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Posted on

May 13, 2015

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breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, rice

cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake

I’m writing in a bit of a huff.

See, I’m going to have to go to the dentist. A year or so ago I cracked my back tooth chewing on a hairbrush, which sounds fabulously fun but it hurt like hell. My dentist took one look, took it out and sent me on my way, with only a stiff jaw and a modest NHS bill to accompany me. All good. However, one of my wisdom teeth has clearly seen the gap left by my departed tooth and thought to himself that he would really rather like to move in. And it hurts. Not the tooth but rather a tiny bit of gum that I keep catching with my teeth as I shut my mouth. How can it heal if I keep biting into the bloody thing? It’s bad enough that I have to sit with my mouth slightly open at all times like a pensioner stuck on her Sudoku, but now I have to go to the dentist to fix it? Bah.

It’s not that I’m scared of dentists…well, no, that’s a fib. I am, but who isn’t, you can’t get a kick out of a man pumping a tool in and out of your gob and finishing it off with a squirt of something acidic to set your teeth on edge. OR CAN YOU. No. Oddly, the drill I can deal with because it doesn’t hurt, but when they use that little air-sprayer thingy I just want to bite his nipple off as he hangs over me in his dainty tunic. My skin is crawling up my back as we speak. I know where the unease about my dentist comes from – I had to have a tooth out when I was little after I (again!) cracked one eating nuts. I swear my teeth are made of glass. Anyway, the dentist I had back then clearly hated life, children and smiles, so set about me with all the care and precision one might elect to us knocking down a brick wall. I remember even now his pock-marked face being within kissing distance from mine, his bloodshot eyes darting around and spittle-flecked lips pursed as he yanked the tooth out. It wouldn’t come, so naturally he decided to put his entire bodyweight onto me, using his elbow in my chest as leverage. Fair enough, he got the tooth in the end, but he had to stop after forty minutes to have his brow mopped with a towel and Lucozade brought in and I had a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. No wonder I’m scared, though I’m not scared of much else. Rollercoasters? High as you like. Water? Chuck me in. Enclosed spaces? Pfft. As long as I don’t get stuck and have to be ‘popped out’ of the tight space by a team of firemen, I’ll be fine. That said…

Spiders bother us both, though Paul more than me. We once ran screaming from our Quayside flat when a spider the size of a small motorcar came trundling out from under the fridge. We were on the cusp of checking into a hotel when we realised our wallets were still in the flat, and without those, we’d be screwed. So we dutifully went back in only to see it, bold as brass, sitting in the middle of the laminate flooring. I swear if my vision had been good enough I would have been able to see his tiny little finger sticking up at me in defiance. Action was needed, so, screaming all the while, Paul ran to the balcony doors and flung them open as I dashed (I was skinny back then, I could dash) into the little office, got the giant (expensive) John Lewis waste-paper bin, emptied the contents on the floor, ran back into the living room (still screaming), trapped the little fucker and promptly ran to the balcony and threw him, the bin and almost myself over the bloody edge. I was surprised the little bastard didn’t have a parachute and a distress flare he was that big. Good times. The bin disappeared down onto a road somewhere and when we picked it up the next morning, an electric bus had run over it. Serves me right eh.

Paul’s also scared of all the boring things like being buried alive, and he doesn’t like the idea of drowning or burning, which seems an altogether reasonable way to live, whereas all my fears are quite silly. For one, I’m scared of dams. Terrified. Even looking at the word makes my teeth jitter a bit (which doesn’t help my sore gum). It’s not the fear of them breaking – oh no – it’s just how alien and unsettling they look. They have no business being there. Having a parent who works for the local water company means I have an unflinching and comprehensive knowledge of all the creepy things and secret pipes hidden just below the ground, ready to suck you away into oblivion. He once told me that a family crashed their car into a reservoir and the suction on an intake pipe held all the doors shut so they couldn’t get out. Yikes. Sewers too. Pennywise I could handle, but the sluice gate at the end would have me sucking on Kalms like there was no tomorrow.

I’m also genuinely frightened of irregular holes. Har-de-har not bumholes, no, but irregular clusters of holes sets me on edge. If I have a crumpet, I have to have it upside down otherwise I can’t eat it, and sponges make me feel uneasy if I look at them. I feel like I could have myself a story in Chat magazine surrounded by sponges, biting my nails, but alas I saw someone has beaten me to it. Things like sieves are alright because the holes are organised and clean, but I reckon I’m probably the only person ever to almost faint looking at Swiss cheese. Ah, aren’t phobias daft.

Tell you what’s not daft though – tonight’s evening meal idea, which uses up all the scraggly old broccoli you have lying around.

chicken, broccoli and rice bake

REMEMBER: this serves eight! It uses four HEAs and half a HEB. But the meal freezes nicely and will do for lunches and makes a good whack. The recipes doesn’t make a gloopy dish, it actually cooks right down and is more sticky than anything else. tasty!

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you will need:

370g uncooked long grain rice, 500ml chicken stock, 500ml skimmed milk, 250ml water, 1 bay leaf, sage rosemary and thyme leaves (or dried), 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 25g plain flour (4.5 syns), 250g fat free greek yoghurt, ½ tsp chili powder, 2 chicken breasts (cooked and chopped), 90g Gruyere cheese (or cheddar) (3 x HEA), 40g light feta cheese, salt and pepper, one head of broccoli, half of a wholemeal roll (as breadcrumbs) (half a HEB), handful of cheddar (HEA).

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you should:

measure out and rinse the rice. set aside
cook the chicken breasts and shred like they’re incriminating documents
pour the chicken stock, milk, water, bay leaf and sprigs of herbs into a saucepan over a medium heat for a few minutes then put to one side
spray a large frying pan with Frylight and cook the onions for a few minutes until softened
add the flour and coat the onions well
add the liquid mixture to the frying pan and stir well until there are no lumps
reduce the heat to low and add the yoghurt, chicken, chili powder and cheese and stir continuously until well mixed and the cheese has melted
transfer the mixture into a large casserole dish with a tight lid (or cover with foil) and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes
meanwhile, chop the broccoli into small florets – the smaller the better
stir the broccoli into the casserole dish along with the rice and mix well
re-cover, and bake for another 15 minutes
sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a little leftover cheese and place under a medium grill for just a few minutes until golden brown, texture like sun

ENJOY ENJOY.

By the way, I know we have the last two days of 7777 week to publish – that’ll probably be this weekend!

