Tag Archives: egg

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July 18, 2017

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bacon, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

syn-free carbonara quiche – yes, it’s amazing

Evening all! Carbonara quiche if you don’t mind – I was looking at the proper ham and egg quiche we did a long while ago and wondering how we could make it better without adding to the syns. And boy, have we managed it. You’ll find the recipe below. Now, because we have guests coming over tonight, we’re going to hand you over to a guest writer! It’s been a while but I love getting new writers in, not least because it means I get to rest my wanking wrist for a bit. I implore you – please, as fans of my blog – to leave feedback. There’s something fun about reading comments from an audience who appreciate you, and I love to share. If you want to write for us, leave a comment below or contact us via our Facebook page here.

This one’s all about pregnancy – you can understand, can’t you, why we’ve never covered this on our totally gay blog? I can’t remember much about my own labour other than it was a fairly easy one. Well, no, I finished typing that sentence and called my own mother to ask her whether it was true. Her response? “It was like trying to shit a melon”.

See, it’s that type of chat that meant we were never on the front cover of Prima or Your Baby. Sounds like I was a big bugger though – 9lb! First and only time in my life I’ve wrecked a woman’s vagina. Paul was even worse – he didn’t exactly come swinging out like Tarzan like you might expect from his mother, but rather, in typical Paul fashion, he finished eating his tea (his twin sister, who he absorbed in the womb, the fat bastard) and slopped out at a mere 4lb.

Plot twist: he was so weak when he was born that the vicar gave him the last rites. To be fair, the poor bugger was probably gasping for a cigarette. The only baby I know who has yellow fingertips in the photographs. Eee, on that note…

baby, baby, baby nooo – by Julie Wansboro

So it’s bad enough that you end up the size of a small cottage when you fall pregnant without then having to meet all those ‘Mothers of Year’ in waiting rooms. It starts in the doctors surgery when you come out with a little cheesy grin and you see people smiling at you knowingly. Of course they don’t know but you think your smile has given it away instantly.

They’re like velociraptors, seeking out a new mum and ripping her ideas to shreds.  Why, oh why do they feel the need to tell you about their horrendous child birthing experiences?  It could reduce you to tears or hurling depending on your strength of stomach. They talk of tears, stitches, forceps and ripping, the burn, the stretching.  They’re not content with that, they go to discuss the whole labour experience from the first ‘braxton hicks’ and the hilarious mad dashes to the hospital thinking they’re in labour followed by laughter.  All the while you’re trapped in this waiting room praying they call you in next.

Dignity leaves the room the day you fall pregnant, no end of clinicians will view parts of your body that you’ve never seen in your life and nor did you want to (well you might want and if you’re a contortionist might well have).  During one of my four birthing experiences I was asked if I’d like a mirror to be held at the business end so I could see the head crowning?! What kind of sadistic bastards are you?  No, no I don’t want to see that, if I’d wanted to see that I’d be a midwife.  Are they trying to scar me for life?  Beautiful my arse!  Whilst I agree the whole falling pregnant, having a healthy baby is indeed a minor miracle at the same time millions of women manage to give birth every day without having to watch.

J Edit: I’m sorry but this is hilarious – why a mirror? I’d rather there was an amateur dramatics group just to the side recreating it by trying to roll a bowling ball through a rasher of bacon

Being awkward I’m O-neg, so joy of joys I marry an O-pos! This means absolutely nothing to anyone until you fall pregnant then it’s like arrrggghhh what have you done!!They decide you are a pin cushion and you must have blood tests on every possible trip to the hospital for check-ups.  Woe betide you if they then discover you’re anaemic, the joy of iron tablets, black poo and constipation to accompany the ever-growing circumference of your middle.  It gets to the point where you forget what your knees look like or know if you’re wearing matching shoes.

Then you get the talk about breast feeding, cracked nipples stories, swollen breasts and leaking…….stop please, I really don’t need to know.  Where are the mums who tell you the great stories, the love at first sight of their babies stories that make you forget the journey there?  Oh hang on, they’re the same mums telling you the horror stories!!!!  Four children later the stone I gained with each of them has managed to rigidly stick to my ribs, Zara my SW saviour has helped shift two of those stones and I reckon by the end of the year I’ll have shifted another one.  Wish me luck!

Well, frankly, it all sounds horrendous. Paul and I are never going to be one of those gay couples who both jizz in a tea-cup and slosh it inside a willing lady using the ‘blow’ function on a Henry hoover. That is how it works, isn’t it? For one, I can’t bear waste, and two, no. There’s no stage of childhood that I think is worth the upheaval. Babies are red-faced poo machines, toddlers are angry red-faced poo machines, children are vexing time-sponges and teenagers are rude pockets of acne and emotion.

I’ve mentioned before that I hate it when people bring their baby over to me and expect me to be all emotional and coo over it. I can’t. I have zero paternal instinct. I see a bundle of beetroot cells swaddled in something far too expensive from Mothercare and I just shudder. I’ve found that people have stopped doing it now that I pick the baby up and put it in the filing cabinet as protest.

