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March 2, 2015

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junk food kids: who’s to blame? YOU ARE, you lazy cow

Weigh in is now tomorrow – we’ve switched classes to allow us to stay to class. No recipe tonight as I’m in such a huff about a TV programme that I had to vent!

Please tell me someone else caught Junk Food Kids: Who’s To Blame on Channel 4 last week (and still on their catch-up service, now)? It takes a lot to get me screaming at the TV – normally it’s thick people on gameshows, or if Jeremy Kyle’s incredibly botoxed and exceptionally punchable face looms into the foreground like a possessed fleshy iron. But this documentary really took the biscuit, and gave it to a fat kid.

It was ostensibly a programme designed to look carefully at all sides of the argument over why Britain’s kids are getting fat, with several different streams running throughout focusing on different children, but what got my blood pressure rocketing even more than my swollen ankles usually manage was poor Tallulah (which I’ll spell correctly, even if your mother couldn’t quite manage all the requisite L’s needed to inscribe her own daughter’s name correctly in copperplate on her neck) and her oil-slick of a mother, Natalie. The kid was fat – not podgy or puppy-fat – but fat. She was in constant pain because her teeth had rotted down through so much sugar at the age of four, which ultimately resulted in her having to go under the knife and have 6 of her baby teeth removed.

It didn’t take long for the same old excuses to be trotted out, either – the poor lassie was fat because of her ‘fi-royd’. Fuck off, unless the thyroid was being deep-fried and served with a side of chips, we could probably rule that out. She gives her daughter Ribena at night instead of water because the alternative is ‘she’d (the mother) be up all night’. Boo hoo! It’s called parenting – you can’t expect Professor Weetos and Dr Pepper to look after your kid. She then missed an appointment at the dental hospital for her daughter because she couldn’t be bothered to roll out of bed of a morning. I despair.

It makes me enormously nettled when no-one dare say the truth to these parents – it’s YOUR fault. You’re feeding them crap and then wondering why their teeth are black and rotten. You choose to let them brush their teeth only when they want to and give them full sugar Ribena instead of cuddles and attention. You’re trying to be a friend instead of a parent and as a result, your child is fat and in pain. But instead of remedying this, you blame everyone else but yourself. I can’t fathom it – I love my cat, and if I thought he was in pain, I’d do anything I could to fix it – and I didn’t push him out of my vagina after nine months of nurturing. I don’t even HAVE a vagina.  I know Natalie loved her kid – but you’re supposed to, loving your kid doesn’t make you an amazing parent – nurturing and making sure they are healthy and happy does that.

There were others too, including a truculent little madam who sat through her dietitian appointment with her mobile in her hand, barely acknowledging or respecting the learned doctor, instead playing on Facebook whilst her mother looked on with a ‘well what can I do’ face on. Here’s what you do – you take the mobile out of your daughter’s hand, you drive 7 miles away and put it by the the side of the road. If it goes missing, tough titty, daughter learns a lesson. If it doesn’t, that’s a fourteen mile walk for your daughter and think of the weight-loss. If I’d disrespected someone like that when I was a kid – and I’m not some gosh-darn-it eighty-year-old, I’m only in my late twenties – my arse would have looked like a bag of raw mince from the back of my parent’s hands. But instead the mother kowtowed to her daughter’s moods and inclinations like some shaking shrew and then wondered why the daughter didn’t respect, acknowledge or follow her.

Of course, like most of Channel 4’s documentaries, it was pretty sneaky filming – they played the usual trick of letting the subject say something like ‘AH’VE NO IDEA HOW LITTLE BELLABRUSCO GOT CHUBBY’ and then panning the camera across a sea of off-brand crisps (Sprinters) and Aldi chocolate bars (N&Ns). I know it was designed to make the viewer annoyed and I know that I played along by getting irate and shaking my head in disbelief – I had to take a Stugeron afterwards because I felt seasick.

BAH.

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March 1, 2015

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

balsamic roasted sprouts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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to make balsamic roasted sprouts you will need:

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

 

to make balsamic roasted sprouts you should:

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

I’M BACK, BITCHES.

J

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February 25, 2015

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burgers, fakeaways, recipe card, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

falafel burgers

For some reason, Jehovah’s Witnesses have taken to standing around outside of Eldon Square of a lunchtime, thrusting copies of The Watchtower at me as I shuffle past with my headphones in and trying desperately not to catch their eye. I feel like I can’t be mean to religious people in the same way I often am with chuggers – I usually just point at my ears and pretend I’m deaf, and I once told someone collecting for Alzheimer’s Research that she’d spoken to me just a few minutes before, didn’t she remember…she called me a very unsavoury name, and perhaps rightly so. But the JWs are a bit creepy – too earnest with the smiles, too keen to stop people and try and engage them, too comfortable with being told to fuck off. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll rock up to them and ask what they can do for me, as a blood-giving (sssh), civil-partnered sodomite who believes in abortion and hard living.

