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June 4, 2016

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beef, diced beef, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, steak

rick stein’s filthy macaroni

Very quick post tonight – just time to rattle off the FILTHY macaroni!

Ah Rick Stein, let us count the ways we love you. Your food is simply delicious. You look like a Waitrose take on Brendan from Coach Trip. You have a great sense of humour which shines through all of your shows. You make us both feel confident that when we get to 70 we’ll still have a twinkle in our eyes and the ability to act slightly camp in unusual situations. People at work have decreed that I must want to stare moonily through his windows at him because I idolise him so much.

Gush, gush. Look, we’ve only just happened across Rick via his Long Weekends show on BBC2. For years we didn’t bother because most of his meals revolve around seafood and although god knows we’ll put most things in our mouth without blinking, neither of us have ever managed to get away with fish.  We spotted, however, that he was holidaying in Berlin and Iceland for his show, staying both times at the same hotels we did, and since then we’ve become massive fans. He’s brilliant! Let’s do the recipe, then, shall we? I absolutely can’t claim this as one of our own – it’s all darling Rick’s work. The original recipe is called sporki macaroni which he doesn’t like as it means dirty pasta. Frankly, we like him so much we’re going to call the recipe FILTHY macaroni! 

You can buy Rick’s book with this recipe from Amazon and I’d heartily recommend it – yes, you’ll spend syns per meal but christ it’s worth it. Click here for that. Oh and we’re not getting paid to promote Rick. I reckon the fact we bought two fish and chips from his little outlet in Padstow means we’ve given him enough money. They were delicious.

filthy macaroni

to make filthy macaroni, you’ll need:

  • 400g lean beef – we used one of the packets of diced lean beef you get in our Musclefood deal – very tasty meat indeed! Have a look!
  • 3 small red onions, chopped
  • 3 small carrots, sliced
  • 1 bay leaf (we have a little plant growing in the garden – buy one and never look back)
  • pinch of salt
  • a good grinding of black pepper, then do it again – you can never have too much
  • 2 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced, using a fabulous little mincer that feels good in the hand, such as this one
  • 300ml chicken stock
  • a few handful of spinach
  • 250ml full-bodied red wine (11.5 syns – this serves 4 and I reckon most of it boils off, so let’s live life on the edge and call it 2.5 syns each) (don’t tell Mags though, she’ll key my car with her nails)
  • 600g pasta – any old shite will do, but we used penne that’s been rattling around amongst the weevils for the last year – only the best

to make filthy macaroni, you should:

  • unusually for a gay man, I’m going to recommend you brown off your beef – do this by putting a drop of oil in a decent, heavy pan, getting it sizzling and then dropping in the beef – better to do this in two batches rather than trying to cram your meat into a space that perhaps isn’t designed to accommodate it all at once (also unusual for me to say…)
  • add the chopped onions and carrots and stir
  • once these are brown, add the bay leaf and a good pinch of salt and all the pepper
  • stir in the tomato puree, cinnamon and garlic and fry gently for a couple of minutes
  • add the red wine and chicken stock – heat all the way up to a gentle simmer, cover with a lid and cook for about an hour or so until the meat is tender
  • about fifteen minutes before, cook up your pasta – don’t cook it to mush, keep it nice and al dente (not Al Murray) – and about five minutes before it is done throw the spinach in – drain the pasta, add to the meat sauce and stir – then cook on a low heat for another ten minutes to get the flavours working together

Done! Rick serves with chopped parsley but I’d genuinely rather set my eyes on fire than do that. Bleurgh. It’s the Devil’s Pubic Hair!

If you’re looking for more beef or pasta recipes, click the icons below to be whisked away to our fabulous bank of recipes!

beefsmallpastasmall

J

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June 3, 2016

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american, beef, beef mince, cured meats, fakeaways, pork, recipe card, syn free

syn free pizza stuffed meatloaf

I was just going to do a quick post tonight to accompany this pizza stuffed meatloaf but damn it, it deserves a proper articles. Partially because I’m too lazy to type and also because tonight’s guest writer Vicky looks the sort to smash your knees in over an unpaid catalogue debt, I’m going to hand you over to her. Vicky would like to talk about something not normally mentioned on this blog – being thin. Let’s go. Mind, because I’m an egotistical terror, I’ll be butting in throughout. REMEMBER, these articles are done by people who fancy taking a stab at writing but don’t have an outlet. If you can’t say anything nice, keep it schtum. For me! FAIR WARNING: there’s a lot of blue language in this post!

sticks and stones – by Vicky “Thundergash” M

So – James has invited us mere mortals to write in his blog – I feel like I’ve been invited to have tea with the Queen. Except it’s a Queen that swears a lot and slugs gin like a menopausal housewife. (James: our Queen does have a much better beard, mind)

We’ve been advised that we should write about what we know. Hmm. I don’t know loads – I’m just a normal 35 year old mum of 2 kids.

I do know about weight though. Oh, I know a hell of a lot about weight, on both ends of the scale (scale, geddit?) (James: I’ll do the jokes, please) (I’m kidding)

Firstly – I have Marfan syndrome (look it up if you want to be nosey) – it basically means I have long skinny limbs and according to textbooks I should be as skinny as a beanpole. Pfft. I was, as a kid. Skinny jokes were all I heard growing up and I absolutely hated my body. I was the tall gangly kid and to this day it annoys me that people can be told “you’re too skinny – you need to eat” yet fat comments are a no-no. Why can’t people just not comment at all? Wankers. I seem to have slipped from one end of the fat-scale to the other. I had legs like string – no, not those slender, sexy legs that people gaze lustfully upon. I’m talking bony with knobbly knees that invite cat calls of “oy Wednesday legs! Wednesday gonna snap?“

Yep – being skinny was a fucking ball (a ball of shite more like) now I know I’m meant to say “embrace your body sisters (and brothers) love every part of yourself!” but try telling a 15 year old girl that. I hated my body. One day I hit puberty and widened. It seemed to happen overnight. I looked like an HGV reversing up a back lane. I got hips, thighs, an arse you could hide Shergar in and stretch marks all over – on my shoulders, my hips, my bastard thighs – you name it.

My mum would tut and kindly say “those jeans would look great if your hips were smaller” (cheers ma!)

as I got into my twenties (after giving birth to a 10lb 12oz baby) I looked like a road map naked, or perhaps a saddened zebra, with my big massive tits resting kindly on my deflated belly. Gorgeous eh? Anyway, here’s my point. I’m a size 16 or on a good day a generous size 14. To this day I get told “there’s nothing on you! I’d love your figure!” cos I do now have decent legs (ha! take that bullies!) but I still hate what I see in the mirror. No amount of dieting and exercise can hide my saggy tits, my C-section scar and how Mother Nature decided to gift my skin with probably 40% of it covered in stretchmarks.

What annoys me is the “I’d love your body” comments. No, no you wouldn’t. I dislike my body and massive hips just as much as the next woman.

Did I mention that I recently got engaged? I finally met a man who loves me and my dodgy bod. Does it matter that whilst I’m naked I often have “how can he stay hard when he’s looking at this?!” running through my head? Not to him. He’s 17 stone (James: pffft amateur!) and loves cake and bread. I LOVE his pot belly, I wouldn’t change a thing on him and sometimes (on a good day) I let it sink in that he feels the same way about me.

I suppose I should be happy and if this was a film I’d discover a way to love myself. But I’m not in a film. Haven’t been since ‘Vixen Vicky and the Broken Down Rugby Coach 8: Fill ‘Er Up.’ Reality isn’t like that is it? I know that if I won the lottery and could afford new tits and a new belly, I’d never be fully happy with myself. I did however discover shirt dresses and that belts create a waist. A decent bra can hide a multitude of syns. I’ll never have a bikini bod but a cute swimming costume with a little ruffle skirt can hide my thighs and the stretchmarks. I suppose I may not be happy with what I’m working with – but I can dress to create a way to carry it off, and unless someone’s looking fabulous and mentions it themselves never EVER tell someone they need to “lose a few pounds” to look good in their jeans or to eat more as they’re too skinny. You never know what they’re facing.

Just be kind to people.

Oh and enjoy your syns – that’s what they’re there for!

I’d like to applaud Vicky for her honesty and her very Radio 4 way of putting things. That’s if Radio 4 was hosted by Jordan and consisted solely of her gargling semen down the microphone for eight hours. I wish people did love themselves more. Without wanting to be all claphappy, everyone looks beautiful in some way. Even if you’ve got a face like a prolapsed anus, you might still have nice fingers. Teeth like a downed aircraft? Bet you’ve got a shapely bottom. Everyone has something good about them and I tell you now, from someone who spends a lot of time people watching, those who walk with confidence aren’t always the skinny, toned folk you might assume. I’ve given up caring what people think – I’ve met my husband, I’m happy with my lot, so now when I go to a beach I’ll pay no second thought to getting out my hairy back and my wobbling Mitchell Brothers titties. If you don’t like it, that’s tough banana. I like to feel the sun on my tyres as much as the next guy.

Anyway enough of that – I’m on the verge of breaking out a drum circle. Let’s get to the recipe for pizza stuffed meatloaf.