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chubbycubs

Posted on

May 9, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, burgers, dressings, low syn, lunch, mince, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

BLTE bap, hot tuna salad and larb burger

So here’s the thing. I get a lot of people telling me to write a book, and I’ve always wanted to, but never really had the right idea or the inclination to do research and gain the appropriate knowledge. Then, as it happens, Paul decided to stroke my ego in the car today (and we weren’t pulled over in a layby flashing our interior lights at lorry drivers, which is normally what we’re doing in the car together – honestly, I hope Eddie Stobart’s drivers aren’t epileptic, it looks like an Eighties disco in our car) and told me I really should get on with it. Well, I love writing, I adore writing this blog (for the most part) and because I’m massively egocentric, what better topic to write about than what is happening in our lives? That would be great for me – but boring(ish) for you.

Here’s my idea: I am going to write a book – it’s going to be in the same format as what we’re doing now with the blog posts, but with fictional stuff interwoven amongst the nonsense. It won’t be a slimming book, simply because I don’t want Margaret coming after me with her Lynda la Plante weave all awry and her gang of Slimming World lawyers straining on the leash to do me in for copyright law. But I’ll put a few of my favourite recipes in there too. It’ll be like Bridget Jones Diary, only massively less successful. Renee Zellweger could totally play me though, if she put 180lb on and fell face-first into a fire. Naturally the blog remains at the forefront of my writing, and this side project will be something I’ll be tinkering on with for the next few months. In the meantime, if you fancy reading more of our writing, don’t forget we have a book on Amazon which is an account of our four weeks in Orlando: read about how I spent the first two days of the holiday tinted blue thanks to cheap sunscreen, or how I exposed my not unsubstantial arse to a crowd in a waterpark. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by paying only £1.20, you’ll keep Paul and I in replacement ped-eggs. That can be found here.

Right, so with that announcement over, let’s start with day four of SP! Tomorrow I’m going to explain SP in a bit more detail and also tell you exactly what I think of it. I’ll give you a clue: I think it’s a load of horse’s arse. And I’m not even going to mark that as a protein, either.

BREAKFAST

BLTE

The E stands for egg (P), obviously. Plus lettuce (S) and tomato (S). There’s not an awful lot to say about this, other than:

we totally didn’t have two each *cough/splutter*
I got Paul out of bed to make this (because I was hungry) by setting off the smoke alarm and then hiding in the kitchen – he came dashing in completely nude like the world’s cuddliest fireman and then proceeded to tell me off for about five minutes, the whole while I’m standing there agreeing solemnly with everything he said and pushing the packet of bacon closer and closer to him. I know one day our actifry is going to burst into flame through overuse and we’ll both perish in the fire because we’ve played too many pranks with the smoke alarm. I bet Paul manages to die with a pious ‘see I told you’ expression on his face
there’s a certain type of wholemeal bread roll you’re allowed – I think it’s a Weight Watchers one – but we only had these little buns in the freezer and after waking Paul up by tricking him into thinking he was in The Towering Inferno, I didn’t have the temerity to tell him to go to the shop…so we just used these. They’re about the same size.

LUNCH

Hot, hot tuna salad

So good I named it twice, see. No, it’s hot in both senses of the word – hot because of the added chilli and also, served hot. Usually tuna salad is served cold and, to someone who doesn’t like fish, isn’t especially appetising. Hell, I’ll make Paul wash Little Paul in the bathroom sink before he gets his birthday gobble.

Christ can I say as an aside I realise that this post is making it sound like Paul has an awful life, like some hairy Little Mo to my Trevor. Honestly, it’s not that bad, no-one needs to call Relate for us just yet. The only time he’s raised an iron in anger is when our ironing lady was off for two weeks having something done with her ovaries. Having them out I think, not wallpapered.

Anyway, yes, tuna salad:

to make hot, hot tuna salad you will need:

several big fuck-off lettuce leaves (S) – I grow mine in the greenhouse and honest to God, it’s like Day of the Triffids in there at the moment. I’m lucky I have a retractable hose-pipe – if I get lost amongst the lettuce, I just pull myself free. Yep. You’ll also need two tins of tuna (P), two large sweet peppers cut into chunks (S), three shallots sliced thinly (S), two tomatoes cut into chunks (S), 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of oil.

to make hot, hot tuna salad you should:

mix the tuna together with all the spices and salt and set aside
fry the onion and pepper in a dab of oil or some frylight until soft
chuck the tuna in and heat through – why not add a bit of chilli sauce if you like your hoop to look like a deflated liferaft
serve up on the giant lettuce leaves
to eat, fold the lettuce into neat parcels and chew

DETOX WATER

Mandarin

My favourite water so far! It tasted like sunshine in a glass. Well no, not quite, but it’s just one ingredient:

mandarin – which is excellent for vitamin C, which is handy for preventing skin wrinkling.

Don’t forget, if you want a gloriously ostentatious way of serving up your water (and don’t think for a second that come Eurovision night that isn’t going to be full of punch) you can buy one from Amazon. I will say this, we’ve certainly consumed a lot more water since we bought it, but that’s more because I’m such a tight-arse that I’m determined not to lose face and see it consigned to the back of the cupboard along with the lollipop maker and the ravioli crimper.

Haha, crimper.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – GEOCACHING

geocachingday42

Ah geocaching. I’ve rumbled on about geocaching before – it’s essentially a giant treasure hunt where no-one wins. But you don’t need to win a prize to enjoy it, it’s fantastic fun if you’re GIANT NERDS like us. People have hidden containers all over the world (and I’d bet my savings there’s probably at least five within easy walking distance from your house right now) and you use your GPS or an app on your smartphone to find them. Then you sign the book and put it back. It’s a great way of:

livening up a charming walk out in the country; and
making the British public think you’re loitering in the bushes with your knob out ready to strike.

See, part of geocaching is that you have to be subtle – some of the containers are hidden in plain sight, so you have to try and swipe them without people seeing, which can be difficult when you’re stumbling around in the trees like a flannel-shirted rapist. We had a lovely walk around a nature reserve and ended up on one of Northumberland’s fantastic beaches. Just look at that scene above. See, the North is so much more than child-beating and whippets. That picture of the rock at the top – that’s called a disco cache, where the logbook is hidden inside a container designed to look like something completely different. They’re extra hard – I’ve hid caches myself inside golf balls, birds nest and even a fake blob of chewing gum. It’s all free of charge and hey, if you’ve got kids, get them involved too.

Everyone I ever explain geocaching to wrinkles their nose and asks me what is the point, but it’s great fun. You’ll end up enjoying yourself, trust me. Visit www.geocaching.com, pop in your postcode and go and find the closest one to you.