I’ve never been a religious person – the only time I went to church growing up was at Easter to get a free Easter egg (although it was always a Spar special egg, dead cheap with white bloom on the chocolate) or Christmas for the same reason, substituting egg for a chocolate jesus. It didn’t help that the guy delivering the sermons had an almighty lisp, which as a child was immensely hilarious. I know, cruel, but there you go. Actually, unusual disability seems to have followed me around through religion – our RE teacher in middle school was amazing (used to let us watch South Park rather than read the bible) but he had a tremor in his left hand, which combined with his hand all clawed up through arthritis, looked like he was wanking all the time. Awful I know, but that also used to cause much hilarity during lessons – teacher twittering on about God whilst calling him a wanker with his left hand.

I haven’t had much experience with other religions either, sadly. As part of a cultural exchange, our class had to go and visit Newcastle Hindu Temple – the idea being our minds would be broadened by their lavish food, colourful buildings and pleasant atmosphere, whereas young Hindu children would get to come and sit on the rock hard pews and listen to a man in a frock lisp his way through All Thingth Bright and Beautiful. Well see it was all going swimmingly until we had to sit cross-legged on the floor and listen to the brahmin explain Hinduism – champion. Except I, coming from an environment where the only spice I consumed belonged to Ginger, Baby, Scary, Sporty and Posh, was having a bad reaction to the pakora we had been given at the start and, genuinely accidentally, let out a fart that, pushed between my flabby schoolboy bumcheeks and the hard, polished floorboards, was ridiculously loud. And long. Once it was coming, there was no stopping it – at least ten seconds easily of earth-shattering, hair-burning fart. It sounded like the police helicopter was hovering overheard, it truly did. No-one believed me that it was a genuine accident and I got made to stand outside, although to be fair that was probably to give my nipsy a chance to cool off in the autumn air. I got detention and summarily bollocked for that little incident. It’s no wonder there’s so much tension these days – if only there’d been a bit more tension in my sphincter, eh.

Whilst I’m talking about religion, a quick comment on the upcoming Pegida march through Newcastle. I find it shameful, utterly shameful. People say it isn’t racist but you’ve only got to look at the comments on Facebook to see the true colours. I’ll say only one thing – people bleat on and on and on about what asylum seekers get given – but they base it on hearsay and what they read in the paper. Take a moment, do some proper research – they get next to nothing. I worked for a charity for over a year and the state of some of the properties that these asylum seekers were living in would make you weep. It really would. You’d hear stories of what they went through, what they’d seen, and you’d know straightaway why they tried to get away. Awash with benefits? Absolutely not. And do you know, it was always, always, ALWAYS the same type of person complaining about foreigners getting this that and the other – bone-idle, lazy bastards who had never worked a day in their life, or even intended to. Give me 1000 asylum seekers over just one of those type of people each and every time. That’s all I’m saying – don’t like to tubthumb on a funny blog, but it boils my piss.

Anyway! Let’s move on. Tonight’s recipe is these lovely falafel burgers, served with tzatziki dip.

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Assume you’re using your bun as your healthy extra, this is syn free. Admittedly I had two, but ssh.

to make falafel burgers you will need:

1/4 chopped onion, three cloves of garlic, a good handful of parsley (or rocket), 2 tsp cumin, pinch of smoked paprika, salt and pepper, 1 tsp of lemon zest, 1/2tsp of baking soda, pinch of pepper. You’ll also need 250g of chickpeas but NOT the tinned version, no, get dried and soak them for around 36 hours – just cover them, leave, drain and dry. I chucked in some shredded chicken that I had in the fridge but you don’t need to.

to make falafel burgers you should:

blend everything together, gently – you want a coarse, grainy paste, nothing too smooth. If you need to dry it out a little, add breadcrumbs (6 syns for a wholemeal roll). Shape into four burgers and put in the fridge for 30 minutes. Bake on 180 for thirty minutes, serve with tzatziki in a wholemeal bun!

to make tzatziki you will need:

mix 200g of finely chopped cucumber, a small red onion finely chopped, 200g of fat free yoghurt, a bit of garlic finely chopped, 1 tbsp of lemon juice and salt and pepper. Season to taste and put in the fridge until you need it.

Enjoy, enjoy.

