See after work yesterdayI went out with a good friend to endure Poltergeist at the cinema. I say endure, I mean barely tolerate. It was absolute bobbins. I LOVE horror movies, the schlockier the better, but this was just lazy pap. It says a lot that we weren’t bothered by the usual festering tits that had packed the cinema. The type of people who can’t sit for ninety minutes without checking Facebook. Normally they make me rage – they’re the type of people who I’d happily unplug their life support machine to charge up my phone – but given how bad the movie was I couldn’t blame them, could I? We appeared to have half of China visiting in the row behind us which gave the bizarre effect of having the English film in front of us being live-translated behind us followed by shrieks and giggles and excpetionally caricatured noises. Still a dull film though. Even I was hoping for one of Phillipa’s skin-melting farts just to liven things up but she was too busy being distracted by a rolling pig / unicorn hybrid.
So yes, I synned. See I had good intentions of staying on diet but I had a pint of Guinness in my hand before I had even sat down, which was followed by pizza, pasta and ice-cream. In my defence, I thought I was only ordering a small ice-cream but it turns out the scoop they use for their ‘three scoop special’ was a dustbin lid. You can imagine my distress and disappointment at having to eat it all, it really was just the worst.
I have to be honest, both Paul and I are in a bit of a lull with our diet at the moment – Slimming World is great because it isn’t very restrictive but occasionally I just get sick of eating sensibly and not being able to have what I want. Now, people always turn around and go ‘just have a little bit of what you fancy’ but that’s not how I work. I couldn’t just have a Freddo, I’d want a carpet-sized bar of chocolate to eat until I was sick. It’ll pass, but we’re relaxing the rules a little bit at the moment – still cooking a healthy recipe every day but just need to let it ease a bit. Once the bank holiday is over we’re going to be on it 100% – but even that’s easy to say and harder to do given neither of us have the type of job where we are guaranteed to be home at five with plenty of time to cook and prepare lunches. Sometimes I just want to come home, put on my scratty boxer shorts and scratch my balls in front of the TV for six hours until bed.
As an aside – I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately, but the good news is that I’m actually writing more than ever – it’s all going in the book. New content rather than old stuff!
Anyway: it’s Eurovision tonight, so that means vodka and snacks. No apologies! I just hope to God Australia don’t win because I’ve sort-of promised Paul that we’ll go to the next one…
OK, that was moany. So here’s a nice breakfast recipe for you to be cracking on with:
to make breakfast burritos, you’ll need:
one WW (boo hiss) Love Fibre wholemeal wraps (look for the purple and blue packaging, as you can use this wrap as a HEB); two slimming world sausages (or use low syn sausages but syn them), two eggs, HEA portion of extra mature cheese, two decent slices of ham cut into chunks and a potato.
to make breakfast burritos, you should:
cut the potato into very thin strips and spritz with a tiny bit of oil and pop in the oven for ten minutes (if that) until they’re cooked through like french fries – set aside
cook the sausages either under the grill or in an Actifry, then cut into thin slices (like matchsticks rather than discs)
crack the eggs into a pan and whisk on a medium heat to make scrambled eggs, set aside
slice up your ham and grate your cheese
when everything is ready, hoy your wrap into the oven for a minute or so to warm it through, then lie it flat on the counter
load it up – a row of cheese, then sausage, then egg, then chips, then ham
roll it up!
If you’re a bit slow and don’t know how to roll a wrap properly, you can find a guide here. I had to use it, don’t worry, no-one is judging.
Just out of shot in that photo was an attempt to make homemade salsa but as it looks like something you’d scrape out of an infected foot, I’m not putting the recipe on. What a bitch!
Both out and about tonight but could we let you down and not give you a recipe? NO. Here’s a failsafe recipe for Asian chicken nuggets. They’re Asian because of the marinade, naturally. I’m in a terrible mood at the moment, not helped by the fact I pulled FUCKING SPAIN out of my OWN Eurovision sweepstake. However: it’s Eurovision this Saturday and I absolutely can’t wait. I love it! My leather cheerio is already relaxing from the fug of amyl nitrate billowing across from Austria. Anyway:
3 syns is nowt, but you can make it completely syn-free (the nuggets anyway) by just blending your HEB bread allowance. But balls to that, use panko breadcrumbs instead and live like a king!
to make asian chicken nuggets, you’ll need:
two chicken breasts chopped into nugget sized bits, soy sauce, rice wine (1 syn for two tablespoons, but you only need one, so I’m not counting the syns), 1tsp five spice powder, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, pinch of salt, panko breadcrumbs (Tesco sell these and they come in at 4.5 syns for 25g – you’ll need 50g, so that’s 4.5 syns but as most of it falls off you’d be hard pushed to be anywhere near 4.5 syns, so I’ve said three)
to make asian chicken nuggets, you should:
well this is tricky – combine all the wet ingredients and spices with the chicken and leave to marinate – the longer the better, as the actress said to the bishop
put your breadcrumbs into a bowl and crunch some black pepper in amongst it all
drop each nugget into the breadcrumb, get them covered and pop onto a tray that’s been lined with greaseproof paper
bake in the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes, turning them if you can be arsed – we don’t, but we’ve got a fancy tray with little holes in it which bakes from underneath too
serve with chips (make your own or just cheat like we do when you can’t be arsed and have McCains Rustic – they’re 1 syn for 100g) and beans
There’s no superfree on this meal but hey, you know what, have yourself a fruit salad and a good pump afterwards. You’ll be OK!