This recipe makes enough for four if you serve it, like we did, with some broccoli and cheesy sweet potato and kale mash, which you can find the recipe for right here. If I’m absolutely honest, we ate two servings each, but then we are both Notorious P.I.Gs. So, y’know, do what you will.

pizza stuffed meatloaf pizza stuffed meatloaf

to make pizza stuffed meatloaf you will need:

  • 500g beef mince 
  • 4 tbsp tomato puree
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 30g grated parmesan (1x HEA)
  • 70g reduced fat mozzarella (1x HEA)
  • few slices of ham
  • handful of basil leaves
  • salt and pepper

We used one packet of mince from our Musclefood deal – you get four packs included in the price together with chicken, bacon and beef pieces – more than enough to keep you going for weeks! Click here to take advantage of that! This is actually very easy to make and looks impressive!

to make pizza stuffed meatloaf you should:

  • preheat the oven to 190 degrees
  • in a small bowl mix together the tomato puree, vinegar and oregano to make a paste – add more vinegar or water if you need to thin it a bit
  • lay out some baking paper and shape the mince into a rectangle shape, about 9″ by 7″
  • add two tbsp of the tomato sauce onto the meatloaf and spread out, leaving about 1/2″ around the edge
  • on one half, layer on a few slices of ham, half the grated mozzarella and half of the parmesan
  • use the parchment paper to ‘fold’ over the empty half on top of the other half, and pinch together the seams
  • carefully move the meatloaf onto a baking sheet
  • spoon 2 tbsp of tomato sauce onto the top of the mixture and sprinkle on the remaining cheese and some salt and pepper
  • cook in the oven for about thirty minutes
  • serve with your sides and revel in the fact it’s all so delicious and syn free!

Oh, if you’ve bought a basil plant just for the sake of a few leaves, stick the plantpot into a small container and fill it with water. This time of year it’ll grow quite merrily on a windowsill as long as you water it from the bottom! Just like I do with Paul.

J

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June 2, 2016

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fakeaways, low syn, mexican, pork, pork joints, recipe card, slow cooker

slow cooked pulled pork chilli boats

To be honest, I know the slow cooked pulled pork chilli boats look crap, but do you know what? I don’t care! We saw them on Pinterest (I know, it’s a miracle I saw anything between all the JuicePlus ads and knock-off Etsy bumph, but hey) and thought we’d give them a go. Lesson learned? Don’t try and copy anything from Pinterest. It never works for us. What looks cute, unusual and fluffy on Pinterest usually ends up looking like the end result of a family car backing over a cat. 🙁

It’s the same with this blog, to be fair. We do try and make our food look presentable but you have to remember, we spend a lot of time fannying about with the dishes this way and that way to try and get them to look half decent. That’s because we want to promote our food. You, on the other hand, shouldn’t fuss about – get down to the business of turning your hard work into poo, instead. It’s what you want.

Anyway, I wanted to give a quick guide to how we blog. This isn’t a funny post but it’s something that we get asked a lot about. I’ve seen a lot of people over the last couple of years start up food blogs and most of them stop after a while, and there’s a bloody good reason – it takes a lot of time! If you want to share your recipes then go for it. You can host on WordPress for free and it’s an excellent platform for your own blog – very easy to use! We take all of our photos with our iPad and touch them up slightly in Photoshop (normally to balance the colours – we have a very, very red kitchen). It’s worth taking the time to write properly but don’t stress too much about telling a story – there’s far, far too many blogs out there (possibly including my own) that, for example, when writing about a chilli will tell you about the time they went to the market to buy chillis, and how amazing chillis are, and how much they love chillis…if you’ve got a story, tell it, but if you’re just filling out the word count, don’t!

We do spend a lot of our time doing this – finding recipes to adapt to make them Slimming World friendly, writing out the posts, taking the pictures, researching the syn count, publicising the posts – each post takes about two hours to do, I reckon. If you’re committed, it’s a fun, worthwhile hobby, but jeez, when I think about all them hours…

If you’re looking to make money from a blog, unless you really, REALLY build up the readership, you’ll struggle. There’s plenty of ways to do it, but you’ll not make much to begin with unless you have a blog full of adverts and trick people into going there. That’s not good. Readership takes a while to build – we get on average about 25,000 views a day but for the first year we were hitting 500 and being glad of it. I remember how excited I was when we got up to 50 subscribers – now we’re not a kick of the arse off 10,000! That’s just insane to me.

If I could give only one bit of advice – do it with love. Now I know that’s going to make everyone’s teeth turn black from all the sugar but honestly, Paul loves cooking and I love writing so a food blog is the perfect outlet for that. If you’re the same, give it a go! If you don’t fancy writing full-time, don’t forget you can guest write for our blog if you want to see your name up in lights. Just drop us a line in the comments and we’ll contact you.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s get to the bloody pulled pork chilli boats.

slow cooked pulled pork chilli boats

to make slow cooked pulled pork chilli boats, you’ll need:

  • a good joint of pork, we used shoulder from Musclefood – it came with very little fat on (and we just cut it off) and an excellent price at £6.00 per kg – click here for that!
  • tin of tomatoes
  • tin of beans
  • tin of black eyed beans
  • an onion
  • a small carton of passata
  • 1 tbsp chilli powder
  • a slow cooker
  • Old El Paso Stand and Stuff tacos (4.5 syns each)
  • one slice of Edam (the sliced Edam from Tesco – one slice is a HEA, or just use your syns for about 4 syns)
  • potato wedges for the side
  • chopped lettuce

to make slow cooked pulled pork chilli boats, you should:

  • put everything bar the taco, cheese and lettuce into the slow cooker and cook overnight on low – then shred the pork with two forks
  • stuff into a taco
  • make a cheese sail
  • put it on a bed of lettuce
  • serve with potato wedges and a feeling of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-with-my-life

Meh! It made Paul laugh. The leftovers can be served with rice the next day and put into a sandwich. Hell, you could even put it on a pizza like this old recipe of ours. This chilli really is the bare bones – add as many vegetables like peppers or mushrooms as you want. Really, it was just an excuse to muck about with our food. Enjoy!

For other pork recipes, click the icon below!

porksmall

Goodbye!

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June 1, 2016

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low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, vegetarian

spinach and wild garlic pesto pasta

Hello! Check out the recipe below for spinach and wild garlic pesto pasta.

Work’s been super busy and I make no apology for the lack of posts. It’s all I can do not to tear my car into the central reservation of an evening. Sometimes I think I’d like to give up working and stay at home wearing the same underwear for four days on the trot (you know the type, male readers – change them when you’ve got to fold them with a karate chop) but I know it would end in ruin, not least because I couldn’t possibly be one of those people who prepare dinner for their husbands and push the hoover around inbetween arguing on Facebook in barely-English and playing Bejewelled. I watched fifteen minutes of Jeremy Kyle the other day and it was eye-opening – at least, eye-opening in the sense that I almost held open my eyes and poured hot metal into them rather than watch the show. I just can’t understand it. Going on TV all cankles-blazing to yell incoherently to your other half whilst some smug envelope-ripper alternates between blowing spittle in your face and cowering behind his security guards, who stand on the stage like they’ve fallen off the back of a lorry in a blizzard of creatine and can’t remember the syllable for ‘HELP’. It’s repellent. If you thought your partner was pounding himself into your sister / mother / crudely-drawn approximation of a vagina sprayed on the side of a bus shelter, why go onto national TV to get ‘the troof’? Is the lure of a night’s stay in a Travelodge with all the Taybarns’ beige food and Bellabrusco you can manage really so strong? It must be!

Oops. Side-tracked. Anyway, some GOOD NEWS for you readers. We finally managed to get around to updating our recipe page. This might not sound terribly exciting until you remember our previous bank of recipes was just a giant list and made for a rubbish read. So we put our thinking caps on, loaded up photoshop to make some snappy graphics, and split all the recipes out via their key ingredients. This means if you’re stuck for inspiration on what to do with your pork (PUT SOMETHING ON THE END OF IT) or your breasts (PUT THEM AWAY, THEY’RE FRIGHTENING), you can see at a glance what to make. Give it a go by clicking here. I have a request – share that link wherever you can. I see so many posts from people saying they need recipe ideas and there’s over 300 in there! Thanks.

Tonight’s recipe is a bit fancy but hey, if I can’t let my early onset male pattern baldness down once and a while, what can I do? It uses wild garlic which is growing abundantly outdoors at the moment. Take a walk into any woodlands and you’ll find, amongst the spent custard-catchers and dog muck, strong scents of garlic wafting up from the ground, also known as ramsons. They have big, smooth flat leaves and right about now, tiny white flowers. They’re distinctive but still, be careful – don’t be picking anything you’re unsure of, I can’t have anyone’s death on my conscious, not least because I don’t want my facebook feed full of wailing and ‘SHARE IF U MISS HER IGKNORR IF YOUR GLAD SHE DEAD’ pictures. Do step away from the well-worn paths so you’re not getting a plant with a lacquer of dog piss too. You can find more information here on the BBC website, which includes the fact it’s also known as Stinkin’ Jenny. Which let’s be honest, would totally be my drag name if I ever went that way.