Oh and let’s be honest, any combination of Paul and I is going to look awful. It’ll come out with my bent nose, Paul’s boss-eyes, my ‘yes, I’m British working class’ teeth and Paul’s inability to grow a decent beard. What hope would it have?

Anyway, let’s do this carbonara quiche recipe, shall we? I’ve mixed things up a bit from the previous quiche – our all time most-visited recipe, you know – so pay attention. This makes enough for eight good thick wedges – plus it freezes well!

to make carbonara quiche, you’ll need:

  • two large red onions (or white onions, tsk, racist)
  • 8 large eggs (and look, the best you can get, please – it’s the main part of the recipe and well, treat yourself)
  • about 500g of gammon or bacon – I bought a 1kg uncooked joint from Lidl for £3, cut it into cm cubes and froze half of it for another time – either way, you’ll want to dice it into cubes
  • a pack of cherry tomatoes
  • 100ml of 1% milk (2 syns, or 1/3 of a HEA) (to be honest, I didn’t syn this – it’s between 8 servings, so it’s a quarter of a ruddy syn)
  • 100g of spaghetti or however much you have left over at the end of a meal
  • 120g of lighter mature cheddar (3 x HEA, but you can cut that back if you like)
  • one clove of garlic or one tsp of that lazy garlic you can buy

You’ll also need a decent cake-tin. I use a silicone baking tin and absolutely nothing sticks to it – click here to order one. One of the best we’ve ever used! I give it a couple of sprays with olive oil – not Frylight – and the dispenser we use can be found here. We fill it with olive oil and if we’re bothering to syn, we syn it the same as the Tesco sprayer at 7 squirts for 0.5 syns. We hate Frylight.

to make carbonara quiche, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 170 degrees and get a pan of water boiling for your spaghetti
  • once the water is boiling, throw in your spaghetti – has anyone taught you the spaghetti trick? Grasp all your spaghetti together in your wrist like…er, well, honestly, like you’re gripping a cock, lower the ends of the spaghetti in the water and let go – it’ll fan out into the water rather than going in as one big lump
  • chop up your onion and in a frying pan, sweat it off with your garlic and bacon / gammon chunks until the onion and garlic is soft and the bacon is cooked
  • whilst that’s sweating, prepare your cherry tomatoes – you don’t want the seeds in the quiche otherwise you’ll make it too watery so, pop those tomatoes! You don’t need to be fancy, literally burst them in a bowl, tear them in half and put the flesh in a bowl on the side
  • drain your spaghetti and run it under cold water to cool it down and stop it sticking together
  • in a jug, beat your eight eggs and milk with a load of black pepper – no salt though, the bacon/gammon will be salty enough
  • grate your cheese – this is where the microplane grater we always bang on about comes in handy, it does it so finely that it spreads out easily!
  • mix everything together (hold back a handful of cheese for the top) in a big mixing bowl – get your hands right in there – you want everything mixed well – and once combined, slop it into your cake tin
  • press down any errant strands of spaghetti and top with the remaining cheese
  • cook in the oven for a good forty minutes – test it by sticking a knife into the centre – it should come back clean – if it doesn’t, keep cooking it until everything is set – cover the top with foil if you think it is starting to catch
  • cool and serve

Two pointers: this is AMAZING the day after, once it’s sat in the fridge – and it is perfect for freezing and lunches. Also, if after you’ve mixed everything together, if it looks as though you need another egg, crack another one in. You don’t want it too ‘sloppy’ but there needs to be a decent liquid to contents ratio. Oh, I’m so flirty!

Please tell everyone you can about this recipe, it’s a corker and we love it so!

Want more recipes? But of course you do? Click the random selection of buttons below!

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Stay safe.

J

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October 5, 2016

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beef, fakeaways, low syn, lunch, recipe card, sandwiches, savoury snacks, snacks

droptober recipe #5: egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich

Yesterday it was a portion of pie, today an egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich- if you’re sitting there with an itchy gunt and slaver on your lips thinking it’s going to be diet-friendly chocolate ice-cream with added cake tomorrow…you’ll be disappointed. But I must say, I’m somewhat enjoying these more ‘naughty’ recipes – are you? But mind, before we get to the egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich, you know what’s coming…more of my words poured into your ear like the sweetest of all the honey. Let’s wrap up Glasgow.

There’s not an awful amount to say – not because it wasn’t useful (it was) or lovely (of course) but because my week consisted of me going to my temporary work, learning lots, coming back, eating lots, sleeping. Even I’d struggle to eke 1000 words out of that, but hey, that’s never stopped me before! Some random thoughts then.

