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June 23, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, mince, pasta, pork, poultry, recipe card, sauces, taster ideas

200 posts – plus turkey and bacon meatballs with homemade bbq sauce

Well christ almighty, we’ve made it to two hundred posts. 200! To put that into perspective, each post on average is around 1500 words, so that 300,000 words, or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix combined with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. AND, unlike JK Rowling, I can still crack a smile or two! Actually, that’s unfair, she seems like a lovely person – she’s just always looks as though she’s seen her arse and doesn’t care for the colour. I bet the words of a fat diet blogger really stings – she’ll be sobbing into her solid-gold handkerchief and dabbing her tears with £50 notes.

But honestly, it’s just incredible to me that we’ve racked up so many recipes, posts, slang words for willies, nonsense and flimflam in just under eight months, and that’s excluding the various interludes where we ~~stuffed ourselves with pizza~~ fixed up the house or the website. Normally we take up a hobby and give it up fairly quickly, but it’s become a proper routine in Cubs Towers – plan the recipes, buy the ingredients, type the blog.

Occasionally it can feel like a slog typing it all out, but listen – we know what it’s like to be on SW and seeing the same old recipes bandied around. There’s lots of nice foods but people limit themselves to the same watery stews, anaemic veg and nonsense chemical concoctions, and it’s just not sustainable. The best ‘recipe’ I’ve seen recently is a ‘jam doughnut’, which was a bloody brown breadbun injected with a bit of jam and rolled in sweetener. That’s no more a jam doughnut than I am a black lesbian. Why do that to yourself? Why not have a jam doughnut and syn it? Or, make a decent attempt at a low-syn pudding and take the edge off? Eh, I don’t know.

Certainly, our weight loss has been slow – but it’s been steady. I haven’t updated that banner in a few weeks but we’re nearly up to 60lb weight loss between us, and cumulatively, we’ve actually lost more than that – but gained a few pounds back on holiday. Our aim has always been 2lb a week for me and 1lb a week for Paul. I’ve seen grown women throwing tantrums because they’ve “only lost 2lb this week” (although actually, it’s usually “OMG onli lst 2lb dis wk :'(“, like there’s some kind of fucking tax on vowel usage) and I just despair – it’s so much better to lose slowly and not feel like you’re on a diet than it is to starve yourself, eat beans all day and shit your way to weight loss which you’ll immediately put on the second you slip into size-16 knickers. We’ve all been there too, losing a stone and then zipping around Tesco like we’re on the final round of Supermarket Sweep, running our arm along the biscuit aisle and emptying the shelves into our trolley. It’s pointless and doesn’t work.

Look through our recipes and you’ll see many, many different styles of cooking and flavours. We consciously avoid repeating recipes too much, and we’ll normally try and sneak in an unusual flavour or arrangement at least once a week. We’ve learnt so much and, for once, we’re enjoying being on a diet. This blog gives me (James) a mouthpiece for rambling and nonsense but it’s actually kept us on track – having to think up new foods means we’re focused on our diet and the ‘can’t be arsed’ element disappears.

But – and christ, prepare for your teeth to start rotting – the best part about all of this is you. Seriously. Seeing people trying our recipes, sharing links, joining our group (4,000+ members) or facebook page (almost 14,000 likes in two weeks), passing around that FAQ or even stopping us to let us know how much you enjoy it – well it genuinely, whole-heartedly makes our day. I’m actually quite a quiet person at times, and it’s such a lovely feeling to know people are enjoying what I have to say. Please continue to comment, to share, to take part, we love it all, and we promise that in return we’ll keep going. Not least because I want to get to 365 posts…!

Right, you can come back now. I know, feelings much. To celebrate, I’m going to post a recipe that we’ve been keeping back for a special occasion because it was so, so nice. It’s a long one, but you can take it. Just push out and think of England.

How best to do this…let’s go for constituent parts. So…

to make the sauce, you’ll need:

one very large white onion, or two smaller ones, I’m not a size queen (that’s a lie, I totally am)
500ml of passata
2 gloves of garlic
1 tbsp of smoked paprika
2 tbsp of honey (5 syns – but this makes – easily – eight servings, so I’m going to say one syn for the dish)
3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper
some chilli flakes if you want to punish your nipsy

This recipe is wonderfully easy. You’ll need a receptacle for your sauce – this makes enough to fill two medium sized ketchup bottles. Ours are Kilner and like everything else, we bought it from Amazon. You can get six for a tenner here. You’ll use about a bottle’s worth in this recipe, so the other bottle you can keep sealed in the fridge. It really does make a wonderful sauce which would be amazing on pulled pork or burgers.

The other thing I’m going to push here is our Kenwood Mini Chopper. Normally we chop our onions by hand but because the recipe calls for it to be very finely chopped, we used this. It makes very quick work of cutting up onions and various other things and is excellent for making breadcrumbs too. It’s £14 on Amazon. Not essential but I will say this – as people who use a lot of gadgets, this is probably one of our favourites. Right, so…

you’ll need to do this:

if you’re using a chopper, finely pulse the onion and garlic until you get a finely chopped paste – don’t make it too mushy mind
if you’re using a knife, you want it cut very fine
tip into a pan with a drop of oil and the salt and, on a medium heat, allow to soften
add everything else into the pan after five minutes or so (make sure the onion doesn’t catch, although, a bit of smokiness is no bad thing)
simmer gently for five minutes or so
allow to cool, and then blend it – again, we just tipped it into the Mini Chopper, whizzed it up and then poured it into the ketchup bottles – no need for extra dishes or gadgets

Keep those bottles to one side. Don’t put the lids on until they’re nice and cool mind. On we go…

to make the spinach, you’ll need:

a big family bag of spinach – not a pissy little few leaves, because it’s a scientific fact that spinach reduces in volume by 10,000% if someone so much as breathes near it
two garlic cloves – cut into the finest of slivers
a couple of squirts of oil or Frylight

and then you:

squirt the bottom of the pan with a drop of oil or frylight
add in the garlic
apply a gentle heat and allow the garlic to take on a bit of colour and flavour the oil
add spinach, lower the heat, cover and allow to wilt right down
serve (note: this spinach takes about five minutes, so make it at the end of your meal)

to make the meatballs, you’ll need:

500g of turkey mince – a lot of people ask me where they can find this – Tesco is my answer, and here’s another tip, it’s forever being reduced. If you spot it in the reduced meats bit, check to see whether it has a £3 for £10 sticker on it still – if it has, SCORE. Buy three packs and although it’s reduced in price, it still discounts the lot as though they were full price, which means you end up paying about £4 for three packets of mince. Damn, I shouldn’t give that away…
6 bacon medallions, or normal bacon with the ~~best bit~~ cut off
4 spring onions, chopped fine, white and green bits used please
one small breadbun made into breadcrumbs (HEB) – you’ll may not need them all
1 small egg
2 tsp of ground pepper
2 tbsp of dried parsley or even better, fresh parsley, but double up if it’s fresh

you’ll then need to:

put the oven up to 200ºC or 180ºC fan – do you know, I really loathe how Mary Berry says ‘fan’, fact-fans
cook your bacon – nice and crispy mind, then allow it to cool and cut it up (or use your chopper) into nice small bits
put your turkey mince into a bowl, add everything else, and mash it all together. Really take out your frustrations here. Lady in Primark gave you a shitty look? Someone cut you up in a company-lease BMW? Sat behind someone with dickies on the bus? Imagine that’s their face and PUMMEL
once you’ve got all that anger out and your tears have dried on your cheeks, you want to set to work dividing up the meatballs – keep them small – perhaps the size of a child’s bouncy ball* – and place onto a baking tray sprayed with one spurt of oil or Frylight
at this point, you might find you’ve got too many to eat in one go – that’s fine – set aside any leftover balls on a plate and put into the freezer, and once they’re frozen, take them off the plate and put into a bag (that way they don’t stick together whilst they freeze, genius right?)
brown your balls in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes until they’ve firmed up and taken on a bit of colour
finish them off in a frying pan – get it fairly hot, drop in your balls and then tip in maybe a quarter or half of your sauce, and cook them through, letting the sauce glaze your balls
serve on top of your noodles and spinach with carrots on the side if you want them

* know this. I spent about fifteen minutes, I shit you not, trying to think of something comparable in size to a meatball, and all I could think about was testicles. It’s hard being me.

to make the carrots, you’ll need:

six or seven carrots, spiralised
1 tbsp of honey (2.5 syns)
a squirt or two of oil
caraway seeds

Just a note about the spiraliser – you don’t need one. Look you really don’t. But they’re good fun and a piece of piss to use. We’ve only just got one and if you’re interested, you can buy one for £27 here. They make courgettes into spaghetti and various other things, but you can do the same thing with a knife, so don’t get your bajingo frothing if you can’t find one.

and then you’ll need to do this:

spiralise or cut up your carrots
put into a bowl and add the oil and honey
chuck in the caraway seeds and a pinch of salt
mix, mix, mix, mix – get everything nicely coated (it helps to use runny honey)
chuck in the oven until they’re soft – or crunchy, if you prefer it, up to you!

We cooked up some syn-free noodles and layered our plate with noodles, spinach and meatballs, with extra BBQ sauce on the top and those carrots on the side. You don’t need the carrots, but they’re a nice addition – we just had a surplus rattling around in the bottom of the fridge, so why not?

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chubbycubs

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June 22, 2015

Posted under

breast, low syn, poultry, recipe card

chicken stuffed with spinach, sundried tomato and cheese

We’ve bought a new bed on a whim! That’s two incredibly impulsive things we’ve done in so many days – a big deal when you’re like us and the idea of being cute and spontaneous is buying a different scented candle at the garden centre, and even then only if it’s included in the BOGOF offer.

I woke up this morning full of piss and vinegar about the state of our pillows – I’d get more neck support if I rested my head on the jet of air from a hairdyer. I have a neck like a fucking Tetris piece and I’m forever clicking and cracking it, much to the chagrin of Paul. If I shake my head furiously I sound like one of those clacker toys. Plus our bed is awful. We bought it from ASDA or somewhere because we got a ‘great deal’ but a) it’s too small (we had a Caesar bed previously, that’s 8ft by 7ft) and b) the mattress is awful. It provides all the orthopaedic comfort of being mugged for your mobile in a backalley. We’re fat lads and every time we turn over the springs pop and ‘boing’ with increasing malice – I know at some point I’m going to turn over to snooze the alarm clock and be impaled right up my hoop. Imagine that – cause of death: ‘anal trauma caused by cheapskate John Lewis mattress’. I’d certainly be a wailing ghost.

Not only that, but because the bed is one of those awful ones with the drawers underneath, we spend the night being tormented by our cat constantly pulling at it, trying to get inside. That’s vexing enough, hearing the drawer roll forward an inch and roll back over and over again, but when she does get inside, you’re so highly-tuned to the slightest noise that you’re treated to ten minutes of her tongue rasping over her mary for ten minutes before she goes to sleep. Bag.

So we did what any normal couple would do, and rang the Premier Inn to find out how to buy one of the beds they use in their hotel rooms. We ❤ Premier Inn and we just don’t care. We sleep so well in a Premier Inn bed, and now we get to enjoy the experience at home without worrying about how many pockets of Gentleman’s Hot Vanilla has soaked into the mattress. Our new bed arrives in four weeks and it’s exactly the same beds they use in the hotel. Mind, I hope we don’t wake up with Lenny Henry in the bed…though he is a fan of the larger form…so who know. I might book into one of their rooms and steal the purple Premier Inn comforter just to complete the look, together with a menu of fried breakfast items to sit on my bedside table.

We did have an amazing period last year where we had a bed which was comprised of two superking sized beds pushed together. It took up the entire bedroom and was necessary because I needed to sleep apart from Paul for a few weeks whilst I recovered from an operation. Of course, being lazy, we just kept it for almost a year and with two quilts, eight pillows and enough room to literally somersault* (which I’d do if I didn’t think my neck would be turned to dust thanks to my corpulence), it was brilliant. It was a sad day indeed in Cubs Towers when we dismantled poor old Megabed and Paul dragged the mattress – which resembled a Jackson Pollock painting at this point – into the garage. Sniff.