Now look, if you’re not a fan of stumbling about in the woods looking for plants and risking life and limb in the search of a few leaves, then you can swap it out for spinach and some grated garlic, and we won’t tell. You can even lie and still tell your other half that you’ve been out hunting for pleasure in the woods, although you might want to clarify that this doesn’t mean you want to be back there later in the evening bent over a Vauxhall Astra’s bonnet whilst a barely interested plumber tries to fluff himself to half-mast. Is it just my world that requires these clarifications? Good lord. It really is worth hunting out the wild garlic though – for one, it’s free, which will appeal to all those misers who are tighter than two coats of paint, and secondly, it’s so very tasty! Admittedly, be careful not to do what I did when I was a young’un. Buoyed with the excitement of a walk in the woods, I filled a carrier bag with wild garlic leaves and flowers and took it into school to show my teacher, who, with all the enthusiasm of a teacher one week away from seeing the devil children out of the door for the final time, told me to stick it in my locker and stop showing off.

Showing off? Christ I know we were a poor family but I think even I could have done better than some bloody garlic on Show and Tell. I could have brought in my Kerplunk with the sticks missing, for example. Short game.

Anyway, it stayed in my locker for eight weeks, heating up nicely in the summer holiday, then rotting down into a putrid, gloopy mess which slicked down between the lockers and out onto the carpet. When they re-opened the classroom a couple of days before school came back the smell was so overwhelming that they had to put the classroom AND the adjoining classroom out of use for a week or so to air it out. It’s amazing, even then I had the ability to befoul a room with my odours. Anyway, who’s laughing now? Not the teacher, she smelled like a freshly cut dump for two weeks whilst the residual smell permeated her every pore. WHAT AM I LIKE. So yes: by all means pick the garlic, but don’t bloody store it anywhere you wish to breathe the air of. Oh, and if you’re concerned that a diet of flowers, leaves and garlic is going to leave you skinnier than a vegan’s dog, throw some plain chicken in there. It’s that easy. This makes four servings. It assumes that you’re using 4 x HEA (i.e. one per person/serving).

spinach and wild garlic pesto pasta

to make spinach and wild garlic pesto pasta, you’ll need:

  • 200g of spinach
  • a clutch of wild garlic leaves, washed, and a bunch of the flowers from the top
  • enough pasta for four people
  • 180g of ricotta (90g is one HEA, who knew?)
  • two tablespoons of good olive oil (12 syns)
  • 60g of parmesan (2 x HEA)
  • salt and pepper
  • chive flowers if you have them

to make spinach and wild garlic pesto pasta, you should:

  • cook up your pasta
  • boil your spinach and garlic leaves for a minute or two – you want it softened but not mush
  • blend the spinach and leaves together with the oil, pinch of salt and pepper, together with 50g or so of the parmesan
  • you don’t want it looking like soup – keep a bit of texture
  • add the ricotta and stir it through
  • stir into the pasta
  • decorate with chive flowers and garlic flowers and a bit more parmesan

This keeps really well for a lunch the next day.

You can find all of our vegetarian and pasta recipes by clicking on the icons below!

vegetariansmallpastasmall

Enjoy!

J

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May 25, 2016

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low syn, pork, pork chops, recipe card

curried mango pork chops with orange glazed rainbow chard

It doesn’t get any fancier than curried mango pork chops with orange glazed rainbow chard, even if the photo does look like I’ve smeared some houmous on a built-up shoe and sat it beside something the cat’s brought up. Meh, it tastes nice, and it all comes out the same colour so who really cares about presentation? We’ll get to the recipe after this short moan about Forever Living.

STRONG WARNING: if you’re a seller of Juice Plus or Forever Living, let’s just assume that you’re the exception to prove the rule rather than someone who is guilty of the below. No need to get uppity, I know there’s some good in all scams. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

We all know how I feel about Juice Plus. It’s worthless powder pressed into pills and shakes designed to be sold to vulnerable folk by desperate pushers who care not about the health risks but more about lining their pockets. The company actively encourages reps to post via Facebook slimming groups and pretend that they tell people off for it when they don’t. Meh. I’ve talked about them plenty of times and frankly, if you’re a Juice Plus seller, I think you’re a parasite. 

No, Forever Living entered my orbit recently (lots of things tend to do this – when you’re the size of a horse-box you tend to have your own slight gravitational pull) because I, out of nosiness, responded to a post on a Slimming World group from someone who said ‘they desperately needed help‘. Actually, it was more like ‘CAN ANI1 HELP PLZ I DESPRATLY KNEED HELP PLZ MESSURJ ME‘. Sorry, no, forgive me, it was more like ‘CAN ANI1 HELP PLZ I DESPRATLY KNEED HELP PLZ MESSURJ ME ⊙﹏⊙ ❤?☹?♥☹? ♥❤ xXxXxXx‘. Anyway, being a kind soul and/or nosy, I messaged to find out if she was OK, only for her to launch into her sales pitch about Forever Living and how wonderful the products were and she just needed people to try the products and they could solve eczema and depression and MS and aches and pains and first world melancholy and the Times Cryptic Crossword blindfolded. I responded that it was a load of horse shit and she promptly blocked me. I was annoyed simply because she’d made out like she was in trouble or needed support and it was just a ploy to get caring folk to message her so she could exploit them to pay off her Brighthouse sofa. Or rather, pay off her leader’s Brighthouse sofa. Which you just know will be 90% highly-flammable Taiwanese foam and have built-in speakers. The worst part is that I know some poor sap will end up buying her products, losing their money and feeling blue. Nice one!

Anyway, I let that lie, but seemingly because I’d mentioned the words Forever Living on Facebook, the sponsored ads threw up an intriguing proposition that I should get in contact with a ‘Global Home Business Manager’, accompanied by the kind of graphic someone disinterested in Media Studies might put together in MS Paint in order to stop failing a class. The kind of poster you see in church halls advertising beetle drives and jumble sales. The type of advert that gets filed under ‘God bless them, they’re trying’. It was the ‘Global Home Business Manager’ bit that made me intrigued – not because I want to work from home, but it’s such a clash of words that it really struck me. Many things do at 7.30am in the morning over my bran flakes. What is a Global Home Business Manager?  To me it sounds like the kind of absolute nonsense title that people who sit in front of Jeremy Kyle recruiting other people to exploit help live the dream give themselves to justify their existence, but no, turns out it’s the title given to the next tier up in the Forever Living pyramid, presumably because Chief Shill isn’t quite positive enough. A quick look at the profile for this ‘Global Home Business Manager’ reveals all the usual tricks – the rent-a-quote images about ‘BEING MY OWN BOSS’ and ‘YOU CAN DO IT TOO’, all the positive reinforcement messages lifted verbatim from 1000 other Forever Living profiles.

There’s no doubt you can do well from it, absolutely no doubt. Problem is, you have to turn into one of those annoying folk who piss off their friends, families and neighbours with constant and endless pushing of your tat. How come if it is such a great product it can’t be bought in shops but rather needs to be peddled via a network of recruits on facebook? People describe themselves as business owners but that’s a complete misnomer – you’re a modern day Avon lady, only you’re an Avon lady who rings the doorbell every ten minutes and shouts through the letterbox about the benefit of smearing aloe vera on your ‘gina to clear up your cystitis. You’ll sharp notice that people stop answering the door too, the more you pester them. I left a comment on this sponsored advert asking why there is never any mention of the folks who buy into the whole Forever Living scam and then lose all their money, or about the dubious marketing, or the fact that it’s a giant fucking racket. I didn’t swear, but the comments were deleted immediately and I got a snooty, patronising private message from someone with a dreadful haircut advising me that ‘they felt sorry for me for not being able to see the benefits of such a fantastic product’. You can imagine how grief-stricken I was by such a retort, but typical that the negative comments get deleted. People looking for the champagne lifestyle – which such a tiny amount of sellers will achieve, and even then it’s only with the ill-gotten gains of those below them – are likely to be suckered in. It’s a mess.

I think what gets me most of all, though, is the fact they prey upon the desperate. Officially, they’re told they’re not allowed to say that these products help with illnesses, but I know from personal experience – many, many times over – that the reps say whatever they can in order to gain a sale. I’m lucky that aside from being outrageously handsome and ever so slightly overweight, there’s nowt much wrong with me. I play along, though – I make out I’ve got disease XYZ just to see if they ever back down and say no, this product isn’t for you. They never do. It’s always ‘oooh yes, this can help with your illness’ as though they have the cure to all known disease in a box in their bedroom as opposed to a few sachets of knock-off tat. They don’t give a flying fuck whether these crappy, untested products make a disease worse or the pain that you might go through, they care about one thing only: your money in their pockets. Well, a tiny bit of your money in their pockets and the rest in their leader’s pockets. They are arseholes of the highest order.

Listen, as you can imagine, the Internet does a much better job of explaining this. Take a look at this article on cracked.com or this (god-forbid) recount of an ex-rep on the Daily Mail (I know I know).  Have a gander on Mumsnet for some honest opinion of what people think of the sellers or take a read of the many, many discussion threads out there on it. If you’ve got someone with white teeth and whistling ears trying to sell you a magic potion or worse still, trying to recruit you, ask yourself three questions:

  • why can’t I buy these wonderful products in a shop or why aren’t they prescribed by a doctor;
  • what has this person got to gain by promoting such a ‘wonderful’ lifestyle; and
  • who do I trust more – science, the NHS, doctors and medical studies – or the badly-typed words of someone with a BTEC in Travel and Tourism and debts to pay off?

