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February 15, 2018

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chinese, fakeaways, low syn, noodles, pork, pork joints, recipe card, rice

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char sui pork – served on steamed pak choi

Well, hello there! Here for our char sui pork? It’s understandable, you love a bit of meat. This is our final ‘Chinese’ style meal for a while, you’ll either be pleased or disappointed to hear! What could our next theme be…anyway, it’s not James writing tonight, but rather Paul. You can tell because my swearing is more gentle and there’s about 60% less knob jokes.

After James’ posts yesterday on why I’m so damn perfect I thought it’s only fair that I do one the other way round. So here goes: three things which make James pretty damn spesh.

He’s like a hairy water bottle

Now you might think that that sounds gross, but hear me out here.

As we are slightly less rotund than before we keep finding ourselves at full nipple-on quite often and it’s so handy having a heat source to hand. There’s nowt better when you’ve just come in from taking the bins out to smushing your face right into a hot pillow made out of fat – it’s truly wonderful. And not only that but he sometimes lifts up his belly so I can put my feet underneath, so it’s like getting your feet massaged whilst in a hot bath. It’s great! One of my most favourite things in the world (and he’ll hate me for saying this) is when I get up for a piss in the middle of the night and get back into bed to warm up. I’ll press right up against him and I feel like a panini.

Surprises

I’ll try not to get too mushy here because I know you miserable buggers hate all of that, but he’s always been one for giving me surprises, and not just of the venereal disease kind – the couple that leaks together stays together. Sometimes they’re small, like an unexpected Creme Egg and sometimes they’re fookin’ massive, like that time he surprised me with a trip to New York. I quite often come home to find a new desk gadget, or a cake, or something that he found in a shop somewhere that he thought I would like.

Encouragement

I have absolutely zero willpower. Quite literally none at all. If I were still single I’d have had a heart attack about ten years ago because I just can’t stop myself. Fortunately I’ve got Muffin who’ll not only dissuade me from eating shit or doing daft stuff, but do it kindly as well. It’s like having to distract a tantruming toddler – he does it tactfully and patiently! But it’s not just with food, it’s with other stuff too – we often come up for ideas for the blog together but I either lose patience or get distracted, but he’s always there to keep me on track and focussed. It’s helped me change and also to work hard to get a better job. Honestly, without him I’d be too scatty to actually ever get anything done.

Right, that’s enough of that bollocks, eh? Onto what you really came here for – char sui pork! This’ll make one big, long Linford-style tenderloin, enough for four servings and then spin the leftovers into our mixed chow mein. I mean honestly.

char sui pork

to make char sui pork you will need:

  • 500g pork tenderloin
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp ginger, minced
  • 60ml soy sauce
  • 60ml cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp brown sugar with stevia (6 syns)
  • 1 tbsp hoi sin sauce (1½ syns)
  • 2 tbsp honey (5 syns)
  • salt
  • pepper
  • pak choi

top tips for making char sui pork:

  • don’t be tempted to skimp on the syns for this one – they’re worth every single one! remember that syns are there to be used!
  • sort that ginger in seconds with one of these Microplane graters! It’s our most used kitchen gadget!
  • this is fantastic in our tasty mixed chow mein!

to make char sui pork you should:

  • slap the pork out onto a chopping board and make a few diagnonal slashes across the length of it – not too deep, mind
  • mix everything else together and pour into a shallow dish
  • plop the pork in, turn it over a few times in the marinade and leave it for as long as possible – overnight ie best
  • preheat the oven to 200°c
  • put a rack over a roasting tin, and fill the tin halfway with water (make sure it doesn’t touch the top of the rack)
  • put the pork on the rack and roast in the oven for twenty minutes
  • turn the pork over, brush with the remaining marinade and reduce the temperature to 180°c
  • roast for another twenty minutes
  • remove from the oven and slice into discs
  • serve with whatever you like – we steamed some pakchoi leaves and served it on there, but would recommend some rice or noodles to go with!

Belly still rumbling? Don’t worry – we’ll look after you. Here’s some more fakeaway goodness:

P

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January 30, 2018

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american, british, budget, chip shop, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, recipe card, sauces, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

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one syn chips and cheesy garlic sauce

One syn cheesy garlic sauce and chips – building on yesterday’s fakeaway recipe, here’s our take on Paul’s favourite drunken snack (aside from whichever taxi driver happens to give him the keen-eye in the rank – and it’s not hard to catch Paul’s eye, given it swivels around like Mad Eye Moody on E). It’s not going to win any awards for classiness, presentation or nutritional value but if you’re at the end of a long, crap day and you want something to satisfy your hole (and indeed, you’re all out of the eighteen D batteries needed to power your robocock), this is the one for you.