J

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February 24, 2015

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american, beef, beef mince, pork, pork mince, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

rolled stuffed meatloaf

Only a little preamble tonight, because the recipe is a corker and I need my wordcount for that. BUT remember my Muller yoghurt letter? There’s a new (well, old) letter to read below…

I visited Poundland today – all I wanted was a money-tin, all I got is my eyes opened. I’ve said many times before that I’m not a snob but do you know, maybe I am. I’m snobbish about good manners, for one thing – asking me to do something without saying please is as bad in my eyes as taking my packed lunch and crapping in my salad roll. The reason I mention manners is the amount of people zombieing around Poundland, death-rattling and spluttering and sniffing was beyond the pale. Since when did it become acceptable to cough without covering your mouth, or sneeze right in someone’s face without attempting to cover it? At one point I went to pick up a pack of Haribo only for some wispy-chinned gasbag to cough the bottom of her lungs right across me and THEN keep on moving without so much as a backwards glance. Poundland? I almost pounded her head off a shelf full of knock-off Elsie and Anal Frozen figurines.

What makes Newcastle’s Poundland more interesting is that it is right next door to Waitrose, so you get people coming out of Waitrose, all full of puff and OH LOOK AT ME BUYING MY QUINOA AND DOLPHIN TEAR SALAD quickly nipping into Poundland to buy some cheap batteries, and people coming out of Poundland going into Waitrose to get a free coffee and finger all of the posh fruit. I’m not a huge fan of Waitrose, it’s absolutely rammed full of yah-yah-mummy students and people who think they’re the Big I Am. Have you tried any of Heston Bloominghell’s nonsense food from there? I can safely say I’ve tried most of it and thought it was all overpriced piss. Just because you can coat bacon in mushy pea puree and the hope of a orphan doesn’t mean you should.

Hey actually, speaking of Poundland, a few years ago I actually wrote to them – ironically, about a moneytin – and if you’re a fan of my fruity letters to organisations, you’ll enjoy this. Here:

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Oh young James, you should have known better. They replied with a proper arsey letter.

Anyway, what YOU should do is try this recipe, it was bloody delicous – and only the coleslaw is synned, so you could leave that out and have a syn-free dinner that looks a treat! It’s your normal meatloaf recipe, but with three ingredients in the middle – sweet potato, shaved sprouts and very finely chopped mushroom.

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to make the hot and spicy coleslaw you will need:

 100g of red cabbage, 100g of radishes, 100g of white cabbage, one carrot large enough to make your eyes water, 100g of fat free natural yoghurt, salt, pepper and 1tbsp of horseradish sauce (1 syn but it makes enough to feed six, so your choice but I’ll say syn free).

to make rolled stuffed meatloaf you will need:

900g of a mix of lean pork mince and lean beef mince, 1 large red onion, two garlic gloves (grated) PLEASE, get a microplane grater. Like this one on Amazon. It’ll make it so much easier! You’ll also need two large eggs, 2 tablespoons of parsley, 2 tbsp dried mustard powder, 1 tbsp of thyme (fresh or dried, see if I’m bothered), 1 tbsp coriander seeds crushed (can leave these out, I won’t tell), 1sp of onion powder, some salt and pepper, and a tiny bit of baking powder.

For the stuffing, you’ll need 3 sweet potatoes, half a bag of sprouts, half a pack of mushrooms and an onion.

to make hot and spicy coleslaw you should:

Finely grate your cabbage(s), radishes and carrot into a bowl. Add yoghurt, horseradish, salt and pepper and mix well. Put it in the fridge.

to make rolled stuffed meatloaf you should:

Then the meatloaf mix – combine the meat, chopped onion, garlic, eggs and all of the spices and seasoning and mix it in a bowl until you get one lovely lump. Too wet? Add breadcrumbs. One wholemeal roll is a healthy extra – blend and add as much as you think you need. You’re aiming for a well mixed lump. Put it in the fridge to cool.

Next, pierce and microwave your sweet potatoes for around 15 minutes. Once cooked and cooled, scoop out the flesh into a bowl and add salt. Eat the skins, they’re fucking tasty. Next, finely chop the mushroom and onion. I used my Kenwood chopper here. It does make things a lot easier, even Delia says so. Mind it does nothing that a sharp knife can’t do but you are looking for finely chopped. Put into a pan, cook for five minutes or so on a medium heat to draw out the moisture. Set aside. Next, very thinly slice your sprouts. You can again use a knife or if you’re a fan of speed and danger, use a mandolin. This is mine, and it’s only £11. Stick the sprouts in a microwave bowl, cook for two minutes so they soften just a little, and set aside after draining and getting as much liquid out as possible.