I’ve never felt older than I did this morning, when, standing at a bus-stop surrounded by screaming kids effing and jeffing, I tutted to myself and thought ‘kids these days’. Well actually, what I thought was ‘kids these days…if I kicked the littlest one under the wheels of a bus would I REALLY be in the wrong?’. Which is a trifle worrying but honestly, they were so loud. All the conversation was happening at twice the speed I’d expect, like someone leaning on the BPM slider on an old record-player. At one point I thought they were speaking Gujarati until I made the words ‘here-man-ye-FUCKING-DONKEY’ explode through all the vocal drawls and tics. Plus half of the little scrotes were smoking, albeit they were doing that affected ‘suck in a tiny bit and exhale like you’re trying to blow out a chip pan fire’ smoking. I mean if you’re GOING to smoke do it properly, I didn’t hear one lung-rattling cough amongst them. Amateurs. I was on half a tin of Peterson Old Dublin at their age.
You may wonder why someone as sociopathic as me was on a bus – well, I had to take my dear little car in for a service. It’s a brand new car so there should be no problems and it could have waited but see, my windscreen wipers were leaving an annoying smear on the window and rather than just clean them myself, I just took the car in for a full service and asked for a new set. We’re terrible with money, what can I say. But we’ve got no debt so we’re doing something right! I had to sit outside the dealership for twenty minutes waiting for someone to open up, and then I was immediately cut up in the queue by someone with a nicotine fringe and Build-a-Bear shoes. It’s OK, I’m British, I’ll queue politely and stare at the back of your greasy head with such unimaginable fury that I’m surprised the word KNOBJOCKEY didn’t burn across your ears.
He was booking in his bellendmobile for a service too and I almost ground my teeth into diamonds at his excruciating exchange with the receptionist. See, she asked him what time he wanted to pick up the car, he replied ‘Whatever time is good for you, I’m easy’. That made me vomit gently against the back of my teeth but I held it back. She then suggested 4pm – nope, no good, he was picking the kids up. 5pm? No, he was taking his mother to hospital. 3pm? He’d be at work. Tomorrow morning? He drives a lorry for a living, he’d be away. I mean HAWAY MAN, it’s not bloody hard to give HER a time instead of trying to be a smooth bastard with your plaitable earhair and chip-fat musk. After what felt like enough time to the rubber on my tyres to perish in the sun, he fucked off, it was my turn, I signed the car over and was away before she could click her pen.
The bus, then. Awful. For so many reasons. Firstly, I like my own personal space. I don’t like sharing that personal space with someone for whom deodorant and mouthwash are part of an “alternative lifestyle”. I immediately tune into their every defect – the way their nostrils whistle when they breathe out, the way they click their teeth over every speedbump, the way they lean against me as the bus turns a corner. I hate it. I’m not perfect by any stretch but see that’s why I contain myself in a car. People don’t respect personal space but I probably take it to the other extreme – I wince like a beaten dog if someone so much as gets in the lift with me.
Plus, the journey cost me £2.20. For a distance no greater than two miles, all downhill. Had I not been worried about my lovely shirt, I could have laid on my back and barrelled down the hill like a roll of carpet. I could even have walked (shock, I know, but even I’m not fat enough to decline a walk downhill) but I would have been late for my dentist and he’s the last guy I want to piss off. That’s extortionate, and it took almost half an hour because the bus stopped quite literally every 100 yards or so to let someone off and on, with all their bloody questions taking another five minutes. The driver had all the charisma of a roadside piss and snatched tickets and cash like he was on the Crystal Maze. I don’t doubt there are exceptions but do they make all bus drivers go to a training camp to thrash all the human decency out of them? Or is it dealing with rotten human beings all day that turn them into such miserable buggers? I saw someone stumble over the word Megarider and I honestly thought the driver was going to punch her on the tit.
Ah well. The dentist went very well – I’m not even going to write a sarcastic recount of that, because I just can’t fault my dentist. He’s lovely. He takes the time to tell me what he’s going to do and I think he must minimise anything that ‘hurts’ because I rarely feel a thing. Apparently I have animal teeth AND naturally white. Not surprised, what with all the “whitening solution” I’ve had cascaded over them over the years, am I right? If I was richer, I’d have every last tooth torn out and replaced with big fake white teeth. I know it looks unnatural but it’s the one thing about me that I’m genuinely shy about – even though my teeth are pretty decent. Paul hides his teeth all the time too, despite having a lovely smile – but in the nine years we’ve been together I’ve never been allowed to look at the back of his mouth. The guy is happy enough texting me a picture of his balloon knot with an ‘URGENT: OPEN THIS’ caption, but his teeth? No. Weird.
Anyway, as it happens, the car came back completely free of any worries and they replaced the blades for nowt because they should have lasted longer! RESULT.
Tonight’s recipe, then:
to make lamb kofta, you’ll need:
ingredients for the kofta: 900g lean lamb mince, 1 large onion, 3cm piece of root ginger (peeled and chopped), 2 cloves of garlic, 1 chilli pepper (deseeded), 1 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp ground coriander, 2 tsp garam masala, 1tsp salt, 1 egg
to make lamb kofta, you should:
throw the onion, ginger, garlic, chili pepper, cumin, coriander, garam masala, salt and egg into a food processor and pulse until it makes a grainy paste
mix together the minced lamb and egg, and then combine with the paste mixture
leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour
divide the mixture into ten portions and roll out into a thick sausage shape – you want it to be about the size of a penis that, when presented, you wouldn’t get very excited about, and skewer
in a small bowl mix together a little fat free yoghurt with a drop or two of oil and add a pinch of black pepper
using a pastry brush, lightly coat the koftas with the yoghurt mixture
grill under a medium heat for around 5 minutes per side
We served this on a HEB WW tortilla bread from Tesco, plus some tomato and a giant lettuce leaf.
ingredients for the creamy cool cucumbers: 1 cucumber (sliced thinly), 1 onion (sliced), 60g fat free natural yoghurt, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tsp sweetener, pinch of salt and pepper, 2 tsp dill
recipe:
mix together the yoghurt, onion, white wine vinegar, sweetener, salt and pepper
pour over the cucumbers and toss well to mix
sprinkle the dill over the mix just before serving
Better to make this just before serving otherwise the cucumber leaks its water and the sauce looks like something you might get treatment at the clap clinic for.
