Before we get started – I heard an expression yesterday which had me clutching my sides with laughter, and I’ve tried and tried to work it naturally into my normal dialogue but haven’t been able to, so I’m just going to chuck it here at the start of the blog and let it set the tone:

…”she had a fanny like a butcher shop with blown-in windows”…

Seriously, how can I get that into normal conversation? I can’t exactly chuck it across to the man who has been round to size up my blinds, can I?

Yes yes, I know, I said I’d update, but then I also said it would just be chaotic with all the decorating and people being in the house, so we took some time off instead. Listen I thought this blog would fizzle out like a disappointing fart after a week or two when we started, so the fact we’re here almost a year later is good enough! So shut yer hole. Even getting to the computer to type up this blog has been like a thrown-out round of Gladiators, climbing over paint-pots and sanders and forty inches of dust just to get to the keyboard. Christ knows what my name would be if I had been a Gladiator…’GELATINE’ perhaps, or ‘SWEAT RASH’. You would have had to slightly de-tune the TV to soften the image of me in a lycra unitard too, with my tits jiggling about like duelling jellyfish and my cock-and-balls smeared across my front like a run-over weasel.

Of course we’ve had the natural gaggle of people in the house, quoting for work, looking disdainfully at our paint colours and over-egging their quotes and then backtracking so fast their shoes smoke when I start haggling. Case in point – we had a local company come out to quote for installing an alarm system a couple of days ago. He turns up, starts rattling our windows and doors and telling us that ‘given the fucking area youse (wince) live in, you really need to improve your security’. The area we live in! The cheeky little muckspout. 

We’ve had a painter in the house all week and he’s been brilliant – meticulously clean, efficient, turning up on time and doing a cracking job. But CHRIST has it been stressful – each morning before work I’m having to run around the house removing anything indecent and/or smutty. The normal products that help a happy homo-marriage, but not something I want my painter to have to move with a gloved hand. We’ll be finding bottles of lube, douching bulbs and fetishwear stuffed down the cracks in the settee and behind the towels until at least 2018.

Hell we had to stop the TV from syncing with the computer and displaying the contents of our photo slideshow just in case he was busy glossing the skirting boards, flicked on the telly for a bit of Jeremy Kyle and was confronted by a 55″ LED display of a hardcore bukkake session. Nothing matt about that, mate. He probably already thinks the house is haunted by the gayest ghost imaginable given I’d forgotten that when I show people at work how our fancy lights work where you can control the colour and brightness from the iPad, it’ll be changing them at home as it’s all connected via WiFi – imagine trying to paint when the lights keep flashing and changing from Hussy Red to Septic Green.

It doesn’t help matters that Paul seems to think it’s entirely appropriate to ‘drop the kids off’ first thing in the morning before his steamy shower, meaning the bathroom smells like an animal rendering plant for at least three hours. I wouldn’t care so much but the painter was recommended by someone whose opinion I actually welcome and I don’t want him going back and telling them that our house smells like a sewage outlet. 

My haggling has also been coming along wonderfully – after making a new enemy at the sofa shop by taking £700 off her commission, I managed to haggle 50% of the cost of our blinds. I say I haggled, but really, he told me it would cost £900, I said no and that I’d pay £450 and not a penny more. He immediately said that was fine. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t because he was swooning at the sight of me stood in front of him in my vest looking to the world like a hot-water tank spoiling for a fight, so it just shows how much these companies try and screw out of you.

Now before some clever-dick points out that we could buy them online and fit them ourselves and save so much more money, well yes, that’s true, but you don’t know us. We’d install the blinds upside-down and on fire. It’s like the motto that I really should have tattooed on the lower of my back – ‘I prefer to get a man in’.

Speaking of haggling, our budget week starts today. Now, cards on the table time, we’re abysmal at budgeting when it comes to money. We bought a second Actifry because the first one we ordered was grey and we fancied black and rather than returning it to Amazon, we’ve put it in the shed where it’s currently propping up the Christmas tree stand. We’ve paid a locksmith £50 for two new handles for the door but we’re putting him off visiting because we don’t like having to make small-talk while he fits them. It’s not because we’re rolling in money, because let me assure you we’re not, but we also don’t have kids sucking our money out of our wallet like a mucky-faced perma-yelling hoover.  Plus we’re gay, so pink-pound rules, yes? 