DINNER

Larb burgers

Told you I was getting the use out of my lettuce! Note: I used a carrot and ginger dressing from Tesco on this which works out at almost a syn for two tablespoons. But you can use fat-free vinaigrette if you dare not sacrifice a syn.

to make larb burgers you will need:

500g of turkey mince or three chicken breasts (if you’re using breasts, then you’ll need a mincer – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that?), 3 shallots (S) (one thickly sliced, the other two thinly), 3 cloves of garlic (S), a few lime leaves (get them from Tesco’s world food bit), 1 small stalk of lemongrass, a dash of fish sauce, a bit of ginger (you only need a little knob to really taste it – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that), a lime (S), pickled cabbage (S I think) and the ubiquitous giant lettuce leaves (S).

to make larb burgers you should:

get your food processor or blender or what have you on the go
throw in the thickly cut shallot, garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and a pinch of salt and pulse to a paste
add the meat and pulse so it’s nicely mixed up with the spices
shape into six burgers
heat a griddle pan with a drop of oil or some Frylight and get it medium hot
add the burgers and cook hard – you want to get some sear lines into the burger for that classy bitches look
turn over and repeat on the other side – we cooked them for seven minutes each side to really cook them through – always be careful with chicken
if they look a bit dry, throw some lime juice into the pan
in the same griddle pan, put the finely sliced shallots in to fry off in the juice of the meat and lime
once cooked through, assemble onto the lettuce leaves, add some pickled cabbage and the shallots, and serve (you can add dressing if you want, I found it wasn’t necessary.

Enjoy! Oooh it’s like you in a tropical paradise, right?

DAY FOUR DONE.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 5, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, breast, classics, fakeaways, indian, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata

Right, so remember we’re structuring the posts a little different this week – it’s pure diet. No sass. Oh fuck off, this is me, I can’t sign my name without a 500 word critique of someone’s hairy top lip and an anecdote about peas. I heard something I haven’t heard in years today: ‘Oh, you’ll know him, he’s gay too’. I mean, it’s a harmless enough comment and it was certainly meant with no malice, but it does tickle me. I like the idea of there being a gay psychic link that becomes activated the very second you turn to someone who shares the same approximate genitals as you (so to speak) and say, oh we’ll give it a go. A yellow pages but in lavender. I suppose it works on the same idea as ‘having a gaydar’ which I DO think there’s a grain of truth in. Paul and I can normally spot the other gay couples wandering around the garden centre or fingering the strawberries in Waitrose, but it never extends to anything more than a tiny smirk and a colossal leer at the cucumber in their trolley. Half the time I walk around like I’ve had a stroke because I’m trying not to wink at them.

In fact, this is what happens when you’re not looking.

Anyway, hush. So how are we going to do this? Easy! I’m going to mark speed foods with a S and protein-rich foods with a P.

BREAKFAST

Poached eggs on marmite toast with baked beans

Now come on, you don’t really need me to talk you through this, but it’s a HE of wholemeal bread (the small loaf, don’t be putting two eggs on a doorstep of bread and come crying to me next week) slathered with marmite, baked beans (P) and eggs (P). I can poach an egg properly no problem but time is always a factor, especially now I have to contend with the worry of not getting a reflection of my knob in the pictures (we’re always naked during breakfast, saves showering twice when I invariably spill my cornflakes into my chest hair). So we bought one of these egg-poachers – It’s the easy and lazy way to cook poached eggs in the microwave. £4.99 on Amazon, steal. You half fill each compartment, microwave for forty seconds, crack your egg in, microwave for another 30 seconds and you are done. Normally you get the runny yolk but I was sidetracked scratching Paul’s back this morning so forgot to take them out. Anyway, done!

Oh, be careful – whilst I’ve never experienced this, it can be slightly dangerous to microwave an egg. Perhaps prick the yolk. Up to you. If you happen to like goo blasting across your face in the morning, well then you’re my type of reader.

LUNCH

This makes enough for six servings, or if we’re being realistic about the type of people that we are, two servings and a bit leftover to pick at in tears whilst you hang that too-skinny pair of jeans back into the wardrobe. WE’LL GET THERE.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you will need:

: one big bugger leek (sliced) (S), a handful of samphire (S), handful of sugarsnap peas (S), mushrooms (sliced) (S), salt and pepper, garlic, 30g of parmesan (optional – HEA choice but don’t forget this serves two/three) eight eggs and a frying pan that is a) non-stick and b) capable of going in the oven.

to make leek, samphire, pea, mushroom and bacon frittata you should:

slice and prepare your veg and chuck it all into a frying pan
cook off the bacon medallions under the grill (or normal bacon, but chuck away that fat) then chop and add
beat all the eggs into submission in a jug, adding a good sprinkle of salt, pepper and garlic (grated)
pour egg into the bacon and veg mix and give it a good shake and mix to let the egg soak through
pop onto a medium heat for around ten minutes or so until things start to firm up – the top will be runny though
add the grated parmesan here if you’re using it
whack it into the oven for ten minutes or so on around 180 degrees – you want it firm but not overcooked
leave to cool and then slice and serve with salad – it transports well so it’s good for lunch

top tip: you really can chuck any old shite into a frittata, it’s really very forgiving. Any flimflam you have sitting in the bottom of the fridge will easily taste delicious in a frittata. Get it done!

DETOX WATER

Full disclosure – I really think detox waters are a load of piss. Well, not immediately, but they’ll get there. Your body is a detoxing machine! However, that said, drinking water is always a wonderful thing. Click here for the Kilner water dispenser. You don’t need one. You really don’t. But it’s summer soon. Cheaper alternatives are available, by the way. This water contains:

two sliced limes (S) (can help prevent kidney stones)
one sliced lemon (S) (because you don’t want scurvy, your legs will bend when you get on the scales)
half a sliced grapefruit (S) (strengthens the immune system)
pineapple sage leaf.

Pineapple sage leaf? Totally unnecessary. But it’s amazing. You may recall I started a herb garden a few posts ago and this little bugger is growing merrily away – the leaves taste like sweet pineapple and smell amazing. You could brew it in a tea, if you’re the type of arty-farty person who thinks such a thing is a sensible idea.

The water was refreshing and ‘clean’. But then what do you expect, we have plumbed in filtered water and an ice-dispenser. FAT MEN LIVING THE DREAM. Of course, I needed it after my body magic…

BODY MAGIC – GARDENING

I had timetabled four miles of walking for the body magic today, but when we got up it was absolutely chucking it down. I would have been drier had I swam to work down the Tyne. Plus the cows are back on the Town Moor, and they terrify me with their cold, dead eyes and shitty tails. So instead, we spent a good hour or so gardening – from top to bottom:

repotted our baby leeks
potted out our tomatoes into their automatic watering beds
trimmed back our lettuce monster
FINALLY planted all the early potatoes!

Google tells me that gardening comes in at around 300 calories for an hour of medium graft. Personally, I reckon 295 of that calorie spend comes from me constantly yanking up my trousers to stop the neighbours over the road being able to see my bumhole everytime I planted a potato. I live in perpetual and unending fear of my top of my arse-crack being exposed.