Right, before we even get started, I’ll need to put up the banner:
Today’s recipe is a major tweak session. Listen, I know, I know it’s not the Slimming World way, but this is something I disagree with them on. All of the ingredients used are syn free AND very good for you, and the only synned item is some dark chocolate, but what’s life without a little risk, eh? I’ve made my feelings quite clear on tweaking before and I’m not going to change for anyone! HARRUMPH. But before we get to that, here’s a little ramble…
The reason for the title of the post being ‘Good Morning Australia’ is because we’ve discovered a new app on our iPad – Wakie! Essentially it’s an alarm clock but one that actually connects you to the person who wants waking up. For example, some bronzed god in Australia may want waking up because he has to go to work at 11am, and I’m sitting in the UK available to make the call, and the app will connect the two of us. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s just like making a phone call, and we LOVE it. At first we were shy – lots of ‘So what’s the weather like where you are’ and ‘what you getting up for’, but now we wake people up by telling them jokes, or my most favourite, using the soundboard of Roy Walker’s catchphrases that we found on the internet from the old Radio 1 days. Imagine that – you’re fast asleep in New Zealand, your phone goes, you blearily answer it and you get ‘GOOD MORNING CONTESTANT’ blaring at you, followed by ‘IT’S A GOOD GUESS, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT’. Haha! It works the other way too, we had a wake-up call from someone in America this morning, who told us a joke and then farted down the phone. She sounds like just our type of girl to be honest. It’s completely anonymous so there’s never a way of finding out who you spoke to, but it’s just great fun. Perhaps you should download it – you’ll know if you get through to us because it’ll be a litany of blue jokes, shrieks of laughter and ten seconds of Paul trying to press the hang up button and missing because he hasn’t got his glasses on and there’s four iPads in his field of vision.
Anyway, the good news is we’ve had no altercations with anyone today and it’s been an altogether pleasant day, even though all we’ve done is our grocery shopping and beetled about in the car. Are we the only couple who go out in the car just for a drive? I mean, I know the price of fuel means arranging a small mortgage beforehand, but there’s nothing better than just heading out on a sunny day, not knowing where you are going to end up. I think I get that from growing up with my parents, who would take us out on a drive to nowhere and always reply to the question of ‘where are we going’ with ‘there and back to see how far it is’. Helpful. To be fair to them, my sister and I were proper nightmares in the back of the car. Not as bad as Paul, mind you. He kicked his sister so hard in the side of her head for turning off his 911 CD that she spent a car journey from Glencoe to Aberdeen with ringing ears. To be fair, I’d have ringing ears if I had to listen to Paul’s music choices for more than ten minutes – I spend less time changing gears than I do pressing the ‘Skip Track’ button on my steering wheel to try and get past his Tracy Chapman nonsense. It’s no wonder the clutch in the Micra is fucked.
I’M SORRY: TRACY CHAPMAN SOUNDS LIKE A BEE WITH A COLD TRAPPED IN A BOTTLE.
Actually, my parents once thought it would be a great idea to transport my sister, me, a tent and two week’s worth of camping impedimenta in a scalding hot Ford Escort to the bottom of France (from Newcastle). It wasn’t, and I think my sister and I started fighting from the second my dad started backing the car down the lane from our house. Bearing in mind that we were quite fractious siblings at the best of times (though we’re close now) this was a recipe for disaster. Anyway, clearly sick of remonstrating with us and smacking our arses, our parents threatened to leave us by the side of a road in the middle of rural France at some backwater petrol station. Of course, being kids, we were full of bravado, and we knew they wouldn’t dare. But they did – they bundled us out of the car at the petrol station and proceeded to drive to the exit ramp. Now, let me clarify, I believe their intention was to give us a little fright and stop a moment or two down the ramp and pick us back up. Only they hadn’t factored in the massive lorry that pulled out behind them, clearly with Paris’ entire shipment of Gauloises in the back and no time to wait for my parents to teach us a lesson in good behaviour. Being a one lane exit ramp they had no other alternative than to carry on down onto the motorway and leave us stranded, bawling. Oops. They came back around from the other side around fifteen minutes later after they’d driven like they had a bomb up their arse to the next junction and turned around and we were completely silent for the next couple of hours. So I suppose the threat worked. Anyway, don’t judge, they are great parents.
So today’s recipe is…gasp…wait for it…get Mag’s number dialled ready to press…A SMOOTHIE. Quick! Get the amyl nitrates and bring her around!
This makes four decent sized smoothies, so give a couple to the kids or just enjoy two!
to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you’ll need:
25g of dark chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker which are 6 syns, so 1.5 syns a serving), 80g of uncooked spinach, 40g of mint leaves, four frozen bananas, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 750ml of almond milk (either use it as part of your HEA – you’re allowed 875ml of Blue Diamond almond milk, and you can use it in coffee – or syn it as 3 syns, or less than a syn per smoothie). You’ll also need a blender or some way of making it mush together, and we chucked in some ice for shits and giggles.
to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you should:
only thing to do is to prepare the bananas by freezing them – top tip, slice them first and lay all the slices out flat on a chopping board, and then freeze like that – that way you’re not having to cut up a frozen banana
blend the whole lot into a nice green blend
serve in a normal glass like a level-headed, reasonable person, or pop it in a fucking milk bottle
Also, it might not sound especially nice, but this tasted delicious, like a mint milkshake. You can’t taste the spinach but it adds a lovely green and the health benefits are obvious. We had ours at noon and I’m not hungry yet so I’m going to say this can be used for a breakfast. Yes: technically it’s a tweak. But look at it this way. The banana is syn free. The spinach is a speed food. Mint makes your breath fresh and hot men will kiss you. Dark chocolate is good for the ticker and if you’re feeling particularly virtuous, just leave it out. You’re not drinking a bathtub of this stuff, you’re using it as a meal or a snack. Enjoy it, please!