Eee, what a sentence.

But first, I want to respond to something that’s been bugging me – I spotted this on Twitter:

I appreciate the first clue that this wasn’t going to be a reasoned, erudite debate should have come from the fact it was Good Morning Britain and as such it was meant as a light-hearted piece to get people talking, but it really annoyed me. They wouldn’t be allowed (and rightly so) to put ‘Are pensioners ALWAYS stinkin’ of piss’ or ‘Toddlers: they’re shite at tennis, so let’s throw them in the sea‘, so why is such an asinine point allowed when it’s about the so-called millennial? Someone then made a similar point and linked to a particularly vile Daily Mail article (I can imagine that you’re clutching your chest as we speak with the shock) about how young people are especially pointless and stupid because they can’t wire plugs, darn a sock or heaven-forbid bleed a radiator.

Now, I don’t know if I’m a millennial. I don’t think I am – I’m possibly too old.

Actually: according to Wikipedia, I am. Woohoo! And yet I’ve never even smashed an avocado.

I’m a millennial then, and here’s the thing: we don’t need to know these things. We live in a world where if a radiator needs bleeding, a quick two second type on our phones will bring up a video explaining exactly how to do it in more highly-defined pixels than could ever be counted. A further ten seconds would probably bring up a plumber’s number if things got super risky. Actually, on my phone I have several plumbers, though they’re never coming over to tighten my u-bend up. Is that a bad thing? No! It’s the way of the world, and it’s great!

Now some will doubtless say that we’re losing the skills of old but that isn’t true – they’re just transferring. Yes, we can’t darn a sock, but why would you darn a sock when you can order a pack of seven pairs delivered to your door within two hours with Amazon Prime? Why would you need to know off the top of your head how to make a white sauce when there’s millions of recipes online or in books that will show you how? The world has changed: instant information is here and it’s embraced by anyone with half an ounce of grey matter in their head.

You know what the worst thing is about all of this? They never mention how it works in reverse. Stereotyping massively, have you ever tried showing someone in their 80s how to use a television? My nana had a four channel TV and I spent nearly three hours explaining the various wee buttons on the remote. Even in the few days before she died she was waving that remote around like she was performing the Flight Simulator round on The Krypton Factor, with the TV blaring so loud that if I sit in a silent room even now I can still hear echoes of The Weakest Link. My mother is a beautiful, clever and astonishing woman but the first time she handled a computer mouse she picked it up and held it to her ear. Paul recounts of a similar tale with his mother who, upon receiving this errors back in the day of Windows 95:

went and drew the curtains so the police would think she was out. It’s easy to snicker at what we can’t do, but what about stuff we’ve mastered that would cause many an aged brow to wrinkle. For example: could you run a blog? Could you face countless years ahead of rack and ruin as automation steals your job and politicians steal your hope? Could you draw a penis out of the foam on the top of a latte? Exactly!

Anyway, it’s not like it fucking matters that a millennial can’t bleed a radiator: you’d need a house for your radiator first of all, and we all know exactly how great that situation currently is, eh?

Bloody old people with their wide-sweeping generalisations.

(I’M BEING SARCASTIC)

Eee, on that note, shall we do the recipe? Of course we should. One recipe for syn-free cheesy garlic sauce and chips coming right up, flower. Listen, I’d give you scraps but my boss will have my bollocks off if I give away any more freebies.

This makes enough sauce for four people very, very easily. It freezes well though!

cheesy garlic sauce

cheesy garlic sauce

to make one syn cheesy garlic sauce and chips, you’ll need:

  • as many slimming world chips as you want
  • 80g of whatever cheese you like – I like to use Red Leicester for a bit of colour (2x HEA) (grated)
  • 220g of Philadelphia Lightest (2 x HEA)
  • one bulb of garlic
  • chilli sauce – if you like – we use Flying Goose Sriracha Hot Chilli Sauce for only 1tbsp for a syn

top tips for making one syn cheesy garlic sauce and chips:

to make one syn cheesy garlic sauce and chips, you should:

  • make the sauce first!
  • to make the sauce, cut your garlic bulb in half horizontally, so you’re cutting through the cloves inside
  • spray with a wee bit of oil and pop in the oven on a low heat for an hour or so
  • once it has roasted, simply slide the softened garlic – as much as you like – out of each clove and into a bowl and mash
  • heat a small pan up with the Philadelphia and garlic inside to loosen it a little  – add a splash of milk if you need to
  • add 60g of the cheese into the hot Philadelphia and stir it, don’t let it set – you want the cheese to be absorbed into the Philadelphia
  • add some salt and pepper if you like
  • pour over hot chips with the remainder of the cheese (we actually mixed it up and put some grated mature cheddar on too, because we’re filthy)
  • top with chilli sauce if you like

I know, right?