Never gardened before? You’re missing out. I’m no Charlie Dimmock, despite having her tits and then some. Even if you’ve only got a tiny bit of land to potter in, you can grow your lettuce and herbs easy enough. Tomatoes are more of a fart-on but worth the effort. But start small. Nothing tastes better than something you’ve grown yourself.

Finally…

Does anyone have Margaret’s number? Seriously, I feel like ringing up and congratulating her. I’ve FINALLY found a Slimming World curry recipe that doesn’t taste like someone’s sneezed a curry stock cube onto some chicken and wrung a dishcloth over it. It was tasty, though I made some adjustments! And SP friendly. So without a moment of hesitation…

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you will need:

one red onion (chopped) (S), 2 garlic cloves (grated) (S), one chicken breast (makes enough for two) (P), 1 tbsp of korma powder, 6tbsp of tomato puree, 200g of passata, a half teaspoon of turmeric, 400ml of chicken stock, chopped red pepper (S), spinach (S), bit of coriander so you can pretend you’re out somewhere dead fancy. For the broccoli you’ll need some tenderstem broccoli (S) and a 1tbsp of tandoori curry powder

to make easy chicken curry with spicy broccoli you should:

gently cook the onion, chopped red pepper and garlic in a drop of oil or a few squirts of everyone’s favourite pan-ruiner, Frylight
chuck in the diced chicken and cook hard and fast until there’s not a squeak of pink chicken
add everything else – powder, puree, stock and passata, bring to the boil and then reduce to a low heat and cook for twenty minutes or so until the sauce has thickened, throwing in the spinach for five minutes near the end;
whilst that’s happening, throw your broccoli into boiling water and cook the very life out of it for 3 minutes or so – you still want it firm, if you have to gum it to enjoy it you’ve gone too far;
drain the broccoli and whilst it is still damp, sprinkle that tandoori powder all over it
heat up a griddle pan – again, tiny bit of oil or frylight, and griddle the hell out of that broccoli for a couple of minutes
serve up – add a dainty bit of coriander that’ll sit mournfully on the side of your plate until the cat eats it.

Phew! Enjoy that did we? I hope so!

SPEED FOODS USED TODAY: red pepper, spinach, leeks, broccoli, grapefruit, lime, lemon, garlic, onion, mushrooms, samphire, sugarsnap peas (12).

Before I go, there’s a competition running this week. I’ll announce it tomorrow (if I remember) but it’ll reward those with keen eyes…

Please do share this blog as far and as wide as you can.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 26, 2015

Posted under

lunch, pork, pork mince, recipe card, rice, syn free

cabbage rolls

First of all, today’s recipe is cabbage rolls, which couldn’t sound less appetising if they tried. Plus, I tried to take a decent photo of them, but they invariably look like something you’d see hanging off a tramp’s foot in the summer. They tasted wonderful though and, well, it’s something different! And here, it’s a Romanian recipe so that gives us an excuse to dust off the old flagmaker, rattle off this banner and declare twochubbycubs’ European Tour back on. OK so it may not be weekly but we’re only two men.

But first, today. We’re mulling over whether or not to move house. I know, the people in the street would be bereft not seeing my knob hanging out of the front of my boxers as I absent-mindedly put the bins out on a Monday, but since we had some strange lads in our back passage a few days ago (not invited through Grindr, either, unusually) it’s made us a bit unsettled. We don’t think they were trying to break in, because there was an open window into our bedroom (though admittedly the flashing neon red light was turned off at the time) and they didn’t do anything…but still. It makes you feel uneasy. Though saying that, had they climbed in through the bedroom window, they would have fallen onto our bed – and all I’m saying is I wouldn’t have needed Tony Martin’s shotgun to make them bleed from behind. The little smackrats. This is a nice part of the world!

So yes, we bundled into the car and decided to go have a look at some of the new estates that are being build, and to take the opportunity to view the showhomes. Well, they were awful. It didn’t help that the chap on the front desk took one look at us – physically looked us up and down, mind you, taking in our dog-walking trainers, shaved heads and George jeans – and clearly decided we were there to steal the copper wiring and good silver. His opening gambit was that ‘these houses are very difficult to get’ and that we’d need excellent credit to get an appropriate mortgage. The cheeky, oily little oik – we own our house outright with no mortgage and I’ve got better credit than the Queen. Paul hasn’t, because he bought a stereo from Kays catalogue on tick and then forgot all about it over ten years ago, but there you go. Always trust a Geordie with money. We spent ten minutes looking around and then left with a disdainful look at Captain Acne behind the desk and told him it was far too small and there were altogether too many Audis on the estate.

We didn’t manage to leave quietly though as I managed to back the car over a child’s football that had been discarded in the middle of the road, resulting in an surprisingly loud bang echoing around the estate which probably sounded like the car backfiring, which I suppose didn’t help our image. We trundled over to The Parents and spent half an hour oohing and aahing at how well my nephew is coming along (I make him sound like a tomato plant) – without so much as a cup of tea mind, mother – and the highlight of that being when he pointed at Paul and called him Uncle Fatty. The kid has style!

After my parents came IKEA, and good lord IKEA is stressful at the best of times but even more so when you’re breaking the rules and going anti-clockwise with seemingly all of Gateshead’s unwashed masses bearing down on you, it’s hell on Earth. Especially because when the weather is warm enough not to leave an icicle on your tit, everyone decides to throw on a scraggy t-shirt exposing their Neapolitan-ice-cream skin to the sun – blistered red from being out under a SKOL umbrella all afternoon, yellow from nicotine and jaundice, streaky brown wherever the Poundstretcher Fake-Bake took hold.

And the stopping! I know everyone needs a moment to sniff their eighty-dozen orange-scented KLIT tea-lights but for goodness sake, do it to the side. I genuinely think there should be two lanes in places like this – one of those who can glide with purpose and one for those dolts who walk like they have a ball-bearing stuck in their socks. I’m being glib, I appreciate that people have disabilities and of course, they’re exempt, but if you can’t move quickly simply because you’re too much of a clot to remember to put one foot in front of the other in a reasonably rhythmic pattern, then just do everyone a favour and stay at home and have someone else pick up your ÖRGI bookshelf. Bastards. I didn’t even get a bloody hot-dog at the end because I couldn’t bear the thought of having my face stripped by someone’s eye-watering B.O for ten minutes in the queue whilst I had nothing to do than count the skin tags on their neck.

Hark listen to me, you’d think I was Adonis. But Paul says I am, so there.