Exactly.

Right, let’s get to the recipe, eh? This dish is very easy to make – pretty much a bit of blending, a bit of smearing and a bit of grilling. The side of rainbow chard is an excellent way to get your speed food in and can be used as an accompaniment to any other dish.

curried mango pork chops with orange glazed rainbow chard

to make curried mango pork chops with orange glazed rainbow chard you will need:

for the chard…

  • a big bunch of rainbow chard cut up into small chunks (or use spinach)
  • a big fat onion sliced thinly
  • a clove of garlic, minced, using one of these! 
  • one orange

to make curried mango pork chops with orange glazed rainbow chard you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200 degrees
  • make a dry rub by mixing together in a small bowl 2 tsp of paprika, 1 tsp curry powder, salt and pepper
  • in a small pan, mix together the mango, ½ tsp curry powder, ½ tsp paprika and stir frequently over a low heat
  • rub a good amount of the dry rub mix onto each pork chop, on both sides
  •  heat an oven-safe pan over a medium-high heat with a little frylight and add the pork chops
  • sear for about 1-2 minutes on each side
  • add a tbsp of the mango mixture onto each pork chop and spread evenly, reserving the rest
  • place the pan in the oven and cook for about ten minutes
  • keep stirring the mango mixture until it has thickened slightly
  • when the pork is cooked, serve with the remaining mango puree on the side

to make the rainbow chard

  • cook off the onion and garlic until golden with a few squirts of oil
  • lower the heat and add the chard, put a lid on the pan and allow to steam gently
  • once reduced, squeeze the juice of half an orange in the pan and allow to bubble gently

I’m not synning the orange juice. We’re talking half an orange between four. If you want to syn it, it’s such a fractional tiny amount that it can be your job to work it out!

Serve!

J

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May 23, 2016

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breast, chinese, cured meats, dips, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, noodles, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, sauces, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

fresh spring rolls and dipping sauce

Was it my fresh spring rolls and dipping sauce that caught your eye? Well scroll on down, you filthy buggers. Fair warning, tonight’s entry is a little saucy.

Before we get to the recipe, I’m going to do something unusual. See, in the facebook group that accompanies this blog are a load of funny buggers, each more crass and hilarious than the last. I can rattle off a blue joke and a knob gag no worries, but well, I struggle to get women’s problems correct. It’s all so complicated, and well, if you get it wrong, you’re liable to end up with a clit around the ear and a flap in the face. Wah-wah.

Anyway, I decided it would be a gas to ask people if they wanted to write an ‘article’ for the blog – no catches, write what you want, and if I have a recipe but can’t be buggered to type up one of my usual why-use-one-word-when-forty-paragraphs will do, I can post one up! If you’re interested in having a go, let me know in the comments. Readers, please remember that these articles are people wanting to try their hand at writing a blog post but don’t have the confidence to set up a full blog. Be kind. If you’re thinking negative comments, keep them ssh. If you enjoy the article, let’s hear from you!

Tonight’s entry is by the charming Clarabell, who lists the ability to say the alphabet backwards and having a creepy double-jointed hand as her party trick. Don’t believe me? Take a look!

20160522_174459

Goodness. Least she never struggles to get the last Pringle out of the tube, eh? I’d better make sure that isn’t the image that shows up when you post this to facebook. Over to Clarabell…

sweatbox: a tale by Clarabell

Now, we’re all used to the candid craic from James and Paul about douche bulbs, all things in the downstairs department, and of course the post that mentioned bukkake…which I had to google. On a work laptop. Upon which I forgot to delete the history. Cheers guys! So I figured that with a gaggle of MAINLY female readers that my post would have to be about some nether region tale of the female variety. Something we’ve probably all experienced at one point. Perhaps not James and Paul. (James edit: NOT TRUE! I’ve been there and it was all very charming, but not for me. That’s what keeps the world interesting, different opinions, apropos of nothing I don’t like potted ox tongue either).

I’ve been fed up lately, I’ve been getting bouts of cystitis, antibiotics, thrush, cystitis….repeat. I’ve had a scan and there’s nothing wrong with me other than I don’t drink enough water, and have self-created this cycle of misery.

Resigned to buying the thrush cream, after the standard tactic of ‘ignore it and it might not be there’ stopped working, off I went to the local shopping centre, my purse hovering on the thick air in front of me. I’m in Asda but I can’t see what I want on the shelves, and I’m quickly narked that the chemist is the other side of the centre, only because when your regions are on fire, that’s a long walk to do, simultaneously avoiding the urge for a scratch, and walking like there’s stones in your shoes. But! In a flash of delight, I remember that they took out half of the checkouts, to make an optician that no-one goes in, and…. a PHARMACY! Whoop! There’s nothing like the delight of knowing you can get minge cream at the same time as your linguine.

“I’d like some Canesten Oral Duo” I say bravely– pointing to the bottom shelf. Worryingly, he looks like he doesn’t have a clue what I’m asking for. He follows my finger to the bottom shelf, and picks up some Sea Legs, examines box, puts it back and repeats – he does this a few times with a box of Rennie, and some headlice solution, and eventually comes across the thrush ‘range’ glowing on the shelf like a barber’s pole in full red and white glory. I’m wondering at this point if he is the pharmacist, or whether he’s mugged the rightful medicine man of his Asda badge and strolled behind the desk in the manner of an imposter, hoping to get first nab of the nearby ‘Whoops’ range, but he comes across the requested item at last. Not literally, you’d really struggle to pick the box up if he did that.

“Is it for you?” he asks. Christ on a bike…look mate, it’s fifteen flaming quid…I am not about to raffle it off in the Slimmer of the Week basket I don’t say this, instead I go with “yes” and 100% resting bitch face. Oh but he isn’t finished, “have you used it before?”…panic! What’s the correct answer to this? ‘Yes’ and appear like some serial offender, someone who can’t control their rancid ways and lifting minnie?! Or ‘no’ and risk a declined purchase, or worse, some sort of lecture on best application practice and/or side effects?! I go with “yes” quickly followed up with “a while ago…” He gives a small nod. He knows I’m baking bread. Phew, home and dry, which is good because another customer has joined me and she has the smug privacy of a prescription, which is her ticket to a no question transaction.  What is it with these useless questions?

However, there can be none more useless than the question I once got asked buying antihistamines for hayfever, “drowsy or non-drowsy” I was asked! Really?! Erm..let me check my diary…nope, nothing on the afternoon, drowsy for me please, I’m fine to lounge around spaced out and sleepy, I was not planning on driving and the only ‘machinery’ I’ll be operating will be the telly, so yup, drowsy will do just do fine…ah wait, no consuming alcohol? Poop.

Anyway, Ahmed walks to the till, and promptly stops and stands above it doing jazz hands, and of course he just remembered he doesn’t know how to use it. Suddenly, “Doreen!” he shouts WAVING THE CANESTEN BOX IN THE AIR! “Doreen, can you ring this in for me please”! I swear the smug-prescription-holder does the smirking shimmy, that tiny little wobble that comes only with an inner titter.  I throw her some side-ways shade, which is code for ‘look lady, we’ve all been there, and you will one day (maybe soon after that prescription for antibiotics teehee!) also have to stand here and deal with this lovely bloke, showing the world his arm pit sweat patch whilst at the same time holding aloft the solution to your itchy snatch’.

Goodness me! I once had a flatmate who had perpetual thrush, brought on by the fact her extra-endowed boyfriend  seemed hellbent on hammering her cervix over her back-teeth. Not even kidding there, she showed me a photo he’d sent and what I thought was his arm holding the camera definitely wasn’t. At one point our fridge was more cranberry juice than anything else. I still can’t have a cranberry sour without thinking of her undercarriage. I remember we once had a full stand-up row over the fact I refused to boil tea-towels in a saucepan on the hob to sterilise them. Awfully judgemental for someone with a little too much glue on their envelope.

Now listen, before anyone starts writing their ‘ANGRY OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS’ letters and getting themselves in a tizz, don’t. I know it’s perfectly natural and I know people get all sorts of things but do you know, if we can’t laugh at ourselves, what can we do? Let’s not live in a joyless vacuum.

Right, to the food!

 fresh spring rolls

These are one of those tasty little dishes that look complicated to make, but they’re really not. We used Blue Dragon Rice Pancakes for these which SW say are one syn each (ridiculous) – you can buy rice pancakes from any Asian supermarket too. The joy with these is that you can ram them absolutely chock-full of speed vegetables and lovely free things. 

to make fresh spring rolls, you’ll need:

to make fresh spring rolls, you should:

  • get a plate and fill it with warm water, you’ll obviously not need a lot
  • chop all your veg up – this is where a mandolin will save you so much time and make everything neat and wonderful – click here to buy one of those
  • get everything ready to hand
  • take one pancake, push it into the water, allow to rehydrate a little
  • take out, shake off the water and lay it on a tea-towel or better, a nice clean worktop
  • if you imagine it in thirds, you want to place a big amount of filling at the top of the bottom third – or really, just below the middle of the pancake
  • fold in the sides
  • fold in the bottom
  • roll – keep it nice and tight with your hands (fnar fnar)
  • place on a chopping board and cut with a very sharp knife

You’re done! We served ours with a dipping sauce where we took low sodium soy sauce (6 tbsp), a couple of tablespoons of hoisin (4 syns), a few chilli flakes, a drop of honey (1 syn) and some passata. Stir and serve!

