Tag Archives: syn free

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June 16, 2015

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

quickpost: rhubarb and custard overnight oats

Super quick post tonight as a) I’m tired and b) I need to tidy up before Paul gets home and brays me. I’m like the Little Mo of the street. Christ, I used to have a real thing for Trevor out of Eastenders, which is messed up. But true to my word of a recipe a day, here’s the final overnight oats recipe in my trio of flavours. You’ll find the previous ones here:

rhubarb and custard overnight oats

to make rhubarb and custard overnight oats, you’ll need these:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because they make a good consistency
  • a banana and custard muller yoghurt OR 100g of syn-free natural yoghurt, with three drops of custard flavouring added*
  • 200g of rhubarb
  • enough sweetener to take the edge off the tartness of the rhubarb
  • a drop or two of rose-water (optional)

* you can buy custard flavouring from Lakeland – it’s in their professional flavouring range. You don’t need this, but it does taste lovely!

to make rhubarb and custard overnight oats, you’ll need to do this:

  • mix up your oats and yoghurt, dur, and put it into the bottom of the jar
  • chop up your rhubarb into thumb sized chunks, chuck in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water and a drop of rose water and cook on a medium heat with the lid on until it turns to mush
  • take it off the heat, mix in sweetener if you want it
  • once cooled, pour the rhubarb onto the oats, and seal
  • mix it up in the morning and enjoy!

Rhubarb raw is syn-free and then you add it to water, so really, it’s syn-free, but SW say it’s 0.5 syn for 100g. Look, don’t count it, seriously. You’re not going to turn into Dibley-era Dawn French if you eat something grown in the ground and boiled in something pissed from a cloud. If you were deep-frying it in butter…perhaps.

Enjoy! 

J

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June 15, 2015

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breakfast, classics, desserts, overnight oats, recipe card, snacks, sweet snacks, syn free, vegetarian

cafe mocha overnight oats – and a box full of faces

Three important messages:

  1. when we cook, it’s nearly always enough to serve four people – but we’re greedy so normally eat three servings and save the last serving for picking at when we tidy up the kitchen. Unless I say otherwise, assume the recipe serves four;
  2. I’m going to stop using that little recipe plug-in I brought in because the good folks who get this post by email no longer receive the recipe – and we can’t be having that – don’t say I don’t listen; and
  3. if you comment on the blog via Facebook, that is brilliant as it means more publicity, but I don’t get a notification so don’t worry if it takes me a while to respond! What it does mean however is that other people can help you if you have a question, and isn’t that just lovely?

Here, what a day. It’s been a dreadful day today for someone who dislikes a) people and b) being the centre of attention. See, I’m one of the first aiders at work, which generally means I get to have a big important first aid box full of plasters and the exciting knowledge of everyone’s intimate maladies. It’s a very responsible position indeed, with matters that are nothing less than life or death – do I issue a corn plaster or a waterproof plaster? Do I check NHS Direct via phone OR online? Do I hide in the toilets until another first aider is found? PRESSURE.

The downside of this responsibility is that I have to attend refresher courses on what to do in the case of an emergency – which to my mind is an easy enough question – flap, wave my arms around dramatically and call 999, although I’m told that’s overkill if someone splashes a bit of hot water from the coffee machine across their hand. I can’t bear these type of ‘events’, I really can’t. I spend so long worrying about whether I’m going to get picked to ‘demonstrate’ that I only just take the information in. It’s hard to concentrate when you’ve got forty factory-workers angrily staring at you and criticising your soft office shoes as an ex-ambulance driver tries to put your arm in a sling.

There’s only one scenario where I’d enjoy being helped into a sling and I’d be disappointed if that occurred in a 20 minute refresher.

I’ve mentioned before about my personal space issues – if anyone comes within 3ft of me my shoulders go up and my head disappears into my shoulders like a tortoise with anxiety  – so people tumbling me around the carpet and trying to get my body into a recovery position is my idea of a living hell. Plus, there’s the added pressure of trying not to break wind as my right thigh is hoiked into the air with the gentle touch of an abattoir-worker and having to kneel down in front of everyone to practice CPR on a dummy that looks like a boiled ham with a crudely drawn crayoning of Sharon Osbourne’s face plastered on it.

Of course, I immediately managed to embarrass myself by nipping to the gents for a couple of minutes before the class started, only to find on my return that everyone had left the lobby and decamped into one of the meeting rooms. I peered through the window and sensed some familiarity amongst the bald heads and let myself into the room, having to cross it to get to the only spare seat, whispering apologies and ‘oh silly me’ faces a-plenty. Ten minutes into the lecture on how to safely lift boxes in a packing facility I realised my mistake and had to walk back across the classroom with everyone’s eyes burning into me. I’m surprised my hair didn’t catch. I found a chair in the other class and glowed with embarrassment.

The three hours passed fairly quickly, although of course I was chosen almost immediately as an example of oxygen deprivation, giving the scenario of ‘If I held a pillow over James’ face, it would take four minutes for his brain to start dying’. Typical. Half an hour in and he’s got me pegged as a pillow-biter.

Giving CPR presented a challenge, not least because I was picked to ‘build’ the dummy to practice on in front of the entire class. Social anxiety coupled with someone telling you to ‘pick a face out of the box’ and ‘turn it inside out, clip his ears onto the dummy’ makes for a very challenging ten minutes. I can’t build tension, let alone a fucking latex approximation of some chisel-jawed corpse whilst twenty people stare down at me as I fumble around his plastic lips. It gets better – I then had to demonstrate how to pump the chest (30 presses, hand over hand, between the nips) which meant a good minute of me pistoning up and down, more than likely with the top of my arsecheeks peeping out over my belt in an accusatory manner. Didn’t get any less awkward when someone else took over, because then I had someone’s arse backing into my face as they tried to bring the dummy back to life.