Our cat has betrayed me – normally he sleeps between the two of us if it’s a cold night but he’d gotten up early doors and gone out chasing mice. How the hell he manages to spend a night between the two of us I have no idea – we’re very much a ‘spooning’ couple, constantly intertwining our legs and arms and murmuring nonsense at each other. I actually woke up once with Paul having rolled on top of me, not in a ‘but it’s my birthday’ way but rather out of comfort, like I was an especially squashy lilo. Nevertheless, around 1am Bowser will be padding around our pillow and then crawls between us like a tiny potholer. How he survives I have no idea – the squashing I mentioned above must be bad enough, but the flatulence produced between the two of us vents out right where he sleeps. It must be like trying to sleep with your head stuck in one of those Dyson Airdryers you get in toilets, only one that blows out air that smells of turned corned-beef and death. I swear after a night of our easy chicken curry he’ll disappear under the duvet as a black and white tom and comes back a tortoiseshell who suffers night terrors.
Tonight’s recipe has the unfortunate problem of looking exactly like another recipe we did earlier in the week, but what can I say, we’ve missed carbs and we had some steak to use up. Isn’t that a first world problem right there?
to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you will need:
500g penne pasta, 120g steak (sliced into bite size pieces) 1 onion (chopped), 1 green pepper (chopped), 1 clove of garlic, 300ml skimmed milk, 250g quark, 2 tsp Cajun seasoning, 120g extra mature cheddar (grated), 20g parmesan (grated), 50g chorizo (sliced), breadcrumbs (from half a wholemeal roll)
if you use the wholemeal roll and the cheese as your healthy extras (remember, this serves 4) this will be 3 syns per serving, 1.5 from the chorizo, and 1.5 from the milk.
to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you should:
cook the pasta until al dente (like Al Murray, but less of a cock), drain and set aside
in a large frying pan or saucepan soften the onion and green pepper in a little oil over a medium heat for about ten minutes
add the Cajun seasoning and stir well
slowly pour in the milk and stir continuously
add the quark in small amounts and mix until smooth and creamy
in a separate frying pan quickly cook the steak and chorizo over a high heat for one minute
add the steak and chorizo into the cheese mixture
add the cheddar and parmesan to the mixture, remove from the heat and stir continuously until all the cheese has melted
add the pasta to the mixture and mix well
pour the mixture into a large casserole dish, top with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for ten minutes just to make it sticky.
Now this is proper stick-to-your-ribs cooking and we loved it, but for goodness sake, it serves four. Keep some for your lunch the next day. This with the rice bake from the other day is more than making up our carb deficit and it tasted delicious!
Oh, if you need a casserole dish, get a bloody Le Creuset one. We’ve had ours over two years now and yes, it is very expensive, but we use it daily – as a frying pan, to cook in, to roast in, and it’s never stuck or failed us. They’re £160 on Amazon at the moment. Click here and treat yourself! Do you need something so pricey? No. But you kinda want one…
The first MP3 I ever downloaded was The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. Good lord! I was a country boy growing up in a council house in BHS adult-sized trousers, I don’t think I was ready for all that ghettofabulousness. I’m surprised the download made it past all the porn, mind, though I don’t doubt it took twenty minutes to download. Kids these day don’t know how lucky they are. Could have been worse – one of the first CDs I owned by Doesn’t Really Matter by Janet Jackson. Argh, I really had a thing for a marimba and sass.
The reason I am rambling on about music is because it’s an integral part of writing this blog – I can’t write unless I have music playing and no distractions, and even then I’ll spend forty minutes trying to find something I want to listen to on Spotify. It’s very distressing – a whole world of music and I always end up coming back to the same twenty or so songs. Paul hates it, because I always end up singing along and my voice sounds like a cat being pushed through a mangle, plus I add new notes and words into the lyrics, so a simple beautiful verse becomes peppered with falling scales and swearwords.
Anyway. I’m a bit pushed for time tonight so instead of words, I’m going to show you something. Something AWFUL. You may remember from my About Me page that it’s always been a hope and a dream of mine to get into the newspapers holding out my fat-bloke trousers after I’d lost so much weight? Well…when I was 18…
That hair though, seriously. I told you I used to have hair like Enya in her Orinocco Flow video. I’d give anything for a chance at that long hair again, though I wouldn’t have it quite such a sex-offender colour. Plus those trousers! 46″. Christ. Plus, white jeans. Never give a fat bloke white jeans, they’ll always have chocolate in their pockets and it’ll look like they’ve shit themselves when they stand up. What I didn’t mention in that article is how seething I was about losing out at the Slimmer of the Year finals to some black-footed leviathan who was too fat to get on an operating table. I didn’t have a sob story.
Ah well. It’s not like the haircuts ever got worse. Well, save for the Myra Hindley…
And of course, the Bjorn Again:
Aaah. Oh young James. You poor bastard.
Anyway, enough of all that. Tonight’s recipe is a simple salad full of fresh tastes. Just like my hair, am I right?
to make rocket, pea and mint salad you will need:
two chicken breasts, big old handful of rocket, couple of rashers of fat-free bacon, 200g frozen peas, small bag of new potatoes, mint, 0% fat-free natural yoghurt (make sure you pick up a syn-free version), lemon, fresh mint, four spring onions and rockets
to make rocket, pea and mint salad you should:
make the dressing: a few tablespoons of yoghurt, plus the juice of half a lemon and a few leaves mint chopped nice and fine – and set aside
grill the chicken breasts nice and plain and set it aside, and grill the bacon off and when cooked, cut into tiny slices
chop up your new potatoes into small chunks and boil them for a few minutes until they’re tender, adding the frozen peas into the boiling water for a couple of minutes too, then sieve the lot
chop up the spring onions into nice small slices
put a drop of oil into a frying pan, add the onion, potato, bacon and peas – I like to splash some lemon juice in;
after a few minutes, take it off the heat and add the rocket and a few sprigs of mint, and stir everything through
serve with the dressing and chicken, with some slices of radishes to garnish.