Although these are a syn each, these fresh spring rolls are very, very filling and a brilliant way of getting fresh veg into you. I’m a big fat pig and only managed four! If you wanted to keep it vegetarian, swap out the meat for cooked egg or mushrooms.

Enjoy.

J

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May 20, 2016

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breakfast, desserts, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegetarian

lemon meringue overnight oats

A man walks into a Scottish bakery, points at the goodies and says ‘Hoo, is that an eclair or meringue?’

The baker says…

…

…

wait for it…

…

‘No you’re right, it’s an eclair!’

AN ECLAIR! SEE HE THOUGHT BECAUSE HE WAS SCOTTISH HE SAID ‘OR AM I WRONG’ AAAAH YES

BOOM

giphy

And the crowd goes mild!

Come on man straight in there with a bloody meringue joke, there’s literally one meringue joke in existence and that’s it. I’m not even sorry!

Tonight is a super-quick post because it’s Friday, I want to sit back, put my cankles up and rest my weary hide. I’m lucky in that I enjoy my job, god knows what it must be like if you hate it. Paul watches a lot of How It’s Made on the TV (really getting the use out of our Sky subscription, because who doesn’t want to know how pencil sharpeners are made or how they deliver 24,000 cherry bakewells a day?) and you’ll often see, amongst the fantastic machinery and wonderfully clever mechanical systems some little old dear spending eight hours troubling her sciatica and screwing toothpaste caps on or holding over a sheet of pastry. I’m not knocking anyone’s job because well, a job is a job, but goodness me, how do they do it? I get bored if I have to type the same word twice – I treat my emails like a round of Just a Minute. No repetition, hesitation or deviation.

I confess myself a little ticked off because I went to fill the car and promptly filled it full of Supreme Diesel. My car is diesel, so what’s the problem? Well, it offends my meanness to pay extra for something that I can’t see the benefit of. Nevertheless, I went in, handed over my monthly pay and the cashier, clearly sensing my distress, offered me a free copy of the Sun. He was clearly having a bad day. I took one, but only to be polite, the way someone at a buffet may take a spoonful of potato salad that the host has made only to drop it into a plantpot when their back was turned.

What a rag, though. Read what you like, it’s your life, but look at the front cover today – it’s not filled with the sad news that a plane crashed into the Mediterranean killing 66 poor buggers in what could be another frightening turn of terrorism, oh no, it’s got a mock-up of an olive-oil filled paddling pool with the frothy headline ‘The Day Free Speech Drowned’ and a couple of subheadings about how it goes against common sensibility. That should tell you everything you need to know about this shitrag.

We all know who it is, so please don’t be a funny bugger and comment on this saying ‘OMG ITZ THINGY’ because, well, don’t. What I can’t fathom is why anyone cares. The visual is troubling enough but can anyone genuinely say that the fact some happily married man and his husband had sex with another man? Why is it news? No-one was hurt (although they’ll be smelling like a greek salad left out in the sun for a few days), no laws were broken, it wasn’t even a Boy George whoopsy-daisy-chained-an-escort-to-a-wall moment. Some mouthbreathing anus from (I think) The Sun was on Radio 4 on this morning saying that it’s in the public interest because this artist is in the public eye. Well, here’s the thing, unless he’s felching someone out on my front lawn, I couldn’t give a toss – and even then I’d only mind because he’d be flattening our new grass. The journalist went on to say ‘AND HE HAS KIDS’ like having kids immediately renders it illegal to have sex and fun with your partner, which is ridiculous, and there was more than a hint of the kids being exposed to their seedy lifestyle.

Of course, the media printing the name of the children’s fathers and explicit, in-depth detail of their olive-oil-orgasms isn’t exposing them, oh no no no. That’s in the public interest. 

Honestly, they’re a bunch of twats. Feel free to print that, you Tiddler-Riddler-haired witch.

Oops! So yes, let’s get to the lemon meringue overnight oats, shall we?

lemon meringue overnight oats

to make lemon meringue overnight oats, you’ll need:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because we like them
  • fat free natural yoghurt
  • one lemon
  • 2  lemon mini meringues from Marks and Spencers – it’s 7 syns for the whole 35g packet and you get about 14 in there, so let’s hedge our bets at 1 syn for 2, feel free to add more, I don’t care, go wild in the aisles darling
  • lemon curd (1 tsp is 1 syn, I used two)
  • a pretentious serving jar or any old container

to make lemon meringue overnight oats, you should:

  • finely grate the lemon – not all of it, into the yoghurt – for once, this is something I can really say a microplane grater is great for – you get all the rind without all of the pith! Buy one here, you’ll use it lots and lots!
  • it’s really just a case of layering – lemon yoghurt on the bottom, then half the oats, then a spoonful of lemon curd, a crushed up meringue, yoghurt, lemon curd, oats and meringue
  • I like to squirt some of the lemon juice into the yoghurt because I’m a rebel, plus I’m used to the taste of sour yoghurt splashing on my tongue
  • once you’ve taken a picture, cooed over it and thought well isn’t that a treat, mix it all up and put in the fridge for the morning OR, eat it straight away like I did

If you enjoyed that, we’ve got seven more wonderful overnight oats recipes all on one page right here. Because we care. Go have a look, you won’t be disappointed. Promise.

It’s worth a mention that you could make your own Slimming World friendly lemon curd but really, the proper stuff is 1 syn per level tsp, you don’t need a lot of it for flavour and life’s too short to be pissing about in the kitchen with eggs and a wheelbarrow of Splenda for the sake of one syn. If you prefer to make your own, there’s plenty of recipes on the Internet. OK? GOOD. Jeez.

J

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May 18, 2016

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, recipe card, salad, vegetarian

peanut broccoli salad

Here for the peanut broccoli salad? Scroll down to the picture and start running your fingers under the words on the screen. Today’s post isn’t going to be played for laughs because something is on my mind. The NHS. Yes, today we’re not going to so much as wander off the path as set camp in the forest. See, I was driving home listening to Professional Chode Jeremy Hunt gabbling away in that smug, shit-eating way of his about reaching a deal with the junior doctors. I can’t abide the man. You know when someone is described as making your skin crawl? He makes me turn inside out like a salt-covered slug with shyness issues. I’m unapologetic in my view. He represents the very worst – perhaps second only to George Osborne, a man so smug that he probably has a Fleshlight designed in the vision of his own face delivering bad news – of what is wrong with who is running the country. But that’s another rant for another time.

See, I love the NHS. I truly do. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had previous bouts of health anxiety and whilst that’s under control, it’s also meant I’ve had many trips to the doctors in my time. I’ve also got a dicky ticker to boot. Every single time I’ve been into hospital I’ve been treated with the utmost respect by all of the staff, who wear their smiles wide and work hard to bring reassurance and comfort to all. I was in there this morning for physiotherapy on my Klicker-Klacker neck. The doctor who I saw was wonderful, knew about my anxiety, took the time to explain what the problem was (and more importantly, what it wasn’t!) and even had the good grace not to recoil when I took my shirt off. I wasn’t rushed, I wasn’t made to feel like I was inconveniencing them, and I was told just to call up if things got worse. 

I hasten to clarify something – I’ve only been into hospital when I’ve actually had something wrong – I’m not a timewaster (though I’ll say this – don’t dismiss anyone with health anxiety as being a timewaster – take a moment to ponder what it must actually be like worrying and fretting that they’re dying). I’ve never had a single bad experience with the NHS, and it breaks my heart (just what I need) to see the systematic dismantling of it coming in via the back door.

And listen – I normally love things coming in via the back door. Of course there could be improvements, but what massive organisation can’t stand to lose a little fat? Plus if I have to sit through one more ‘GO YOU’ video in the waiting room where positive messages are beamed at me by someone more tooth than human I’ll cut myself. Least I’ll be in the right place. I’m going to hand over the typing to Paul, who can put our feelings in much better terms. Over to you, Fatty.

All we ever really hear about the NHS is that it’s awful, things are going wrong, mistakes are happening – I can only disagree with that entirely both with my own experiences and those I’ve seen of others (as a spectator and a cog in the machine itself). 

It’s pretty amazing to think of this giant institution being there in the background which we all take for granted. Can you imagine having to dole out some cash every time you wanted to see the doctor? I had a taste of it when we last went to Florida and suffered from a simple perforated eardrum. It cost nearly £500 for ten minutes with a mardy quack and a Tiny-Tears bottle of ear drops. £500! James started clutching his heart until I reminded him we’d need to mortgage the house to pay for the defibrillator. We paid it because I needed it – I was in agony and due to fly back, and fortunately had some travel insurance to cover it, but to imagine having that sort of thing drop into my lap on a normal day beggars belief and needless to say would mean I’d probably have to self-medicate with whinging and attention-seeking, and probably some Ben & Jerry’s too. 