Costco next – and if you think IKEA is bad, then Costco is even worse. Here the aforementioned numpties are armed with a trolley big enough to fit a hot-tub and enough baked beans to keep a Toby Carvery going for a financial quarter. Oh and it gets worse – it was bloody tasting day, which meant crowds of people all pushing and pulling at one another with their 4×4 trolleys in a nugatory attempt to get their cracked hands on a postage stamp of lasagne or a bit of brioche you could start a fire with. We bought our usual forty tins of tomato puree, sack of pasta and catering jar of gherkins, which were crashed through the till by the cashier with all the care and panache you’d expect from someone who had tattooed her eyelashes on, and we were on our way to the final test – Tesco at 3.40pm on a Sunday afternoon.

Which, remarkably, was a fairly sedate experience, despite me shrieking at Paul ‘STOP PLAYING WITH YOURSELF THERE ARE KIDS ABOUT’ when he was adjusting his belt in the reductions aisle. I’m surprised he had room, the usual ballaches were waiting to tackle the poor Tesco lackey to the floor for their 35p breadbuns. I genuinely can’t stand greed of this sort – but I’ve rambled on about these shitgibbons before who fill their trolley because they can, not because they need to. Nobody needs fifteen discount cauliflowers at 4pm on a Sunday. Take one, and fuck off.

So that was today. Goodness me.

Today’s recipe then: cabbage rolls!

to make cabbage rolls you will need:

1 medium white cabbage, 160g cooked rice, 1 egg (beaten), 60ml skimmed milk, half an onion (chopped), 500g pork mince, ½ tsp pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, 500ml passata, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tbsp lemon juice, ½ tsp black pepper, a good dollop of sauerkraut (optional but delicious but by gaw it’ll make your bum windy)

to make cabbage rolls you should:

preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (gas mark 4)
remove the core from the head of the cabbage
boil the whole head of cabbage for ten minutes
drain the cabbage and leave to cool
in a large bowl mix together the cooked rice, mince egg, milk, chopped onion, crushed garlic and pepper
peel away 12 or so leaves from the cabbage – they need to be a good size but the smaller ones will still be okay, just use less for the next step. Shake off any excess water, nobody loves a moist cabbage
scoop roughly two-tablespoons worth of the mince and rice mixture and plop into the centre of a cabbage leaf
fold the bottom ends up and the sides to make a small parcel
place roll seam-side down into a baking dish that has been sprayed with a little FryLight if you’re a tasteless buffoon or a drop of oil if you’re sensible
in a separate bowl mix together the passata, tinned tomatoes, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over the cabbage rolls
cover the dish with tin foil and bake for an hour
serve with anything you like, but we had new potatoes because they were the easiest thing to grab

Enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 24, 2015

Posted under

lunch, mince, pasta, poultry, recipe card, syn free

turkey stroganoff

That has to be the most tortuous way ever of getting the recipe title into a pun. The recipe today will be a turkey stroganoff – cheap to make, difficult to pronounce and syn-free. Oh yes!

Someone lovely responded to one of our posts today saying they’d love us in book form. Let me tell you, I’d love to write a book (and indeed, I have – my Honeymoon Diary is on Amazon) and my head is full of ideas, but I’m the world’s worst procrastinator. If I can find a way of putting something off to do later, I will, even if it’s something I enjoy doing like writing. Hell, a book about a wizard made JK Rowling insanely rich, even if she does walk around with a face like a franked stamp. Like she’s seen her arse and doesn’t like the colour of it, as my dad would say. Like she’d lost a fiver and found a pound, if you will. Like an abandoned sofa. I’m only jealous.

To give you a few examples, I painted our bedroom a charming slate grey last summer (Paul wouldn’t let me put a slab of wipe-clean Perspex on the wall behind the bed, which I think was a mistake) and I had every intention of going around with a little scrubby cloth and getting all the paint of the windowsills, lest our gardener looks in and thinks I’m a cack-handed slattern. I am, but I don’t want him judging me. But I’ve put it off and put it off to the point where I’d rather repaint the room than go at it with a cloth. For a year and a half in our old flat we had a bed that dipped in the middle almost to the floor because three of the slats snapped (sadly not through passionate love-making, but because I plucked one of Paul’s bum-hairs as he walked past naked and he fell onto the bed in fright). Did we go to IKEA and get some new slats? No, we propped it up with a few DVDs and spent 18 months walking around with spines like question marks.

If I take a day off, it’s always done with good intentions that I’ll go shopping, get some nice food in, do tasks around the house, practice writing, have a walk. What invariably happens is that I’ll spend three hours pressing the snooze button and the rest of the day watching Come Dine With Me on Channel 4 catch-up in my ‘house boxers’ – i.e. the ones I can’t wear outside of the house because my knackers tumble out of a hole in the gusset. We’ve got several pairs of these, super comfy, but god knows what we do to our boxers to make them fall apart like that. Paul puts it down to friction, I put it down to his rancid farts burning through like when you toast the top of a crème brûlée. Nevertheless, they’re handy for dossing around the house, though I do think my neighbours over the road have seen my balls swinging around more times than they would care to admit.

Here, have some stroganoff – it doesn’t look all that in the picture but it tasted lahverley! And it’s something new, so get on it.

to make turkey stroganoff you will need:

1 tbsp olive oil (or Frylight if you’re that way inclined), 500g turkey mince, 1 brown onion (diced), 225g sliced mushrooms, 170g passata, 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 tablespoon chilli sauce (we used Cholula, which to me sounds like something you’d rub onto an irritated foof, but for goodness sake DON’T), 500ml chicken stock, 200g fusili pasta, 250g fat-free greek yoghurt, parsley

to make turkey stroganoff you should:

in a bowl, mix together the chopped tomatoes, worcestershire sauce, garlic power and chilli sauce. Keep to one side whilst you make the magic happen
in a large stockpot or even better one of these babies, heat the olive oil (or Frylight, pussy) over a medium-high heat.
add the minced turkey and onion and stir frequently for about two minutes. Make sure to keep breaking up the clumps of mince as you go
add the mushrooms to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes until the mushrooms are tender. Don’t worry if it starts to look a bit watery – that’s what you want
add salt and pepper and anything else you might fancy. We won’t judge
stir in the passata and the delicious tomatoey sauce you made earlier and mix well
add the stock and bring the whole lot to a boil. Don’t be shy – if you keep stirring, it won’t stick
once it’s bubbling away add the pasta and reduce the heat to a nice simmer
cook for about 15 minutes or until the pasta is cooked as you like it. Stir occasionally, but not too often
add anything else you might fancy (lots of pepper is nice), remove from the heat and let it cool for about 5 minutes or so. If you do this next step whilst it’s still really hot it’ll look like you’ve spewed in it
add the yoghurt and mix well
serve, worship us and then share the recipe with your friends!