When I checked in I was offered a room with a view of the river – sounds great, right? I immediately snapped it up only to be told it cost an extra £25 a night for this view. I did enquire as to whether there was going to be a flotilla of rare boats I could gaze at or perhaps a Scottish take on the Oxford/Cambridge rowing, but no – which is a shame, as I love nothing more than watching cox thrusting away – it was just a letterbox window view of the Squinty Bridge. I’m ashamed to say I took it anyway despite the extra charge and actually managed to sweet-talk the charge off my bill later in the week.

Glasgow seems surprisingly amazed by the Squinty Bridge. I mean, it’s nice, for a slightly-vagina shaped bit of metal, but I’ll see your Squinty Bridge and, quite literally, raise you our Millennium Bridge:

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Our bridge moves! I gazed out of the window for ages thinking that your bridge moved, but alas, it never did. Plus, I only spotted fifteen bodies floating down the river during the five days I was there – Taggart lies. Our bridge lifts up to allow ships to enter (it seems fitting for Newcastle, actually: a giant, hard beast that opens up to allow easy access for seamen) and is ever so fancy.

The room itself was nothing to write home about, which was lucky because who wants to receive a letter stating ‘bed clearly damaged by too many people rutting on it’ and ‘bathroom tiny but fine, who knew being able to shower and shit at the same time would be such a luxury’. Weirdly, there was no main light, meaning every moment before bed was spent turning off about 100 lamps and drawing the curtains against the glow of the lights outside.  Just what you need before bed, a fucking bleep test. I missed Paul most of all when I was sleeping. I just can’t get a relaxing night’s sleep unless I’m sleeping with half an ear cocked for him finally being drowned by his own neck-fat. Ah well.

Is there a more fraught, tense feeling in life than having a white hire car and not taking out the damage insurance that covers scratches and dents? I swear I spent a good two hours a day gingerly driving my car a foot in various directions, terrified that if I parked next to another car their careless owner would come back and scrape their denim-clad arse all down the side of my car, leaving me with a ridiculous bill to pay. I’ve never felt such stress behind the wheel – I had to go for a colonoscopy just to calm down. There will be footage in some tedious collection somewhere of me trying to park perfectly within the lines of a bay in a perpetually empty car-park. Worse, I had to move my car at one point as I’d parked it directly under the Finnieston Crane and, being ever the worrier, I had visions of dead seagulls plummeting from on high and cracking the window. You know what makes this just the worst though? Anyone watching would automatically assume I was a braying arsehole who didn’t want his precious Audi scratched – to be clear, it was all fuelled by me being a tight-arse.

Speaking of being a tight-arse, after one particularly taxing day, I made my way back to the hotel and stopped by their gaily-named little pantry for a snack. I snaffled a Crunchie and a can of coke and the lady behind the desk charged me £2.90. I was conflicted. As a fat bastard, I wanted the Crunchie. As a sarcastic sod, I wanted to ask whether she was confused and perhaps she thought I was asking her to accompany me up to chew the Crunchie and share the coke. As a Geordie I wanted to be outraged, bellow something about rip-off Britain and stot it off her noggin. Naturally, my elegant, fat, British side won out, and I took my Crunchie and coke and grumbled about it to myself all the way back to the room.

Weirdly, that’s about the only things I have to say on the trip – as it was for business rather than pleasure there wasn’t a lot of shenanigans to be had! I used Deliveroo for all of my evening meals. For those that ‘div nat knaa’, as it were, this is a service which picks up delicious food from local restauarants and cycles it round straight to your location. It’s a great idea in principle and, judging by the sheer amount of hipsters who almost run me over every time I cross a street in Newcastle, seems to be doing well. My limit for each evening meal was £25 and I found a voucher for £10, meaning, because I like to get the value from these things, I ordered £35 every night. Mahaha. I know, it’s shocking, but see it meant I could keep some for breakfast (though dolmades at 7am is a tough call) and stock up on drinks, so there was method in the madness. I did have to make a ‘oh my other half is starving’ crack every time the Deliveroo driver turned up to try and justify the huge bag of food he was bringing. He knew though. He knew.

And that’s that! Let’s get to the recipe for egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich before bake-off starts, eh? It’s four syns per sandwich. The photo below shows one half of the sandwich as we’ve cut it in two for the picture. Dur.

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to make egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich you will need:

  • 2 slices of your Healthy Extra B choice bread
  • 2 tsp mustard (1 syn) (use the mild mustard, the bright yellow stuff, as opposed to anything too hot, unless you want a steaming hoop later)
  • 3 slices of gherkins
  • 5 slices pastrami
  • 1 egg
  • 15ml skimmed milk (½ syn)
  • half a 25g bag of light baked crisps (2½ syns) (this adds a nice crunch)
  • 2 slices of light cheese (1x HeA)
  • 1 tomato, sliced

to make egg, pastrami and cheese loaded sandwich you should:

  • toast the bread to however you like it and once the toast is done, put mustard on
  • scramble the eggs by whisking with the milk, and cooking in a small saucepan over a medium heat (don’t stir too often!)
  • layer everything
  • add the top slice of toast and enjoy

I hope this fills your hole but if you’re looking for some more inspiration, just click on one of the buttons below!