Want more fakeaways? Oh we’ve got too many to count man, come have a look by clicking on the button to unlock deliciousness! Remember to share us around!

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J

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January 24, 2018

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breast, chinese, fakeaways, one-pot, poultry, recipe card, rice, syn free

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chicken dopiaza: syn-free, easy to make gorgeous curry

Your chicken dopiaza will follow in a moment. But first, I was listening to a very interesting podcast all about regret this morning on my way into work. It was particularly befitting, as I was regretting my choice to walk in, regretting my choice to wake up in the morning and especially regretting letting someone go in front of me at the gate to the town moor, as it then meant I had twenty minutes half-walking-half-hanging-back otherwise their lycra-clad lumpen arse was filling my field of vision. I don’t have many regrets – what’s the use? I’m not Doctor Who, can’t turn the clock back (trust me, if I could, I’d go back fifteen years and tell myself not to cut off all that fabulous hair I used to have, even if a good third was missing from setting it on fire lighting a cigarette from a gas hob), so why worry? But that said, because I’m in the mood to write tonight, let me tell you about just a few things in life that I do lament.

#1: meeting Paul

Eeee no, of course not, I’m joking. We fit together like the square and the l shaped in Tetris. I very much doubt there is another man with cracking tits out there who would cheerfully put up with my arse-of-death and histrionics every morning.

#2: spending three years of my life looking like the bastard offspring of The Scottish Widow and Bubble from Big Brother 2

Let me explain. I’ve always been an up-and-down-dieter: sometimes I’m fat, sometimes I’m thin, sometimes when we touch the honesty is too much. But, after losing a hefty amount of weight in my teenage years, I couldn’t overcome the acute embarrassment I had about my big fat wobbly body – despite being only 13 stone – and so I dressed for about three years solid in a giant black wool coat that a friend bought me (little did I know) from the ladies section of C&A. I adored that coat – long, swooshing and magnificent – I’d cut about the village I grew up in like the gayest spectre of death you’d ever seen. I was by no means a goth: I was too clumsy for eyeliner, too cheerful for Livejournal poetry. But what people mistook for vivacious fashion sense (dry cough) was actually masking the desire to hide my body away in the biggest cloak I could find. Looking back at photos I’m left mortified – in 99% of them I’m wearing 28″ waist jeans and a coat that you could comfortably cover a Renault Passat with in a cold frost. In short: I look like a twat. You know what compounds the look though? I found a black bucket hat in a hedge one day and loved it that much that I took it home, washed it and never took it off again. I honestly shiver when I see it now.

And yet you know, it’s funny: I couldn’t give a toss what people think of me now. I wear what I want, most of my holiday photographs have some form of nudity in it with either my fat arse or my rack on show, and you know what? I’m all the better for it.

#3: I wish I’d bothered learning to drive sooner

I grew up in a tiny village in the middle of Northumberland with one bus connection and a kitchen outlet store. It wasn’t exactly a den of homosexuality, though I did alright on that front due to the various ‘friends from school’ I had over. But still, whenever I drive home nowadays and see all those lorries parked up, all those fun little country lanes, all those crashes with van drivers where someone gets rear-ended or has their bumper pushed in from the back…well, it’s hard not to feel like I’ve missed a glorious opportunity. But see I moved out at 18 into the centre of Newcastle and the need to drive never really came up – now it’s my most favourite thing in the world. I’d cheerfully be a lorry driver if I thought my back was up to lifting suspect rolls of carpet into ditches, but no, that time has passed. I only learned to drive at the age of 27, though I fear I’ve subtracted eighteen years of my life due to damage to my heart from getting so wound up about other drivers since then. Life’s a balance.

#4: buying cheap batteries

I let Paul convince me that buying 64 AA batteries from IKEA would be a safe bet, simply because we go through them at such a rate of knots that people think we’re road-testers for Ann Summers – which is ridiculous, because all of our sex-toys are wired straight into the fuse-board. They’ll be fine, he said, slipping lurid packets of bright yellow into our trolley. Well they’re bloody well not. I seem to spend a good third of my day sliding the plates off the back of my keyboard, remotes, magic mouse, doorbell, ped-egg and Xbox controllers because the batteries inside couldn’t power a mouse’s kettle. It’s like they’re filled with mist. What makes it worse is that our Nest smoke alarm is battery-powered. It doesn’t just beep – oh no – it shrieks, in that cold robotic voice – THE BATTERIES ARE LOW. PLEASE REPLACE THE BATTERIES, which is just what you need to wrench you from sleep at 4am in the morning. Oh and if you ignore her she ups the ante considerably: she decided to warn us that there was smoke in the hallway the last time we were in Lidl, meaning us screaming back home in the Smart Car only to find it was just her malfunctioning. Internet of Things will change your life they say. Aye, they’re not wrong: I’ve developed generalised anxiety disorder every time I hear an electronic chirp. Twitter is hell.