See, I’m going to have to go to the dentist. A year or so ago I cracked my back tooth chewing on a hairbrush, which sounds fabulously fun but it hurt like hell. My dentist took one look, took it out and sent me on my way, with only a stiff jaw and a modest NHS bill to accompany me. All good. However, one of my wisdom teeth has clearly seen the gap left by my departed tooth and thought to himself that he would really rather like to move in. And it hurts. Not the tooth but rather a tiny bit of gum that I keep catching with my teeth as I shut my mouth. How can it heal if I keep biting into the bloody thing? It’s bad enough that I have to sit with my mouth slightly open at all times like a pensioner stuck on her Sudoku, but now I have to go to the dentist to fix it? Bah.
It’s not that I’m scared of dentists…well, no, that’s a fib. I am, but who isn’t, you can’t get a kick out of a man pumping a tool in and out of your gob and finishing it off with a squirt of something acidic to set your teeth on edge. OR CAN YOU. No. Oddly, the drill I can deal with because it doesn’t hurt, but when they use that little air-sprayer thingy I just want to bite his nipple off as he hangs over me in his dainty tunic. My skin is crawling up my back as we speak. I know where the unease about my dentist comes from – I had to have a tooth out when I was little after I (again!) cracked one eating nuts. I swear my teeth are made of glass. Anyway, the dentist I had back then clearly hated life, children and smiles, so set about me with all the care and precision one might elect to us knocking down a brick wall. I remember even now his pock-marked face being within kissing distance from mine, his bloodshot eyes darting around and spittle-flecked lips pursed as he yanked the tooth out. It wouldn’t come, so naturally he decided to put his entire bodyweight onto me, using his elbow in my chest as leverage. Fair enough, he got the tooth in the end, but he had to stop after forty minutes to have his brow mopped with a towel and Lucozade brought in and I had a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. No wonder I’m scared, though I’m not scared of much else. Rollercoasters? High as you like. Water? Chuck me in. Enclosed spaces? Pfft. As long as I don’t get stuck and have to be ‘popped out’ of the tight space by a team of firemen, I’ll be fine. That said…
Spiders bother us both, though Paul more than me. We once ran screaming from our Quayside flat when a spider the size of a small motorcar came trundling out from under the fridge. We were on the cusp of checking into a hotel when we realised our wallets were still in the flat, and without those, we’d be screwed. So we dutifully went back in only to see it, bold as brass, sitting in the middle of the laminate flooring. I swear if my vision had been good enough I would have been able to see his tiny little finger sticking up at me in defiance. Action was needed, so, screaming all the while, Paul ran to the balcony doors and flung them open as I dashed (I was skinny back then, I could dash) into the little office, got the giant (expensive) John Lewis waste-paper bin, emptied the contents on the floor, ran back into the living room (still screaming), trapped the little fucker and promptly ran to the balcony and threw him, the bin and almost myself over the bloody edge. I was surprised the little bastard didn’t have a parachute and a distress flare he was that big. Good times. The bin disappeared down onto a road somewhere and when we picked it up the next morning, an electric bus had run over it. Serves me right eh.
Paul’s also scared of all the boring things like being buried alive, and he doesn’t like the idea of drowning or burning, which seems an altogether reasonable way to live, whereas all my fears are quite silly. For one, I’m scared of dams. Terrified. Even looking at the word makes my teeth jitter a bit (which doesn’t help my sore gum). It’s not the fear of them breaking – oh no – it’s just how alien and unsettling they look. They have no business being there. Having a parent who works for the local water company means I have an unflinching and comprehensive knowledge of all the creepy things and secret pipes hidden just below the ground, ready to suck you away into oblivion. He once told me that a family crashed their car into a reservoir and the suction on an intake pipe held all the doors shut so they couldn’t get out. Yikes. Sewers too. Pennywise I could handle, but the sluice gate at the end would have me sucking on Kalms like there was no tomorrow.
I’m also genuinely frightened of irregular holes. Har-de-har not bumholes, no, but irregular clusters of holes sets me on edge. If I have a crumpet, I have to have it upside down otherwise I can’t eat it, and sponges make me feel uneasy if I look at them. I feel like I could have myself a story in Chat magazine surrounded by sponges, biting my nails, but alas I saw someone has beaten me to it. Things like sieves are alright because the holes are organised and clean, but I reckon I’m probably the only person ever to almost faint looking at Swiss cheese. Ah, aren’t phobias daft.
Tell you what’s not daft though – tonight’s evening meal idea, which uses up all the scraggly old broccoli you have lying around.
chicken, broccoli and rice bake
REMEMBER: this serves eight! It uses four HEAs and half a HEB. But the meal freezes nicely and will do for lunches and makes a good whack. The recipes doesn’t make a gloopy dish, it actually cooks right down and is more sticky than anything else. tasty!
to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you will need:
370g uncooked long grain rice, 500ml chicken stock, 500ml skimmed milk, 250ml water, 1 bay leaf, sage rosemary and thyme leaves (or dried), 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 25g plain flour (4.5 syns), 250g fat free greek yoghurt, ½ tsp chili powder, 2 chicken breasts (cooked and chopped), 90g Gruyere cheese (or cheddar) (3 x HEA), 40g light feta cheese, salt and pepper, one head of broccoli, half of a wholemeal roll (as breadcrumbs) (half a HEB), handful of cheddar (HEA).
to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you should:
measure out and rinse the rice. set aside
cook the chicken breasts and shred like they’re incriminating documents
pour the chicken stock, milk, water, bay leaf and sprigs of herbs into a saucepan over a medium heat for a few minutes then put to one side
spray a large frying pan with Frylight and cook the onions for a few minutes until softened
add the flour and coat the onions well
add the liquid mixture to the frying pan and stir well until there are no lumps
reduce the heat to low and add the yoghurt, chicken, chili powder and cheese and stir continuously until well mixed and the cheese has melted
transfer the mixture into a large casserole dish with a tight lid (or cover with foil) and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes
meanwhile, chop the broccoli into small florets – the smaller the better
stir the broccoli into the casserole dish along with the rice and mix well
re-cover, and bake for another 15 minutes
sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a little leftover cheese and place under a medium grill for just a few minutes until golden brown, texture like sun
ENJOY ENJOY.
