I have a thing for authoritarian men too thanks to referee John Anderson – even now when it’s ‘taking a while’ Paul just needs to shout ‘YOU’LL GO ON MY SECOND WHISTLE’ in a strong Scottish lilt and we can get to sleep early.
Anyway, shock horror, I digress, but you learned something new about me there didn’t you? So, to very briefly explain how it works – it’s essentially the TV show but slightly smaller, but all rules are the same. Team of six (they’ll pair you up with strangers if there’s just two of you, like us) running around four giant zones, each player playing 3-4 games to try and win a crystal whilst your teammates look through the windows and shout advice / naked hostility. Games are split into mental (using your brain), skill (using your agility), physical (using your strength) and mystery (fuck knows). A team captain is nominated at the start who chooses who gets which game. You get between two to three minutes per game and if you don’t get out in time you get locked in. Each crystal is worth five seconds in the Crystal Dome at the end where they turn on giant fans and tonnes of gold and silver tokens blow about. You need to get 100 gold tokens after deduction of silver to win. There see, I could be the Maze Master – lord knows I’ve got the haircut.
With us starting at 3pm, Paul got us to the venue at 2.15pm, because heaven forfend we would turn up to an adventure and not have to spend fifty minutes glancing at our phones and me inwardly seething at him. We were shown to the bar (hooray) and told we couldn’t drink (boo) and immediately spotted another couple of lads who were on our team, literally and (so we thought) euphemistically. There was something about one of them – 6ft 2″, chubby, snappy shaped beard, green coat, hectoring his partner – that just appealed to me, so I decided to spend my time making cow-eyes at him. Eventually, after my hamfisted attempts at flirting left my ham entirely unfisted, we were ushered in to meet the other couples and to meet our Maze Master, Ty Tanic. I’ll say this now – in much the same vein as Timothy Thimble, this man was an absolute legend – so full of vim and enthusiasm that you couldn’t help but enjoy yourself. We gave the captain role to a lovely lady whose name I forgot immediately and in we went.
Cubs, I can’t begin to tell you how much fun it was. The games are exactly like the ones on the TV in terms of attention to detail, size and scope and you really do feel like you’re on the game show itself. Paul did two games (winning one, losing the other – and how: he had to shoot arrows to knock apples off perches and he quite honestly would have had more luck if he had stayed back at the hotel, bless him). I did three games and, somewhat inexplicably, won all three. My mystery game was essentially a tiny escape room which was easy enough, then I had a physical room where I had to crank a generator and then hoist myself across the room on a trolley quick enough to snatch the crystal before it disappeared out of sight. I say with no exaggeration that it was probably the fastest I’ve ever shifted my 20-stone frame in my entire life: I exited our burning house in a more leisurely fashion. My last challenge involved building a set of giant keys to slip into holes into the wall and well, it can’t be a surprise to you to know I did well there. Between the six of us we played sixteen games before heading to the dome with ten crystals.
Find someone who looks at your arse like Paul looks at mine and you’re set for life
Before we get to that, a couple of things I learned:
turns out when you don’t know the people you’re playing with, you can’t really shout ‘helpful’ instruction like you might with your partner – whenever we lost a game, it was all very aaah bad luck and IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE – one of the games we lost was a giant form of Operation where you had to pick up scattered bones and put them into a giant alien corpse. Our teammate seemingly didn’t understand how to use tweezers and took two minutes to figure it out. I almost bit through my tongue holding back my yelling but she was so nice I didn’t dare say anything;
you move between zones in the same way as you did on the TV show – crawling through tunnels, sliding down giant slides and for what must have been a terrifying moment for the person below me, climbing down a very tall ladder. I was preoccupied with Paul climbing down above me however as he had spent a good ten minutes saying he didn’t think his knee was going to hold – that and me wearing oversized Dr Martens made for a very scary descent;
one of the rooms apparently has an actress playing Mumsie in it – we didn’t get her and that’s probably for the best – had I opened a door and been met with an aged crone wearing tattered rags looming from a veil of smoke, I’d have just assumed Paul’s mother had come along on the Megabus
The dome itself was exactly like it was on the TV – lots of screaming and shouting and things getting blown all over, then we were ushered in to have a go ourselves. We managed 188 gold tokens and only one minor concussion. A quick stop for photos (the magic ruined slightly by someone coming in with a leaf-blower to sweep up all the errant tokens) which I won’t be posting here because I look like three little men wearing a giant shirt and then we were on our way, promising to leave Tripadvisor reports and to bitch about the other contestants.