I also made the mistake of asking the teacher some basic tips on how to deal with any possible emergency arising from having a pregnant lady in the office. Well look, I think it’s better to be prepared, and it’s not like I have an intimate understanding of how it all happens. For all I know, it might ding like a microwave, the flaps swinging open like the prize-doors on Bullseye and a baby comes swooshing out like its on a log flume. Well, clearly taken with the fact that someone had actually asked a question, he addressed the whole process of giving birth in blistering detail. I was enthralled. I could tell everyone else was seething because they wanted to be away but I can honestly say I now feel confident delivering a baby. It sounds marvellous – sacks of fluid bursting, feet wriggling out, placentas sloshing out like the sponge in a car-wash – you just need Melanie and Martina and you’d have a brilliant Fun House round.

Ah well. At least I’m trained up if anyone faints, burns themselves, does a Jim Robinson or strokes out. That feels good. And, although I’ve been my usually sassy self about the whole thing, these First Aid courses are amazing. I learn a lot and the presenters are always fantastic. Considering my medical experience begins and ends at being scared of the 999 theme tune, the fact they manage to hold my interest for so long is testament to how good they are. Great work.

Seriously though, click this and tell me that this isn’t a bloody frightening theme tune. It’ll open in a separate window. I used to have genuine nightmares about that. Though not as much as The Outer Limits. Yikes.

Speaking of nightmares, there was no excuse for this box of horrors that I had to use to prop up someone’s legs as I demonstrated the ‘shock position’. 

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Eurgh. I put Paul in the shock position once. I used Durex Heat instead of Durex Tingle. Poor love had to pop a blue raspberry ice-pop in afterwards to fix his nipsy.

Speaking of hot, smoky flavours – here’s a recipe for cafe mocha overnight oats – or chocolate coffee oats. That’s C-O-F-F-E-E. Oh yes sir boss like the drink! Hmm. This will make one jar for the morning.

cafe mocha overnight oats

you’ll be needing these to make cafe mocha overnight oats:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because they make a good consistency
  • 1 Muller Yoghurt vanilla with chocolate sprinkles
  • 1 banana (now, if you’re sensible, mash it in a bowl like a normal person, but if you’re Captain Anal when it comes to tweaking, smash it up in your teeth and then spit it into the jar, because you know, that makes a difference to the syns…well maybe if you’re a fucking sparrow)
  • a good cup of instant coffee, stronger the better

you’ll need to do this to make cafe mocha overnight oats:

  • mix up your oats with the yoghurt and put into the jar
  • top with the mashed banana
  • take your cup of instant coffee and dribble a tablespoon or two into the jar
  • top with a few granules of coffee
  • mix it all together like a bad-ass and put it in the fridge to enjoy in the morning.

You can make this just as strong as you like. The banana adds a bit of sweetness, the coffee adds a pick-me-up. Better made with decent coffee mind, a cup of Mellow Birds isn’t going to cut the mustard!

Enjoy. Always.

J

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June 13, 2015

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budget, dressings, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chive vinegar – a syn-free flavourful dressing

We got into an argument today in the car-park of a fucking farm-shop. I mean seriously, a farm-shop, it doesn’t get any more middle-class-on-a-Saturday than that. To complete the scene, we had only stopped to see if they sold duck eggs. Anyway, we had parked Paul’s little Micra between the lines of the bay as any normal, educated people would do. Some Red-Leicester-coloured, wrinkly, pendulum-tittied tart got out her car to the left and crashed her door into the side of ours. ‘Accidentally’. And didn’t apologise. I was foaming – not so much for any possible damage to the car (there was a bit of a scrape, but it’s our ‘scrappy’ car so I don’t mind, it only adds to the character) but more for her nonchalance.

When I pointed out that she’d hit our car, she told me (quote) “the fucking wind caught my door”. Looking at her, her face had clearly caught a fucking sandstorm, but that’s by the by. I asked her to be more careful only to be met with a volley of abuse as she stomped off into the shop. Seriously now what happened to manners? It wouldn’t really look too good having two big bald men shouting at one woman so we couldn’t continue, but it took all of my good breeding not to climb on top of her shitty Ford Ka (missing the letters AAAHNT) and take a dump on her windscreen.

I can’t bear people like that. Accidents happen – she did – but fucking apologise, for crying out loud. Since when did it become OK to waltz through life without any personal responsibility? £10 says she’s the type who thinks acting classy is hanging a Magic Tree from her inevitable clit-ring before she sets off for a prison visit. Gah. Anyway. Recipe.

Now you might think this is a bit of a cheek as it isn’t really much of a recipe, but look, one thing I find Slimming World can fall down on is flavour, and this is a nice, simple way of injecting a bit of flavour into a meal – the chive flowers create a subtle onion taste and the vinegar can be combined with a touch of oil to make a decent salad dressing. I have to admit, it looks pretty sitting there in its Kilner jar, but please don’t be tempted to give something like this as a gift. I know that Nigella lassie pretends that she goes around to her friends on the bus with a box of handmade chutney, but this is real-life, and no-one will thank you for some onion vinegar, Kilner or no.

Chive flowers grow on the top of chives, obviously, and you can eat them raw or cut up into a salad. If you don’t have chive flowers, don’t worry – you won’t be able to make this just yet, but chives are the easiest plant to grow. Get yourself to a garden centre, knock all the hairy-chinned old biddies into the flowerbeds, pick up a chive plant and drop it into a container of soil. As long as you remember to occasionally water it and don’t cover it in salt or bleach, it’ll come along nicely, and you can use chives wherever the recipe calls for a subtle onion taste.

chive vinegar

you’ll be needing these:

  • 2 or 3 chive flowers
  • Enough white vinegar to fill up your jar
  • A suitably pretentious jar

and you’ll need to do this:

  • Fill your jar with vinegar
  • Push the chive flowers in
  • Seal and leave to sit for a couple of days
  • Once the vinegar has gone a suitably camp pink, use a toothpick to fish out the chive flowers – or leave them in if you like a strong onion flavour

Enjoy!