By the way, I know we have the last two days of 7777 week to publish – that’ll probably be this weekend!
VERY quick post tonight (genuinely!) because we’re running late with everything having just arrived home from class (we took the long way home because it was a lovely sunset, how fantastically homosexual is that). Weigh in this week:
After a week (well six days) of SP:
Paul – lost 3.5lb
James – lost 5.5lb
TOTAL WEIGHT LOSS: 48lb.
Happy with that mind! The last two days of our SP week will be online on Wednesday and Thursday – no post tomorrow as I’m off gallivanting! Behave yourselves!
It’s going to have to be a quick post tonight because we’re having computer problems and like pick-a-name-of-a-celebrity-famous-in-the-Eighties we’re having to format the hard drive. And reinstall Windows, of course. So that’s a fun evening.
We decided, after we got out of bed at an unseemly hour this afternoon that we would have a ‘trip out in the car’. That’s a sign we’re both getting old, not least because the three places we considered were a) a garden centre b) an outlet shopping centre and c) a castle. I fear we’re rapidly becoming one of those couples who drive to the seaside and then sit inside the car eating egg sandwiches before driving home again, the bitter resentment of each other thick in the air. I don’t understand that – there was an old couple yesterday who had driven to the same beach we were geocaching at, only to park their Nissan Incontinent facing away from the beach and then proceeded to eat their sandwiches. Surely you’d want something interesting to look at – I can’t imagine the ‘Pick Up Dog Shit’ posters were that enthralling. Perhaps they were enjoying the spectacle of two fat blokes bustling around in the undergrowth looking for a lunchbox with an ASDA smart-price notepad and an IKEA pencil in it. Who knows. Frankly, a trip out to the beach isn’t a success for me unless I’m still picking sand out from under my helmet four days later.
There’s an image, I hope no-one was eating mackerel.
Anyway, we decided to go to the Royal Quays Outlet Centre purely because there’s a Le Creuset outlet there and I wanted a salt-pig. Listen, I know my rock-and-roll lifestyle is getting too much, but please try to keep up. This meant a trip through the Tyne Tunnel where I immediately managed to cock everything up by missing the tiny basket for the toll as I drove through, leading to 50p rolling under the car. Now, I’m an exceptionally tight person, but even I didn’t think to get out of the car and retrieve it – I just made Paul find another one amongst the detritus in our ashtray and we were on our way. However, the driver of the car behind was almost out of his car and on the hunt for the pound coin no sooner had I pulled away. I was aghast – I mean, I’m stingy, but for goodness sake, he hurtled out of his car door like Usain Bolt looking for my 50p. I slowed down because I was trying to sync my phone with the radio and he hurtled past us at the entrance, pretty much cutting us up, so we spent the tunnel journey mouthing mean words at him – Paul mouthing TIGHT and me mouthing BASTARD in perfect unison. I hope he felt thoroughly ashamed – he was driving a BMW though so I very much doubt he had any sense of shame. Or pity. Or driving ability. Nobber.
However, catastrophe struck when we got to Royal Quays – the Le Creuset shop has gone! Where else will I buy my beautiful but overpriced kitchen ornaments now? The ladies on the checkout, who clearly saw our shaved heads and dirty shoes and assumed we were there to rob the place (though you’d be pretty hard-pushed to make a quick getaway with a bloody cast-iron casserole pot jammed down your boxers), always treated us with incredible disdain. But the deals were good so we kept going back. Alas, it is no more. We checked the information board and Paul suggested that we could get something nice from Collectibles. Well really. I’d sooner shit in my hands and start clapping than trawl through the tat in there. Not saying you can’t get nice stuff, but when your window display is a pyramid of Nicer Dicer boxes then we’re not going to get along. We left in a huff, didn’t even bother going to Cotton Traders to pick up a marquee-sized flannel shirt. Our wardrobe is almost exclusively flannel shirts in varying pairs of colours – it looks like a test-card when you slide the door across. Anyway, crikey, I said I wasn’t going to waffle…
BREAKFAST
Sausage egg bhurji
Because we er…slept in until past noon, we had to cobble together a breakfast pretty fast, so we actually took one of our recipes and jazzed it up a little. That’s right! We’re at full jazz!
Full jazz? But that’s impossible! They’re on instruments!
Yeah. Egg bhurji! It’s delicous. Scrambled eggs but with spice and flavour. Click here for the recipe (it’ll open in a new window) but note the addition before. We had four leftover sausages from when we made that coffin of meat on Monday, so when the onions (S), peppers (S) and peas were softening, we threw the sausagemeat in with them and cooked it through before adding the eggs. Served on a couple of slices of wholemeal toast, it was a delicious start to the day, although the resulting flatulence was terrifying. I didn’t dare put the indicator on when I was going through the Tyne Tunnel lest the car blew up – it would have been like that shite Sylvester Stallone disaster movie, Daylight.
LUNCH
CONFESSION TIME. Because we were so lazy and didn’t get out of bed until after 12, we didn’t bother with lunch – the breakfast served as our lunch. Isn’t that awful? I did have half a Twirl in the car and it was delicious.
DETOX WATER
Peaches and mint
It’s really quite hard to make facetious comments about bloody water day in day out, so let’s skip to the good bit:
peaches – good for the eyes, which is important to us because we’ll need you to keep reading; and
mint – perfect if you’re the type of person who uses your breath as a weapon.