Now, assembly. Hoy the oven onto 180 degrees. Get a loaf tin and grease the sides. You’ll then need to get some parchment paper or greaseproof paper or anything but the Daily Mail and line the tin. Doesn’t have to be precise, you’re not on the Krypton Factor and I’m not Gordon Burns. Next, get a flat sheet (preferably a baking sheet, it’ll make it easier for you) and line that with greaseproof paper. You want to be able to form a rectangle of around 8″ by 13″. Here’s a tip, don’t let a man measure this for you – the amount of men I’ve met in my life who think 5.5″ is 8″ is surprising. Dump your meat into the middle and flatten down to create an even rectangle, nice and flat. Take your time.

Now, spread the sweet potato over the top, nice and thin – don’t worry if it’s a bit patchy, but take your time to keep it smooth. Add the sprouts, then the mushroom and onion.

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This is the tricky SOUNDING part, it’s actually quite easy.  You want to roll the meatloaf. Start by getting hold of the parchment paper at one of the short ends of the rectangle and slowly roll the meat over itself – tight, but not ridiculous. Peel off the paper as you go. It’ll make sense when you do it, trust me. Take your time, rolling and peeling, rolling and peeling, until you’re left with a lovely roll of meat. Oooer etc.

Next, lift carefully into your loaf tin – remember it must be lined. Place the meat seam side down. Decorate the top with tomatoes or bacon or whatever.

In the oven for fifty minutes, take it out, drain the excess liquid away carefully, put back in oven for fifteen minutes, then crack the door open and turn the heat off and let it sit for 15 minutes. Cut and serve with chips and coleslaw and a big fuck-off smile on your face. Well done!

J

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February 23, 2015

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weigh in week seven – the results are in!

Tale of two fatties tonight!

jaymes – 4lb off

paul – 3.5lb on!

total weight loss – 32lb!

Believe it or not, we’re both happy with this result – going in the right direction. I continue going downwards slow and steady and Paul, despite putting on a quarter of a stone, is content it wasn’t more. See, he’s been away down South on a hen-night and has been eating and drinking terrible things for almost four solid days. I reckon a reet good crap will shift that, and he’s vowed to make a proper effort this week – not least because he’s fucked up my little weight loss chart!

Anyway, because we haven’t seen each other in a few days, we’re having a no-computer night and chicken and chorizo risotto for tea – it’s very easy to make, and rather like at least one of us tonight, packed full of meat. A friend at work suggested we were having TOAD IN THE HOLE with a knowing leer on her face before – she knows us too well! Recipe can be found here.

Before I go, you’ll like this. Paul’s brother has pretty severe autism, which lends itself to the odd little gem. Paul took him out shopping on Saturday and he begged to go to Superdrug – to buy “the shampoo that makes my head feel like it’s sucking on a mint”.

He meant Original Source Tea-Tree. I loved that.

J

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February 22, 2015

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just to be the man who walked a thousand miles

Paul’s back tomorrow. It’s been odd without him in the house – the air smells fresher, certainly, and the toilet is remarkably un-pebbledashed, but it’s been quiet and my feet have been getting cold during the night. We very rarely spend the night apart – I can genuinely only think of 6 nights, in over eight years, where we haven’t been burbling sleepy nonsense in each other’s ears and dutch-ovening our way through the night. I’ll be glad to have him back, I’m about three days away from dressing in rags and wailing around the street in the rain like Eponine from Les Mis. In the meantime, a little bit about walking – I’ve walked for years.

I don’t know how well any of you know Newcastle, but there’s a town moor just outside the main city – a lovely, open field with a well-lit path cutting right across it. Well, to help improve my fitness, I’ve taken to walking across there into work and back in the evenings a couple of times a week – four miles in total. I’m not doing this to boost my weight-loss but rather to get back to a decent level of fitness. You don’t need to exercise for SW to work, but well, it can’t do any harm.

Of course, the town moor, by the very nature of its name, is also used by lots of other people, and has four unique problems – cyclists, walkers, dog-walkers and cows. Let’s take cyclists first.

A few years ago, you’d be lucky if a cyclist had anything more than two wheels and a handlebar as they went past you. Times have changed, not least because you can now sense their self-satisfied attitudes before you see them, drifting ahead of their bike like a breath on your neck. I’m not a fervent anti-cyclist – admittedly, I don’t see the point, but the ‘Professional’ cyclist does wind me up.