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Thanks all!

J

 

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June 19, 2015

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fakeaways, indian, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

don’t light a match, it’s egg curry time!

Yep.

Egg curry. Curry, boiled eggs and sweated-down onions and garlic.

You can rather guess the effect it’s had on the both of us, can’t you? Yep. A colossal, vile, dramatic rise in the amount, pungency and volume of our after-dinner hints.

Every time I field a benchwarmer, I’m taking another layer of skin off my buttocks. I’m raw, I’m not kidding, and each time Paul steams his knickers I feel my face tighten. It’s awful – quite genuinely the worst smell that’s ever barrelled out of us. Now I’m no prude, I love a good taint-stainer, and other people’s seam-splitters make me howl, but this is too much, even for me. We can barely type for gagging and even the cat has been licking his own chutney-locker for twenty minutes just to give his nose a break. I’ve never seen a cat cry until tonight.

Listen, I’ve talked about puckered-chuckles before and I’m not going to go into too much depth here, but everyone – I don’t care how hoity-toity and prim you are – has been proud of one of their farts before. My favourite? I once broke wind on the London Eye, in the height of summer, in a full capsule. Imagine that, the heat blaring down, everyone panicking but being terribly polite about the whole affair. In my defence, I didn’t think it would smell and I was more preoccupied with making sure it wasn’t a full-on cheek-rattler that I didn’t think about the consequences. I bet there’s still fingernails scratched into the emergency exit of capsule 19. 

Paul disagrees though, stating that my best pump was early on morning as I dozed in bed and he got ready for work. He asked me a question and in my slumber I let loose the loudest, squeakiest arse-moo he’d ever heard, to the point where I woke myself up thinking it was the bedside alarm. He had to get back into bed for laughing so hard and he still chuckles about it now. We’re a classy pair.

Here, my favourite old fart joke. It probably only makes sense if you’re of an era when Emmerdale used to be Emmerdale Farm and Jimmy Saville was just a cheeky tinker.

 A bloke goes into a bar and asks for a pint of bitter with a head on it. He gets one from the barman, and then asks him to keep an eye on the pint whilst he nips to the bog. Barman agrees.

Bloke comes back from the netty only to find the pint is still there but the head is missing.

“What happened to the head on my pint?!” he asks the barman, to which the barman replies, “well, see that large athletic looking lady over there? While you were in the gents she came over and farted on your pint and blew the head off it“.

“Right” says the angry customer, “I’m going to have a word with her!”.

He storms over to the lady and asks, “Excuse me, fart in my Whitbread?“

and she says…wait for it wait for it…

…..

….

…

..

.

“No I’m Tessa Sanderson”

Tessa Sanderson right?!

 

 

Oh screw you. Here’s your stinking recipe!

syn free sw egg curry

This serves four.

We served it with saag aloo from a previous recipe (opens in a new window) and boring old rice. This is a great way of getting a load of superfree into your mush. So…

to make egg curry, you’ll need:

  • 6 hard boiled eggs (shell removed)
  • 2 medium onions 
  • 3 medium tomatoes
  • 1 tsp grated ginger
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 green chilli (sliced)
  • handful of coriander leaves (chopped)
  • 2½ tsp ground coriander
  • ½ tsp tumeric
  • ½ tsp paprika
  • ½ tsp garam masala
  • ½ ground cumin
  • salt

For the love of God, buy one of these. YES IT’S A MICROPLANE GRATER but you can do your garlic and ginger so quick. Plus Parmesan and lemon. Hell you could even try getting your feet sorted out with it, which is handy if your feet look like a drought relief map. 

to make egg curry, you’ll need to do this:

  • finely chop the onions
  • spray a large saucepan with Frylight OR a drop or two of oil and place over a medium heat
  • gently fry the onions for about 5 minutes or until translucent and golden
  • add the crushed garlic, ginger and sliced chili to the pan and stir it like a piece of playground gossip
  • chop the tomatoes roughly, add to the pan and stir well
  • cook for about five minutes, until the mixture is quite mushy
  • meanwhile, in a small bowl mix together the corianer, turmeric, paprika, garam masala and cumin powder with two tablespoons of water until smooth, you want it looking like an Orlistat side-effect
  • add the spice mixture to the pan and mix well
  • add the chopped coriander leaves to the pan and continue to cook the mixture for another three minutes or so 
  • add 325ml water to the pan, cover and cook for fifteen minutes, or until it’s really thickened up
  • meanwhile, boil six eggs for 10 minutes. peel under running water
  • remove the curry from the heat and stir well 
  • slice the eggs in half and place in the curry.

Look, this isn’t the most razzmatazz of recipes, but it’s fun and unusual. That’s what Slimming Would should be about. SHOULD.

Now excuse me, I have to go FART LIKE A BREWERY HORSE.