But let’s cheer up, and look forward to the new bed. Tonight’s recipe is simple, elegant and tasty. Give it a whirl!

you’ll need these:

two good chicken breasts – not the water-filled cheap ones
sundried tomatoes in oil – six syns for 100g but you’ll be lucky to use 10g in each breast, hence the one syn on the recipe
your HEA of whatever cheese you like – a good strong cheddar works best, so 40g of light mature cheddar is tasty
make up a side salad of whatever you want – here I used rocket, spinach, tomatoes and spiralised cucumber, and served that with a dressing of yoghurt and fresh mint

and it’s as easy as this:

cut the side of your chicken – you’ll need a fairly small gash
you might think at first that you’ll never get everything in there and it’ll be too tight, but just do your best – try using your fingers to loosen it up
the cheesy bit goes in first, because you don’t want that oozing when things heat up
cram it full of spinach and a couple of tomatoes – really pack it in
now things get steamy – get a griddle pan and heat it up – you might want to rub a little oil on it if it’s a dry old thing, because you don’t want to have to peel your meat off the sides
sear the chicken on both sides
you’ll want to finish it off by putting it in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes – you want clear juices dribbling out when you prick it
serve with a bit on the side

Eee, get me a job at The Sun.

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chubbycubs

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June 21, 2015

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

rocky road overnight oats – the best yet!

Before I start – Paul sat bolt upright in bed this morning (well as bolt upright as someone with a waterfall of fat on their front can do) and announced ‘I just had a dream that I won the Eurovision Song Contest…representing Lebanon!’ and went back to sleep. I couldn’t sleep after that particularly gay announcement. Cheers Paul.

The title of this post comes from my father, who on entering any room, always say ‘EH’ like he’s missed out on some juicy titbit of gossip. I endured this for eighteen years before I moved out (not because of the eh-ing I hasten to add) and he still does it even to this day. Brilliant.

I’m going to quickly post this recipe below and then head off to see The Unmentionables – well you have to, it’s Father’s Day. My dad is brilliant – he’s like the antithesis of me in every single way. Where some people might call me quite fey, he’s super-butch. I’m fat, he’s thin. He has a Screwfix catalogue next to his bed, I had a copy of Salza: For Lover of Latino Inches hidden under my mattress. He can quite cheerfully throw up a set of shelves, remodel a kitchen and mend a broken car, whereas I can quite cheerfully call a handyman, joiner and mechanic in on my mobile.

He’s always been one of those dads who knows how to do everything – and although he always walks into my house and says it smells of something, which irks me no end – he can always be relied upon if I ever need anything done. He was great with me growing up, despite having to endure the veritable collection of freaks that I brought home…the ginger one, the scabby one, the one with the discus-shaped lip, the one with the question-mark spine, the one who looked like Richard Osman from Pointless, Silent Bob, the chap whose voice sounded like a bee caught behind a radiator…he made small talk and polite conversation with them all. I never once felt awkward, pressured or unsupported and that’s testament to what a great father he is. I never tell him that, obviously. That would be far too awkward and non-manly. Feelings, right?

Paul has a similar relationship with his dad, although it’s slightly more difficult for him as there’s over 250 miles between them. However, we seem to have settled into a pattern of genial giving of gifts on special occasions – Paul’s dad gets a cookbook or an atlas at Christmas, Paul gets money a week after his birthday. I’ve met him and can gladly say the old ‘in-laws are horrible’ stereotype doesn’t apply, which is great. He’s a thoroughly pleasant chap. Paul often tells me of how he came out to his parents – his mum reacted in a very ‘mum’ way, by making retching noises and almost-but-not-quite putting down her Puzzler in shock, whereas his dad said ‘SO YOUR MUM TELLS ME YOU’RE GAY, SON’ and went back to fussing around his Renault 19. Parents are fun.

As for us, being fathers is the last thing we’d ever want to do. The mechanics of it are bad enough – we’re not going to stand around popping our yop into a plastic cup and finding some suitable receptacle to carry our child, that’s too stressful. But even if we got past that point, the idea of having a child to look after is my idea of genuine hell. I can barely remember to clip my own toenails and go to the toilet, having some screaming hellchild demanding regular food and access to my bank account fills me with dread. So: you’ll never be reading the tearful account of us adopting and raising a child, though you can know that if we ever DID, it would have a proper bloody name. I’ve heard of a kid being called Lil’star and it makes my eyes shake with fury.

ANYWAY, here we go. Today’s recipe: rocky road overnight oats. I know I said no more overnights oats but I had this photo kicking around in the archives and in the spirit of Father’s Day, I thought I’d post something a bit more…fun. Well I say fun…

to make rocky road overnight oats, you’ll need:

40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because we like the texture
1 vanilla and chocolate Mullerlight (syn-free)
sliced banana

to make rocky road overnight oats, you should:

place your oats in the bottom of your jar
cover with sliced banana
cover with the yoghurt

and then you’ll use your syns to add the following:

10 mini marshmallows (0.5 syns)
5g of chocolate chips (1.5 syns)
5g of dried cranberries (0.5 syns)
two smashed up sugar-free Werthers Originals (0.5 syns each)

I know 5g doesn’t sound like a lot, but weighed out and mixed in, it is. Jeez, calm down.

or you could add:

1 tsp of chocolate sprinkles (1 syn)
segments from a tangerine
fresh berries
smashed up Crunchie fun size (4 syns)

The world is your oyster. Yes, you have to use syns (NURSE! NURSE! GET THE SALTS) but for goodness sake, for a sweet indulgence at the start of the day, why not go mad and let your hair down? I mean give it a wash first obviously.

If you want more overnight oats, you’ll find them here:

Happy father’s day!

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chubbycubs

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June 20, 2015

Posted under

bacon, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, recipe card, seafood

spicy tuna and bacon pasta

Just a recipe today folks, as we’re having a lazy day in front of Netflix. We literally could not have done less today – we stayed in bed until 10am, got up, took the duvet with us and got under it on the sofa and have barely moved since. Paul went for a piss sometime after noon and I’ve made a few cups of tea, but put it this way, if we had a pedometer attached to one of our flabrolls, it would read ‘ERR’ right now. Ah well. We work hard, we can rest! It’s lucky that neither of us are the type to look with jealous eyes at other people on Facebook who are out protesting, or burning in the sun, or rolling down hills in plastic balls. I mean, yes, that’s fun, but it’s so energetic. We like to rest before we get tired.