Now its not the helmet-cam that gets me cross, although it’s just so needlessly passive-aggressive – the Halfords equivalent of wearing a sign saying Telltale Tit on it. It’s not even the lycra, which clings to every wrinkle and takes away the mystery of whether a man has a matt or gloss finish. No…it’s the lights that wind me up – I used to cycle merrily in the dark along country roads with only the little reflector that came free with my box of Frosties lighting the way, with my long black coat and my shit goth black hair billowing behind me like the gayest Scottish Widow you’ve ever seen. Now you see cyclists coming towards you looking like a tiny mobile oil-rig, all shiny helmets (admittedly not the first time I’ve had one of them come at me of a morning) and blinking lights morse-coding ‘YES, I AM A TWAT’ on the front. It’s lucky I’m not epileptic, I’d be twitching halfway to Sunderland by the time I finished my walk.

Then see there’s other walkers – I’m an incredibly competitive person but also someone who is fundamentally lazy, a dangerous combination. I don’t like to be ‘outwalked’ by anyone, but I’m too fat and slovenly to move beyond a speed that could be best described as ‘god bless him, he’s trying’. If I see someone coming up behind me (admittedly not the first time I’ve had that happen of a morning, either) I’ll immediately try and quicken my pace, but I’ll sharp need to slow down as my trousers start smoking and the smell of bacon wafts around me.  I’ll lump joggers and runners in with this lot – fair play to anyone who wants to improve their fitness, it’s all good fun, but why do so many need to run towards you with that weird cum-face thing going on?

Dog-walkers are even worse, though. I don’t mind dogs, but only if they’re decent, dog-sized dogs – not cats that bark. As a rule, if you can lift up a dog with one hand, it’s too small for me. I like walking a dog to be a battle of wills, see. But by the by, it’s those people who let the dog run up to you and jump up on my work trousers – I don’t particularly like dogs I don’t know at the best of times, but I could really do without a muddy pawprint over my crotch. Oh how the owners laugh gaily as I shoo their little shitmachine away from me, all ‘OH HE’S REALLY NO BOTHER’ and ‘OH HOW HE LIKES YOU’. I’d love to reply ‘DO YOU THINK I COULD DROP-KICK HIM OVER ST JAMES PARK FROM HERE?’ but of course I’m too British so I just laugh nervously and call them rude words as soon as they turn their back. Keep your dog on a leash if you’re incapable of calling them back, it’s really that simple.

The final problem is cows. For eight months of the year, there are about two hundred cows milling around on the moor. No-one else seems fazed by them but they make incredibly nervous. I grew up in the country and was never fazed, but one day I was walking across the town moor with my headphones on, in a world of my own, when a cow ‘crept’ (I say crept, a cow weighs around 100 stone or so, so she did well) up behind me and nudged my side with her nose. I got such a fright that I actually screamed out loud like a jessie and well, now I’m terrified of them! There’s only one place in Newcastle for 100-stone beasts with insanely long eyelashes and pendulous titties and that’s the Bigg Market. I console myself by eating their brethren with a smug smile.

So yes, walking. Perilous. Recipes tomorrow when t’other half returns! I PROMISE.

J

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February 21, 2015

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quickpost: I’ve finally did it myself!

Using my quickpost for this week to make sure there’s a post every day! VERY quick post tonight because I fell asleep in front of the TV and it’s nearly midnight. Why am I so tired? Simple. I spent all day DOING DIY! Honest to God. I’ve never felt manlier – I almost went out and bought a cigar and a six pack of beer. Did I? No. I did some DIY though. Admittedly all my drilling and measuring and sawing (I shit you not, I used a saw) were done to the best hits of Juice Newton, but still? The shelves will probably end up on the floor with a cat pinned underneath and it’ll cost me ridiculous amounts in vet fees, but for a moment, I FELT LIKE A KING. I once put a bed together from IKEA and realising that I hadn’t quite done it correctly, I just used a pile of magazines to prop up one corner. That bed lasted me three years of hard ‘single living’, if you know what I mean. God bless you Nintendo Magazine, you have no idea how many intimate moments were stacked upon your pages.

Anyway – bed for me, recipes tomorrow – this is like a mini break for Paul and I see.

Here’s what I did!

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Ladies, if such a display of manliness has left your lettuce wet, I apologise, but I’m married! Tsk.

J

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February 20, 2015

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saving money on slimming world

Bobby Beale, you little tinker. Cost me £10 at the bookies, that did, plus my dignity for sitting and watching it (and enjoying it!). I’m alone in the house tonight as Paul’s down South. I’m not too good at being in the house by myself, and it doesn’t help that I’ve got the score from Scream 2 playing as I type. If my ex and Paul’s mother burst through the door waving a knife at me then at least I can say I died doing what I love, typing with one hand and scratching my balls with the other. Though I do hate the thought of being discovered in my ‘lay around the house’ boxer shorts with the hole burnt in the behind – from an errant cigarette back when I used to smoke, not from any particularly violent flatus.