Remember – we’re on Twitter! If you enjoy us, SHARE – @twochubbycubs

Whoo!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 23, 2015

Posted under

airfryer, burgers, fakeaways, recipe card, syn free

kangaroo burger with fries

Only a teensy tiny post tonight as Paul is out gallivanting and I’m stuck at work – so I’m activating a saved post! Enjoy!

Actually, not much to say about this recipe aside from the burger – we bought it from www.musclefood.com where we previously got a big old box of chicken. Delivery was quick and the meat really has been second to none. The kangaroo burger has languished at the back of the freezer and we thought, well why not? Let me tell you – it was very tasty! You could hoy a beefburger in here just as easy. It’s syn free, very lean meat and chucked in a bun with tomato, onion, rocket and a slice of cheese it made for a good tea. Cook it under the grill for around fifteen minutes until the juices run clear. If Musclefood float your boat, order using this link and you’ll get four free chicken breasts. Goodness! Remember, HEB for the bun, HEA for the cheese.

The fries were easier still – just cut them thin, drop of oil, a bit of salt and into the Actifry. Same effect could be made from doing them in the oven!

Finally, if you’re a fan of the snazzy little (wanky) chip pan, you can pick up a pack of four here. All you need to complete the gastropub experience is a giant plate with a tiny bit of crackling and a tiny period of cranberry sauce on it. Yum!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 22, 2015

Posted under

fakeaways, indian, lamb, lamb mince, one-pot, recipe card, syn free

spiced lamb mince and potato aloo kheema

Firstly, a massive and genuinely heartfelt thank you to everyone for the lovely comments yesterday in response to my article about my nana. I can’t reply to them all but please know that they were read and enjoyed greatly. She’d have hated (but secretly loved) all the fuss. She was one of those people who would say she didn’t want anything for Christmas and then sit there with a face like a slapped arse until you got her present out. I’ll miss her at Christmas – we used to joke on amongst ourselves that she was like Dr Who – always regenerating at Christmas despite us saying for a good ten years that ‘we’d better not go away this year, it’ll be her last’. Ah well. Your comments were delightful, inspired and so very kind, and it made me feel better that I was able to encapsulate even the smallest bit of what she meant to me. That said, if she wasn’t currently on ice down at the morgue, she’d be tunneling halfway to China now spinning in her grave at what I’m about to show you.

I have literally become the thing I hate most. Just look.

I’m drinking a mixed drink from a fucking jamjar, like some pretentious rah-yah in one of those bars where they take a perfectly affable building, cover it in veneers and turn off all the lights so you have to read the menu by the cherry of a liquorice-papered, prison-thin American Spirit roll-up. You’ll note however that the jamjar is a proper Kilner licenced jar and I even doubled down and got the awful paper straws to go with it. Paper straws though, really – the liquid equivalent of trying to dry yourself with a cloud. Five minutes in and it’s already collapsed, so I end up sucking like I’m giving the world’s worst blowjob to both parties concerned. Don’t worry, it’ll be back to George pint glasses soon enough and we’ll only wheel out the posh stuff when it’s going on Twitter, like the Christmas china.

That’s the next point – we’re now on Twitter. The observant amongst you will doubtless have spotted the little widget there on the right displaying pictures and other such nonsense. The aim is to get you lot sharing these recipes wherever you can, plus, it gives me an outlet for my bile for when I can’t be bothered sitting at the computer trying to type with a particularly needy cat clawing away at my genitals. Follow us by adding @twochubbycubs and share share share share!

Along similar lines, I’ve just noticed that we’ve sailed clean past 2000 members, which when you think I was only bleating on about having 1000 members back in January (and take a look at that page, I shit you not when I say it’s one of our best recipes), is pretty incredible. Like we always say – Paul loves cooking (he’s learnt to, Little Mo has nothing on him) and I love writing, so this is the perfect outlet for us. The fact that so many of you like hearing our nonsense and swearing only gives us a reason to try harder! With that in mind, know that we are going to be back to full speed pretty soon – recent events have knocked us a little, but we’re still doing a new recipe a day, and you’ll get the benefit of that. We’ve got breakfast ideas, themed weeks and oops – we forgot about Europe. What are we like. So bear with us, and until then, enjoy this:

Tasty. And check out the presentation, I felt like I was in a Newcastle Wetherspoons. I mean, I knew I wasn’t because I have a full set of teeth and a career, but still*.

to make the spiced lamb mince you will need:

500g of lean lamb or pork mince (or beef, for that matter – hey listen, I’m not judging you), 500g of potatoes (use new potatoes if you can get them) cut into thumb sized chunks, 1 red onion finely chopped, 2 big juicy red tomatoes (i.e. don’t be buying a pack of cheap tomatoes, God is watching and he despairs of your watery orange balls of nowt), and then the spices:

to make spiced lamb mince you should:

2 tsp of garam masala
1 tsp of cumin seeds
a cinnamon stick
1 tsp of turmeric
2 tsp of coriander powder
1 tsp of chilli powder
1 green chilli
1 tbsp of garlic and 1 tbsp of ginger paste (DON’T buy it, just get a microplane grater and grate your own ginger and garlic – much cheaper because you can chuck the ginger bulb in the freezer for next time – and oh look, a handy link – and only £9 – cheap at half the price and you can even use it on your feet which I totally don’t do)
a bay leaf

You’ll also need a drop of oil for the onions. If you prefer, use Frylight, but like I always say: don’t.

This recipe only took us about 30 minutes to make and most of that was the pot sitting on the hob. So what’s your excuse, eh?

ingredients for the sides: a pitta bread each (HEB if you use a wholemeal Weight Watchers pitta, which has all the taste and wonder of a side of Artex), an onion, tomato, cucumber and red chilli for the onion salad and fat free natural yoghurt, cucumber and fresh mint (or mint sauce if you’re common) for the raita.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I don’t know if this is extra-lean lamb mince. See, it was at the back of our freezer and we did buy a load of extra-lean mince from our butcher back in the day. I think it is. If it is, then the dish is syn free. If not, use extra lean beef or pork or even turkey. OH THE EXCITEMENT.

OK, so the recipe:

make up your side dishes
- add yoghurt, mint and grated cucumber together and chill
- toast pitta bread
- chop up onion, tomato, cucumber and finely chop chilli – combine and add a pinch of salt
- set aside
get your best pan out of the cupboard – heavy bottomed (that’s the pan, not you, cheeky)
add the cinnamon stick, bay leaf and cumin seeds and get it on a medium high heat until they sizzle
add the chopped onions, cook until golden, add the ginger and garlic paste
add the turmeric, chilli and coriander powder and let it sweat for a moment or two before chucking in the mince and potato
allow to brown for a few minutes and then add the chopped tomatoes – two big tomatoes should produce more than enough water once you put the lid on and turn the heat down to a medium
cook until the meat is cooked and the potatoes tender – chuck in the garam masala and cook down for a moment or two more
serve.