Actually, let me drive this point home – these ‘detox waters’ are a load of unscientific nonsense BUT, if you like flavoured waters and you’re often buying bottles of that Volvic ‘A Touch of Fruit’ stuff, make some of this instead and save the syns. ‘A touch of fruit’ doesn’t mean they’ve wafted a strawberry over your bottled water, it’ll just be a load of fragrance and sugar to make it taste sweet. Make your own and never look back.
BODY MAGIC IDEA – GIANT DOG WALKING
I wish that this picture better conveyed the sheer size of this dog. I felt like I was walking a cow, albeit a cow that sounded like a steam engine as it chugged along. I’ve often mentioned that Paul and I like to help out at a local animal shelter and when we went today, we were given this gorgeous dog – Bear, a Caucasian Shepherd dog – only 11 months old and weighing in at over 8 stone. He’ll continue to grow until he’s three years old and he was already up to Paul’s waist.
He was utterly, utterly gorgeous – soft as clarts, hairier than the hairiest of my two arse cheeks and incredibly strong. He was on his fourth walk of the day, the poor bugger. Some silly bugger bought him and then dumped him when they realised they’d need to fit a rolling garage door rather than a dog-flap. We were walked by him for over four miles and he kept stopping to have his ears scratched and to look adorable. I can’t deny – we were on the verge of hiring a transit van and taking him home, although he’d probably consider both of our cats as nothing more than mere fortune cookies at the end of a big meal. I was dreading him having a shit – I only had a Morrisons carrier bag that they’d hastily given me, whereas going on the size of him I think I’d have been better off with the cover from a king size duvet.
Listen, I’ve said this before and I don’t care – if you have a spare afternoon, go to your local cat and dog shelter and volunteer to walk the dogs or stroke the cats. They’ll love it and you get free exercise and the chance to see beauties like this one.
The irony of twochubbycubs finally pulling a Bear isn’t lost to us, by the way.
DINNER
Cottage pie with a swede and carrot top and roasted green vegetables
to make cottage pie you will need:
for the vegetables – 20 brussel sprouts (halved and peeled) (S) and a head of broccoli (S), together with a couple of squirts of frylight, balsamic vinegar and salt
for the top: peeled and chopped swede (S) and three large peeled and chopped carrots (S)
for the mince: 500g of extra lean beef mince (P), one small stalk of celery (S), one red onion (S), two carrots (S), tin of chopped tomatoes (S), one garlic clove (S), beef stock cube
to make cottage pie you should:
mix the sprouts and chopped head of broccoli up in a good few glugs of balsamic vinegar, salt and frylight, and pop in the oven on the bottom shelf on 180 degrees
meanwhile, prepare your mince, which is nothing more than sweating down your finely chopped onion, carrot and celery in a bit of salt and a dab of oil, then putting in the mince and browning it off, then adding the chopped tomatoes and a stock cube, and letting it bubble down
when the mince is thick and the mash is ready, put the mince in the bottom of a pyrex dish and top with the mash, and then, if you’re feeling like a truly luxurious dirty girl, you can spread your cheese over the top, so when it comes out of the oven after thirty minutes on 180 degrees, you can peel off the top like a great big scab.
Mmm! Bet you’re hungry now. Actually, it was delicious. And gosh, it was a SW recipe which we tinkered with, and I didn’t even need to sieve my dinner before serving like I normally do with SW recipes! GOSH.
Just look at that. I said quick post and I’ve typed 1715 words and that’s without a lunch bit. This is why the book might take a while…!
So here’s the thing. I get a lot of people telling me to write a book, and I’ve always wanted to, but never really had the right idea or the inclination to do research and gain the appropriate knowledge. Then, as it happens, Paul decided to stroke my ego in the car today (and we weren’t pulled over in a layby flashing our interior lights at lorry drivers, which is normally what we’re doing in the car together – honestly, I hope Eddie Stobart’s drivers aren’t epileptic, it looks like an Eighties disco in our car) and told me I really should get on with it. Well, I love writing, I adore writing this blog (for the most part) and because I’m massively egocentric, what better topic to write about than what is happening in our lives? That would be great for me – but boring(ish) for you.
Here’s my idea: I am going to write a book – it’s going to be in the same format as what we’re doing now with the blog posts, but with fictional stuff interwoven amongst the nonsense. It won’t be a slimming book, simply because I don’t want Margaret coming after me with her Lynda la Plante weave all awry and her gang of Slimming World lawyers straining on the leash to do me in for copyright law. But I’ll put a few of my favourite recipes in there too. It’ll be like Bridget Jones Diary, only massively less successful. Renee Zellweger could totally play me though, if she put 180lb on and fell face-first into a fire. Naturally the blog remains at the forefront of my writing, and this side project will be something I’ll be tinkering on with for the next few months. In the meantime, if you fancy reading more of our writing, don’t forget we have a book on Amazon which is an account of our four weeks in Orlando: read about how I spent the first two days of the holiday tinted blue thanks to cheap sunscreen, or how I exposed my not unsubstantial arse to a crowd in a waterpark. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by paying only £1.20, you’ll keep Paul and I in replacement ped-eggs. That can be found here.
Right, so with that announcement over, let’s start with day four of SP! Tomorrow I’m going to explain SP in a bit more detail and also tell you exactly what I think of it. I’ll give you a clue: I think it’s a load of horse’s arse. And I’m not even going to mark that as a protein, either.