No recipe tonight, but instead, a response to the many posts I’ve seen dotted around saying how expensive SW is, especially for new joiners. So, I thought I’d rattle off a few ways around saving money on slimming world – our shopping bill normally comes in at around £50 a week, and we generally shop at a combination of Waitrose, Tesco and Morrisons. I’m just going to scattershot type the article mind, so don’t expect structure and hilarity – I’m sitting here freezing my bollocks off but if I don’t type it before my bath I’ll never bother! I also plan to turn this into a pinned page at the top and keep adding to it. Oooh I’m the gift that keeps on giving!

Bulk buy the staples

Long time readers may remember The Cat Hotel – we cleared out our shed, fitted shelving and use it to store bulk purchases of anything that is either on a considerable discount or cheaper to buy in bulk. So to this end we always have masses and masses of Slimming World staples – chopped tomatoes, beans, pasta, spaghetti, chickpeas, tinned veg, stock cubes, salt, vinegar, sauces, rice. We generally buy these in bulk from Costco – to give you an example of savings here, you can pick up 24 tins of excellent quality chopped tomatoes for around £7, or 28p a tin. Yes, you can buy them cheaper in Tesco if you go down to the ‘Aren’t I a cheapskate’ range, but you’re getting red piss in a tin with a tomato crust. There would be more tomato flavour if you sucked the tomato on the tin wrapper. Bulk buying nearly always pays for itself in the end plus you’ve always got something in – many a time Paul and I will just have a tin of beans for dinner because we’re too busy illegally downloading TV shows and living the life of Riley. By the way, our cats don’t bother with it, and why would they? Yes it’s warm, safe and dry, but they’d much rather crap in my flowerbeds and track their muddy paws across our white tiles.

Cook twice, freeze once!

Most of our recipes can easily be doubled or halved – but if I say it serves four, then cook for four and freeze two portions – or serve three portions and take one for lunch the next day as we normally do. You’re cooking the meal anyway so it’s no hardship at all to freeze a bit up.

ALDI/LIDL

You can save money in these shops, but I don’t like them. I have tried, I swear I have. We went to an Aldi once and it was just too stressful – I don’t like a shop that puts garden shears next to petit pois tins and tumble drier balls next to the Daily Malk chocolate. I find it too confusing, with all the off-brand rip-offs and impossible layout – it’s like an Escher puzzle of abject poverty. Plus when you go to pay for your items the cashier throws them through the checkout like she’s going for gold for Great Britain’s curling team. I like small talk and chit-chat, not fucking carpet burns from a pack of floor wipes swishing past my hand at the speed of light. If you can deal with the above, all the very best to you, you’ll definitely save – but if not…

Don’t be afraid to scrabble in the bargain bin

Listen, I used to avoid the bargain bin like the best of them, but since I discovered that my local Tesco actually do decent meat reductions, I’ll happily get in there and elbow an old biddy in the face for £2 off a pork shoulder. You’ve got to be savvy though – get what you need, rather than what you think is a decent deal. If you weren’t going to buy that six pack of yoghurt reduced to 8p because the fork-lift ran over it and a fox shagged the strawberry crunch, it’s not a bargain. But the flipside of this is – don’t be one of those fucking awful people who grab items as soon as the poor supermarket worker has stuck the reduced sticker on it. Have a touch of class. Yes, you might have a trolley so full of reduced bread that you could use it to stop a raging river, but what price dignity? I’ve mentioned before that I’ve seen people actually fighting and nothing is worth that.

Get yourself a countdown

Clearly not a countdown as in the game-show for the piss-flow challenged, but rather where you bulk buy Slimming World entry costs and get 12 weeks for the cost of ten, plus if you time it right you’ll normally get given a free book that you can immediately sell on ebay for further profit read and enjoy. Mind, this is good for two reasons – yes, you’ll save money, but if you’re as tight as a tick’s bumhole like I am, the idea of wasting already spent money will make you go to class! WIN WIN.

Right – bath now, more tomorrow!

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February 19, 2015

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lamb, lamb joints, low syn, recipe card

rosemary crusted lamb steaks

Just a wee post tonight as I’m itching to find out what happened to Lucy Beale, god help me. I’m ashamed of myself.

I heard Boy George on the radio driving back and it nudged a memory out of me – I once threw my sister’s Culture Club CD down a well (apparently I lived in Amish country)– frankly the best place for it, but I got a proper telling off for it. But see now she used to do the same thing that Paul does now – hears a song, likes it, plays it over and over and over and over again. Not too bad when it’s a decent ditty but Karma fucking Chameleon? Even now the opening chords of that song transport me right back to my teenage years in a bedroom that smelled slightly of bleach and Boy bloody George caterwauling through the floorboards.