#5: arguing with sucker-lipped thick idiots on Facebook about manners

I know I’ve mentioned this before but honestly, I can’t help myself. I’m in a group which asks people to say please and thank you when they request help from others. The fact that it even needs to be specified boils my piss as it is, but I’m always first to point out if someone’s being an ill-mannered dick. The amount of folks who think it’s appropriate to hold up some knock-off yoghurt and say SINS without so much as a kiss-my-arse is mind-boggling. I appreciate that we’re not in church but good manners costs fuck all. Put that on a tea-towel and wipe your fadge with it. So as you can expect, I end up in all sorts of arguments with people with faces dusted with Wotsit-powder and lips like a bee-stung arsehole who say stuff like WE ARE NOT KIDS (but you are! You always are! Just because you’ve got two babies and an Elizabeth Duke pay-as-you-go engagement ring doesn’t mean you’re not 17) and THIS IS WURST THAN SCHOOL (how would you know?) and then THE ADMIN R WORSER THAN HITLER. That’s the best one: you’re compared to a man responsible for the gassing of millions of folks simply because you’ve got the cheek to expect a please before helping out. And THAT’S my regret: that I bother arguing. Have you ever tried arguing with a thick/entitled person on the Internet? You’d get a more reasoned discussion by lifting up the cat’s tail and bellowing direct into her pouting vulva. All they do is respond with an attempt at insulting you (it’s hard to take offence when you can’t decipher their spelling) and then so many crappy emoticons that it’s like watching The Emoji Movie in a haunted hall of mirrors. You can’t make someone see sense – you can lead a horse to water, but you have to strongly resist the urge to push their head under until all you’re left with is a bloated cadaver, a neck tattoo of a badly-spelled take on the name of a Love Island contestant and a scum of Paul’s Boutique foundation floating on the water.

So yes: I regret trying to encourage people to use manners.

And you know, that’s about it. It really is. As I said, what’s the use in regret? It gets you nowhere, you can’t change what has happened and most of all, it tethers you to the past when you should be moving forward.

Speaking of moving forward, let’s do this chicken dopiaza recipe – if you’re here for a good curry recipe, a chicken dopiaza is absolutely perfect. Promise you that this is easy to make, tasty and very customisable! It’s quite a mellow dish but you can make it as spicy as your little ring will handle!

chicken dopiaza

chicken dopiaza

to make chicken dopiaza you will need:

  • 500g chicken breast, cut into chunks
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp garam masala
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 2 large onions, chopped
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper (or chilli powder)
  • 1 tsp ginger, minced
  • 5 tomatoes, chopped

top tips for chicken dopiaza

to make chicken dopiaza you should:

  • heat a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and spray in some oil
  • sprinkle the cumin seeds into the pan and stir until they start to pop – which’ll take about 20-40 seconds
  • stir in the onion and cook until starting to turn brown
  • add all the spices, ginger, tomatoes and garlic and stir well – cook for another couple of minutes
  • use a stick blender to gently blend all the mixture together until smooth
  • put the pan back over the heat and add the chicken
  • bring the whole lot to a simmer and cook for about twenty minutes or so – slosh in some water if it starts to thicken too much
  • if you want, slice another onion and quick fry with a little oil in a pan – optional but tasty!

Are you a spicy bird? We’ve got loads of curry recipes!

J

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October 10, 2017

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fakeaways, indian, lunch, pulses and grains, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, travel, vegan, vegetarian

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roasted rainbow aloo gobi – syn free and amazing

Roasted rainbow aloo gobi if you please, and syn free to boot! You know sometimes you make a vegetarian dish and it’s OK but you’re left craving meat like a sex-starved nun? This wasn’t the case with this – in fact, it was so tasty and colourful we ended up making it again the next day. Then had the leftovers the day after. By that point the neighbours were banging on the window sure, so fetid and thick was the fart-air billowing from under our door, that someone had died. So, make it, but be warned: your leather cheerio will turn black and die.

You know, it’s a wonder I don’t get asked to write the recipes for Woman’s Weekly. Anyway, before we get to the pure sex that is the aloo gobi, you’re going to have to endure a night out with us, as it’s part four of our Benidorm trip. We’ve even got videos for you! Don’t want to read all our shite? That’s fine. I’ve put in a shortcut button. yes, for this one, you just need to click on the OLD MONA WHO’LL LET ANYONE CHUCK THEIR PAINT ON HER FACE below:

Possibly the classiest photo we’ve ever had on here and I’ve used it to make a spunk joke. Eee, what am I like. Shall we continue?

click here for part one | click here for part two | click here for part three

When you last left us we had endured a breakfast buffet, met our doubles and sizzled by the pool for far longer than could be considered reasonable for a travel blog. Remember that time, we had hope in our eyes.