BREAKFAST
BLTE
The E stands for egg (P), obviously. Plus lettuce (S) and tomato (S). There’s not an awful lot to say about this, other than:
we totally didn’t have two each *cough/splutter*
I got Paul out of bed to make this (because I was hungry) by setting off the smoke alarm and then hiding in the kitchen – he came dashing in completely nude like the world’s cuddliest fireman and then proceeded to tell me off for about five minutes, the whole while I’m standing there agreeing solemnly with everything he said and pushing the packet of bacon closer and closer to him. I know one day our actifry is going to burst into flame through overuse and we’ll both perish in the fire because we’ve played too many pranks with the smoke alarm. I bet Paul manages to die with a pious ‘see I told you’ expression on his face
there’s a certain type of wholemeal bread roll you’re allowed – I think it’s a Weight Watchers one – but we only had these little buns in the freezer and after waking Paul up by tricking him into thinking he was in The Towering Inferno, I didn’t have the temerity to tell him to go to the shop…so we just used these. They’re about the same size.
LUNCH
Hot, hot tuna salad
So good I named it twice, see. No, it’s hot in both senses of the word – hot because of the added chilli and also, served hot. Usually tuna salad is served cold and, to someone who doesn’t like fish, isn’t especially appetising. Hell, I’ll make Paul wash Little Paul in the bathroom sink before he gets his birthday gobble.
Christ can I say as an aside I realise that this post is making it sound like Paul has an awful life, like some hairy Little Mo to my Trevor. Honestly, it’s not that bad, no-one needs to call Relate for us just yet. The only time he’s raised an iron in anger is when our ironing lady was off for two weeks having something done with her ovaries. Having them out I think, not wallpapered.
Anyway, yes, tuna salad:
to make hot, hot tuna salad you will need:
several big fuck-off lettuce leaves (S) – I grow mine in the greenhouse and honest to God, it’s like Day of the Triffids in there at the moment. I’m lucky I have a retractable hose-pipe – if I get lost amongst the lettuce, I just pull myself free. Yep. You’ll also need two tins of tuna (P), two large sweet peppers cut into chunks (S), three shallots sliced thinly (S), two tomatoes cut into chunks (S), 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of oil.
to make hot, hot tuna salad you should:
mix the tuna together with all the spices and salt and set aside
fry the onion and pepper in a dab of oil or some frylight until soft
chuck the tuna in and heat through – why not add a bit of chilli sauce if you like your hoop to look like a deflated liferaft
serve up on the giant lettuce leaves
to eat, fold the lettuce into neat parcels and chew
DETOX WATER
Mandarin
My favourite water so far! It tasted like sunshine in a glass. Well no, not quite, but it’s just one ingredient:
mandarin – which is excellent for vitamin C, which is handy for preventing skin wrinkling.
Don’t forget, if you want a gloriously ostentatious way of serving up your water (and don’t think for a second that come Eurovision night that isn’t going to be full of punch) you can buy one from Amazon. I will say this, we’ve certainly consumed a lot more water since we bought it, but that’s more because I’m such a tight-arse that I’m determined not to lose face and see it consigned to the back of the cupboard along with the lollipop maker and the ravioli crimper.
Haha, crimper.
BODY MAGIC IDEA – GEOCACHING
Ah geocaching. I’ve rumbled on about geocaching before – it’s essentially a giant treasure hunt where no-one wins. But you don’t need to win a prize to enjoy it, it’s fantastic fun if you’re GIANT NERDS like us. People have hidden containers all over the world (and I’d bet my savings there’s probably at least five within easy walking distance from your house right now) and you use your GPS or an app on your smartphone to find them. Then you sign the book and put it back. It’s a great way of:
livening up a charming walk out in the country; and
making the British public think you’re loitering in the bushes with your knob out ready to strike.
See, part of geocaching is that you have to be subtle – some of the containers are hidden in plain sight, so you have to try and swipe them without people seeing, which can be difficult when you’re stumbling around in the trees like a flannel-shirted rapist. We had a lovely walk around a nature reserve and ended up on one of Northumberland’s fantastic beaches. Just look at that scene above. See, the North is so much more than child-beating and whippets. That picture of the rock at the top – that’s called a disco cache, where the logbook is hidden inside a container designed to look like something completely different. They’re extra hard – I’ve hid caches myself inside golf balls, birds nest and even a fake blob of chewing gum. It’s all free of charge and hey, if you’ve got kids, get them involved too.
Everyone I ever explain geocaching to wrinkles their nose and asks me what is the point, but it’s great fun. You’ll end up enjoying yourself, trust me. Visit www.geocaching.com, pop in your postcode and go and find the closest one to you.
DINNER
Larb burgers
Told you I was getting the use out of my lettuce! Note: I used a carrot and ginger dressing from Tesco on this which works out at almost a syn for two tablespoons. But you can use fat-free vinaigrette if you dare not sacrifice a syn.
to make larb burgers you will need:
500g of turkey mince or three chicken breasts (if you’re using breasts, then you’ll need a mincer – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that?), 3 shallots (S) (one thickly sliced, the other two thinly), 3 cloves of garlic (S), a few lime leaves (get them from Tesco’s world food bit), 1 small stalk of lemongrass, a dash of fish sauce, a bit of ginger (you only need a little knob to really taste it – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that), a lime (S), pickled cabbage (S I think) and the ubiquitous giant lettuce leaves (S).
to make larb burgers you should:
get your food processor or blender or what have you on the go
throw in the thickly cut shallot, garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and a pinch of salt and pulse to a paste
add the meat and pulse so it’s nicely mixed up with the spices
shape into six burgers
heat a griddle pan with a drop of oil or some Frylight and get it medium hot
add the burgers and cook hard – you want to get some sear lines into the burger for that classy bitches look
turn over and repeat on the other side – we cooked them for seven minutes each side to really cook them through – always be careful with chicken
if they look a bit dry, throw some lime juice into the pan
in the same griddle pan, put the finely sliced shallots in to fry off in the juice of the meat and lime
once cooked through, assemble onto the lettuce leaves, add some pickled cabbage and the shallots, and serve (you can add dressing if you want, I found it wasn’t necessary.
Enjoy! Oooh it’s like you in a tropical paradise, right?