Rather like the Monopoly Live experience, we can not recommend this enough: it was a solid two hours and superb from start to finish. As there are more games than there are opportunity to play them, Paul and I will be going back to try the others. I’d say only one thing: it is probably better with people you know purely so you don’t feel bad calling them a stupid cow when they can’t do the games, but even if not it was still amazing. Expensive though: two tickets cost £158, but there’s always deals to be found if you look around on those voucher sites. You can have a look here!
OK, let’s leave it there. 3,000 words. I’m not even sorry. To the corned beef bake!
This is what the corned beef bake looks like cooked
Again, the corned beef bake doesn’t look much, but it tastes so good!
Get a spoon and start to shovel this corned beef bake as soon as it is done!
This recipe comes via the author of the Emotional Support Potatoes. I've tinkered with it to add our own spin on it, which will doubtless result in four days of asthmatic, indignant wheezing and a face like a slapped arse - six days if he realises I've changed the recipe - and it's lovely. I have however added his gran's recipe under our own so if you're a purist, you can try that too. Either way works!
Also, this is one of those recipes where it is hard to give an exact amount on things because it depends what ratio of corned beef to potato you like. See also cheese.
On the calories: this comes in at 605 calories but those are HUGE portions, including the cheese and the crisps - you can reduce both to save some calories but listen, this is a bowl of stodge and you don't need to skimp. Calorie counts are approximate as ever.
Ingredients
700g of potatoes - we use Maris Piper
one egg and a splash of milk
plenty of salt and pepper
one large tin of reduced fat corned beef
two large onions
250g of extra mature cheddar
chilli sauce, as much as your arse can handle
optional: one bag of Walkers Max Flame Grilled Steak Crisps
Instructions
make the mash by boiling chunks of potato (don't peel them) until soft and mashing it up with an egg and some milk, plus salt and pepper to taste
whilst the mash is cooking, finely dice your onion and fry gently until golden and soft
in a big bowl, mix the mash, corned beef, half of the cheese and more salt and pepper together, seasoning to taste
slop into a baking dish and cover with the rest of the cheese and, if using, the crisps - but crunch the crisps up first so they go into wee tiny bits
Pop in the oven on about 170 degrees for 30 minutes, covering the top with tin foil for the first twenty minutes so the crisps don't burn. Feel free to finish off under the grill to make it super crispy. Serve with beans if you like but we prefer just good old fashioned chilli sauce.
Notes
The original recipe by Ann Nethercot, living legend
Make your mash with a load of butter and milk until creamy. Mash in a tin of full-fat corned beef, top with cheese and grill until crispy. Serve with beans and disappointing looks at your grandson.
Recipe
customise this to your heart's content - add some peppers in there, chilli sauce running throughout, try sliced tomatoes on the top - but we think either the pure way above or our way works best
don't stop reading at this point, we've given you a second recipe for how to use leftovers
Books
this might not look like the most sexy recipe ever, but that's because we're saving those for book three which is awash with recipes that'll make you pop a towel down - you can pre-order here!
what's bright, colourful and satisfies you in the kitchen? Neither of us, but the second book can: order yours here!
considering it was our first, the original cookbook is still something to treasure: click here to order
looking for twenty six extra recipes and a kick up the arse with your diet - then try our planner: here
Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, as we're going on a cruise in September and just learned that J-Lo is our entertainment and I need to bone up on diamonds so I'm not fooled by the rocks that she's got
Coursescomfort food
Cuisinetwochubbycubs
Now, if you have leftovers – and you likely will because lordy does this make a lot – let it cool in the fridge and then shape it into fish-cake sized patties. When time to cook, dip them into egg and then seasoned panko crumbs, then gently fry them until the crumb is golden. Serve with beans and a fried egg on top, like so!