We used the day to plan for the night ahead, with an eye to having a bit of dinner somewhere local to the hotel and then heading out to a place we’d heard excellent reviews about – the Showboat, just up the road. Dinner was so awful that I can’t remember where we went, only that it was exactly like the slop you get in lay-bys from people who’ve used their food hygiene certificate to wipe their arse with. I’ve been told you can eat well in Benidorm and it’s undoubtedly true, but every single place we looked at within about half a mile’s mince from the hotel were full to the brim with people pointing at pictures of egg and chips on the laminated menu. If my memory serves me correctly, Paul had a hot-dog and I had a club sandwich. Presumably the Club the sandwich referred to was the Cavern Club because this sandwich tasted like it was made back in the sixties – I’ve never had to dip a sandwich in my pint before to moisten it.

Showboat, then. I’m not too sure how to couch my experience of the place, really – not least because we drank 11 pints each over the course of the entire evening. People in our facebook group were treated to some wonderfully awful videos, I can assure you. Let me say that the staff were lovely, the venue was clean and the toilet, far from the Trainspotting homage I expected, was spotless. We’d shuffled in at 8pm and had the place to ourselves – the entertainment such as it was started at 9pm so we decided on a game of pool. There was one pool cue and well, the lines on the table weren’t especially clear.

Like playing at The Crucible!

I won, because I always do when it comes to pool – Paul’s flipper-arms make holding the cue difficult – and then it was time to get a round in and enjoy the first act: a Tina Turner impersonation. Here’s the thing: when your opening gambit is a declaration that despite appearances, you’re not actually a man in drag, then it rather sets the tone. She (and she was a she, I could see no Nutbush City Limits under her straining skirt) was really good! She belted out a few of the classics, though I did feel sorry for her when she tried to get the audience up on stage – the front two rows looked like they couldn’t manage to breathe unassisted let alone jive through Proud Mary. She gamely pressed on.

We don’t need another hero. We just need someone to call a nurse.

Things reached a pinnacle when it came to River Deep Mountain High – one of my favourite songs. You know it – it has a great lead-in and then straight into Tina singing. I was all ready to stand up and clap and throw my knickers on the stage (the size of the fuckers meant they’d probably come back down in someone’s tapas in Valencia) but there was a problem – she uttered the first line and then stopped. Completely forgotten the words. I was devastated: I was itching to see her strut/stumble through my favourite, and it wasn’t to be. I yelled out that she must leave Ike before he did any more serious damage and, taking this on board, she carried on and saw it through to the end. Towards the closing notes I saw our doppelgängers arrive and take seats near the front. We exchanged glances. Tina shuffled off. More drinks for everyone.

Then came Stella Artois. A drag act. I’m going to hold my hands up here and say outright, I’m not a huge fan of drag unless it’s done superbly well. This guy wasn’t. Actually no, let’s rewrite that a bit: I don’t mind drag acts, but I don’t like the fact that some people seem to think it gives them a licence to be an abrasive, nasty arsehole. Stella was absolutely in this second category. They opened with a few gags which actually did make me laugh (and listen, I’m not a hard person to please, I’m probably the only person in Britain who’ll happily sit through You’ve Been Framed) and then boy oh boy did that show degenerate quickly. It’s pretty bad when you’re hearing material stolen from Peter Kay’s early work, it’s even worse when it’s from Bob bloody Monkhouse. I think if the crowd hadn’t been (barely) lapping it up he’d have started a Vera Lynn singalong.

That’s when things just got worse and worse. I’m all for a coarse gag – as evidenced in nearly every single post on here – but make it funny. I thought we’d reached a low point when he was talking about his arsehole but then the racist stuff followed. We’re not just talking like the naff racist gags you expect in a flat-roof social club but just vile shit about blowing up mosques and *clutch my sides* not seeing a white face in Birmingham. Jim and Saul were slapping their knees and sloshing their campari all over their shoes at the ‘humour’ whereas I was hoping to find blood in my urine just to cheer myself up. The show lasted an hour during which we anaesthetised ourselves with a lot more booze and making videos for the group. Not going to lie, we were thankful when they tottered off the stage, though I admit I was fretful about whether or not she would get back to Peterborough in time to put tea on for Paul’s brother.

I’m kidding, he looked nowt like Paul’s mother. She’s got a much more pronounced beard.