 

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June 12, 2015

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budget, fakeaways, lunch, persian, recipe card, savoury snacks, slow cooker, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

red lentil dahl – syn-free and it’ll make you pump

See, told you we’d be going daily with the recipes! Tonight’s recipe is a red lentil dahl might not look incredibly appetitising but it’s the easiest thing in the world to make and full of low-fat, tasty goodness. Plus, without wanting to be crass (oh why not, I always am), it’ll really help things move along. So, if you’re having trouble down below, which is a very common side effect with the SW diet, this recipe will have you releasing an otter in no time at all.

red lentil dahl

to make red lentil dahl, you’ll need:

  • you’ll need a slow cooker for this recipe
  • 500g of dried red lentils
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • a lump of fresh ginger about the size of half a thumb, minced
  • 300g frozen spinach
  • 1tsp ground cumin
  • 1tsp ground coriander
  • 1tbsp curry powder – choose from mild, hot, very hot or OH CHRIST MY RING
  • 1tsp of mustard seeds (optional)
  • Pinch of salt and pepper
  • 1000ml of chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you’re vegetarian – and don’t be tight and use the cheapest stock you can find, it’s a main ingredient here so splash out a little)
  • LOOK – one thing I always say to you is to buy yourself a microplane grater. You’ll never look back, you can mince garlic and ginger in no time at all. Yes, they’re a bit pricey if you compare it to a bog standard grater, but treat yourself. You’re only fat once. Click here to do the honours

to make red lentil dahl, you should:

  • once you’ve weighed out your lentils, give them a rinse in the sink to get the dust off them (that’s what I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
  • chuck absolutely everything into the slow cooker, set it to low and cook for 6-7 hours
  • keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get too thick (something else I say to Paul when he’s ‘getting lucky’ in the morning…)
  • serve with curried vegetables, rice or whatever you like!
  • This does well as a side dish but we take it in for lunch sometimes on its own – like an extra-thick soup. Tasty!

Enjoy!

J

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June 11, 2015

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pork, pork chops, recipe card, syn free

parmesan pork chops, garlic broccoli and smashed potatoes

Right, so here we are, back again to slide into your mailbox with all the subtlety of a kick from a horse. You may have missed our delicious recipes, you may have longed to hear our caustic wit, or you may have struggled without at least eighteen euphemisms for a penis (though here’s two right off the bat you can use freely, though perhaps don’t cry them out at point of climax: “Spurt Reynolds” and, if he’s particularly hung, go for “spam bannister”). Who knows!

We had to take some time off to move the website over from its previous home, tethered to a blog-hosting site like a bag full of dog-muck hanging off a gate, to a fancy new host elsewhere on the Internet that will allow us to customise the blog and make it easier for you, the rabble that read it. How? Let me count the ways…

  1. you can now comment using Facebook – a small change but significant, as if you want to share a recipe, just tag someone in there – plus you don’t need to wait for me to remember to check the spam filter and approve your comments. Not going to lie, I’m terrible at stuff like that. You wouldn’t think I was a super-organised secretary dealing with the cut and thrust of the legal world in real life, would you? Probably for the best, saying as I’m not…
  2. once I’ve figured out how, you’ll be able to search for recipes – that’ll make things a lot easier when you’re trying to tell people about the time I got caught blasting a tune on Paul’s pork trumpet by a wily Irish farmer – just type in ‘mortifying embarrassment’ and you’ll be taken right there;
  3. also coming are more ‘readable’ recipes that you’ll be able to print in a nice neat order. It won’t take all my angry protestations about Frylight and overuse of the words ‘dash’, ‘pinch’ and ‘fuckery’, though, so sensitive eyes should stay away; and
  4. easier to read text – the last blog would scroll awkwardly on mobiles and as the stats say most of you are coming here inbetween playing online bingo and buttering your muffin over internet pornography, I thought I’d help.

There’s also all sorts of tedious behind the scenes gubbins happening and you’ll probably notice the site changing its look as we go on. I’m learning here – I’m not a website designer, I’ve actually had sex before.

How are we? We’re good!

Work continues for the both of us, ever onwards.

Cats are fine, although the white cat keeps coming home with a black face where he’s been rubbing against something sooty. Maybe that’s why some of our neighbours seem to dislike us – they think we’ve got a minstrel routine in the garden.

The only thing to note is the diet – I’ve just been completely off it the last couple of weeks. You may remember I posted about losing my mojo a little, well, it continued. I did try to get back on the horse, but damn it if it didn’t taste so delicious. Two weeks of pizza, McFlurrys, jellybeans and chocolate and I’ve only put on 4lb, and I’ve finally got it ‘out of my system’. I’m ready to diet again! Paul’s been the same but not quite so severe, and has actually lost 2lb. The jammy fucker! Again, I’m going to write a post about all this fairly soon.