Look at that ooze though!
Right, that’ll do. Until next time.
Tick tock goes the clock, and what then shall we see?
A nice trickle of pre-orders at the moment ahead of launch of our new cookbook in May – having seen the final drafts and signed off on all the recipes a few days ago, we can promise you it is absolutely glorious. Very us. You can order it here – thank you!
Today’s retrorecipe is something slightly different. I’ve realised that there’s a lot of sport to be had from looking at old recipes and mocking the fact that they put everything in jelly or use the word ‘puff’ far more than could ever be considered decent, but there’s actually a lot of very good recipes out there which have fallen out of favour that simply need rescuing and brought up to date. Plus there’s the small matter of us wasting food by cooking stuff only for Paul to shove it away and pronounce that he isn’t eating it, like he’s Newcastle’s answer to Violet Beauregarde. That’s my drag name right there incidentally: Violent Noregarde.
This coconut chicken is an absolute doddle to make and comes from Betty Crocker’s ‘Buffets’, which promises menus, recipes and planning tips for easy and successful home entertaining. Now my first confession: for years I have imagined Betty Crocker as some homely nana bustling around in her American kitchen, keeping an apple pie cooling on the window and swatting at her sticky-fingered grandchildren with a broom. Kind of like my nana but she doesn’t have Fifteen-to-One playing at a volume that brings the roof tiles clattering off when someone buzzes in. However, a quick bit of googling to see what she looks like reveals the whole thing to be a sham: she’s a made-up figurehead representing a massive conglomerate who just so happens to look like my husband in a nice dress. I confess myself seriously disappointed and to make matters worse, it turns out there was never an Aunt Bessie, despite all the cloying marketing and ‘just like my nana used to make’ advertising. Which, to loop around, wouldn’t be true anyway: my nana used to make Yorkshire puddings that you could climb inside and enjoy a hot bath of gravy – I’ve never had an Aunt Bessie Yorkshire pudding that wasn’t as flat as a witch’s tit.
I’m just amazed it’s taken me thirty-six years to realise the scale of corruption in the home baking world, I truly am. I know a lie takes the elevator whilst the truth takes the stairs but even so: madness.
Second confession: this book is absolutely glorious. A relic of its time absolutely (make sure there is one ashtray per every two guests is an especially timeless tip, with presumably a few tanks of oxygen kept to one side for after) and very much a ‘whilst your husband goes and works, you stay home at occupy yourself with doilies’ tome, but still glorious. By way of example, there’s four pages, including diagrams, detailing how best to set up your buffet to promote good flow. There’s a map if you’re having a circular buffet, those who fancy a three-sided buffet are literally catered for and, best of all, a double-line buffet plan. Not to be sniffed at.
We can’t very well talk about buffets if we don’t mention the one buffet that I absolutely do not miss: the taster nights. I know we have talked about this a lot over the years but good lord if we didn’t see the worst of humanity (maybe overegging the pudding a bit) at those events. Long time stalwarts will know it’s where everyone attending Slimming World is encouraged to bring a snack to place on the decorating table and everyone titters and chortles their way through eating watery quiche and plucking dog hair from their teeth. The type of meeting where you’re looking to see if those are sesame seeds on the prawn toast or nits. We were lucky – our class was on the outskirts of the posh part of Newcastle (Edinburgh) and so it was fairly civilised but I always remember a couple of weeks we spent attending a class in a flat-roof social club whilst on holiday. I’m not saying it was rough but when we got up to eat we took our chairs with us in case the scrap man swiped them. I’ve never seen, either before or since, such fervent desire for a Tupperware box of golden vegetable rice that had been sweating in someone’s handbag for the best part of eight hours. Possibly the only buffet I’ve attended where everyone brought their own knives without knowing the event was catered.