What we’re going to do is to price up our recipe this week, so you’ll be able to see at a glance how much it costs per serving – and – our recipes this week (unless clearly stated) will serve 6 – not so that you get double the pleasure at dinner time, but rather so you can parcel some up and have it for lunch the next day. We’re not going to be providing a recipe for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day as it’s still a bit too chaotic to commit to such shenanigans, but I am going to try and post as much as we can and just like American week, you might get a few more days out of us if we come up with good ideas.

We’re assuming a basic level of spices and stock and flavouring, but we’re going to keep out our more outlandish ingredients this week. However, you’ll spot two news things: ways to ‘gussy’ up the meal, i.e., if you’re not on the bones of your arse, I’ll include ways you can spend a little more to add even more flavour, and also, a way to strip down each recipe even further. Well, where I can. One of the recipes coming up uses three ingredients for heaven’s sake. 

Actually, that’s an idea – I might take a picture of a glass of water, do it all up twochubbycubs style, and post it in the facebook groups with a recipe guide. That’ll cause an argument – not that such a thing is difficult – I saw someone ask for a syn value yesterday only to be called a ‘fucking snooty bitch’ (well, it was actually fkn sntty btch (there’s that vowel tax again), but I don’t think she was calling her a frolickin’ snotty birch, so let me have it). Honestly, dieting folks could start an argument in an empty house. Just have a square of chocolate and calm your titties.

SO, first recipe isn’t the most exciting, but look, it’s a good start and a decent cheap way to get your breakfast. Plus, I wanted one more overnight oats recipe on the blog so I have a full week of them to post around like the profligate slut that I am.

to make apple pie overnight oats, you’ll need:

• 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because we like their texture
• 1 apple
• 10g of sultanas
• cinnamon
• fat free natural yoghurt
• if your yoghurt is a bit Katie Price (a little tart), chuck in a dusting of sweetener, but just a dusting, you don’t need to use a bloody snow shovel

then you should:

• get yourself a fancy jar like mine from Amazon or if you are trying to save money, ask a passing child to hold their hands in a bowl shape, mix it all in there, have them stand overnight and then send them back up the chimney after breakfast in the morning;
• put your 45g of oats and dash of sweetener in the bottom
• add your 10g of sultanas on top (1.5 syns at a push – 25g of basic sultanas is 2.5g)
• grate your apple coarsely (I mean use the coarse setting on the grater, not that you should eff-and-jeff all throughout the process) and pop that on top
• add a sprinkling of cinnamon
• add the natural yoghurt
• MIX it together – a few people have commented that the oats were a bit dry but then they hadn’t mixed it all together – it won’t look as pretty as my photo, but if you don’t mix, you’re going to have a very dry breakfast…

the cost:

• Tesco fat-free Everyday Value natural yoghurt – 45p for 500g – you use around 50g, so 5p
• Tesco Everyday Value oats – 1kg for 75p  – you use 35g, so let’s say 3p
• Tesco Everyday Value apples – 89p for 6, so let’s say 15p for one 
• Tesco Everyday Value sultanas – 500g for 84p – of which you use 10g – so 2p

I’m assuming you have cinnamon and sweetener – if not, get your cinnamon and ANY spices from an Asian foods store, you’ll save a fortune. Sweetener – it’s part of the deal on Slimming World that you’ll have a pile of sweetener like those salt-bins you see on the roads. If not, it’s dirt cheap, lasts ages. Or, you know, use a dash of sugar.

to save more:

• buy your apples loose or on the market

to gussy it up:

• use a Toffee Mullerlight for a toffee-apple flavour 
• add dried cranberries (synned)
• add blackberries

Oooh, what will you choose?

More overnight oats recipes:

• peanut butter and jelly
• cafe mocha
• rocky road
• rhubard and custard
• carrot cake
• old traditional

WE’RE BACK, BABY.

J