PRAY FOR JAMES

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February 7, 2015

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breakfast, fakeaways, indian, lunch, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

spicy scrambled eggs that’ll take your ring off

I’ve had occasion to go into two places I’d never normally venture this week – a proper designer fashion shop and an expensive perfume place – normally places I avoid like the plague.

My first task was to buy some jewellery for my boss who was leaving – so in I minced to Vivienne Westwood, expecting to be immediately shooed back outside by some harridan with a broom with exclamations of ‘WE DON’T WANT YOUR SORT IN HERE’ like a stray cat in a butchers. I don’t do high-end fashion. Hell, I don’t do fashion at all – I buy most of my clothes from Tesco because I couldn’t care less what I look like as long as I’m clean and warm. Now the interesting thing was that my preconceptions about the designer shop were entirely wrong – the assistant behind the counter could not have been more friendly, warm or welcoming, despite me standing there in my Florence and Fred shirt and elastic trousers. Actually, I did have expensive shoes on, if that helps. Us fat men can’t spend money on normal clothes but by gaw can we put it away on bags and shoes if we need it. She asked me what tone my friend was, I had no idea, whether she liked silver or gold, I had no idea, whether she was classic or modern, I had no idea. She masked her exasperation impeccably. I did almost want to tip her over the edge by asking if they had shirts in my size – looking at the offerings on the rails the only way I could wear a Vivienne Westwood shirt is if I folded it in two and used it as a handkerchief. One jacket that I thought would have been suitable for my two year old nephew was hastily put back when I realised it was an Adult M. Nevertheless, after a fashion, we managed to pick out a tasteful piece of jewellery and whilst I cold-sweated my way through paying for it, I engaged in a polite chitchat with the assistant, until she told me that the rug I was standing on was worth £9,000 and all I could think is that I’d covered it in cat-hair from where I had set my rucksack down. The cats use my rucksack as a sleeping bag, see, and no, I don’t have a fag-bag or a murse. So…

The next stop was a fancy-dan perfume shop for a different gift for a different friend.  I hate these places at the best of times, because walking through a perfume department is like being pepper-sprayed by eighteen old ladies at once. I find most perfumes repellent and as a general rule, if you walk near me and it smells like you’ve had a bath in Charlie Red, things aren’t going to end well. It didn’t help that the lady behind the counter was clearly only flying with one engine because she kept repeating the last three words back to me like a parrot – I was asking for some advice on perfumes and it was like I was in an echoey tunnel. ‘LIKE SOME PERFUME?’ followed by ‘DON’T KNOW MUCH’ and then ‘PAYING BY CARD’ and ‘FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE’ got real vexing, real quickly. Plus, I know it’s par for the course when you work on a make-up counter, but I swear she’d put her make-up on with an emulsion roller – it was on so heavy I felt like I was undergoing rorschach testing, I nearly shouted out throbbing cock when she bent down to check my card. You shouldn’t be able to remove 90% of your face with a damp wet-wipe and to be honest, I’m yet to see someone who doesn’t look 100% prettier when they don’t have half of Superdrug on their face. Says he, the fucking oil painting. Ah but see, I MIGHT have a face like a bucket of burnt Lego*, but I’m not bothered.

Because I’m early posting today, here’s a picture of breakfast from this morning. I think Slimming World can be quite challenging when it comes to breakfast because the portion of cereal you’re allowed wouldn’t fill me up – I normally use a ladle when I’m having my coco-pops (as an aside, I had originally typed cock-pops there, and only spotted the error when I was proof-reading – wouldn’t that be a nauseating cereal, though the box-art would be amazing) and there’s little else to have in a rush in the morning. Understand this – I’d sooner spend another ten minutes doing the snooze-sleep-shuffle than get up and fry an egg. I usually just eat a tin of beans with an egg stirred in, but that’s frightfully common. But today I thought I’d try something new, and after a quick flick through my recipe books (I must get those pages laminated) I found an Indian recipe for egg bhurji – spicy scrambled eggs, which I immediately set about cooking with my usual culturally insensitive bastardisations. Tell you what though, it was absolutely delicious – I ate the lot. Give it a go and never look back. Syn free and absolutely rammed with superfree foods too!

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to make spicy scrambled eggs (egg bhurji), you’ll need:

ingredients: cumin seeds, a tiny bit of olive or frylight if you must, chopped onion, chopped pepper (I used an old red and yellow pepper I had), garlic, chopped ginger, three eggs, frozen peas, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a chicken stock cube. You’ll also need a chopped chilli or some chilli flakes and garam masala – though I couldn’t find any so I used some curry powder.

to make spicy scrambled eggs (egg bhurji), you should:

recipe: it’s a one pot delight! First, put your oil into the pan and put the cumin seeds in there on a reasonably high heat until they snap, crackle and pop. Chuck in the ginger and chilli, saute for a moment or two. Then the onions for two minutes. Now, the pepper for another two minutes. Cook high and fast. Tip in the chopped tomatoes and the peas, and cook for another two minutes. Next in goes the curry powder/garam masala and salt, mix, and keep bubbling away – you don’t want lots of liquid. I added a stock cube at this point just because I like the taste – if you do that, don’t add more salt. Now crack your eggs into a bowl, beat them up, pour into pan and keep stirring. Remember to keep the heat high but keep stirring so nothing catches – you want the liquid to evaporate off. Serve quickly with coriander. I hate coriander, and I think you’re morally reprehensible for using it.

extra-easy: yep – syn free too, though if you’re absolutely anal you should syn the oil. But come on. Lots of superfree food in this and certainly more than you’d normally get in a breakfast.