Tell you what though, we have had a minor bout of decisiveness – we’ve only gone and booked our Christmas holiday! Yes, we’re shuffling our jellyforms onto a plane bound for Iceland. Iceland! Not the shop – the idea of spending my holiday surrounded by a herd of woman with moustaches buying horse-arse burgers and a suitcase of ice-pops holds no appeal. Thinking about it, Iceland really is the perfect holiday destination for two plus-sized puffs:

they’re super gay-friendly, which is a bonus as it means I can hold Paul’s hand without having my teeth kicked out through my arse;
a lot of their food seems repellant to me, and christ, I’ll put any old shite in my mouth, but ‘singed and boiled sheep head’ and ‘shark fermented in piss’ seems a bit much even for me. I might get old Magsy on the blower tonight and see if she’ll do a piss-shark special in the next magazine;
it’s cold – very cold – which means we don’t need to be walking around fanning our faces like frisky debutantes and worrying about the sweat patches forming under our bitch-titties; and
it’s not going to be full of awful people who think a SKOL ashtray and a STELLA umbrella is the sign of a fine establishment, although, the other side of that coin is that it’s bound to be full of hipsters photographing the Northern Lights and saying yah-but-really-though all the time.

So: if you’re a fan of our previous travels to Ireland or Germany, you’ll enjoy hearing us battle our way through the customs and traditions of Iceland. Anyway: tonight’s recipe, before I pass out through sheer exhaustion, is a spicy tuna and bacon pasta.

I know what you’re thinking. Bacon and tuna is an odd mix, but it works. I’m not a big fan of fish, but I found this tasty. If you don’t have any fancy-dan pasta like us, just use any old guff that you find rattling around in the back of the cupboard. This is a recipe that you could tart-up by adding lots of other vegetables, but actually, the simplicity works for us. We know our limits. So…

you’ll need this to make spicy tuna and bacon pasta:

200g of any pasta – we used fusilli lunghi from Tesco, but just use what you have
one tin of tuna – look, I never use this blog to tubthump, what you buy is your own business, but if you can afford it, buy decent tinned tuna, at the very least stuff that is caught ‘pole and line’ rather than the cheap stuff (actually, some of the cheap stuff is alright and the known brands are crap, like John West and Princes, but just do some research). Tuna caught in massive nets is bad because the same nets suck in all sorts of other sealife, such as sharks and turtles. Terrible when you think that turtle could have made someone a lovely ashtray)
6 bacon medallions, or you know, you could be normal and just trim the fat off proper bacon
1 yellow onion
3 garlic cloves, finely grated, and yes, I’ll plug the microplane grater again for this: click here if you want one – at least your fingers won’t reek of garlic
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4tsp of cumin powder and 1/4tsp of chilli powder (which you can leave out if you’ve got a sensitive balloon-knot
1 tsp of oregano
125ml of milk (1% is 2.5 syns, this serves two)
drop of two of oil, or Frylight, for all your pan-ruining needs!

and to make spicy tuna and bacon pasta, you should:

cook your pasta in salty water until it’s cooked – fling it off a tile to see if it sticks, though you’ll look like a monkey throwing its shit around in a zoo;
let your chopped onions and minced garlic gently cook in a drop of oil until they go as see-through as a whore’s knickers
in goes the chopped bacon, which you’ll cook unil it’s golden brown (texture like sun)
then in go the chopped tomatoes, which you’ll cook until they soften
once that’s done, in go the spices, tuna, chilli powder and oregano, which you’ll mix up nicely
ready for the milk now – chuck it in, bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer until it thickens up
in goes the cooked pasta, swirl it and mix it all up
serve with a sprinkling of parmesan (30g is a HEA)

Enjoy. Like I said, it’s not the most amazing thing to look at, but it’s tasty and quick

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chubbycubs

Posted on

June 18, 2015

Posted under

fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, recipe card, sausages

spicy Slimming World sausage rigatoni

Very quick post tonight as we’re at class and then off to see San Andreas, which will really set my phobia of dams at ease. This recipe came about because we think the Slimming World sausages taste like someone has emptied their Dyson into a condom and sealed it up. They’ve got as much kick as a dead horse. Least they’re syn free though…right? So, to liven them up, we’ve released the meat from the skin, made it into a spicy sauce and served it with rigatoni. NATCH.

You could make this syn free, just omit the wine and replace with beef stock. But like you’re going to do that eh, beetroot-nose?

This serves four, so it does.

to make spicy sausage rigatoni, you’ll need:

a few drops of oil, or, spit, Frylight
an onion the size of a clenched fist (normal, feminine hands – not like a Russian shot-putter)
4 carrots
a pack of SW sausages, circumcised (skin removed)
1tsp of oregano
1/2 chilli flakes
1tsp of salt
1tsp of black pepper
a few drops of balsamic vinegar
100ml of wine (just the cheap stuff you use for cooking, or when ‘she’ comes around) (this is where the syns come in – 175ml of red wine is 6 syns, I’m only use about 60% of that, and this serves four, so let’s call it 4. I’m not Carol Vorderman!)
can of chopped tomatoes
500g of rigatoni pasta, or more if you like
Parmesan and finely chopped basil to serve (30g of Parmesan being your healthy extra)

to make spicy sausage rigatoni, you should:

furiously mince, like Paul at a reduced counter, the carrots and onion – we used our fancydan blender but you could just finely grate them – cook them in the oil/Frylight until they’re soft on a medium heat;
add the ‘meat’ from the Slimming World sausages, together with the oregano, chilli flakes, salt and pepper
keep stirring until the sausage is cooked through and then whack the heat up for a moment and chuck the wine in – make a point of scraping around the pan to get any sticky good bits off the bottom, then reduce the heat
add the chopped tomatoes, drop the heat, add the vinegar and leave to simmer whilst you cook the pasta
cook the pasta, drain it, add the sauce and a few tablespoons of the water you cooked the pasta in
dish up, adoring it with shreds of basil and finely grated Parmesan.

Rejoice! A recipe that makes the SW sausages even tastier! Somehow, by adding flavour, they become delicious! I have to say, this was one of my favourite meals in a long time. Good for taking into work the next day too.