Finally, with regards to the blog, you’ll be glad to know one thing – we’re going to aim for more recipes on here. I know a lot of people like my writing and don’t worry, you know me well enough to know I’m not one to keep quiet, but it can be a bit of a chore making a new recipe and also writing a mini-essay of an evening. So the focus is going to be on continuing the delicious food, writing the recipes in our usual sassy style, and writing longer pieces when I get the time to sit and do it properly. I’m also writing a book alongside this so I don’t want to stretch too thin! Our 7777 week was a great success when we looked at page views, so we’ve got several theme weeks pencilled in:

  • America week – expect junk food but SW style;
  • budget week – aiming for seven meals that serve four on a very tight budget;
  • slow cooker week – if only so we can hear hundreds of people simultaneously going OOOH IT JUST FALLS OFF THE BONE;
  • vegetarian week – our lot of our recipes are meat-focused, but then, so is my lifestyle choice, so let’s mix it up a bit;
  • desserts week – there’s a recipe of disaster when it comes to the scales; and
  • breakfasts week – because if I have to eat another fucking bowl of fromage fucking frais with frozen fucking berries, I’ll die.

If you can think of anything you want us to cover, then contact us via the comments, or on our facebook page found here.

I’m going to make a final plea before you get today’s recipe: please, please, please share us. Share the blog by posting www.twochubbycubs.com in whatever group, facebook page or discussion forums you use. Follow us on Twitter and retweet us far and wide. Join our facebook page by clicking here and then share the hell out of it. We do it all for you, of course, but the more people reading the better! We’re like the clap – we want to spread as far as possible.

Right, enough guff – the recipe tonight is for pork chops breaded in parmesan and breadcrumbs. I’m not normally a fan of strong-smelling cheese on my pork but these worked ever so well…

rosemary pork chops

you’ll be needing these:

Chops
  • 2 pork chops (fat removed, and thrown away, no sucking on it)
  • 1 wholemeal roll (made into breadcrumbs) (*HEB*)
  • one egg
  • 4 tbsp grated parmesan (30g being a HEA)
  • salt and pepper
  • Frylight if you must, but a couple of drops of olive oil is better
Garlic broccoli
  • two garlic cloves
  • tenderstem broccoli
Smashed potatoes
  • rosemary
  • thyme
  • as many small potatoes as your big old belly can handle

and you’ll need to do this:

Chops
  • remove all visible fat from the pork chops
  • whisk an egg into a small bowl and set aside
  • in another bowl, mix together the salt, pepper, breadcrumbs and parmesan
  • dip the pork chops into the egg mixture and coat well with the breadcrumbs
  • spray some Frylight into a hot pan and cook for about 6 minutes on each side
Potatoes
  • boil the potatoes until just tender, and drain
  • spray a baking sheet with Frylight and place the potatoes even spaced onto the sheet
  • using a potato masher or a fork push down onto each potato so it spreads out a little
  • spray with Frylight and sprinkle with the herbs and salt and pepper
  • bake for about 20 minutes at 230 degrees until crisp and crunchy
Broccoli
  • trim the bottom of the broccoli stalks
  • spray a frying pan with Frylight and cook the broccoli over a high heat for about five minutes
  • add the garlic, salt and pepper to the pan and mix well
  • turn off the heat and add 60ml of water to the pan, cover with the lid
  • cook for about 3 minutes until tender

Tasty right?

J

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May 28, 2015

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beef, beef mince, fakeaways, italian, lunch, pasta, quark, recipe card, sausages, speciality ingredients, syn free

I could be brown, I could be blue! baked spaghetti

Haha, weigh in tonight, and although we couldn’t stay, it was full of surprises – I’ve put on a 1lb after the most dedicated week off you’ve ever seen, which included:

  • more vodka during Eurovision than could be deemed reasonable, despite acts such as Israel and Serbia;
  • two Dominos in one week;
  • a pizza the size of a bus steering wheel followed by ice-cream and sweets and a second dinner when I got home;
  • a complete lack of exercise;
  • cookies, sweets and other nonsense gobbled up at work – and – and this one is shocking;
  • I had CHEESE AND SPICY BEEF on my Subway salad today.

Cheese! I thought since having my pencil sharpened last year I’d seen the end of having cheese on my hot meat, but there you go. Boke. Here, it gets better – Paul actually lost a pound AND he was still wearing his god-awful ‘Yes, I’m a registered sex-offender’ god-awful boots that we bought in the Brantano sale for £2.44. I reckon he’s been stirring ex-lax into his nightly Options. Yes see that’s how rock-n-roll we are in our household – a nightly hot chocolate and then into bed to listen to Radio 4. We do normally fit some blisteringly hardcore gay sex in at some point, all is not lost. Anyway, once we’ve enjoyed the Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, we’re going to have a good run at SW. In the meantime, here’s a bit about my cats that I wrote earlier today.

I really begrudge having to pay £200 to insure two cats who are healthy, worm-free and trackable. Especially when they’re so spoilt they have their own water fountain and bloody ensuite shed.

Of course, insurance wouldn’t be quite so necessary if our cats didn’t dice with death on a daily basis, and entirely through their own choice. See, they recognise the sound of our car approaching, and the very second they see the bumper of my car appearing at the end of the cul-de-sac where we live, they sprint across the front lawn in front of the car and run ahead of us, like we’re the star attraction in a tiny cat parade. They then proceed to run around the tyres, rubbing themselves up against the scalding chassis of the car, until one of us picks them up and they proceed to turn our face into mince with their razor-sharp welcome. I don’t think they feel we’re home until one of them has left an oily paw-print all over our shirts. They’re also forever eating things they shouldn’t and I’ve seen Sola, the tiny cat, fighting a dog and winning. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she smokes.

Sola we retrieved from some chav on an estate who was selling kittens on the basis that if no-one wanted them, she was going to leave them by the side of the road. I’d like to have left her by the side of a road, preferably trapped by her legs in a burning labia-coloured Vauxhall Golf, but I digress. We couldn’t drive at the time so we had to take two buses and by the time we got there, she was the last one, the runt of the litter. She meowed the way home and tried to commit instant suicide by falling off the balcony of our apartment. Thankfully, she only fell one floor onto the balcony below, but that made for a slightly awkward exchange because we weren’t talking to the neighbours at the point since we inadvertently told his girlfriend that he was having an affair with someone else. Genuine mistake. We also thought he was belting his lass too, which was wrong. That made for a few difficult bus journeys on the Quaylink, let me tell you.