Seriously – give this one a go. It’s just scrambled eggs but tastier, and it’s something different. Keeping things mixed up is the way forward.

  • just kidding, I’m fucking beautiful. No matter what they say. Words can’t bring me oh fuck off.

J

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February 2, 2015

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the perfect boiled egg

four weeks into our diet and we have our Monday results!

james: 3lb off
paul: 1lb off
total: 29.5lb off
So pleased! Remember last week when I said all I wanted to do was maintain this week? Well, smashed it! I’ve had popcorn, Nandos, sweets and all sorts this week too – but balanced it out by having low syn meals and judicious use of my healthy extras. Paul is content with his weight loss too – as well he bloody should be – he always loses weight slow and steady, but see if he loses 1lb a week it’s still 3.5 stone by the end of it. I need to lose more, hence my 2lb a week target! CHUFFED.Also, I only went and got Slimmer of the bloody Month. Well that’s not what they put on the sticker but perhaps they should – I’d love to see a rawer version of Slimming World without all the cutesy-poo guff – I reckon they’d do well to write a few recipes with fuck this and balls to that in there. Paul was second in the Slimmer of the Month queue, so he’s getting anal tonight.That’s right, no matter how clean I get this house, he wants it tidier.I totally pinched that joke from Family Guy. But then they pinched it from the earlier nineties so that makes us even.So, as is the norm on a Monday – we’re having a night away from the computer, watching TV, but I couldn’t leave you empty-handed, like I did with that beggar who wanted a fiver off me not so long ago. No, because I’m the gift who keeps on giving (me, a giver? Well that answers one possible question…), here’s something ridiculous.

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But of course it is. It’s a sad eyed little chick, ready to be turned effortlessly into poo by my efficient digestive system. It knows what’s coming and it’s not afraid. HEB your toast discs though. Obviously you don’t need to fanny about with the carrot and seeds but it makes it look pretty. Pretty ridiculous. 7 minutes gets you a hard-boiled egg with a lovely runny yolk. If the egg is a big bugger, it might scream when you cut into it, but persevere. I got the idea from the infinitely more talented dosirakbento who is truly a wonder at these things.Cracking breakfast, no?Tomorrow’s dinner? The first in our 50 (!) recipe special, where we find a recipe from each country in Europe. One a week. We’ve even made a fancy-dan banner for it.J
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January 5, 2015

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budget, classics, lunch, pork, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, taster ideas

syn free stuffed omelette

Now that we’ve got Christmas out of the way (and our anniversary, and Paul’s birthday…well no that’s Thursday, but ssh) we’re back on it.

Had a proper road rage moment driving home from some absolutely tiny man (seriously, I could just see the top of his male-pattern baldness peeking out over his steering wheel) in a BMW, who decided that because I was in front of him and doing the speed limit (actually, a shade over) that he had the right to get right up my arse and swear at me in the mirror. I have to admit, I love it, I can’t fathom why people get so apocalyptically angry when driving, especially when he had nowhere to go but maybe 100 yards in front of me. I put it down to the fact he was driving a BMW and was sick of always being the last person to realise when it’s raining. Actually, there seems to be a proper surfeit of arsehole drivers on the road at the moment – predominately those wankers who drive along on a clear night with their fog lights on and, in some cases, their side lights, full beam and the light off their phone lighting up the inside of the car. That’s quite possibly my biggest bugbear. The fact that your 0.8l shitwagon is illuminated like a dressing room mirror doesn’t add any points to your driving! I’m not irrational, but I can’t help but feel it would be best to find them on fire in a ditch somewhere later down the road.

Anyway enough whingeing, I’m pushed for time tonight, so here is tonight’s meal:

Omelette

to make a syn free stuffed omelette, you’ll need:

ingredients: for the omelette, three eggs, sliced ham, sliced onion, sliced peppers, sliced tomatoes, sliced mushrooms if you want them and crumble 45g of feta as your healthy extra if you want it cheesy! Salad is just any old bobbins you have in the fridge (for me, peppers, sweetcorn, carrot, rocket and lettuce) and the wedges are just a couple of sweet potatoes cut into thin wedges and put in the actifry (or do them on a tray in the oven – I don’t add any fat or oil, they cook nicely without).

to make a syn free stuffed omelette, you should:

recipe: prepare your salad and wedges and about ten minutes before the wedges are done, start your omelette.