Enjoy!

* I actually like Wetherspoons and don’t have a problem with them. Creative licence, alright?

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 13, 2015

Posted under

breast, fakeaways, italian, low syn, lunch, one-pot, pasta, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto

Not a typo. The dish is a bit like a risotto but tastes a bit more substantial – tasty though and only uses one pot. Hooray.

But weigh-in tonight, and it’s VERY good news. You may remember that in between getting caught noshing in the hot-tub by a farmer and running caravans off the road, we managed to put on a total of 13lb between us last week? Well, we knuckled down a bit but as you can see from the recipes, still ate like pigs…and we’ve lost:

james – 7.5lb

paul – 5.5lb

Haha! A total weight of 13lb – or, for those who might be a bit touched in the head, we’ve managed to lose exactly what we put on (Paul losing .5lb more than what he put on and me losing .5lb less)! Brilliant, not least because I can’t be bothered to change the ‘total’ image on the right of the blog.

Hey I tell you what though – and this is in no way a disparaging comment against other classes I’ve visited, but what a difference a consultant makes. We’ve worked our way back to our very first consultant and she’s a genuine laugh – we were in that church hall digging those bloody awful church chairs out of our back-fat for a good two hours but it flew by. Reason? It wasn’t just ‘weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done – weight loss – well done’ which holds no allure for us. It felt like a proper class! If you get the right class, you stay, and if you stay, you learn. SIMPLE AS.

Now listen, weigh-in nights are normally a chance for us not to post a recipe but instead spend the evening ped-egging each others feet and tormenting the cat.

Well, we’ve been doing that, see?

But lo, in the spirit of giving, here’s a recipe! Gosh!

Firstly, the recipe uses sundried tomatoes normally, and feel free to substitute them for the moonblush tomatoes I’ve used in the recipe (sundried tomatoes are around 2 syns for 25g), but moonblush tomatoes are very easy to make and syn free. Perhaps half a syn at most per serving, anyway. I nicked the idea from Nigella Lawson and what that woman doesn’t know about cooking you could write on the side of a rolled-up twenty quid note. To make moonblush tomatoes, first whack your oven up to its highest possible temperature. You want it glowing like an Englishman’s shoulders in Benidorm. Next, cut a load of cherry tomatoes in half and chuck them in a bowl. Add a tiny drop or two of olive oil, a good glug of balsamic vinegar, salt, dried oregano, bit of thyme, pepper. Mix gently so the tomatoes are covered but try not to squash the tomatoes. Next, tip them onto a baking tray with the cut side facing up – pack them in tightly. Once the oven is at the highest temperature and you could light a fag off the vapours, turn it off, open the door, quickly throw the tray in and leave it overnight. The hot air will dry your tomatoes out – not completely, but that’s fine – you want them a bit squishy. Syn-free and full of taste! Make it even more interesting by using a range of tomatoes of all shapes and colours. If you DO insist on using sundried tomatoes in oil like a filthy slattern, hoy them in a sieve and pour boiling water on them – gets rid of the oil, see.

OK, so you’ve got tomatoes – either moonblush (overnight) or sundried (jarred – philistine). So…

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts cut into chunks, 200g tomatoes, tiny drop of oil, 1 large onion sliced finely, three garlic gloves, 400g of orzo pasta (or rice), 3 dollops of tomato puree, 900ml of chicken stock, 1/2tsp of oregano, 1/4tsp of thyme, 1/4tsp of lemon zest and 1/2tsp of balsamic vinegar. Basil leaves, black pepper and parmesan to serve.

to make chicken, orzo and tomato risnotto, you should:

fry the chicken off in a tiny bit of oil or a squirt of frylight (bleurgh!) – chuck in a bit of salt and pepper to swoosh it along – once cooked through, set aside
chuck the onions into the pan now and saute gently until they go transparent and sticky – add the garlic for a moment or two
add the rice and fry along with the onion for a minute or two
add the tomato puree, tomatoes (chopped if particularly big, otherwise just tip in), all the herbs and the balsamic vinegar, plus the chicken
now cook gently, on a medium heat, adding stock one ladle at a time and stirring – don’t leave it to stick, and eventually, it’ll go nice and gloopy and thick – tasty!
serve in a big bowl with a smashing cheesy grin on your face.

Just a note – buying a whole lemon just for the zest is a bit silly. So use whatever you need to, then pop the lemon in the freezer – you can use it next time you need zest! Failing that, cut it in half, put it in a tiny bowl of water and microwave for thirty seconds or so, then use it like a sponge to clean your microwave. Gosh we really ARE the gift that keeps on giving tonight.

Cheers all!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 12, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, noodles, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

slimming world classics – salt and pepper chicken

I tell you what, you’re doing rather well out of us this week, bearing in mind we were aiming to only post five times a week, and one of them would be a quickpost! But, like the caring, big-hearted, lovely chaps that we are, we couldn’t let you down, so here’s an extra recipe – salt and pepper chicken.

Syn-free, mind.

I can’t tell you how long I agonised over putting that ‘n’ in the title. I’m someone whose teeth actually itch if I happen across a ROFL. Anyway, recipe:

to make salt and pepper chicken, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts (one per person) cut into chunks, 5 tbsp Smash, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp pepper, ½ tsp powdered garlic, one egg, a good slug of soy sauce, one green pepper, one onion, one chilli pepper, 2 tsp granulated sweetener, 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, noodles.

to make salt and pepper chicken, you should:

mix together the Smash, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a bowl and spread out onto a plate
dip the chicken chunks into beaten egg with a good slug of soy sauce and roll in the dry smash mixture until well coated
place the crumbed chicken chunks onto a baking sheet that has been sprayed with Frylight
add another couple of sprays of Frylight over the top and bake in the oven (200°C or Gas Mark 6) for around 25-30 minutes or until golden
get your noodles cooking
meanwhile, chop an onion, green pepper and chilli pepper and mix together in a pan
cover and let it sweat over a medium-low heat
add another slug of soy sauce after about ten minutes and mix well
in another bowl, mix together the granulated sweetener and white wine vinegar and stir until dissolved
when it’s all ready, add the vinegar mixture to the vegetables, mix well, and serve with the chicken on top of the noodles

Mwah! Easy-peasy. I know I’m dancing with the devil using frylight and sweetener but if I tell you to use 1tsp of honey and a dab of oil, you might have a fit. Using honey instead of sweetener and a drop of oil instead of frylight makes things better, but up to you…!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

April 11, 2015

Posted under

recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, travel, vegetarian

cheesy smash scones

Gosh, I love a Saturday – the traffic to the blog spikes like crazy and we always get a swell of new people joining. Hello one and all, don’t forget to tell your friends. That was the deal. Don’t make me Princess Di you, I’ve got access to a Fiat Uno. You’ll find a link to all the recipes at the top of the page, together with an FAQ for new members of Slimming World and some other flim-flam. Tonight’s recipe is for slimming world smash scones, and tomorrow’s Slimming World Classic is salt and pepper chicken, but we’ve jazzed it up just a smidge. The recipe that we found out was ‘fry chicken, add salt, add pepper’ which isn’t a recipe at all. Their other recipes included ‘elegant tannin slurp’ (boil kettle, add milk, add tea-bag). Knobbers. Maybe I made that bit up, you’re not the boss here.