Thankfully, Betty Crocker’s buffets are a far more decadent affair – you can tell Betty has a bit of money because ‘she’ also recommends having one member of staff (hired or otherwise) per six guests to dispense drinks and to replenish snacks. Maybe this is where Fanny Cradock’s Sarah moonlights at night, when she’s not busy being scolded/scalded by Fanny during the day. You won’t need any staff to assist with this coconut chicken because it’s luckily very easy to make – handy, it’ll give you time to rearrange your ashtrays just so. Perhaps the best bit of the book is how bewilderingly comprehensive it is: she has thought of every buffet situation you can imagine. They start off obvious: ‘A Mother’s Day Buffet‘ opens the book, though if I served my mother a gooseberry tart and a ‘summer’ cocktail for Mother’s Day I’d be likely to get it thrown back in my face. My mother’s idea of a cocktail is putting her usual six Jack Daniels shots into a mist of diet coke and sticking a cigarette in it for decoration.
We then travel the world a little: ‘A Hungarian Style Dinner‘ gives us an apple strudel and some buttered noodles, a ‘Scandinavian Coffee Party‘ suggests ‘jam sandwiches and cookies’ which sounds delightful and even Ireland gets a mention with ‘An Irish Dinner‘, a stunning festivity consisting of Irish coffee and bread. You rather get the sense that ‘Betty’ is phoning it in at this point but fret not, she pulls it out of the bag for the ending. If you have ever agonised at night what to serve at an ‘Out of Town Guest Buffet‘ (usually clumsily-administered poppers in my case, and if they were halfway decent, I’d make them some toast after) then the answer is here: a marinated cauliflower and broccoli salad set in aspic BECAUSE OF BLOODY COURSE IT IS. We end on my personal favourite: a ‘Soup and Sandwich Late Supper‘ (presumably for the times you don’t want to wake Iris and instead microwave your own soup) where Betty suggests that when you get home of an evening stinking of shame and sambucca, you should set about making scotch shortbread and creamy split pea soup. I mean goodness me, it’s all I can do not to void myself into the wash-basket after three sniffs of the barman’s cloth – where does Betty get her stamina from?
All the above sarcasm aside, it really is a terrific book that I will be taking more than a few recipes from. Given we only let people into our homes if they’re punching a hole in something (walls, ceilings, my bumcheeks) we tend not to have many buffets but with this handy guide, perhaps that’ll change. Shall we do the coconut chicken then? No, we must.
We served our coconut chicken with a traditional puck of Uncle Ben’s (ANOTHER LIE) rice and some chilli sauce
You can use any chutney for this coconut chicken – anything you want
So desiccated coconut - aside from being one of those ingredients I actively avoid because I can't spell it (desiccated I mean, I can manage coconut) - is one of those things I say I don't like until I actually eat it and realise it's like eating a Bounty bar. If you're not a fan of coconut however then you're shit out of luck here and I suggest you leave right now, before you fall any deeper.
You'll forgive me if I don't make any obvious jokes about chutney stuffing in this recipe, because that would be childish and immoral.
I apologise for the somewhat uninspired photography - I was in a rush because as I was serving up, Goomba was staring at me with his big sad eyes like he was Link's nana from Windwaker and that only means one thing - he needed to be let out. It was very much a plate up, photo and go affair otherwise we'd have another kitchen disaster to handle.
We used fig chutney from Tesco here because it was the first chutney Paul spotted on the shelf, but you can - and perhaps should - use a red onion chutney or similar.
Finally, as ever, all calories are approximate and worked out via the NHS app. Your experience may differ. If that's the case, sorry.