There’s no real secret to this other than I use a big frying pan as opposed to those little omelette pans, because I like the egg to be thin and more like a wrap to contain the masses of stuff I stick in my omelette. A squirt of Frylight (I actually use olive oil, a tiny teaspoon – and I don’t syn it, never have, I don’t like frylight – but if you want to keep your syns down, strictly speaking, use frylight). Get it nice and hot. Whisk three eggs in a bowl – add some onion powder, or chilli, or in my case, peri-peri seasoning if you have some. I’m not a fan of ‘eggy’ omelette so flavour it!

Tip the egg into the pan and let it spread, and then as soon as it has a bit of a ‘skin’ on it, chuck your contents in the middle in a nice block. Let it sit for a minute or so, and then fold one side of the omelette over the top, followed by the other third. This should cover your filling easily.

Now listen – if it breaks, so what – it’ll still taste nice, so don’t be put off! I usually let it sit for another minute, and then slide it out onto the plate. It’s that easy! It really is just an omelette. Serve hot and enjoy!

extra-easy: definitely, everything on here fits the bill, and your salad and some of the contents of the omelette make up your superfree. If you’re doing EE-SP, as long as you omit the sweet potato and change the feta cheese to low-fat cottage cheese/quark – both of which work well – this would be a decent meal. I’m very new to EE-SP and I’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but I think this is right!

top tips: an omelette can be boring unless you absolutely stuff it full of bits and pieces you like. It’s a great way to sneak in some superfree too, and can be tweaked into an EE-SP meal. I think a lot of people are put off by the eggy taste, but just add any old shite you can find in the cupboard to make it taste decent!

Tomorrow’s chilli is already in the slow-cooker…

Goodnight!

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November 7, 2014

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bacon, pork, recipe card, syn free

gammon and egg potato rosti

LORD KNOWS why the recipe has come out all weird. I’ll fix that later.

I have made the fatal error of going to my car to type this recipe up on my lunch break, and it is absolutely chucking it down with rain. This means I need to dash, wobble and blunder my way back to the office upon which I will burst through the doors looking like a drowned fat cat. That’s the problem with being fat. Take a coat anywhere and you’ll end up too hot, but forget your coat and you end up looking like a harbour buoy that has washed in. Ah well.

Yesterday, with Paul away until late at a Young Marxist thing, I decided to fake it upon myself to make a fancy tea. See?

Swish! All this came about as I happened across a new recipe in the slimming world magazine, and thought I could give it a go. I went to Tesco with the intention of just buying some potatoes and ended up spending over £100 on vodka, pickled ginger, seaweed, shirts and a box of condoms. I’d love to know what the cashier thought I had planned for the evening. Nevertheless, this turned out to be one of the easiest recipes I’ve done so far, with very minimal skill needed bar some time management. So, without further delay….

I know that normally I break it down neatly in this section, but I am a bit pushed for time. The ingredients are simple enough:

 

to make gammon and egg potato rosti you will need:

two peeled potatoes, one onion, two gammon steaks, two eggs, spinach, asparagus, tomatoes and fry light.

 

to make gammon and egg potato rosti you should:

Grate the potatoes coarser and pop it into a tea towel and squeeze the moisture out. Really go at this, because the less liquid in your rosti, the tastier the end result. Mix with the grated onion and season well. Shape into circles and put on a roasting tray sprayed with a little frylight or olive oil. Cook for a good thirty minutes on 190 degrees until they are grown and crunchy. A little tip for you – you may remember me talking about a burger place that I bought from Lakeland a few recipes ago. You can use this to create perfectly round rosti too! Just squeeze, shape and press. After 20 minutes put your tomatoes in alongside the rostis to roast. Then, put your gammon onto the griddle pan and cook it to your satisfaction. Set aside to keep warm and using the same griddle pan place your asparagus onto the heat to char. The final thing to do is to put all of your spinach in a pan with a drop of water and steam until wilted down. Then press as much water as you can out of the spinach and set aside. Once you have everything ready it is just a case of assembling on the plate to your satisfaction and serving. If you feel the need to be a pretentious prick like me had a swell of balsamic vinegar as that makes everything look good…especially in the 90s…

This meal has no syns and if you spend a bit of time arranging on the plate to look nice you’ll enjoy all the more. I sometimes think that slimming world recipes can be a bit bland but this looks and tastes amazing. Hopefully there will not be too many errors in this post but I am dictating rather than typing so God knows what Apple make of my Geordie accent.

SIRI: its me aayes man! Ah cannut see man!

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November 2, 2014

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bacon, low syn, lunch, pork, recipe card, salad

shaved sprout salad

Christ I wanted to give my recipe today a pretentious restaurant title and I think I’ve succeeded. For all those people, like me, who don’t like a fussy title, don’t worry, it’s essentially just cooked sweet potato, sundried tomatoes and bacon mixed with sliced brussel sprouts.