This whole idea of the value of the NHS hit me today just as I was sorting out our diary – I’ve got a few medical appointments coming up with my GP and at the hospital (we’re at that age, you know) that are for things that are all down to my fatness, and James had a quick rub-down by the physio today for his wonky neck. I did a quick bit of googling about the subject and to have all of these things without the NHS (i.e. like in America) would have cost nearly £3,000. Isn’t that astonishing? I know there’s insurance and various schemes but overall, what a mess. 

Isn’t it great that all these services are offered for nowt, all because of our NHS. Now, I know – I annoy myself with these things – all this treatment is entirely my own fault and completely avoidable, and I am a little ashamed to have to be using up the resources of the NHS on me being too greedy, but on the other hand what a fantastic public service it is – to know that all of us, whoever we are, where we come from, what we do, can have the most fundamental thing – our continued survival – at our disposal. And, what a thing it is that we can be so lucky to have something so grand and wonderful that we take it for granted.

So I made myself a commitment today – to look-up to the NHS and champion it, and also defend it. James will be rolling his eyes at this (he hates it when I get political) (James edit: no I don’t, I just find it hard to get it up when you wear your Thatcher wig and flat shoes) so I’ll maybe soften it a bit – but we ALL need to defend it from those that want to take it away. It is OURS and we must keep it OURS and so we must all do what we can to cherish it, use it, and make sure it’s there for others in the future. So, from today, I’ll continue my weight loss journey so that I can get healthy but also reduce the strain on the NHS in the future – today it’s a fatty liver but if I keep on at the rate I am there will be all sorts of obesity-related conditions that come knocking at my creaky door (and knees – and I need them for….things…), and make sure I do all I can to protect and defend the NHS when I can. Not just in a rabble-rousing way but also to defend the very essence of the NHS and the culture that comes with it, because god knows we’ll miss it when it’s gone. 

Phew. All better. 

Let’s do the recipe, then. This salad more than filled us up as a main meal – we served two paprika chicken breasts with it, the recipe for which you can find here – but it would do as a side too. Plenty of speed and more importantly, plenty of taste. This makes enough for four people as a big side dish.

peanut broccoli salad

to make peanut broccoli salad, you’ll need:

  • 1 or 2 large broccoli, cut into florets (or use 600g tenderstem/purple sprouting broccoli like we did)
  • 1 tin of chickpeas
  • 3 spring onions, sliced
  • 2 tbsp reduced fat peanut butter (8 syns)
  • 1 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp honey (2½ syns)
  • a drop of sesame oil (½ syn)

If you’re serving with chicken, use the Musclefood chicken. Not saying this to push the product because we get paid commission (although we do) – we forgot to defrost some chicken and had to buy a couple of breasts from the supermarket. They went in looking swell and tasty, they came out shrunken and dry as a dead dog’s dick. Musclefood’s chicken is tasty, doesn’t shrink and isn’t full of gristle that makes eating your dinner the equivalent of chewing on the ring of a condom. Click here to order our freezer filler which will get you loads of chicken!

And look – yes you use syns, but this dish works out as 11 syns for the lot. I’ve divided it into four at 3 syns each, so I’m actually being over-cautious there. Don’t sack it off because it uses syns, that’s what they are there for. 

Finally, the inspiration for this recipe came from gimmesomeoven – we’ve taken it and made it SW-friendly.

to make peanut broccoli salad, you should:

  • reheat the oven to 200°c
  • drain the chickpeas well and place on a single layer on a baking sheet and dribble Worcestershire sauce over them – give them a shake to get them coated
  • bake in the oven for about 30 minutes – you don’t want them at full teeth-shattering level but a bit of crunch is a good thing
  • meanwhile, in a bowl mix together the peanut butter, rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey and sesame oil, loosen with a tablespoon of hot water if it’s too thick, until you reach your desired consistency
  • bring a large pan of water to the boil and add the broccoli
  • cook for a minute or two, or longer if you like it softer (amateur)
  • drain and place in cold water
  • when ready to serve, drain the broccoli and in a large bowl mix together with the peanut sauce
  • serve and sprinkle over the roasted chickpeas

Enjoy!

J

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May 15, 2016

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airfryer, american, beef, beef mince, classics, dips, dressings, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, panko, persian, pork mince, quark, recipe card, sandwiches, sauces, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, syn free, taster ideas, thai, vegetarian

taster night ideas for Slimming World

Looking for taster night ideas? There’s SEVEN recipes down below. I’m not surprised you want inspiration, nothing seems to strike fear into slimmers at Slimming World more than ‘we’re having a party next week, bring something along‘. Well, perhaps the words ‘let’s split the room in half, someone keep points, we’re going to do group activities‘. God I hate that. I’m too antisocial at the best of times but being forced to come up with a witty team name and shout out speed foods makes my throat hitch. For those not in the Cult of Mags, a taster night is where everyone is expected to bring along some food to share with the rest of the class and usually results in about twenty quiches and a box of grapes bought from the Co-op over the road by the lady who forgot it was on.

I struggle with taster nights because, as previously mentioned, I don’t like eating food when I don’t know how clean the kitchen it’s coming from is. Luckily I’m in a class now with people who do look familiar with a bottle of Ajax, but Christ, some of the sights I’ve seen in other classes, well I wouldn’t eat what came out of their kitchens even if it contained the antidote to a life-threatening poison I’d accidentally ingested.

Oh! A quick word. When a buffet is served up in class, try and allow the meek amongst us access to the food. A couple of years ago, in a class in Wakefield no less, Paul and I didn’t get any food because half the class – not the better half – dashed forward as soon as the ‘party’ began and formed one giant body of impassable bulk. It was like the Berlin Wall, only smelling faintly of chips. I’ve never seen food shovelled and devoured with such ferocity and I’ve seen Sicilian wild boars being fed. All I wanted was a (nothing-like-a) Ferrero Rocher and a few ‘JUST LIKE DORITOS’ crisps that I could have planed a door with. I had my revenge anyway – the wasabi peas that I put on the table thinking they were syn-free were actually about eight syns a handful. What can I say? My knowledge of the Mandarin language is a little rusty.

So, with all the above in mind, we decided to do a post on snacks, also fuelled by the fact it was Eurovision last night and we like to have a trough of food to work through whilst we watch our entry get annihilated. Before anyone says the UK will never win because ‘it’s too political’ and ‘no-one votes for us because of the war’, that was relevant maybe ten years ago and certainly isn’t now. Russia almost won it and well, that Putin’s been a bit of a tinker this year, has he not? We don’t win because we send absolute shite – po-faced, dreary, period-pain music with insipid staging and crap tunes. No doubt that Aldi Jedward can sing a tune and strum a guitar but they lost a singing competition where literally tens of people voted for someone else to be a winner. Why would that translate to success in the Eurovision Song Contest? EH? We need to send something amazing, with a massive chorus and an uplifting melody, not a song that would barely make its way onto the second CD in the Now That’s What I Call White Noise 87 compilation.

Anyway come on now, let’s get to the recipes, shall we? This is the spread.

taster night ideas

Fancy, right? On view then:

  • Bánh Mì balls with a spicy dip
  • our teeny tiny teriyaki tasters
  • sandwiches filled with syn-free egg mayonnaise and tuna and cucumber
  • sweet potato crisps with four different types of houmous
  • baked new potatoes with cheese and bacon topping

Out of sight:

  • spicy couscous balls
  • gin and tonic lollies

Three caveats that I’m going to throw in before we begin:

TWEAK

  • some of these recipes are ‘tweaks’ in the truest sense of the word – especially the crisps – and it’s up to you whether you follow the rule of synning them or not – tweaks being when you use an ingredient in a way it isn’t intended to be used, such as slicing a sweet potato to make crisps. I will mention it where appropriate. My own view (which you can find here) is that it’s better to be eating something made from a healthy ingredient than a processed packet of crisps. It boils down to this – 100g of sweet potato is around 85 calories, 100g of Walkers crisps kicks in over 550 calories. I’ll be fucked if I’m synning sweet potato crisps at the same rate as normal crisps. If you feel the need to be all frothy and leave a comment castigating me for my temerity, please save yourself the finger strain, wipe the spittle from your lips and simply don’t bother – personal choice;
  • a couple of these recipes you’ll have seen before if you’re a long-time follower, but I thought it would be handy to put them all in one place; and
  • as usual, I’ve given syn values for a normal portion and I’ll mention when it uses up a HEA/HEB. If you’re eating the entire buffet, you’ll need to think about how many HEB/HEA’s you’re using! It’ll make sense as we go along. Basically, each recipe stands on its own. Right? Right.

taster night ideas #1: sweet potato crisps with four different types of houmous:

taster night ideas

to make the sweet potato crisps, you’ll need:

  • a couple of big sweet potatoes
  • spray oil – a few squirts of Filippo Berio’s olive oil is only half a syn, and that’s all you need
  • chinese five spice

to make the sweet potato crisps, you should:

  • to make the crisps, use a microwave, it’s much easier
  • get a big old sweet potato and cut it to uniform thin slices – this is where having a mandolin slicer comes in very handy, because it’ll take no time at all to do the slices – buy one here and never look back, not least because it makes your food look great when it’s all uniform
  • arrange the slices on a plate, squirt with some spray oil, dust with chinese five spice (or indeed, any flavouring you want) and rub it in
  • microwave on full power – it usually takes about six minutes, but keep checking every couple of minutes, and once they start to look dry, turn them over
  • keep a proper eye on them mind, because they can burn easily once they dry out
  • once done, take them off the plate, set aside, and do the next batch

to make the four way houmous, you’ll need:

  • a few small tins of chickpeas
  • garlic cloves
  • fat free cottage cheese
  • a lemon or two
  • sea salt

to make the four way houmous, you should:

  • the basic houmous recipe is simple enough – for enough to fill one of those little square bowls above, you’ll want to use one small tin of cooked chick peas (syn free), a nice round tablespoon of fat free cottage cheese, a garlic clove, pinch of sea salt and some lemon juice. Blend it together, adding a little more lemon juice if you like it runny or keeping some back if you prefer it chunky. It’s up to you. You will save yourself so much time if you get yourself one of these little express choppers that Delia Smith was always going on about between tumblers of Scotch – you can find one here – it’ll make houmous in no time
  • to make the different variations, you just add a few ingredients:
    • lemon and garlic (add an extra couple of garlic gloves, a squidge more lemon juice and decorate with finely grated lemon peel) (don’t take the pith, literally, as that is very bitter – just the top layer, please)
    • basil and parmesan (10 torn basil leaves, 10g of shaved parmesan, bit of salt) – up to you if you want to syn such a tiny portion of parmesan but bearing in mind you’ll be getting what, 2.5g of it, I wouldn’t bother
    • pickled red cabbage (just a few chunks of pickled red cabbage and some of the pickling vinegar added to give it colour
    • paprika and sun-dried tomato – I chucked in 1tbsp of sundried tomato paste (1.5 syns, but again, through the laws of dilution, it’s up to you if you syn it)

Easy! Of course, if you don’t want to fart on making the crisps, just chop up some peppers, carrots and cucumber and use them instead to dip into your houmous. If you want our little serving dish, you guessed it, it’s on Amazon!

taster night ideas #2: teeny tiny teriyaki tasters:

teeny tiny teriyaki tasters

This makes enough for 36 sticky teeny tiny teriyaki tasters (fnar fnar), if you make them bigger, adjust the syns per ball. There’s 12 syns in the overall recipe.

to make teeny tiny teriyaki tasters, you’ll need:

to make teeny tiny teriyaki tasters, you should:

  • in a large bowl mix together the pork and the beef mince with the egg yolk
  • using a tablespoon, scoop out a spoon-size ball and roll into meatballs – do this for all of the mixture (you’ll need about 36 – if you want, you could weigh out each ball at around 27g each…but life’s too short)
  • heat a large pan over a medium high heat and add a couple of squirts of spray oil or, urgh, Frylight, bleurgh
  • cook the meatballs until browned all over and cooked right through – you WILL need to do them in batches
  • place cooked meatballs onto a baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm whilst you cook the rest
  • when done, mix together the soy sauce, white wine, sherry, honey and ginger in a small jug and pour into the same pan you used to cook the meatballs and reduce the heat to medium
  • cook for a few minutes until the sauce has reduced and thickened
  • add the meatballs back into the pan and stir carefully to coat – I find it easier to tumble the meatballs in and then pick up the pan and gently slosh them around rather than trying to stir with a spoon
  • serve on cocktail sticks and sprinkle over the seeds – don’t sweat it if you can’t find these, you could easily leave them off and that brings the syn count to 1 syn for six – even better – but they look so pretty with the seeds on

taster night ideas #3: Bánh Mì balls with a spicy dip:

taster night ideas

to make Bánh Mì balls with a spicy dip, you’ll need:

  • 500g turkey mince
  • 1 onion (grate half of it, chop the other half)
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 3 spring onions, finely sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp fish sauce
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 tsp of sriracha, (1 syn) (you can use any old hot sauce)
  • 1 egg
  • 25g panko (4.5 syns) (or use breadcrumbs from your HEB allowance)
  • ½ cucumber, thinly sliced
  • 5 radishes, thinly sliced
  • 1 tsp rice vinegar
  • 100g quark

to make Bánh Mì balls with a spicy dip, you should:

Full disclosure: we got this recipe from the fabulous cookingforkeeps.com – her recipe can be found here and looks equally as delicious – we’ve tweaked ours for Slimming World!

  • preheat the oven to 200 degrees
  • in a bowl, mix together the turkey mince, onion (grated and chopped), carrot, spring opnions, garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce, 1 tsp of sriracha, egg and the panko until combined
  • roll into 1″ size balls and place on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper
  • cook in the oven for twenty minutes
  • meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together 1 tsp rice vinegar, 1 tsp sriracha and the quark to make a dipping sauce
  • slice the radishes and cucumbers as thinly as you can and skewer one of each onto a cocktail stick with the meatball

taster night ideas #4: little sandwiches:

to make little sandwiches, you’ll need:

taster night ideas

No need for a full recipe here, really. Take whatever bread you want from your HEB – we use Kingsmill Crustless Wholemeal bread, which you can have three slices of. Cut nice circles out of them, remember you eat with your eyes.

  • for the egg salad, boil up four eggs, break them up with a fork, add a tablespoon of quark, lots of black pepper, a chopped tomato and some spring onions
  • for the tuna – well, we’re old school, we just like tuna mixed with vinegar and served with cucumber. You could splash out and add a bit of Quark to bind it, I suppose…

taster night ideas #5: baked new potatoes with a cheese and bacon topping:

taster night ideas

to make baked new potatoes, you’ll need:

  • 1.5kg small salad-type potatoes
  • 100g fat-free fromage frais
  • 30g parmesan (1x HEA)
  • 4 rashers of bacon, all visible fat removed
  • 4 spring onions, sliced
  • chives

to make baked new potatoes, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200 degrees (or an actifry with the paddle removed is just as good – Amazon are selling them for £125 at the moment too!)
  • prick the potatoes with a fork, spray with a little frylight and bake in the oven (or actifry) for about 45 minutes
  • grill or dry-fry the bacon until crispy and chop into small pieces
  • mix together the fromage frais, parmesan and spring onions and set aside
  • when the potatoes are cooked, leave to cool for about ten minutes
  • make a cross in the top of each potato and squeeze the bottoms to open them up
  • spoon in a little of the fromage frais mixture and top with bacon pieces and chives

taster night ideas #6: spicy couscous balls:

couscousballs

Please note: that’s an old photo, it’s actually now 4 syns for all the balls, but you’re not going to eat them all yourself anyway, surely? I’ll nip back in time and change the photo later.

Not worth making a full recipe breakdown for this, because it’s so, so easy. I use two packets of Ainsley Harriott’s spicy sensations couscous, which come in at 2 syns per pack made up with water (so don’t be adding butter, you cheeky buggers). Add the appropriate level of water (whatever it says on the pack) and leave to absorb. Fluff with a fork. Beat an egg and mix it into the couscous, then squeeze as many balls as you can out of the mixture. Pop onto a tray and stick it in the oven on 150 degrees for an hour or so – you want to ‘dry’ them out. Cooked low and slow, you’ll be laughing. For a dip, make tzatziki – greek yoghurt (I use Tesco Finest 0% fat – no syns) mixed with cucumber cut into tiny cubes and mint. Stir, chill, eat.

taster night ideas #7: gin and tonic ice lollies

taster night ideas

Again, no need for a full recipe. We mixed 25ml of gin with a glass of diet tonic, poured it into a cheapy ice-lolly mould like this £3 from Amazon and added a slice of cucumber. Between six, it’s half a syn each. Of course, it’s easy to customise this, put your pint of whisky in, add lime, add fruit, don’t add alcohol, do what you like!

OK, I hope that’s given you some inspiration. It’s certainly made my fingers ache!

Do me a favour though – share this page in as many facebook pages as you can, because taster recipes is one of the main things people need. Spread the love! Leave me your comments below!

Oh it’s worth noting, we did have a couple of drinks to get us through Eurovision, see…

taster night ideas

J

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May 11, 2016

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, recipe card, rice, travel

chicken and cabbage stir fry

Chicken and cabbage stir fry? Just scroll on down. Or have a read of my nonsense…

Now, the last blog entry was bloody miserable, wasn’t it? It all went a bit hello darkness, my old friend, did it not? Well come on, settle back in your chair and let me tell you some good things about Cornwall. It wasn’t all bad, I promise. Look, we had a nice cottage. In fact, I even made a wee video of how it looks. Forgive the crap film style, but see this was originally just intended as a Whatsapp to a mate. Don’t be mean.