Anyway, Stella fucked off, and I thought the entertainment was over the night but then, WHAM! On came a George Michael tribute act. He was so much better! He looked more like George Osborne than George Michael but he could belt out a tune and that’s all that matters. He did all the classics: Fast Love, Careless Whisper, Faith, shot his load up the cubicle door in the gents, the lot. It was great fun. At one point he asked the crowd for their favourites – I, buoyed by more alcohol units than is sensible for a man of my obesity, shouted LAST CHRISTMAS. He immediately sniped back that that was a stupid suggestion because it was September, to which I shouted back that he was supposed to be dead, so all bets were off. He sang Freedom with a proper sulk on.

We left, though I took a moment to step on my double’s foot as I walked past. I like to think my weight on his foot dislodged a fragment of his doubtless infected toenail which shot straight to his heart, leading to a full cardiac arrest later in the holiday. Fucker shouldn’t have stolen my beans and/or looked like me. After a long stumble down the street, we were in bed, snoring and farting the rest of the night away.

Anyway, we made a supercut of the night for your viewing pleasure. You have no idea how long it took to make this faintly appropriate for the blog – the amount of bits we had to cut out just so we didn’t get shut down / put on the front pages of the tabloids, well, you’ll never know.

Oh and if you’re wondering how we were feeling the next morning…

I know, imagine waking up next to that breathing at you from across the pillows. To be honest, you’ve got the far better view out of the two available to you at that point.

Part five will surely come, but first, we really ought to crack on with the aloo gobi, yes? Before I go – all of that above and the sentence I’m most pleased with is the WHAM remark. I chuckled away to myself with that one.

REMEMBER, leave us some feedback on the holiday entries!

This makes enough for easily four people, whether as a side or a full main. You could chuck some red peppers in to increase the colour still further. I got the basic idea from my absolute favourite Indian cookery book, Made in India by Meera Sodha. There’s not a recipe I’ve made yet that hasn’t been absolutely gorgeous, so hats off to her. You can buy the book dirt cheap on Amazon! She recommends making this as a light salad and serving in a poppadom with crushed peanuts, but as I can almost hear Mags clutching her Facebook-raffle-prize pearls from here, I’ve slimmed it down a little.

rainbow aloo gobi

rainbow aloo gobi

to make roasted rainbow aloo gobi, you’ll need:

  • 500g of new potatoes – if you get Jersey potatoes or similar, they’ll be nice and yellow
  • 600g of cauliflower – to make it rainbow, buy rainbow cauliflowers – Marks and Spencers sell them – they come in yellow, white and purple
  • two large red onions
  • one big bastard bag of spinach
  • 1 tin of chickpeas
  • three cloves of garlic, minced (use one of these bad boys – you’ll save your fingers and you don’t need to fart about peeling the garlic)
  • 1 tsp of cumin seeds or half a teaspoon of ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon of chilli flakes
  • salt and black pepper
  • spray oil, but not Frylight, because you’re so much better than that muck
  • red pepper optional

Let’s quickly talk about oil, for those that haven’t been with us since the beginning. Here’s the thing: we don’t like Frylight. It’s pushed too hard in a lot of recipes and it tastes like poo. We prefer to use a good olive oil (and if we’re absolutely honest, we don’t syn it – never have) but for the sake of you lot, we always factor the syns in. Most of the time for blog recipes we recommend using a spray oil – you’ll get enough from 10 sprays and that’s 1 syn according to the calculator. Divided between four, up to you if you syn such a negligible amount. We use one of these filled up with olive oil but listen, you can buy spray oil in the shops. Just look for the Frylight, knock them over, choose something decent. It’s your body – why eat plastic crap if you don’t have to do so?

to make roasted rainbow aloo gobi, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • chop your new potatoes into similar sized chunks
  • pick the cauliflower apart into chunky little florets
  • arrange them both on a baking tray, spritz them with a few sprays of oil, scatter over the garlic, chilli, cumin/cumin seeds and then season with a lot of salt and black pepper
  • into the oven they go for thirty minutes or so, turning them every now and then
  • meanwhile, thinly slice your onion and pepper if using, then gently sweat them in a few sprays of oil – cook them slowly mind, let them sweat and golden and caramelise
  • add the chickpeas (drained, obviously) then the spinach so it wilts down
  • mix in the potatoes and cauliflower and serve!

Super tasty and easy to make.

Want more ideas? You greedy bugger!

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Enjoy!

J

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May 7, 2017

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asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata

Hey there! After yesterday’s overnight oats recipe, we’re mixing it up a little and going for a lunch idea! A frittattatatatatataaatataatata. Or however it is meant to be spelled. A frittata is an excellent Slimming World lunch idea because a) you can hoy any old shite into it and b) as long as that any old shite doesn’t contain Wispa bars and bottles of Becks, it’ll probably be syn free. Plus it’ll keep in the fridge until time immemorial and depending how fancy you want to be, doesn’t cost that much to make! WINNER.