Ingredients
four large chicken breasts
chutney of your choosing - we used Tesco Finest Fig & Balsamic chutney here because we are fancy bitches
two large eggs
100g of desiccated coconut
salt and pepper
We served ours with microwave rice and some chilli sauce because we were in a rush, see. You will also need some cocktail sticks and preferably a big rolling pin. What can I say: size-queen for life, me.
Instructions
bring to mind someone who you absolutely hate: the type of person who if you accidentally ran them over, you'd reverse back over them to make sure the job was done
whilst you're thinking of them, take a knife and cut your chicken breasts in half horizontally - through the breast so it can open like a book
place onto some greaseproof paper and cover with more greaseproof paper
still got your enemy in your head - excellent - take your rolling pin and bash the absolute buggery out of those chicken breasts, imagining it is the skull of your nemesis, flattening them so they're easy to roll
hiding your 'excitement', remove the greaseproof paper, smear a good tablespoon of chutney in the middle of each breast, ignoring the fact it now looks a bit like a beskiddered gusset
carefully roll the breasts up in a nice spiral and secure them with cocktail sticks
they can sit in the fridge for a bit until needed
once you're ready to cook, carefully dip them in beaten egg (seasoned with a pinch of salt and pepper) and then roll in the desiccated coconut
cook - you can bake in the oven but we put ours in our Instant Vortex Airfryer (cocktail sticks removed) for twenty minutes, until the chicken was cooked through
serve with rice
Notes
Recipe
please make sure the chicken is cooked through before serving - at a minimum you want an internal temperature of at least 75 degrees celsius to be safe - see our notes under tools
Books
twochubbycubs: Dinner Time is our new book and it's out in May and has over one hundred meal ideas for every single evening event you can imagine - you can pre-order here!
our second book, glorious in its rainbow spine, is perfect for every other meal occasion: order yours here!
our first cookbook is still a sight to behold, full of our sass and meals: click here to order
everyone forgets about the planner which is silly because it's brilliant for whacking ganglions with (and also contains 26 recipes, just saying): here
Tools
we do so love our Vortex airfryer - here you could cook your chicken and chips in the same machine and it'll work out the timings for you - you can pick one up from Amazon today
Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, as Goomba is going to the groomers next week and if he's anything like his Dad, will tip the groomer generously in the hope of being roughly tumbled about in the back room by the lad clipping his hair
Let’s keep this strictly business this week shall we? The recipe is a reacharound of the Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese, it’s fabulous, it’s wonderful, it takes no time at all and tastes bloody good. I’ve hurt my shoulder trying to sneak a giant concrete garden ornament into the rubble bin at the tip so it hurts to type. In my defence I didn’t want to pay £2.50 because that seems like an outrageous amount to someone like me: the Queen blinks against the sudden light when I pull a fiver from my wallet. Plus I was giving it the Barry Big Bollocks lifting it out of my Golf like I was Geoff bloody Capes so if anything, it was my hubris that felled me in the end. But isn’t that always the case, eventually?
Luckily, we have the second part of the Paul story to entertain, so over to my slender counterpart. You can read part one here, so you can. Paul doesn’t believe in skimping on the detail, so do just scroll to the photos of the Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese if you’re in NO BLOODY MOOD for his nonsense and flimflam.
You know what would make my shoulder hurt a little less? Seeing some pre-orders on our amazing new book! 100 fast dinner recipes for all occasions! You can order it here
So really, the next five years or so carried on in the same sort of way. James would cook sometimes and he even taught me how to make a delicious risotto – still one of my favourites. Pretty early on we started going to Slimming World. James had a lot of success in his teen years following SW and knowing I was self-conscious about my weight (actually having access to food and not having to walk 10 miles a day meant the weight piled straight back on again…) we gave it a go. And that go lasted for a good 5-6 years. We tried a few different classes as we moved about but always returned to the same one because it was so super friendly and the consultant was a right laugh. No shade to Slimming World but we didn’t really enjoy the classes. It just wasn’t our cup of tea and our consultant did her best. We fell into the same pattern of turning up, getting weighed and then making an excuse to leave so really our fiver went on standing on a pair of scales, which of course we could do for free at home. A year or two after joining Slimming World though we started to try a bit more cooking, mostly for financial reasons (Papa John’s ain’t cheap) but also we knew that if we didn’t we’d just balloon more and more. Social Media was starting to become a thing so we joined a few of the Facebook groups and started making all the standard fare that used to be doing the rounds. You know the stuff. Curry Loaf. Quiche. Fanta Chicken. If it was about 10 pixels across and badly cropped we made it. We laugh about it now but that was the height of our abilities. And so, twochubbycubs was born! Initially it was more of a place for James’ writing but, for some reason we still can’t figure out, it really started to take off. Fuck knows why, because for the first couple of years the stuff we put out was absolute shite. But it did! And so along with that, out of necessity, we needed to be able to cook.