It was charming – a small, hidden away little building nestled on a back lane in a small, charming village. It was decorated in that style that normally makes my eyes roll back into my brain but when I’m on holiday, I can overlook and admire. Lots of Orla Kiely, whose name still looks and sounds to me like a Countdown Conundrum, including a few feature walls clad in that distinctive colourful wallpaper which has the unique double effect of making me ooh and wince at the same time. A whoo, perhaps, only not so exuberant. The kitchen was well-appointed, which makes a bloody change, with lots of secret little gadgets that we enjoyed like a hidden plug socket that rose from the unit like a robot’s knob and an extractor fan in the ceiling that opened up like a robot’s arsehole. It really did! Don’t get me wrong, I mean I’ve seen a bloody extractor fan before, but not a sphincter-edition that opens and shuts on command. Terribly exciting. The house was absolutely littered with the kind of living magazines you’ll often find in private hospitals – look at this table made from walnut and disdain, yours for only £16,000. I would love to be in a financial position where I could open one of those magazines and not pass out from sucking too much air in over my teeth. Actually, that’s a fib, I could a billionaire and I’d still shop at IKEA, because all my shopping experiences should end in the consumption of a hot-dog.

Everything you needed was there, including a decent TV, a wine cooler, smart outdoor furnishings, fresh flowers, a little hamper welcoming us as guests, dressing gowns…ah yes, the dressing gowns. Obviously meant for people who eat wheatgrass for breakfast and think nothing of a twenty mile run before work, these barely managed to get around us. It was like trying to hide a sofa behind a tea-towel.We persevered though, and naturally this lead to embarrassment. See, we had received a text from either the owners or the people looking after the cottage to say they’d pop around in the morning. We forgot, of course, and set about on the first morning making a nice breakfast and a mess when someone knocked on the door. Paul, barely clad in his gown, answered the door, taking a moment to ensure the dressing gown met in the middle and covered him up. 

It did – but, unbeknown to him, bless, he was so busy trying to cover his belly up and make small talk about fishing towns with the person at the door that he completely neglected to cover up his nether regions, meaning Little Paul was experiencing some Cornish air of his own. I was just out of sight frantically trying to mime ‘COVER UP’ to him but whenever he looked at me he assumed I mean cover up his belly, and he tightened his gown further at the top which meant the bottom opened up more. Paul, of course, has previous when it comes to flashing his willy – sometimes with my involvement as in Ireland, and sometimes completely on his own steam as in Corsica with the holiday rep. I’m beginning to feel he may have a problem – I reckon we shouldn’t go back to New York, for instance, because he’ll probably end up tripping over one of the live cameras and having a blisteringly highly-detailed, 80ft representation of his spam dagger projected across Times Square. Whoever was at the door had the good grace not to mention his accidental nudity and to their credit, we didn’t hear them start retching until they had climbed back into their own car. Anyway, the police only kept him in for a few hours and then let him go. Kidding. Though they could have done me for handling swollen goods afterwards, kaboom-tish.

Speaking of nudity, the cottage also came with a very odd quirk – an outside bath in the yard. The yard itself wasn’t overlooked and there was a large, wooden fence bordering you from the place next door, so there was no chance of anyone glancing over at me getting undressed and calling the police to report a runaway cow frolicking in the garden. I imagine that (and indeed, the write-up hints at it) when they designed the place they imagined lithe, hunky young couples sliding into the bath together under the stars and laughing tinkly at times past. No chance for Paul and I. If we had somehow managed to both get into the bath there wouldn’t have been any room for so much as a cup of hot water and hell, no amount of Radox Muscle Relaxant would have got us out of there. Imagine two pickled eggs squashed together at the bottom of a jar and you have a faint idea. Paul’s a complete jessie anyway when it comes to being cold so there was no chance of him joining me, though he did come to my aid when my tasteful piles of Love It, Take A Break, Hiya and Fuck Me No Way spilled out of reach across the decking. I don’t know what it is about holidays that make me reach for these magazines, full as they are with medical woes, true crime and children’s names that look like someone has had a half-hearted stab at spelling a normal name and added a hyphen and a ‘Mae’ onto it. I can’t get enough. We took two books each to read – mine being a story about a man who travelled around Britain on a bus (I know how to live) and Paul brought along The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Again. That book has travelled the world with us to the point where I’m beginning to think I need to put Frank Owen on my bloody passport. I wouldn’t care but it’s quite a weighty book and takes up a lot of space in our suitcase, especially as it remains exactly there until it’s time for the flight home again. 

There is something a smidge unnerving about bathing outside, not least because whenever a light aircraft passed overhead it must have looked like the Hindenburg crash site. Worse was climbing out because, paranoia or no, there was a crunch of gravel on the other side of the fence. I can’t imagine anyone was enjoying the sight of my hairy arse clad in Radox bubbles but hey, whatever floats your boat. Admittedly the gravel crunching was more likely to be subsistence or the ground shaking from me pouring out onto the decking, but I digress. There was also a log-burner which I can say, rather proudly, that I managed to light on the first go. Paul was giving it the whole ‘put some more fuel on it’ and ‘throw more logs on it’ like his knowledge of fire extends to anything other than clicking on his mother’s gas fire. Pfft. I grew up with coal, damn it – if it has, at some point, stood upon this Earth, I can make it burn. 

It did have an indoor bathroom, of course, we weren’t having to shit in the yard, and this included a fancy double shower with a rainfall shower and one of those tiny little showers which people say is for washing your hair but I know that secretly it’s for washing your minnie-Moo. Listen ladies, I know what goes on. The dials for the shower had no clue on them as to what made it go hot and what made it go cold, nor what shower they operated, so the half-awake morning shower became more like a scene from Saw as you dodged scalding jets on the back of your leg and an icy cascade from above. I half-expected a little doll on a tricycle to wheel around the corner, although if he was bringing me a fresh bar of coal-tar soap I’d be happy.

If we had only one complaint, it would be the bed. See, we’re spoilt up here because we have an absolutely giant bed that we can tumble around in and lose each other in the heat of night, but this bed was your bog-standard, plain Jane affair. Comfortable yes, but Paul’s both a snorer and a feeler (in that, if I’m not lying next to him, he’ll be reaching out with whatever he can extend until he finds me) and, without space to escape, it made for a long, noisy, sleepless few nights. The pillows weren’t the rock-hard type that we like (honestly, I reckon Paul would be more content if I had someone come and concrete a step onto the bed instead of pillows) and so we both managed to crick our necks. Me especially so, given I’m already carrying a weird neck injury at the moment. The upshot of this was that I couldn’t turn my head right and Paul couldn’t turn his head left, which made driving in Cornwall, with its labyrinthine roads and many, many junctions, a very fractious event. Many moments of calm and tranquility in the Cornish countryside were ruined by the over-revving of my engine, me shouting at Paul to check my way rather than his way and him shouting at me saying he couldn’t and then us both shouting at each other for confirmation and then finally shouting at some poor fart in the car in front for not pulling away sharp enough and thus forcing us to repeat the whole dance again. BAH.

That is the only complaint though. We had a remarkable stay and it’s a place that, despite my crass and crude review, I can’t recommend strongly enough. It was tastefully decorated, ideally situated, had everything you could need and, for once, it was made for couples rather than smelly children. We booked with www.uniquehomestays.com and the cottage was called Two Bare Feet. We’d go back in a heartbeat. Well, no, maybe if they moved it onto the Northumberland coast…

…right, let’s get to the recipe, shall we? This recipe serves 4.

chicken and cabbage stir fry

to make chicken and cabbage stir fry you will need:

  • 300g dried noodles
  • 2 chicken breasts, cut into chunks (you don’t need to use four breasts here, despite this being for four people – two big Musclefood chicken breasts will do. I know I bang on about them a lot but two of these breasts is more than enough meat, especially compared to the tiny ones you get from the supermarket – just have a look at our deal and you’ll never look back!)
  • 2 tbsp cornflour (2 syns)
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tsp root ginger, grated
  • 500ml chicken stock
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 peppers, cut into strips
  • 2 carrots, cut into matchsticks
  • 1 cabbage, chopped
  • 300g frozen peas, thawed
  • 3 spring onions, sliced
  • 2 tsp sesame seeds (optional – roughly 2 syns)

Don’t forget, use your mincer for the ginger and then just put your ginger knob right in the freezer. It’ll be fine! A microplane mincer is one of the best things you can buy for the kitchen and it’s so cheap!

to make chicken and cabbage stir fry you should:

  • cook the noodles according to the instructions, drain and rinse with cold water, and then set aside
  • in a large bowl whisk together the chicken stock, soy sauce, lemon juice, ginger and cornflour – make sure there are no lumps
  • allow the stock mixture to cool slightly if it is hot (such as if you’ve made it using a stock cube and boiling water) and then add the chicken, and leave to marinade for about 20 minutes
  • using a slotted spoon, remove the chicken from the bowl and shake off the excess, but keep the marinade – you’ll need that later
  • heat a large pan or a wok over a medium-high heat and add a little oil
  • cook the chicken, stirring frequently so it doesn’t catch
  • remove the chicken from the pan and set aside
  • in the same pan, add a little more oil and fry the onions until softened
  • add the peppers and carrots to the pan and continue to stir fry
  • add the cabbage and keep stirring, for about 6 minutes until the cabbage starts to wilt
  • add the peas to the pan along with the rest of the marinade and the chicken, and stir until the sauce has thickened
  • add the noodles to the pan and stir until warmed through
  • serve the mixture and add the spring onions to garnish

It’s as easy as that, see?

J