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chubbycubs

Posted on

May 21, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, panko, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, taster ideas

asian chicken nuggets

Both out and about tonight but could we let you down and not give you a recipe? NO. Here’s a failsafe recipe for Asian chicken nuggets. They’re Asian because of the marinade, naturally. I’m in a terrible mood at the moment, not helped by the fact I pulled FUCKING SPAIN out of my OWN Eurovision sweepstake. However: it’s Eurovision this Saturday and I absolutely can’t wait. I love it! My leather cheerio is already relaxing from the fug of amyl nitrate billowing across from Austria. Anyway:

3 syns is nowt, but you can make it completely syn-free (the nuggets anyway) by just blending your HEB bread allowance. But balls to that, use panko breadcrumbs instead and live like a king!

to make asian chicken nuggets, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts chopped into nugget sized bits, soy sauce, rice wine (1 syn for two tablespoons, but you only need one, so I’m not counting the syns), 1tsp five spice powder, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, pinch of salt, panko breadcrumbs (Tesco sell these and they come in at 4.5 syns for 25g – you’ll need 50g, so that’s 4.5 syns but as most of it falls off you’d be hard pushed to be anywhere near 4.5 syns, so I’ve said three)

to make asian chicken nuggets, you should:

well this is tricky – combine all the wet ingredients and spices with the chicken and leave to marinate – the longer the better, as the actress said to the bishop
put your breadcrumbs into a bowl and crunch some black pepper in amongst it all
drop each nugget into the breadcrumb, get them covered and pop onto a tray that’s been lined with greaseproof paper
bake in the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes, turning them if you can be arsed – we don’t, but we’ve got a fancy tray with little holes in it which bakes from underneath too
serve with chips (make your own or just cheat like we do when you can’t be arsed and have McCains Rustic – they’re 1 syn for 100g) and beans

There’s no superfree on this meal but hey, you know what, have yourself a fruit salad and a good pump afterwards. You’ll be OK!

Before anyone asks, I got the basket from Amazon. It looks lovely! Click here for the link.

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chubbycubs

Posted on

May 17, 2015

Posted under

breakfast, desserts, drinks, low syn, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

easy mint chocolate chip smoothie

Right, before we even get started, I’ll need to put up the banner:

Today’s recipe is a major tweak session. Listen, I know, I know it’s not the Slimming World way, but this is something I disagree with them on. All of the ingredients used are syn free AND very good for you, and the only synned item is some dark chocolate, but what’s life without a little risk, eh? I’ve made my feelings quite clear on tweaking before and I’m not going to change for anyone! HARRUMPH. But before we get to that, here’s a little ramble…

The reason for the title of the post being ‘Good Morning Australia’ is because we’ve discovered a new app on our iPad – Wakie! Essentially it’s an alarm clock but one that actually connects you to the person who wants waking up. For example, some bronzed god in Australia may want waking up because he has to go to work at 11am, and I’m sitting in the UK available to make the call, and the app will connect the two of us. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s just like making a phone call, and we LOVE it. At first we were shy – lots of ‘So what’s the weather like where you are’ and ‘what you getting up for’, but now we wake people up by telling them jokes, or my most favourite, using the soundboard of Roy Walker’s catchphrases that we found on the internet from the old Radio 1 days. Imagine that – you’re fast asleep in New Zealand, your phone goes, you blearily answer it and you get ‘GOOD MORNING CONTESTANT’ blaring at you, followed by ‘IT’S A GOOD GUESS, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT’. Haha! It works the other way too, we had a wake-up call from someone in America this morning, who told us a joke and then farted down the phone. She sounds like just our type of girl to be honest. It’s completely anonymous so there’s never a way of finding out who you spoke to, but it’s just great fun. Perhaps you should download it – you’ll know if you get through to us because it’ll be a litany of blue jokes, shrieks of laughter and ten seconds of Paul trying to press the hang up button and missing because he hasn’t got his glasses on and there’s four iPads in his field of vision.

Anyway, the good news is we’ve had no altercations with anyone today and it’s been an altogether pleasant day, even though all we’ve done is our grocery shopping and beetled about in the car. Are we the only couple who go out in the car just for a drive? I mean, I know the price of fuel means arranging a small mortgage beforehand, but there’s nothing better than just heading out on a sunny day, not knowing where you are going to end up. I think I get that from growing up with my parents, who would take us out on a drive to nowhere and always reply to the question of ‘where are we going’ with ‘there and back to see how far it is’. Helpful. To be fair to them, my sister and I were proper nightmares in the back of the car. Not as bad as Paul, mind you. He kicked his sister so hard in the side of her head for turning off his 911 CD that she spent a car journey from Glencoe to Aberdeen with ringing ears. To be fair, I’d have ringing ears if I had to listen to Paul’s music choices for more than ten minutes – I spend less time changing gears than I do pressing the ‘Skip Track’ button on my steering wheel to try and get past his Tracy Chapman nonsense. It’s no wonder the clutch in the Micra is fucked.

I’M SORRY: TRACY CHAPMAN SOUNDS LIKE A BEE WITH A COLD TRAPPED IN A BOTTLE.

Actually, my parents once thought it would be a great idea to transport my sister, me, a tent and two week’s worth of camping impedimenta in a scalding hot Ford Escort to the bottom of France (from Newcastle). It wasn’t, and I think my sister and I started fighting from the second my dad started backing the car down the lane from our house. Bearing in mind that we were quite fractious siblings at the best of times (though we’re close now) this was a recipe for disaster. Anyway, clearly sick of remonstrating with us and smacking our arses, our parents threatened to leave us by the side of a road in the middle of rural France at some backwater petrol station. Of course, being kids, we were full of bravado, and we knew they wouldn’t dare. But they did – they bundled us out of the car at the petrol station and proceeded to drive to the exit ramp. Now, let me clarify, I believe their intention was to give us a little fright and stop a moment or two down the ramp and pick us back up. Only they hadn’t factored in the massive lorry that pulled out behind them, clearly with Paris’ entire shipment of Gauloises in the back and no time to wait for my parents to teach us a lesson in good behaviour. Being a one lane exit ramp they had no other alternative than to carry on down onto the motorway and leave us stranded, bawling. Oops. They came back around from the other side around fifteen minutes later after they’d driven like they had a bomb up their arse to the next junction and turned around and we were completely silent for the next couple of hours. So I suppose the threat worked. Anyway, don’t judge, they are great parents.

So today’s recipe is…gasp…wait for it…get Mag’s number dialled ready to press…A SMOOTHIE. Quick! Get the amyl nitrates and bring her around!

This makes four decent sized smoothies, so give a couple to the kids or just enjoy two!

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you’ll need:

25g of dark chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker which are 6 syns, so 1.5 syns a serving), 80g of uncooked spinach, 40g of mint leaves, four frozen bananas, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 750ml of almond milk (either use it as part of your HEA – you’re allowed 875ml of Blue Diamond almond milk, and you can use it in coffee – or syn it as 3 syns, or less than a syn per smoothie). You’ll also need a blender or some way of making it mush together, and we chucked in some ice for shits and giggles.