So, that brings us to the recent times. If you’ve been following us for a while you’ll know that a few years ago we appeared on ITV’s This Time Next Year. It was by chance that we spotted a post in our Facebook group where the production company were looking for people so on a whim we just did it. We knew that weight loss would need to be our thing – by that point we’d ballooned to nearly our biggest size, both well over twenty stone. The process was pretty quick, we had a few interviews and then got the news while we were on holiday in, er, Berwick, that we were going on! Of course we then spent the next month or so absolutely stuffing our faces like never before – thinking that we may as well take advantage before it’d all be taken away for us forever.
The challenge was to lose twenty stone between us, in a year. We got off to an okay start – doing the same things we’d always done – joined Slimming World, stayed for the class, stopped eating takeaways. And that was really it. The losses, as always at the start, were pretty massive but it wasn’t long before they levelled out and we started to become a bit despondent. But the truth is, we didn’t know what else to do. We knew that exercise would help us but we were too big at that point to do anything comfortably, and it was at the bottom of our list of priorities. We’d absorbed all the bad habits that slimming classes drum into us – like eating a giant plate of potatoes or pasta (with us, usually both) and thinking that because it was “Free” we would automatically lose weight. We were falling behind on our weight loss, massively, which became all too apparent when we were booked in for a DEXA scan and I was told that, halfway through our challenge, I was still 50% fat and off the centile charts. We were gussied up to do something about it but still a bit clueless, so we started restricting. We cut out the ten-a-day Muller Lights, switched to skimmed milk and stopped eating cheese. Naturally, all this meant was that we’d both binge on the sly because our meals at home just could not sustain us, and we’d taken out all the deliciousness and joy from eating. By chance, James stumbled across a local company that ran HIIT classes (I think it’s the same as Cross Fit, but without having to pay to licence it) that promised that if you lost 20lb in six weeks they’d give you your money back. He signed us both up immediately and told me, ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL DAYS (where I had already finely curated my birthday takeaway for the night) that we were going, and we were going to stick with it. I wish I could say that was the worst birthday I’ve ever had, but the birthday I spent with him in hospital having his willy-hat lopped off probably takes the title.
I won’t lie, I was absolutely dreading it. The thought of going to a warehouse in the middle of an industrial estate to EXERCISE. In my condition?! No. I raced through all the excuses but ‘er indoors was having none of it. We were going.
Fortunately, the first session wasn’t the fresh hell I was expecting. The place was clean, tidy and modern and the staff lovely. I actually recognised the trainer as being the bloke who used to always give me extra chips in canteen at work and never charged me for it (and still to this day I tell him it’s all his fault I got so fat). Because the classes were aimed at people losing weight (and it being just two weeks after Christmas it’s fair to say we were all in a pretty poor condition) they were, thankfully, quite easy to begin with. Lots of squats, wall sits and easing you into exercise, gently at first. Well, would you believe it – I bloody loved it. Well, when I was actually doing it I wanted to die and seriously considered faking having a heart attack so I could get out there (I’m not joking), as soon as we finished singing Freed From Desire (our groups theme song, for some reason….) I felt great! The weight was melting away, and each time I hit the 20lb target, usually landing a few pounds over.