I have a favour to ask: if you enjoy tonight’s entry, please share it! Or leave some feedback. Make me happy.

So my recipe for asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata will follow, but first, remember how I said I was doing short posts for the week and a long post on the weekend? Well, I’m true to my word. Here’s the long one. Just relax, take it easy – push out a bit, grit your teeth, bite the pillow – it’ll make it so much easier for you. Let me take you to the third and final part of our caravan holiday. Parts one and two are linked below. I’ve even set them to open in a new window for your viewing pleasure…

REMEMBER OUR CAVEAT! Loads of people out there love caravanning. If you’re one of them, don’t get sand in your vag just because it didn’t look like it would be our cup of tea. Everyone has different tastes, remember! 

click here for part one | click here for part two

We were just drifting off to the land of nod when suddenly: sex noises. Worse: unexpected sex noises that were not our own. From a nearby caravan, echoing from their open window into our dreams.

You’ve never lived until you’ve tried to doze off to the sounds of a long-married couple having the most perfunctory sex you’ve ever heard echoing around a tiny caravan bedroom. They must have left their window open (presumably because it was such a hot-bed of sin in there) and so we were treated to him grunting like a stuck pig and her saying ‘yeah’ and ‘oooh’ in the same disinterested manner as someone choosing a wedding toaster from the Argos catalogue. Thankfully the eighteen pints of Stella sloshing in his belly didn’t put him off and he came to a thundering climax in no time at all, complete with loud feverish gasps and cries to a point where I nearly threw on my slacks and rushed out shouting ‘I’M DEFIBRILLATOR TRAINED! SHAVE HIS CHEST!’. Thankfully he was too much of a gentleman to worry about her satisfaction and his snoring, together with what sounded like an electric toothbrush playing a tennis racket, soon wafted into our bedroom. I rolled over, put Brain of Britain on, and we wandered off to sleep.

Only to be rudely awoken with Round 2 forty minutes later. Clearly there has been a buy one get one free on Viagra down at the social cluuuurb because, god save us, he was going for a silver medal. This time the whole experience so much longer, presumably because the pipes had recently been cleaned, and even though we shut the window, we could still hear squelch and creak. It sounded like two people carrying a sofa up a tight flight of stairs. If that’s what straight sex sounds like, I’ll stick with the cock, thank you. You tend to know where you are with a cock. Anyway, this time, when he shot his bolt, we both gave him a cheery round of applause – then hid under our duvet in case he came to our window. Poor lamb must have had jelly legs though because he stayed put. Thankfully that was it for the night and indeed, the weekend.

We awoke fresh-faced the next morning and, faced with eight years on the game just to pay for a box of off-brand cornflakes and a pint of on-the-turn-milk from the on-site shop, we decided to go out for breakfast. A quick neb on Tripadvisor revealed The Riverside Cafe as the place to be so we hopped into town, parked up on the wrong side of the river and waddled our way down. We took barely any photos on this holiday but if I show you this one, it’ll sum up ‘British seaside’ perfectly for you.

Have you ever seen a more depressed seagull? Well…

WAKE ME UP INSIDE SAAAAAAAVE ME

When we arrived at the cafe it was completely full. Paul dissolved into floods of tears and I bravely asked if we could reserve a table. They advised us to nip back in about half an hour, leaving us to stumble around the nearby docks for thirty minutes. That was Paul’s suggestion – I wanted to press my watery-eyed face up against the window, wailing in anguish, until a table was cleared out of sheer discomfort. We returned 10 minutes later than planned because we thought it would look unseemly and too keen to turn up on time – I didn’t want all the customers thinking that we were so fat and greedy that we couldn’t wait. We were then faced with the next dilemma: as two confirmed fatties we were clearly in need of the biggest fry-up option but we didn’t want to drown in tuts so we had to go for the middle breakfast, which was still enough to fell a horse. It was delicious. I love a fry-up but people can get it so wrong – I once received a fry-up with friggin’ spinach on it. Why? Who thinks ‘yes, I want crippling chest pains and iron’ when they order breakfast? Don’t worry, I hurled it off the wall and stomped out. I can heartily recommend The Riverside Cafe though – lovely staff too!