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you should:

only thing to do is to prepare the bananas by freezing them – top tip, slice them first and lay all the slices out flat on a chopping board, and then freeze like that – that way you’re not having to cut up a frozen banana
blend the whole lot into a nice green blend
serve in a normal glass like a level-headed, reasonable person, or pop it in a fucking milk bottle
enjoy!

Two caveats – you DON’T need to be a complete bellend and serve these smoothies up in milk bottles like some vexing bearded hipster, but I’ll say this somewhat begrudgingly, they do look rather nice. We bought ours from Lakeland on Amazon – they’re pretty, but expensive. Click here for a link and there are cheaper alternatives!

Also, it might not sound especially nice, but this tasted delicious, like a mint milkshake. You can’t taste the spinach but it adds a lovely green and the health benefits are obvious. We had ours at noon and I’m not hungry yet so I’m going to say this can be used for a breakfast. Yes: technically it’s a tweak. But look at it this way. The banana is syn free. The spinach is a speed food. Mint makes your breath fresh and hot men will kiss you. Dark chocolate is good for the ticker and if you’re feeling particularly virtuous, just leave it out. You’re not drinking a bathtub of this stuff, you’re using it as a meal or a snack. Enjoy it, please!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 16, 2015

Posted under

beef, cured meats, diced beef, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, italian, low syn, lunch, pasta, pork, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, steak

cajun steak and cheese pasta

Our cat has betrayed me – normally he sleeps between the two of us if it’s a cold night but he’d gotten up early doors and gone out chasing mice. How the hell he manages to spend a night between the two of us I have no idea – we’re very much a ‘spooning’ couple, constantly intertwining our legs and arms and murmuring nonsense at each other. I actually woke up once with Paul having rolled on top of me, not in a ‘but it’s my birthday’ way but rather out of comfort, like I was an especially squashy lilo. Nevertheless, around 1am Bowser will be padding around our pillow and then crawls between us like a tiny potholer. How he survives I have no idea – the squashing I mentioned above must be bad enough, but the flatulence produced between the two of us vents out right where he sleeps. It must be like trying to sleep with your head stuck in one of those Dyson Airdryers you get in toilets, only one that blows out air that smells of turned corned-beef and death. I swear after a night of our easy chicken curry he’ll disappear under the duvet as a black and white tom and comes back a tortoiseshell who suffers night terrors.

Tonight’s recipe has the unfortunate problem of looking exactly like another recipe we did earlier in the week, but what can I say, we’ve missed carbs and we had some steak to use up. Isn’t that a first world problem right there?

to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you will need:

500g penne pasta, 120g steak (sliced into bite size pieces) 1 onion (chopped), 1 green pepper (chopped), 1 clove of garlic, 300ml skimmed milk, 250g quark, 2 tsp Cajun seasoning, 120g extra mature cheddar (grated), 20g parmesan (grated), 50g chorizo (sliced), breadcrumbs (from half a wholemeal roll)

if you use the wholemeal roll and the cheese as your healthy extras (remember, this serves 4) this will be 3 syns per serving, 1.5 from the chorizo, and 1.5 from the milk.

to make cajun steak and cheese pasta you should:

cook the pasta until al dente (like Al Murray, but less of a cock), drain and set aside
in a large frying pan or saucepan soften the onion and green pepper in a little oil over a medium heat for about ten minutes
add the Cajun seasoning and stir well
slowly pour in the milk and stir continuously
add the quark in small amounts and mix until smooth and creamy
in a separate frying pan quickly cook the steak and chorizo over a high heat for one minute
add the steak and chorizo into the cheese mixture
add the cheddar and parmesan to the mixture, remove from the heat and stir continuously until all the cheese has melted
add the pasta to the mixture and mix well
pour the mixture into a large casserole dish, top with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for ten minutes just to make it sticky.

Now this is proper stick-to-your-ribs cooking and we loved it, but for goodness sake, it serves four. Keep some for your lunch the next day. This with the rice bake from the other day is more than making up our carb deficit and it tasted delicious!

Oh, if you need a casserole dish, get a bloody Le Creuset one. We’ve had ours over two years now and yes, it is very expensive, but we use it daily – as a frying pan, to cook in, to roast in, and it’s never stuck or failed us. They’re £160 on Amazon at the moment. Click here and treat yourself! Do you need something so pricey? No. But you kinda want one…

Cheers!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 6, 2015

Posted under

breakfast, breast, desserts, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, salad, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chicken fattoush

Before we launch into day two, I’ve found a brilliant little feature hidden away in the background of my blog – I’ve got the ability to see what people search for to find my blog. It’s so I can tailor the pages in such a fashion to pick up google searches for SW recipes and the like. All very exciting to a data-nerd like me. But I thought I’d share some of the more…obscure searches that people have used to come across (literally, in some cases) my blog..

‘carrot cake overnight oats slimming world’

Excellent! One of my favourite recipes. Nice choice, google.

‘dont trust slimming world’

Oh no! What do they know that we don’t? Maybe it’s all a cult – that would explain all the fucking clapping, for sure. Maybe Mags herself is plotting to take over the world one watery curry at a time?

‘look at my chunky pussy’

Good lord. I like the fact that someone typed that into google too, like it was an instruction rather than a question…

‘1000 heartbeats shit’

I couldn’t agree more. Vernon tries his best, god love him, but you’re still essentially watching someone solve wordsearches during an echocardiogram.

‘miniature brown teapot with teapot and bread on’

I bet they were absolutely gutted when this appeared. For the record, I prefer my “teapots” colossal and without a “lid”, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, I’m talking about cocks again.

‘chocolate in rainbow world’

God knows.

‘stocky hairy men washing each other’

They’d be disappointed. I wash Paul with the extendable hose from outside. However if watching two fat blokes grappling over the ped-egg and yelling nonsense at the TV melts your butter, get in touch.

‘can dogs have baked cod’

Yes, but only if it’s their birthday.

‘is semen classed as a syn on slimming world’

No, it isn’t – but remember, only sluts gargle.

‘young chubby has two at once and loves it’

No denying this one. It was the best night I’ve had in a while. Four fingers at once. But that’s a Kitkat for you (11.5 syns).