I grew up in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, Northumberland – the type of village where a minority of the locals still pointed at planes in the sky, mouthing the word dragons with spittle on their lips. It didn’t have a corner shop (and still doesn’t) but it did have two pubs and a kitchen and bathroom centre. You couldn’t buy a pint of milk but you could buy a fabulous bespoke oak cabinet to store it in. It was a pleasant enough place to live but definitely somewhere you’d go to die rather than thrive.

My sister and I, and the other children of the village (or corn), spent most of our time building dens and treehouses. Well, I’d watch them build treehouses, I was always too fat to climb a tree and the one time I did I got stuck up there for several hours before promptly falling out, like a sleepy owl dressed in a knock-off Diadora tracksuit. Looking back, our dens were amazingly creative – a stack of pallets hidden up a tree, a stack of pallets hidden in the woods, a stack of pallets hidden amongst the pallets on the building site when they built the new houses. We lit a fire once inside one of these enclosed dens which has to be the height of stupidity, but filled with the childlike sense of invincibility we carried on, and mind it gets worse – we used a tyre as a make-shift fire-pit. How the hell we survived that I have no clue – nothing says good country living like breathing in smoke and the fumes from a singeing tyre. Perhaps we’ll be able to launch a criminal case against Dunlop in years to come for all of our defects but frankly, I don’t have Julia Robert’s three-cock-gob so I’d make a shite Erin Brockovitch.

Tell you what I can get in my gob though – tonight’s tea. Rosemary crusted lamb steaks with broccoli and pepper mash.

slimming world rosemary lamb crusted

to make rosemary crusted lamb steaks you will need:

four decent lamb steaks, fat removed – better to buy two excellent chops than four scrag-end slippers, 50g of fresh parsley, 2tbsp of fresh rosemary leaves/sprigs/fingers, who knows, one clove of garlic, 2 tbsp of grated parmesan (between four is a tiny amount, but I’d be careful and say 2 syns), 4 tsp of olive oil (again, between four, so only 2 syns each, and if you want to reduce that further, use two tsp for the crust and use frylight to oil the pan), 60g of breadcrumbs (between four, but I just whizzed up a breadbun which is one person’s healthy extra), salt, pepper and a beaten egg. Serve with pepper mash (mashed potato + egg + lots of pepper) and broccoli.

to make rosemary crusted lamb steaks you should:

hopefully you’ll have a mini-chopper – something like this will do – less than £15 and you can make healthy pesto, hummous and finely chop breadcrumbs in it. We use it a lot, but you can make do with a food processor. Chuck the parsley, rosemary, garlic, parmesan, olive oil (saving a little for the frying pan later) and breadcrumbs in there and blitz to make a pesto. Add some more breadcrubs to get it nice and crumbly.

Pop your beaten egg into one bowl and your pesto in other. Swish your lamb chop around in the egg and then in the pesto. Get your pan up to heat, the olive oil or frylight hot, and drop the chops in – two minutes or more on each side depending on how rare you like your lamb – I like mine to still be connected to its mother and with a half-formed baa on its lips when it gets turned into my dinner. Let them rest for 3-5 minutes (plate up your mash and sides) and enjoy!

The pesto might come away from the lamb, but so what? Just put it back on. This was delicious and only 4 syns max per chop, and that’s being VERY careful. I’d personally give it only two syns but I can’t be fussed arguing with someone over two syns!

Right! ENJOY. Share!

J

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February 18, 2015

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classics, fakeaways, kebab shop, lamb, lamb mince, recipe card, syn free

doner kebab

Warning: this post is miserable as syn. Pun intended.

I woke up in a proper huff today. No particular reason, just I wanted everyone I saw outside of my immediate circle of friends to be immediately blinked out of all existence. Humanity seemed to be doing its bit to bring me to my knees – if I’d had a shotgun and could carry off a leather knee-length coat with any sort of panache then there could have been genuine trouble. Things got off to a sour note as soon as I checked my facebook over my morning banana – which isn’t as filthy as it sounds – and saw…

…people queueing up outside of Iceland to get a ready meal. I mean for heaven’s sake. You need to understand that I wouldn’t queue up outside of a shop if they were giving away free blowjobs and pug-faced kittens, but I can just about see the point of it if you’re desperate for a bargain. But for a fucking ready meal? I’ve seen trolleys awash with them like each one contains a mini Margaret who will come and jiggle your fat-shelf up and done to tone it whilst you watch Eastenders. I apologise profusely if there are any readers out there who queued and enjoyed themselves but I find it despairing – like Black Friday but sweatier. Plus the sausages look like an old poo in a condom, though admittedly I’m basing that on a photo that Ray Charles himself seemingly took using a potato. Nevertheless, each to their own and all that. So…

Every song on the radio into work was the wrong one. My iPod wouldn’t bluetooth up to the car music system meaning I couldn’t have my music on. Every person in every single other car on the road was driving like an arsehole – either too slow, reading their phones, or swerving all over the road trying to get their iPod to bluetooth up to their car music system. Well, honestly. I nearly ran someone over who thought stepping out in front of the bus was the best way to continue their life and then I got stuck behind a bin-lorry who had parked up in a single-lane street so the driver could have a cigarette. And you can’t remonstrate with a binman, everyone knows that. That was just the journey in.