They missed out not keeping Sola, for although she’s the most uppity bitch you’ll ever meet, she has the nicest fur you’ll ever feel. It’s the type of fur you can imagine ultra-rich women making gloves from. That’s partly because she never lets you stroke her – probably sick of trying to lick gravy and sweat from her fur to even entertain us. She’s the epitome of aloofness although for all of her delusions of grandeur, she’s certainly not averse to sticking her nose right up Bowser’s arsehole like she’s sniffing for truffles whenever he wanders back in from outside.

Bowser is the other cat, the tom, and we also got him from a very downmarket area. We heard on the grapevine that he was one of about ten trillion cats that had been found living in one of those houses you see on Hoarders. We could only take one and so we took the first cat that came over. If we had our way, we’d have more cats than furniture, but we’re realists – I already begrudge spending so much on Bite ‘n’ Chew, and not just because of that rebarbative little ‘n’. He settled in straight away, walking around like he owned the place and battering the other cats until we had his bollocks cut off. Now he comes in each day missing massive chunks of fur from fighting but touchwood, they haven’t got his eyes yet.

We also used to have Luma, and she was a lovely, fat cat who was painfully shy and used to hide, no matter how much coaxing, fresh tuna and fuss you tried to make of her. She had plenty of personality when she wanted to – she held us ransom for about two weeks by pissing on our Sky box because we had the bare-faced cheek to switch her to Tesco own brand cat food. Perhaps she was trying to electrocute herself, I don’t know, but she managed to break my Doctor Who series link so I sulked for a week. Along similar lines, I was once lying in bed and she came bumbling over, wheezing away in that gentle fashion, for a stroke. Naturally, I made a proper fuss of her in this rare moment of tenderness and she turned around, showed me her tiny cigar-cutter bumhole and sprayed a tiny jet of foul smelling nastiness right in my face, before sauntering off as I screamed like it was ammonia. We gave her away to a family friend in the end because she was fighting with our other cat all of the time and she’s far happier now, by herself, with an octogenerian who is too slow to catch her and rich enough to spoil her, though I did spot a packet of Viagra in his bathroom cabinet when I was dropping her off so god knows what she actually sees. No wonder she looks so haunted when I spot her.

baked spaghetti

to make baked spaghetti, you’ll need:

250g spaghetti, 500g lean beef mince, 6 Slimming World sausages (defrosted), two 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 200ml passata, 200g Quark, 80g reduced fat cheddar (grated), 1 green pepper (diced), 1 onion (diced), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 egg, 250ml chicken stock, 80g reduced fat mozzarella (using up two HEAs), 1tsp mixed herbs, salt and pepper

to make baked spaghetti, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the spaghetti according to instructions and set aside. For those who can’t cook spaghetti, don’t forget to breathe in AND out whilst doing this
  • mix the chopped tomatoes, passata and mixed herbs (and a little salt and pepper if you like) in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer whilst you do the rest…
  • meanwhile, chop the green pepper and onion and mince the garlic cloves
  • spray a little Frylight (heathen! use oil!) into a large saucepan and cook the onion and green pepper over a medium-high heat until softened
  • add the garlic and stir well
  • squeeze the meat from the sausages (the casings should be easy to pull away, given SW sausages are essentially toe clippings, best wishes and old newspapers wrapped in a diaphragm) and place in the pan along with the mince and cook until well browned, remembering to break up any clumps that form
  • in a separate bowl mix together the quark, egg and cheddar with a little salt and pepper until smooth
  • pour the tomato sauce into the cheese mixture and stir well, adding 250ml chicken stock and continue to stir
  • in a large pan or bowl, mix together the spaghetti, meat and sauce until really well mixed – don’t worry if it looks a bit watery, it’s a SW recipe – if you can’t drink it without choking, it’s not SW friendly
  • tip into a large casserole dish, top with the shredded mozzarella and bake for 30 minutes
  • enjoy! It’ll thicken down in the oven. Promise.

J

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May 26, 2015

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breast, poultry, recipe card, syn free

german potato salad and paprika chicken

I’m officially running on fumes – I haven’t been to sleep since Sunday night, and god knows why – I’m not suffering with insomnia or anything exciting, just didn’t feel tired last night. Which meant I was up typing up some new stuff for the book at 3am in the morning and driving into work at 6am. Actually, that’s a bit of a fib and in the spirit of being open and honest, I was actually kept awake by my body thoroughly rejecting the remnants of our bank holiday blowout – a Dominos pizza. I told Paul to order something nice and he ordered a bloody pizza with onion bhajis on it. Is it any wonder I spent most of the night dancing the sour-apple quickstep and bemoaning the fact I hadn’t put the baby wipes in the fridge to cool my nipsy?

I’m not surprised we both got ill, frankly. I mean, for a kick off, a Dominos pizza is like a zillion syns – I’m surprised Margaret herself didn’t kick my door in like a drug enforcement officer and snatch the Slimmer of the Month certificate off the fridge. Plus, it was almost two hours late thanks to the delivery driver getting lost. To put that in perspective, the Dominos we order from is probably around 5 miles away down a straight road. You couldn’t get lost if you tried. I mean admittedly the driver was as thick as a donkey’s cock and could barely string a sentence together, but even so, it’s not that taxing. I should sue.

Book is coming along nicely mind (but combined with our workloads being all over the place, means I’m not having the same amount of time to write for the blog – but don’t worry!) – here’s a couple of small excerpts:

On sparrows:

Paul was being terribly polite and British about the whole thing but I immediately weighed in on the argument to point out that ‘the Sparrow Ambulance was tied up attending to a coal tit with hurt feelings’ and that I lamented the fact I hadn’t had the foresight to fashion the poor bugger a tiny sling from a spent match and a postage stamp’.