The saving grace of this was that we enjoyed the exercise – and I’ll come back to this later – and if we hadn’t had found that, we would have failed in the first few days. Having the exercise we enjoyed and also importantly getting the results from it made the food a little less terrible. There was also the important fact that we were due to go on the telly in just a few months, where the lovely Davina was expecting her stage to creak a hell of a lot less. Those last six months we really, really went for it. We did the HIIT classes three times a week, and we went to the gym for the other four days for no fewer than three hours at a time. We (to borrow a phrase from the nineties) caned it, and we got the results. By the time we made it to the studio in the May time we hadn’t quite hit our target (I was short by 2.5 stone and James 1) but we felt and looked much better so we didn’t mind. If we had started our fitness part earlier we would have easily hit our target, and probably a lot more (we were still overweight, but only just). We made the promise on that sofa that there was no going back. We were never going to get fat ever again, and the changes we made were there to stay, and we were only just beginning, baby. We left there and went back to the hotel and ordered ourselves a celebratory Papa John’s that we’d been fantasising about for the last six months. So high on our success were we that we ordered a small pizza each and didn’t even finish it. The next day on the way home we went to a Little Chef and I had a yoghurt.
It didn’t last.
Two days after getting home from the studio, fresh in our H&M gear (that we could now fit into) we minced to Tesco to stock up on chicken ‘n’ broccoli, but outside they were handing out vouchers for some Kelly’s ice cream. We bought 4 tubs that day, just as a treat you understand, and it was a bargain after all it’d be silly not to….and ate all four that day. Delicious, mind.
Ever mindful we’d had six months of terrible food and an excruciating exercise regime we promised ourselves that we’d have the occasional treat but we’d stick to it. A few months before we had booked a dream holiday to Canada for six weeks – another thing to aim for, and we were determined we were going to be just as slim as we were for it as we had been on the telly. We signed back up for a six-week programme at Elite and got back on it. By the time Canada came along we were back at our telly weight.
Canada, of course, was awesome. Throughout the whole holiday we’d tell each other, “we’d never have done this if we were still fat!” (which caught more than one bearded Canadian bloke off-guard). And it’s true. Like I said up there, being fat impacts on every single part of your life, and we were realising now what things we would have avoided. Even simple things like not wanting to go up an observation tower because the lift was quite small and people would tut because you’d be taking up too much space. All sorts of daft stuff.
We did six weeks in Canada and, naturally, we did pile on the pounds when we were there. We started off well but by week two we were eating every treat, all the poutine, trying out all the different flavours of crisps… but we promised ourselves that when we got back we’d get back on it, and we’d shed it all. It was just a treat for ourselves anyway, and we were on holiday after all.
When we got back we did indeed get back on it. Back to Elite, back on the brown rice. We hit the 20lb target again and felt pleased, but without having the shadow of the TV programme hanging over us the motivation was gone. We stopped going to the gym as often and when we did we’d slack off. A few weeks later we went on holiday to Tokyo. Already by that point, which was only two months after being on the telly, I was all too aware that the weight was piling back on and I was “big” again. Granted I wasn’t as big as I had been, but was still big, and in somewhere like Japan that meant REALLY big. Naturally we had to try all the local delicacies, and the unusual restaurants we just had to visit, and the bars, and all the different KitKats (plus a melon soda which I swear has heroin in it) just made things worse. After Canada I started in a new job which was okay but was bullied terribly which only got worse after we came back from Japan. Comfort eating became a fast friend, as did all of the bad habits, and in less than a year I was only a few stone off where I had been at the start of the year.
Something that became ever apparent at this time is my absolute total lack of willpower. I have none. James attributes a lot of it down to being a “poor kid” and if something is there I have to have it before it’s gone. When I get an idea in my head that I want something, I have to have it, and nothing will bring me down. Trust me, I’ve tried everything. I started leaving my wallet at home so that I couldn’t buy stuff, but instead I’d just use the contactless on my phone. I uninstalled that but so I just switched to saving up odd bits of change. I would make up excuses to go to the supermarket for something and sit in my car stuffing my face, and load up on other stuff that I’d hide in my car so I always had a stash. A very destructive habit.