Before we get to the recipe, I need to make an announcement that I’m really a terrible grandson. I had plans to visit my nana today (she only lives 30 miles away and it’s a nice drive), but I didn’t get round to it because I got caught up gardening and playing on the Xbox. It will probably do my diet the world of good anyway, as whenever Paul and I go and visit we get the same questions…’would you like a bit of quiche / eight kitkats / mince pie / mince and potato pie / sandwich / lovely bit of tongue (steady) / a Ferrari Racket chocolate from ALDI etc…’ which, when met with polite refusal and cries of ‘but no, we’re on a diet’ results in a look like you’ve taken a shit on the carpet and woes of ‘It’ll never get eaten, it’s just me in this house’ and ‘a quarter inch thick layer of butter on your sandwich will do you no harm’. Honestly! And mind that’s even if she hears your refusal, she’s so tone deaf you could fell a tree in the living room behind her chair and she’d smile bemused at you and say EH.

My nana is amazing, mind, no doubt about that. She is totally accepting of the whole Paul and I being bummers situation, though she did once ask ‘which one was the woman’ which was slightly awkward, as I thought she meant which of us preferred an ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ – but she was actually meaning who did the ironing/cooking etc (remember she’s in her late eighties). Ha! So I’ll go visit her on Tuesday with my usual refrain of ‘I DIDN’T LIKE TO CHANCE LEAVING IT TOO LONG NANA, IN CASE I NEED TO GET MY FUNERAL SUIT DRY-CLEANED’. God, I love her to bits.

Anyway, enough about nana – my absence at her house through gardening was a nice link to me talking about the surfeit of brussel sprouts that we suddenly have thanks to my green-fingered neighbour. So, I got to thinking what I could do with them, and with Paul ‘being the woman’ (ie doing the ironing) (not my actual view I hasten to add), I decided on this fruity number.

Sprout salad

RIGHT, before we start with the details, let me say two things: if you’re not a fan of sprouts, please still give this a go. Sprouts in Britain seem to be served boiled within an inch of their life and will leave your whole house smelling like a condemned nursing home. This doesn’t need to be. Sliced very thinly and dressed well, they’re a crunchy, tasty wonder. Second – yes, this meal is synned – you could make it syn free by omitting the dressing but remember, you have the syns to use, and why not make your evening meal that bit nicer simply by making a dressing to go with the salad? Even then, four syns is still a very excessive estimate – I reckon it would come in at two syns if you omitted the cheese at the end. OK…

to make shaved sprout salad you will need: 

sprouts, an egg, bacon medallions (or bacon with fat cut off), sundried tomatoes (replace with fresh tomatoes grilled if you want to lower the syns), sweet potato, parmesan shavings. For the dressing, honey, olive oil and lemon juice.

to make shaved sprout salad you should:

right, the dressing first. 4 tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tsp of honey (1 syn), 1 tbsp of olive oil (2 syns), some salt, some pepper. Put it in a jamjar and shake, shake, shake! Double up if you need two servings. Then, cube up the sweet potato (leave the skin on) into 1cm chunks, add a tiny bit of olive oil and shake them around to get them coated, add a bit of salt, roast in the oven until soft. Also, stick your bacon on the grill or at the top of the oven to cook. Meanwhile, get your sprouts and take off the outer leaves if they’re a bit muddy or torn. Then the tricky bit – slice the sprouts as thin as you can. You can use a knife, yes, but honestly, get a mandolin. They’re a tenner from Lakeland and you’ll use it for all sorts – coleslaw, sliced potatoes, fruit salad, sprouts. Order one here and never look back. But BE CAREFUL. The sprouts are small and the blade is sharp – just take your time. I used about 30 sprouts in all.

After you’ve shaved your sprouts, get your fingers in and lightly toss them off (haha) so they separate, but you don’t need to go crazy – different textures are what makes this a good salad. Slice your tomatoes and add them in. Add in your cubed sweet potato (cooked) and bacon (now sliced). Arrange on a plate nice and dainty like. Poach your egg (lots of ways to do this, but I go old-school – pan of simmering water, create a whirlpool, drop the egg in from a little glass, poach and serve). Fish it out with a slotted spoon, put on top of the salad, cut the yolk and you’re done. I’ve added a bit of parmesan because why not – hence the four syns.

extra-easy: definitely – this is a fantastic meal because it’s nearly all superfree food, bar the dressing. Sprouts, tomatoes and sweet potato make up the meal, with a bit of bacon and dressing and egg on top. Yes, you can omit the dressing or replace it with a vinaigrette if you want to save the syns – and omit the cheese. But come on, live a little! Heh.

top tips: normally I say you can add all sorts to this salad, but don’t – keep it nice and simple. It’s an excellent new way of trying sprouts and I guarantee you’ll never look back. I’d love to know what people think! But DO get a mandolin. It’ll save those pretty fingers of yours.

FINALLY, my fortnightly call – if you’re enjoying this blog, please tell people on facebook and share it far and wide. I love new readers, comments, fuss – anything at all! I’d be very grateful and I’ll dance at your wedding if you do.

J