And my personal favourite:

‘wat syns.cn u see wen sum is busy with evil’

Words fail me. Seems like a good time to start then…

BREAKFAST

Red berry fruit salad with sweetened Quark

Nothing to this other than it’s a medley of different red berries and, because it’s SP week and you’re not allowed a yoghurt if you’re sticking to it 100% otherwise your consultant will be around to fling a dog-turd off your window, we mixed quark with a little bit of milk and some sweetener. I fail to see the point or the logic to it but we’re fully invested. I can’t imagine my body is going to shut down like Titanic’s furnace the very second a Muller passes my lips but nevertheless. The Quark (P) tasted alright, but…we used frozen mixed berries (all of them (S) foods)on the bottom of the glass that had been allowed to thaw (but not cooked, because christ I can’t handle two moans about bloody tweaking in one post) and chopped strawberries (S) on the top. That masked the taste. Pomegranates aren’t speed though, surprisingly, but you could swap them out for raspberries if you were desperate.

LUNCH

Chicken fattoush salad

Note: this can easily be syn-free – just omit the olive oil. But I like a bit of oil on my dressing. Up to you…OH and in our haste this morning to make this before work, we forgot to take a picture. But it looked like the one above, trust me.

to make chicken fattoush you will need:

½ cucumber (S), 1 green pepper (S), 3 medium tomatoes (S), 6 spring onions (S), 1-2 chicken breasts grilled and cut into strips (P), handful of chopped coriander, handful of chopped parsley, as much leafy salad as you like, 1 tbsp finely chopped mint, 40ml lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp sumac.

to make chicken fattoush you should:

chop the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds (you don’t have to do this, but it stops it getting soggy)
chop the pepper, tomatoes and spring onions into chunks
mix all of the above with the salad leaves, herbs and chopped mint and chicken
in a separate small bowl, whisk together the sumac and lemon juice until well mixed. Add salt and pepper to taste.
pour the dressing over the salad, and eat!

For heaven’s sake though, have a mint after. All that onion!

DETOX WATER

Mint and cucumber

Someone posted a comment on a Facebook group I use about a ‘Sassy Water’ where, if you drink it, the nutrients and wonderful vitamins swimming around in your body would make you lose A POUND AN HOUR. Ridiculous right, and not least because Sassy Water sounds like a particularly ghetto-fabulous drag queen. But what made me more aghast – and I am a man who spends a good two hours of my day with my hand clasped theatrically to my lips with a ‘well fuck me’ expression – PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. People honest to God without theatrics believed it. How?! How do these people remember to breathe in AND breathe out? Imagine if losing weight was as easy as drinking a few glasses of water with the Tesco Reduced Items basket bobbing around in it like a turd in a pier? For goodness sake. Tell you what, maybe that searcher above was right and Slimming World is a big con after all, keeping us fat so we can keeps Mags in Bentleys and Montecristos.

Just kidding, I love SW really. In the water today then:

mint from the garden, chopped up fine; and
enough cucumber to make a nun purse her lips.

Cucumber is good for the skin and mint is champion if your breath bleaches people’s hair as you talk. Still tasted like I was drinking a face-mask mind.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – WALKING

daytwobody

Today’s body magic was walking – into work and back again. I’ve mentioned before that walking into work is a chore (opens in a new window that one, so don’t worry, give it a read) but today was especially tiresome. At 5.00pm, I looked across Newcastle from my office and saw the sun bright in the sky, children playing happily and I could almost hear tinkly laughter from the street below. I got in the lift, travelled seven floors to the bottom, and went outside. It was like The Day After Tomorrow, with horizontal rain and hail. It felt like my face was being powersanded by God himself. Of course, I had a hoodie on, so I was fine, but Paul was immediately caught out by his cheap-o Tesco work shirt turning see-through so everyone could see his dirtypillows. It was an uncomfortable swim home. To top it off, the cows on the town moor thought it would be a jolly jape to start running together over the path with their shitclad tails swishing about, meaning we had to powermince to avoid them, slipping in the cowpats they’d skilfully and carefully left on the path whilst the rain and wind blew all around us. At one point I almost collapsed onto a bench and told Paul to go on without me. It was like Threads, and that shit’s real.

Of course, the rain, wind and bad weather stopped the very second I pressed the door-release on my car keys.

God, if you’re up there, why do you hate me so? Is it the blasphemy? The sodomy? The fact I look better with a beard? Bah!

Anyway, in total, I walked 7.64 miles throughout the day (including a schlep around Tesco and my many walks to the photocopier) and burned 1308 calories. Paul managed a respectful 3.4 mile walk (into work and back – he forgot to leave his pedometer on). We definitely earned our dinner.

OH WHAT A SEGUE.

DINNER

Well, this is embarrassing. It’s still in the oven! We’re having oven-baked meatballs but didn’t realise that they took over two hours to slowly cook. Great! I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Promise. Honest. But the recipe…:

ingredients: 2 large onions (S), 500g lean beef mince (P) (or pork, or turkey!), 2tsp dried oregano, 2 garlic cloves (crushed) (S), salt and pepper, 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (S), 400ml passata, 150ml vegetable stock, 2 medium courgettes (S), 1 medium aubergine (S).

recipe:

finely chop the two onions and put into a bowl with the mince, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper
combine the mixture by hand and roll into twenty or so equal balls
titter at the word balls
place the meatballs into the fridge to chill, perhaps pipe a bit of Michael Buble in for them
trim and chop the courgettes and aubergine into chunks and mix together in a large roasting dish with the tomatoes, passata and vegetable stock
cover the dish with foil and cook for 50 minutes at 200 degrees celsius
add the meatballs to the dish, recover (the dish, not your dignity) and cook for another 40 minutes
serve!

We’re having ours with turnip and green beans because that’s the only thing left after we made sassy water.

DAY TWO DONE.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 28, 2015

Posted under

breakfast, low syn, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, vegetarian

cheese and asparagus french toast dippers with soft boiled eggs

Firstly, let’s get this out of the way: what’s green and empty? Orville’s bumhole. Oh you. Paul’s going to write tonight’s entry, and I’ll butt in wherever my big sassy ass can fit. You’ll be able to spot my parts, they’re in italics. How decadent!

Technology really is marvellous, in’t it? I’m happy to say that in a little over seven months we’ve managed to attract (at the time of writing) 2209 subscribers to the website and 2704 to the Facebook group! And thank you to each and every one of you.