When the TV programme finally aired, I was pleased but also embarrassed and ashamed. I had people coming up to me congratulating me for what I’d achieved, but it was clear that I didn’t keep it up. We were back shopping for clothes at the garden centre and moping around. We did Elite a few more times but we didn’t stick to it. Once or twice we missed the 20lb target. We just couldn’t get back into it, no matter what we tried.
Alright Paul we get the bloody point about the bloody gammo, Christ. More from Rusty Bloodvessel next week. For now, we turn to the instant pot spaghetti bolognese which will delight and surprise you. Don’t have an Instant Pot? Then who the hell do you think you are? Don’t worry, we’ve done a normal method too. Oh, and Paul typed the recipe up, so if there’s errors, we can blame him.
Of course if you don’t cover your Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese in half a Ped-Egg’s worth of cheese then why bother
Overhead shot of Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese, ruining my camera with steam
Nevermind the Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese, you should have seen the word that appeared before OFF on the machine
650 calories I hear you cry for Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese and of course you're right that seems like a lot but does it really? For a massive bowl of pasta and wine and meat and the ease of cooking it all in one dish? Plus, to be fair, this probably serves six - we're just greedy fat pigs. If you have leftovers, you can turn that into another meal, see below the recipe for that!
All calories are approximate and worked out via the NHS calculator. So shut yer gob.
Ingredients
400g lean beef mince
400g spaghetti
40g diced chorizo
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
500ml passata
125ml red wine
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp oregano
Instructions
set the instant pot to saute and add a splash of oil
add the onion and cook for a few minutes until softened
add the garlic, stir and then add the mince and chorizo cook until browned
add the chopped tomatoes, passata, red wine, salt, pepper and oregano to the pan and give a good stir
break the spaghetti in half and add to the pan along with 850ml water - make sure the spaghetti is covered as much as possible (push it down with a wooden spoon if not)
cook under high pressure for ten minutes, then quick release
give a good stir and leave to cool for a few minutes - don't worry if it looks a bit watery, it'll soon thicken up
Notes
Recipe
huge apologies to the entire nation of Italy for this one, which is probably illegal there. Still good though.
add whatever you like into this - bacon, mushrooms, spinach - whatever you have lying about, chuck it in
the wine won't get your kids pissed but if you'd still rather avoid it just add the same amount in extra water instead
Not got an Instant Pot? You can cook it pretty much as is on a hob, but add the spaghetti straight into the hob rather than doing it on its own - the spaghetti cooks in the sauce and it's just laaaahverley
Books
twochubbycubs: Dinner Time is our new book and it's out in May and it's so good I could bubble - genuinely our best work yet - you can pre-order here!
of course if you like your meals fast and filling, book two will scratch that itch: order yours here!
perhaps you want to go back to where it all began - our first cookbook which is a joy untold: click here to order
our diet planner will keep you on track and there's twenty six recipes in there for good measure: here
Tools
we have an Instant Pot Pro because of course we do - you can find it here but other variants of the Instant Pot are cheaper still and they're all marvellous bits of kit
Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, as Goomba has developed a love of eating things off the work surfaces and we're currently missing a teaspoon
Coursesevening meal
Cuisinetwochubbycubs
Got leftover Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese? Crack three eggs into it, and bake it in the oven topped with cheese and tomato!
Leftover Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese can be baked with eggs into a loaf
Looks like a scabby knee but the leftover Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese tastes good baked like this
Gonna level with you, our SEO bollocks is saying I need to say Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese a few more times to get a green light. I personally think I’ve said Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese enough times but they are saying this Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese needs more Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese references. Pah! I’m too busy thinking about Instant Pot spaghetti bolognese to concern myself with matters like that.