On hotels:

Instead we showered, shrieked a bit, use the tiny hairdryer to attempt to dry my back hair despite said hairdryer being so weak it barely shifted the top off my free cappuccino, and unpacked our suits.

On flatulence:

Remember we were in a stable block too with other guests in adjoining rooms – it probably sounded like we were mixing cement all night.

On Paul:

I don’t know what Paul does to the crotch of trousers and boxer shorts but you’d think he had a sack of iron filings instead of a scrotum, because they’re always torn to shreds within a few days worth of use so every time he crosses his leg a bollock drops out like the last tangerine in the fruit basket.

Ah yes! How about a recipe? This was actually my favourite meal in a long time and really could not have been simpler to make. Serves two mouth-breathing fatties.

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to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you’ll need:

ingredients for chicken: two decent sized chicken breasts – you don’t want one of those nasty supermarket breasts that look like the sole of a built-up shoe, treat yourself and get decent meat, plus garlic powder (1/2tsp), 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, pinch of black pepper and 1.5tbsp tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

ingredients for german potato salad: three large potatoes, 4 bacon medallions cooked and cut into strips, 40ml of rice vinegar, 65ml of chicken stock, 1tbsp of dijon mustard (technically I think this is a syn, but split between two…well I won’t tell if you don’t), half a decent sized red onion cut nice and fine (or use red spring onions if you can get them, which we can, because we’re geet posh as owt), tablespoon of fat free greek yoghurt, 20ml of white wine vinegar, some chives for the top if you have them kicking about but don’t shit your pants if you haven’t got them in.

to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you should:

recipe for chicken:

  • combine all the spices with the Worcestershire sauce to make a rub and rub that rub (great writing there, would recommend) into the chicken, getting your fingers deep into every moist crack and really ensuring your meat is slick and covered
  • pop into the fridge to marinade – longer you leave it, the better, but you can hoy it under the grill for around ten minutes a side and cook until the juices run clear when you finger it (the chicken that is, not you)
  • serve with your salad, but oh no, you’ll need to make the salad, so here we go..

recipe for german potato salad:

  • boil the potato for 25 minutes (you want them firm but a bit soft around the edges, like a middle-aged man in a Luton brothel) and then cut into thumb sized chunks (normal thumb, we’re not using Jeremy Beadle as a comparative);
  • NOTE: don’t bloody skin the potatoes, the skin is the best bit
  • as soon as the chunks are cut up, tip in the rice vinegar, mix and let them soak for a moment or two
  • add the chicken stock
  • in a little bowl mix the white wine vinegar, yoghurt and mustard together (whisk quickly, it’ll start to split if you so much as blink) and tip over the potatoes – mix again – don’t be shy about mixing, it’ll rough up the potatoes as you mix
  • add the onion and bacon
  • when you’re ready to serve, chop some chives over the top
  • the longer you leave this dish to sit, the better it’ll be

As ever, enjoy!

J

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May 23, 2015

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airfryer, bacon, breakfast, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, lunch, pork, recipe card, sausages, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

syn free breakfast burritos

Sort of accidentally, honest guv.

See after work yesterdayI went out with a good friend to endure Poltergeist at the cinema. I say endure, I mean barely tolerate. It was absolute bobbins. I LOVE horror movies, the schlockier the better, but this was just lazy pap. It says a lot that we weren’t bothered by the usual festering tits that had packed the cinema. The type of people who can’t sit for ninety minutes without checking Facebook. Normally they make me rage – they’re the type of people who I’d happily unplug their life support machine to charge up my phone – but given how bad the movie was I couldn’t blame them, could I? We appeared to have half of China visiting in the row behind us which gave the bizarre effect of having the English film in front of us being live-translated behind us followed by shrieks and giggles and excpetionally caricatured noises. Still a dull film though. Even I was hoping for one of Phillipa’s skin-melting farts just to liven things up but she was too busy being distracted by a rolling pig / unicorn hybrid.

So yes, I synned. See I had good intentions of staying on diet but I had a pint of Guinness in my hand before I had even sat down, which was followed by pizza, pasta and ice-cream. In my defence, I thought I was only ordering a small ice-cream but it turns out the scoop they use for their ‘three scoop special’ was a dustbin lid. You can imagine my distress and disappointment at having to eat it all, it really was just the worst.

I have to be honest, both Paul and I are in a bit of a lull with our diet at the moment – Slimming World is great because it isn’t very restrictive but occasionally I just get sick of eating sensibly and not being able to have what I want. Now, people always turn around and go ‘just have a little bit of what you fancy’ but that’s not how I work. I couldn’t just have a Freddo, I’d want a carpet-sized bar of chocolate to eat until I was sick. It’ll pass, but we’re relaxing the rules a little bit at the moment – still cooking a healthy recipe every day but just need to let it ease a bit. Once the bank holiday is over we’re going to be on it 100% – but even that’s easy to say and harder to do given neither of us have the type of job where we are guaranteed to be home at five with plenty of time to cook and prepare lunches. Sometimes I just want to come home, put on my scratty boxer shorts and scratch my balls in front of the TV for six hours until bed.

As an aside – I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately, but the good news is that I’m actually writing more than ever – it’s all going in the book. New content rather than old stuff!