I absolutely love technology – any kind. I’m a complete geek when it comes to anything like that. I once dragged James around an old nuclear bunker from the Cold War just so I could crane my neck to have a look at what their printer was like (very beige, if you were wondering). His latest thing is Twitter – I can’t use the bloody thing, too complex for my liking (it just reminds me of someone mouthing off in the middle of a bus station hoping someone screams back – gah) and I recoil whenever I see a bloody hashtag so he’s looking after that side of things. I’ll stick with Facebook, thank you very much. It’s where all the drama happens.

A thought entered my mind today as I sat at my desk at work trying not to think about Galaxy Ripples. I remember the feeling of amazement and wonder I had when I was just a little lad whenever I saw computers. Back then they were just these little boxes whirring away in the corner of the classroom (but only if you were good for that week) that didn’t really do very much but were still fantastic and quite mystical. I also remember the excitement whenever I saw anything even vaguely computerish on the telly (I sat through an entire series of Bugs once. It was crap but it looked cool). I was always lucky enough to have a computer in the house. It started off with the Commodore 64 which unfortunately ended its life at the hands of an errant Lambert and Butler from mother. She used to be fixated with a game called ‘Split Personalities’ where you had to slide bits of a puzzle around to make a picture of a famous personality – mother, in the grips of a panic that only rearranging Elivs Costello’s face in 16-bit can create, must’ve clamped her thin lips down a little too harshly on that tab of hers because the tip fell off and burnt its way through the keyboard. Turns out you can’t load a tape without the use of the space bar.

Our first PC was smashing – a Packard Bell that we had to have the bedroom floor reinforced to stop it crashing through the ceiling. Well not quite, but you get the gist. I’ve never known a computer where you had to shovel coal in the back just to get Encarta 96 running at full speed. No internet at the time – just Solitaire, Rodent’s Revenge and then completely knacking everything up by installing After Dark screensavers (flying toasters!) and setting a boot-up password, then promptly forgetting it. We had to call someone who ‘knew computers’ to come and fix it whilst we stood slack-jawed at the Windows 95 splash screen. He also installed Quake on it but that was far too manly for me so I just spent my time playing Hover and Theme Hospital. No internet at that point see, so there were no long summer evenings spent flogging the dolphin. Anyway. Back to Paul.

From there we eventually moved up to a PC – we got some ‘glorious’ reconditioned box of crap from an iffy looking warehouse that disappeared the next week and where the workers had far too many gold earrings not to be up to something shifty. The only problem was that I used to love tinkering with it. As a curious twelve year old I loved nothing more than taking the case off and pulling wires out to see if I could remember where it went, or delete key files to see if I could fix it (I never could). I was able to get away with it by blaming the Millennium Bug until some smartarse actually pointed to the problems most likely being the massive amounts of smut I had hidden away on it. Eeh what am I like.

I soon got my comeuppance, though. Whilst fannying on too much I accidentally deleted the display driver meaning that it could only ever from that point on do things in sixteen colours. SIXTEEN. You’ve never seen complicated porn until you’ve watched it in only sixteen bloody colours. I didn’t realise a bumhole wasn’t an aurbergine colour until I saw one winking at me for real. Anyway, after a few weeks of aborted, frustrated attempts at having a wank I finally managed to sulk my way into getting another, nicer, newer one. It was still rubbish, mind, but at least I could finally crack one off in a few million different colours. It makes all the difference, believe me. The problem from then on though was that mother started to get her hands on it. No, not that (I know I’m from East Anglia, but come on) I mean the computer, and that’s when it all went terribly wrong. You wouldn’t trust a hamster with a bandsaw so whoever it was that decided a middle-aged woman that had only managed to figure out how to click a biro should be allowed access to a computer deserves a good kicking. There was no time for smut when I had to spend all my days uninstalling toolbars and iffy Bingo diallers and running up and down the stairs with a list of words to run through a thesaurus for her latest Puzzler. And when Bejewelled came along that really was the final straw and I decided to move out. I couldn’t bear another question about a bloody Java installer.

I want to interject here and continue my bit and agree that, for my formative teenager years, technology was amazing – in that technology could get me any amount of debauched filth at the click of a mouse and an installation of Realplayer. Truly, it was a wondrous time to be a teenage boy. When I finally managed to get the computer put in my bedroom rather than downstairs I don’t think I reappeared for a good two weeks, and even then I came out of my bedroom with a right arm like a Russian shot-putter and skin the colour of milk. You know when you were young and you used to slick your arm with PVA glue so that you could peel it off? That’s what my bedroom looked like – like a giant spider had made a nest. My parents were responsible enough to put parental controls on, but nothing stops a teenage boy getting at pornography, and if you’re sitting there reading this thinking little Oliver and Danrobért aren’t bypassing every restriction you’ve put on there, you’re so wrong. It’s a wonder I got any GSCE coursework done.

Hush, you. Fancy lowering the tone like that. Speaking of cheese, though:

I know right?

to make cheese and asparagus french toast dippers with soft boiled eggs you will need:

two slices of wholemeal bread – now this is where it gets tricky, syn wise. You could use a couple of slices of wholemeal bread (from a small loaf) as your healthy extra and look, that’s fine. It really is. Or, you could splash out a little and get this nice seeded bread, which I work out as 6.5 syns a slice – but see now you’re allowed 60g of wholemeal bread so I’m going to call it and say that it’s 3.5 syns for the bread. It might be a bit more, it might be less. I had it and lost 7lb on that week so either way it didn’t derail me. You’ll also need your healthy extra allowance of cheese – choose a good strong cheese, that way you can use less – 30g of gruyere is what I used), six eggs (two for each of you and two for the bread), a good bunch of asparagus and a strong coffee. Oh, and some spray oil – I use Filipo Berio. Or however you spell it.

to make cheese and asparagus french toast dippers with soft boiled eggs you should:

set four eggs away boiling merrily in boiling water – seven minutes is normally enough for a good dippy egg
cook your asparagus – little squirt of oil and just cook them in a griddle pan until they’re nicely browned – then chop into pieces, keeping the griddle pan hot
whisk the remaining two eggs, a dash of milk and some salt and pepper in a bowl
take your slices of bread and make a ‘sandwich’ – cheese and chopped asparagus
carefully dip your sandwich into the egg mixture and drop onto the griddle pan so it can toast and the cheese melts
serve sliced with the top of the egg removed and dip away!

I can’t tell you how nice this was. Something different for breakfast too! Yes, it involves using syns, but that’s what they are there for!

P and J