Anyway, back to Ireland, where you may remember we were spending an awful amount of time driving around and being snotty about craft shops? Well rest assured that this continued unabated. But first, an observation. See, Paul and I have the type of marriage where we can openly discuss other good-looking men without one of us throwing a paddy and waving a pair of blunt scissors at the other’s cock, and as a result we were looking forward to seeing plenty of rough-hewn Irish farmer types with bushy beards and big soft eyes strutting around. Well, pfft. For a start, everyone was about 2ft tall. Seriously, they’d have blinded themselves if they’d pulled their socks up. Plus, weedy – apparently despite only having shops that sell Daniel O’Donnell tat and Guinness fiddle-faddle the men have found somewhere that sells those bloody awful Abercrombie and Fitch hoodies and tiny pin-leg jeans. THAT’S NOT MANLY. I even saw a man-bun (and you may remember how I feel about that) on someone serving diesel in the last petrol station before civilisation ended. I bet if we go back in a year there will be burgers in brioche buns and someone drinking out of a watering can. Pissheads. Scotland has the best blokes – then England, then Wales, then Ireland.

That’s what we were expecting…

Studio portrait of young man

That’s what we got. GOD-DAMN IT IRELAND.

We visited a chocolate factory. I say visited, Paul barely had time to register the words coming up on the turn-off sign before I had swerved the car across the road and into the car-park. I swear I was inside at the tasting station before he’d even unsuckered the sat-nav from the windscreen. MIND. It was a bit of a stretch to call it a chocolate factory, given it seemed to consist of a few lovely Irish ladies melting chocolate nips and scattering orange peel into it. That said, we still stocked up, ostensibly on gifts for our co-workers, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that we had one of the giant chocolate slabs open before we’d even pulled out of the car park. We rationalised it by thinking that, as we’d seemingly shored up Ireland’s deficit by buying so much chocolate, the decent thing to do would be to enjoy it. Plus, they’d been a bit stingy with the ‘free tasting’ considering the amount of money we’d spent – I can remember even now seeing Paul’s watery eyes and downturned mouth when she went to put away the tray of free chocolate.

We also visited the “Most Beautiful Cliffs in Kerry” – which I personally think lived right up to the name. It’s a strong, bold claim and we almost didn’t get to see it. Not because of bad weather, or the access being closed…no, because we were so full of chocolate that we drove straight past when we saw ‘only a five minute walk from the car-park’ on the side. Isn’t that mortifyingly lazy? But I’ve been each and every person reading this has done something similar. I mean, it was just so warm in the car, and a cliff is a bloody cliff…right? We drove on for another ten minutes before we had to turn back around and go see the bloody cliffs, so ashamed were we by our own bloody laziness. Actually – glad we did, because look…

Isn’t that amazing? Despite the two minute walk being more like a ten minute gentle stroll up a gradient that a marble would struggle picking up speed rolling down, it was more than worth it, even if Paul did struggle with the defibrillator at the end. My sense of injustice was piqued by the gypsy (genuinely, I’m not just being racist) who charged me €4 to park the car and gave us a ticket to view the cliffs, but I didn’t fancy arguing with someone who had colour-ordinated his brown change purse with his nicotine-lacquered teeth.

We visited an immeasurable number of beaches, and by god I’ll never forget them, not least because I’m still pouring out a good half of them onto my living room carpet at the end of the day. One afforded us the chance, thanks to a stern warning that we simply mustn’t go on the rocks (which we immediately did), to reinact that bit where old Jelly Belly Harold Bishop fell into the sea and Madge was left shouting HAAAAARULD at the crashing waves after she found his glasses in a rockpool. Remember that? Twochubbycubs do.

Seriously, every day with us is full of nonsense like this. If we’re not re-enacting famous soap deaths – I’ve done Jim Robinson before, complete with quacks and a rolling orange, we’re yelling Titanic quotes at each other. Plus, we left behind some free advertising.

Subtle, right? Here, one final thing. The cottage had an amazing cottage but clearly attracted the sort of people who were braggarts and fancydans when it came to their wine, to the point where each person staying had placed an empty bottle of their best wine on top of the kitchen cupboards (quite a task, given how high up they were – I had to really stretch and I’m tall enough to be continued). And oh lord, people had signed them too – and the names read like a Vegan’s Anonymous meeting, all Cressy and Johnathanial and suchlike. So, in the sense of causing mischief, we added our own. Can you spot it?

Haha, I’ve never drank blue WKD in my life, I don’t think. It’s like wearing Lynx, once you’ve actually had sex, it should be beneath you. Anyway. I tell you what’s below me? My feet. My feet which aren’t cheesy. But I tell you what IS cheesy? These Smash scones! Yeah alright, that was a shit link, so sue me, it’s late. LOOK AT THEM.

Before I get started, let me just put this in here.

Yes, this is definitely a tweak. If you don’t tweak, just skip on. If you’re comfortable tweaking, crack on! These are delicious and perfect to make as a snack. Not sure what tweaking is? My previous rant explains it…click here for that (lots of people seem to really enjoy that article…!)

to make cheesy smash scones, you’ll need:

100g of plain Smash, 2 eggs, 300g of low-fat cottage cheese (make sure you get the syn free cottage cheese, I use the Tesco low fat version), 30g of hard extra strong cheese, chopped chives (we have them growing in the garden – for goodness sake, get yourself a pot, bit of compost and one of the growing pots from Tesco for a quid, they almost grow themselves), paprika for the top, garlic salt.

to make cheesy smash scones, you should:

nothing to this one – you blend the egg and cottage cheese together with a hand-blender, add the Smash, cheese, chives and garlic and shape into a dough. It should feel dry and not very sticky, you can always work a bit more Smash in. You don’t actually need to blend the egg and cottage cheese first, but I like it smooth. Shape it into whatever shape you want, drop them into a frylighted oven tray, sprinkle with paprika and cook for 25 minutes on 190 degrees (check on them after 15 minutes).

Done!

ENJOY.