Work was work.

Lunchtime came and by this point, all I wanted to do was eat my lunch and doze for half an hour in peace so I picked up my Thermos of bloody awful watery vegetable soup (I had nowt in last night to make something fancy) (Paul calls it care home broth) and made my way over my car in the multi-storey in Newcastle’s Chinatown. No sooner had I poured my soup when some piss-eyed old bugger tapped on my window and told me to move my car as they were doing electric works on the lamppost behind. I duly obliged, working my way through my entire bank of swearwords as I moved around to find a space whilst all the while holding a cup of soup in one hand. Having done so, I finished my ‘delicious’ dinner and was about to nod off for twenty minutes when what sounded like the entire country of China paraded through the street below, banging drums and making noise. They were practising the Chinese New Year march and it was like being under attack. I would have had a more restful half hour if I’d managed to set my face on fire with the car lighter. Dejected and tired, with a fetching orange stain on my shirt from where I’d jumped the first time around, I headed back in.

But no! The joy didn’t end there. Work continued being work. Over the rest of the day I managed to drop my pass into the toilet when I went for a piss and then drop it again down the stairs on the way out of the building. I also managed to leave my car parking ticket on my desk at work, meaning I had to go back for it, and then, the final insult, I got stuck behind the only AUDI driver in existence who DOESN’T think they need to go 150mph in their shite company car who was tootling merrily along the 60mph road at 30mph where the bends and hills precluded any overtaking. I like to think she at least heard the sound ‘UUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNT’ as I finally overtook. 

Anyway, I’m home now. Deep breath. I appreciate that this entry is one long moan but I needed it, and now I feel better. Here’s a recipe for doner kebab. Normally I’d shy away from a doner kebab, believing it’s only really suitable for soaking up bile and half-digested carrot before promptly being upchucked in a technicolour yawn by some drunken trollop in the Bigg Market before she settle downs in an alleyway for a foamy piss and regretful sex. A tortuous example. But you get my drift, it’s not exactly classy fare.

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to make doner kebab you will need:

500g of extra lean lamb mince, 1 tsp of oregano, 1/2tsp of thyme, onion powder, garlic powder respectively, 1/4tsp of cayenne pepper, 1tsp of salt and some black pepper. Listen, if you don’t have onion or garlic powder, no need to shit the bed, just use fresh onion and garlic chopped fine. You can use a tiny bit of flour to dry it out if your lamb is particularly wet. Syn that though – 25g is four and a half syns but a) you’ll not use that much and b) you’re not eating the whole lot, so don’t worry about it too much. Eat it in a pitta bread – weightwatchers wholemeal pitta (x1) is a HEB. You’ll need whatever salad you want in there.

to make doner kebab you should:

preheat the oven to 180degrees. Chuck absolutely everything into a big old bowl and mash mash mash with your fists. Imagine you’re punching the face of someone you hate, or you’re trying to birth a cow against the clock. You want that mixture smooth, not lumpy because you couldn’t be arsed. No excuses. Think of the body magic. If you sweat and it drops in, just reduce the amount of salt you add. When you’ve got it so smooth and well-mixed that you want to take a picture and show it to the neighbours, stick it in a parchment-lined loaf tin and cook in the oven for around 90 minutes. After 45 minutes, turn it over and skim off any shite that has oozed out. Once cooked, take it out, let it cool, slice it thin. 

Now, stuff it into your pitta with as much salad as you want. Because I’m not very exciting, I just went for spinach and tomato and onion with a raita made from fat free yoghurt, mint and a bit of garlic. Whoo, right? You could have an extra pitta for five syns more and who is going to know? I’m not telling anyone, I’m still in a bad mood!

Enjoy. Goodnight.

J

Oh: before I forget! Thank you all for your comments, we really do appreciate and love each one. Don’t be discouraged if we don’t reply (we always try to) – I sit in front of a computer all day and once I’ve typed this up, I normally turn off the computer and concentrate on relaxing or teasing the cat. But we thank you all 🙂