campfire stew or cowboy stew

CRASS WARNING! CRASS WARNING! SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF BROWN HUMOUR OFFENDS!

Well, that was bad planning. Having spent the last three days with a full-house and needing a flush thanks to the meat loaf, tuna and beef stew, I resorted to taking a Senokot Max thinking it might gently move things along at some point this evening. Half an hour later, I’m stuck on the thunderbox crying my life away as the world fell out of my bottom. So I’m not venturing far today, and I might spend the day ironing instead. That’s the main problem with Slimming World – you’re never quite sure whether you’ll be coming or going one day to the next.

OK YOU’RE SAFE.

I finally gave into Paul’s demands and purchased a tumble dryer. I think he was ashamed at having our George boxers sailing gaily around on the rotary dryer in the garden, with their stretched elastic and rubbed gussets. He still has a piece of underwear from when we first met, he claims they’re the most comfortable pair he’s ever owned and refuses to throw them out. I’m actually surprised they don’t walk out on their own. I railed against getting a tumble dryer for bloody ages because I thought we’d get damp in the house (we can’t have a vented one, there’s no space, so we’ve had to go for a condensing unit) but he won out when he promised me he’d tumble my socks and underwear in the morning before I got out the shower, meaning they’d be warm. Come on, that’s true love right there.

Today’s recipe, breaking with tradition and posting my lunch instead of the evening meal, is the WORLD FAMOUS (in Slimming World circles) campfire stew, given a far more Brokeback Mountain based hilarious name. This is syn-free, makes four servings, and is proper delicious. Also – incredibly easy to make if you have a slow-cooker.

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to make campfire stew or cowboy stew:

Well – no real need to break down the ingredients – they’re all above, and the recipe is simple – chop the onion and peppers, add everything into a slow cooker, cook on low for eight hours, pull apart with two forks and serve with chips. You will need to add some superfree on the side to make this exactly right, but as a one-off, I didn’t bother, and just had two satsumas on the side. I know, I’m a devil.

A tip though – don’t, for the love of God, put your gammon straight into the slow cooker from the shop. Prepare it a day before by putting it in a pan of cold water, leaving it to sit, and changing the water every six hours or so. This will draw the salt out – you can do the same by boiling it for a bit, but I think that’ll make it tough. Do the cold water rinse for 24 hours and then cook and it’ll taste so, so much better. If you don’t bother, be prepared for your stew to taste like you’ve rinsed it through the sea at Whitley Bay (only without a turd bobbing around in the slow cooker).

Enjoy! I’m off to cry a bit more and put a loo roll in the fridge for later.

J

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!

new potato gnocchi

Just a quick post from me tonight as we’re about to sit down and watch a movie with Fattychops. This is gnocchi, Slimming World style. Now, it’s tasty yes, and syn-freeish as long as you use the cheese as healthy extra, but a bloody gnocchi it most certainly is not. It’s potato, egg, ham, tomatoes and cheese, and nothing more to be said about it!

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to make new potato gnocchi you will need: 

cooked gammon, eggs, tinned tomatoes, small potatoes boiled until nearly soft, cheese, bit of garlic.

to make new potato gnocchi you should: 

put tomatoes on the bottom, potatoes on those, ham mixed in, two eggs cracked on top, add cheese. cook until it looks like the above.

extra-easy: yes – and syn free, as long as you use your healthy extra choice for the cheese. 

top tips: this could be jazzed up a lot – use the strongest cheddar you can find, or add curry powder to the tomatoes, or even a tin of beans.

Right, apologies for the short post, but our movie awaits!

J