Anyway: it’s Eurovision tonight, so that means vodka and snacks. No apologies!  I just hope to God Australia don’t win because I’ve sort-of promised Paul that we’ll go to the next one…

OK, that was moany. So here’s a nice breakfast recipe for you to be cracking on with:

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to make breakfast burritos, you’ll need:

one WW (boo hiss) Love Fibre wholemeal wraps (look for the purple and blue packaging, as you can use this wrap as a HEB); two slimming world sausages (or use low syn sausages but syn them), two eggs, HEA portion of extra mature cheese, two decent slices of ham cut into chunks and a potato.

to make breakfast burritos, you should:

  • cut the potato into very thin strips and spritz with a tiny bit of oil and pop in the oven for ten minutes (if that) until they’re cooked through like french fries – set aside
  • cook the sausages either under the grill or in an Actifry, then cut into thin slices (like matchsticks rather than discs)
  • crack the eggs into a pan and whisk on a medium heat to make scrambled eggs, set aside
  • slice up your ham and grate your cheese
  • when everything is ready, hoy your wrap into the oven for a minute or so to warm it through, then lie it flat on the counter
  • load it up – a row of cheese, then sausage, then egg, then chips, then ham
  • roll it up!

If you’re a bit slow and don’t know how to roll a wrap properly, you can find a guide here. I had to use it, don’t worry, no-one is judging.

Just out of shot in that photo was an attempt to make homemade salsa but as it looks like something you’d scrape out of an infected foot, I’m not putting the recipe on. What a bitch!

J

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May 19, 2015

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fakeaways, greek, indian, kebab shop, lamb, lamb mince, persian, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

lamb kofta with creamy cucumbers

I’ve never felt older than I did this morning, when, standing at a bus-stop surrounded by screaming kids effing and jeffing, I tutted to myself and thought ‘kids these days’. Well actually, what I thought was ‘kids these days…if I kicked the littlest one under the wheels of a bus would I REALLY be in the wrong?’. Which is a trifle worrying but honestly, they were so loud. All the conversation was happening at twice the speed I’d expect, like someone leaning on the BPM slider on an old record-player. At one point I thought they were speaking Gujarati until I made the words ‘here-man-ye-FUCKING-DONKEY’ explode through all the vocal drawls and tics. Plus half of the little scrotes were smoking, albeit they were doing that affected ‘suck in a tiny bit and exhale like you’re trying to blow out a chip pan fire’ smoking. I mean if you’re GOING to smoke do it properly, I didn’t hear one lung-rattling cough amongst them. Amateurs. I was on half a tin of Peterson Old Dublin at their age.

You may wonder why someone as sociopathic as me was on a bus – well, I had to take my dear little car in for a service. It’s a brand new car so there should be no problems and it could have waited but see, my windscreen wipers were leaving an annoying smear on the window and rather than just clean them myself, I just took the car in for a full service and asked for a new set. We’re terrible with money, what can I say. But we’ve got no debt so we’re doing something right! I had to sit outside the dealership for twenty minutes waiting for someone to open up, and then I was immediately cut up in the queue by someone with a nicotine fringe and Build-a-Bear shoes. It’s OK, I’m British, I’ll queue politely and stare at the back of your greasy head with such unimaginable fury that I’m surprised the word KNOBJOCKEY didn’t burn across your ears.

He was booking in his bellendmobile for a service too and I almost ground my teeth into diamonds at his excruciating exchange with the receptionist. See, she asked him what time he wanted to pick up the car, he replied ‘Whatever time is good for you, I’m easy’. That made me vomit gently against the back of my teeth but I held it back. She then suggested 4pm – nope, no good, he was picking the kids up. 5pm? No, he was taking his mother to hospital. 3pm? He’d be at work. Tomorrow morning? He drives a lorry for a living, he’d be away. I mean HAWAY MAN, it’s not bloody hard to give HER a time instead of trying to be a smooth bastard with your plaitable earhair and chip-fat musk. After what felt like enough time to the rubber on my tyres to perish in the sun, he fucked off, it was my turn, I signed the car over and was away before she could click her pen.

The bus, then. Awful. For so many reasons. Firstly, I like my own personal space. I don’t like sharing that personal space with someone for whom deodorant and mouthwash are part of an “alternative lifestyle”. I immediately tune into their every defect – the way their nostrils whistle when they breathe out, the way they click their teeth over every speedbump, the way they lean against me as the bus turns a corner. I hate it. I’m not perfect by any stretch but see that’s why I contain myself in a car. People don’t respect personal space but I probably take it to the other extreme – I wince like a beaten dog if someone so much as gets in the lift with me.

Plus, the journey cost me £2.20. For a distance no greater than two miles, all downhill. Had I not been worried about my lovely shirt, I could have laid on my back and barrelled down the hill like a roll of carpet. I could even have walked (shock, I know, but even I’m not fat enough to decline a walk downhill) but I would have been late for my dentist and he’s the last guy I want to piss off. That’s extortionate, and it took almost half an hour because the bus stopped quite literally every 100 yards or so to let someone off and on, with all their bloody questions taking another five minutes. The driver had all the charisma of a roadside piss and snatched tickets and cash like he was on the Crystal Maze. I don’t doubt there are exceptions but do they make all bus drivers go to a training camp to thrash all the human decency out of them? Or is it dealing with rotten human beings all day that turn them into such miserable buggers? I saw someone stumble over the word Megarider and I honestly thought the driver was going to punch her on the tit. 

Ah well. The dentist went very well – I’m not even going to write a sarcastic recount of that, because I just can’t fault my dentist. He’s lovely. He takes the time to tell me what he’s going to do and I think he must minimise anything that ‘hurts’ because I rarely feel a thing. Apparently I have animal teeth AND naturally white. Not surprised, what with all the “whitening solution” I’ve had cascaded over them over the years, am I right? If I was richer, I’d have every last tooth torn out and replaced with big fake white teeth. I know it looks unnatural but it’s the one thing about me that I’m genuinely shy about – even though my teeth are pretty decent.  Paul hides his teeth all the time too, despite having a lovely smile – but in the nine years we’ve been together I’ve never been allowed to look at the back of his mouth. The guy is happy enough texting me a picture of his balloon knot with an ‘URGENT: OPEN THIS’ caption, but his teeth? No. Weird.

Anyway, as it happens, the car came back completely free of any worries and they replaced the blades for nowt because they should have lasted longer! RESULT.

Tonight’s recipe, then:

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to make lamb kofta, you’ll need:

ingredients for the kofta: 900g lean lamb mince, 1 large onion, 3cm piece of root ginger (peeled and chopped), 2 cloves of garlic, 1 chilli pepper (deseeded), 1 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp ground coriander, 2 tsp garam masala, 1tsp salt, 1 egg

to make lamb kofta, you should:

  • throw the onion, ginger, garlic, chili pepper, cumin, coriander, garam masala, salt and egg into a food processor and pulse until it makes a grainy paste
  • mix together the minced lamb and egg, and then combine with the paste mixture
  • leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour
  • divide the mixture into ten portions and roll out into a thick sausage shape – you want it to be about the size of a penis that, when presented, you wouldn’t get very excited about, and skewer
  • in a small bowl mix together a little fat free yoghurt with a drop or two of oil and add a pinch of black pepper
  • using a pastry brush, lightly coat the koftas with the yoghurt mixture
  • grill under a medium heat for around 5 minutes per side

We served this on a HEB WW tortilla bread from Tesco, plus some tomato and a giant lettuce leaf. 

ingredients for the creamy cool cucumbers: 1 cucumber (sliced thinly), 1 onion (sliced), 60g fat free natural yoghurt, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tsp sweetener, pinch of salt and pepper, 2 tsp dill

recipe: 

  • mix together the yoghurt, onion, white wine vinegar, sweetener, salt and pepper
  • pour over the cucumbers and toss well to mix
  • sprinkle the dill over the mix just before serving

Listen: I know I go on about this all the time. But if you haven’t got a mandolin slicer, bloody well get one. Fair enough you might circumcise the end of your fingers but it’ll be worth it – you can slice your onion and cucumber for this recipe in less time then it would take you to get a knife out of the block and crack a few jokes about the girth of the cucumber. The one we use is from Amazon and is brilliant – and only £12. Think of all the time you spend crying over your onion and irregular slices. Treat yourself. It’s this or chocolate.

Better to make this just before serving otherwise the cucumber leaks its water and the sauce looks like something you might get treatment at the clap clinic for.

End on a high!

J

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May 14, 2015

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bacon, breast, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad

rocket, pea and mint salad

Want to know something embarrassing?

The first MP3 I ever downloaded was The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. Good lord! I was a country boy growing up in a council house in BHS adult-sized trousers, I don’t think I was ready for all that ghettofabulousness. I’m surprised the download made it past all the porn, mind, though I don’t doubt it took twenty minutes to download. Kids these day don’t know how lucky they are. Could have been worse – one of the first CDs I owned by Doesn’t Really Matter by Janet Jackson. Argh, I really had a thing for a marimba and sass.

The reason I am rambling on about music is because it’s an integral part of writing this blog – I can’t write unless I have music playing and no distractions, and even then I’ll spend forty minutes trying to find something I want to listen to on Spotify. It’s very distressing – a whole world of music and I always end up coming back to the same twenty or so songs. Paul hates it, because I always end up singing along and my voice sounds like a cat being pushed through a mangle, plus I add new notes and words into the lyrics, so a simple beautiful verse becomes peppered with falling scales and swearwords. 

Anyway. I’m a bit pushed for time tonight so instead of words, I’m going to show you something. Something AWFUL. You may remember from my About Me page that it’s always been a hope and a dream of mine to get into the newspapers holding out my fat-bloke trousers after I’d lost so much weight? Well…when I was 18…

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That hair though, seriously. I told you I used to have hair like Enya in her Orinocco Flow video. I’d give anything for a chance at that long hair again, though I wouldn’t have it quite such a sex-offender colour. Plus those trousers! 46″. Christ. Plus, white jeans. Never give a fat bloke white jeans, they’ll always have chocolate in their pockets and it’ll look like they’ve shit themselves when they stand up. What I didn’t mention in that article is how seething I was about losing out at the Slimmer of the Year finals to some black-footed leviathan who was too fat to get on an operating table. I didn’t have a sob story.

Ah well. It’s not like the haircuts ever got worse. Well, save for the Myra Hindley…

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And of course, the Bjorn Again:

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Aaah. Oh young James. You poor bastard. 

Anyway, enough of all that. Tonight’s recipe is a simple salad full of fresh tastes. Just like my hair, am I right?

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to make rocket, pea and mint salad you will need:

two chicken breasts, big old handful of rocket, couple of rashers of fat-free bacon, 200g frozen peas, small bag of new potatoes, mint, 0% fat-free natural yoghurt (make sure you pick up a syn-free version), lemon, fresh mint, four spring onions and rockets

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you should:

  • make the dressing: a few tablespoons of yoghurt, plus the juice of half a lemon and a few leaves mint chopped nice and fine – and set aside
  • grill the chicken breasts nice and plain and set it aside, and grill the bacon off and when cooked, cut into tiny slices
  • chop up your new potatoes into small chunks and boil them for a few minutes until they’re tender, adding the frozen peas into the boiling water for a couple of minutes too, then sieve the lot
  • chop up the spring onions into nice small slices
  • put a drop of oil into a frying pan, add the onion, potato, bacon and peas – I like to splash some lemon juice in;
  • after a few minutes, take it off the heat and add the rocket and a few sprigs of mint, and stir everything through
  • serve with the dressing and chicken, with some slices of radishes to garnish.

A simple, elegant evening meal. Yum!

J