Bellies full, we gasped, wheezed and cardiac-arrested our way back to the car and decided on a jaunt over the causeway to Holy Island to start the day. A quick glance at the tide timetable clarified that we wouldn’t be swept away to Norway and so we were set. You’d be amazed how many cars ignore the fact that THE FUCKING NORTH SEA SWALLOWS THE ROAD UP twice a day. We’re not talking about driving through a puddle that you can drive through like a twat! Yet we see loads of the buggers on the news, always in massive twatmobiles, bobbing around in the water with the good folks of the RNLI rescuing them. I think that’s the wrong approach. If I was in charge, I’d knock down the emergency refuge tower, then whenever some dickhead in an oversized Audi got stuck, I’d send someone out in the boat to put their windows through with a hammer and drown the arseholes for their own stupidity. I’m sorry, but I think that’s a perfectly rational response. I’d play Nearer My God To Thee over the boat’s PA system as they sank beneath the waves blubbing mindlessly about their children.

We, not being mouthbreathing numbskulls, made it over safely and parked up. We are members of the National Trust (you may recall Paul is a Rear Admiral and I am a Doctor when it comes to the National Trust, which makes small-talk super awkward when they comment on it as they check our passes) and so parking was free. Which was great, because the bloody castle was completely closed. Oh and the rain. I’d have been drier if we had got stuck on the bloody causeway. We wandered a bit around the little village but it was just so relentlessly miserable that we didn’t stay. We tried – we paid a few quid for a look around the Lindisfarne museum which was full of helpful staff and dated displays, though we were glad to have a bit of a nana-nap in the tiny cinema. We nipped into the nearby shop to buy some mead but after tasting it and realising I’d sooner drink battery acid, we bought an overpriced bottle of gin and made for the car. On a sunny day Holy Island is tremendous and there’s some beautiful walks and views to be afforded, but today was not that day.

After a quick reconnoitre of our available options in the local area we decided to make for a nearby honey farm, thinking at least we’d be able to get ourselves a scone and make the best of a bad day. We struggled to find the place, taking a brief but arresting diversion into a farmer’s field, but soon the big double-decker that serves as their cafe loomed into view. Hooray, but no, the place was closed for the season, despite showing as being open on Tripadvisor. Ah well. These things happen. We spotted something called Conundrum Farm which had a petting zoo and if there’s one thing I like doing on a caravan holiday, it’s handling a snake until it spits in my eye. The farm was aptly named – we went to the address on the website only to end up in the middle of nowhere, Scotland, gazing at a muddy field. We changed tack (because what fools we were for believing a website) and navigated using Google, who took us to an industrial estate. Truly, we were seeing the best of Berwick. Remembering that I’d seen a sign for a village called Conundrum when driving up to Edinburgh, we doubled down and went back over the border, followed the signs…and it was shut.

No mention of that on their website, either.

You can imagine, can’t you, how thrilled I was by this whole day, spent driving aimlessly through brown countryside in the pissing rain to visit a collection of closed signs because no-one could be arsed updating their websites? There’s so many comments about Conundrum Farm being ‘hard to find’ on Tripadvisor and yet, here we were – why not, oh I don’t know, put up a SIGN? Some directions on the website? Hell I’d settle for chalk arrows on tiles like Sarah had in Labyrinth if it meant not fucking about in a Smart car on the borders. BAH. We cycled through the rest of the options available only to find everything closed for the season, not open on a weekend or condemned. Clearly it was beyond the wit of man for local businesses to sync up with the first week of the season at the caravan park, eh?

I wish I could tell you we managed to fill the rest of the two days with jolly-hockey-stick activities, long rambles by the sea and urgent outdoor sex, but the first two eluded us and we were asked to stop the third because we were putting people off their fish and chips. We spent it for the most part curled up inside the very comfortable caravan watching Come Dine with Me and spilling dip on the carpet. Our evenings were spent watching Vera-like-Pet and drinking overpriced booze in the bar.

The only other notable moment was on the last night we decided to have another crack at the prize bingo. This time I confess to being rather tanked up on Stella and was far more into it than last time. You could have cut the tension with a knife, not least because I reckon about 60% of the blokes were probably carrying them. And 80% of the women – they were picking their tooth with them. Yes, deliberate.

The prize – a little better this time given we were playing for money – was in sight, but some fucker called house with me only needing one more number. My reaction was typical of my subtle, respectful nature – I shouted bastard out loud (the kids weren’t allowed inside). Ooops. Someone who looked about twelve and had less hair on his upper lip than I do on my big toe told me to ‘show some respect’ or he’d have me removed. I’ve never felt so admonished in all of my life. Was Bingo Fever catching and had it truly got a hold on me? Am I going to become one of those folks you see standing outside of Mecca Bingo in the pissing rain, trying to light a car-boot Superkings against the wind and putting far too much bronzer onto my crinkle-cut face? Paul removed me from the building before I had a chance to contemplate getting one of those clown-pendant necklaces and filling out a giro form.

We went back to the caravan and sobered up by having a tiny shower and a tiny poo in the tiny toilet. Living like queens! The night flew by in a blur of my frozen feet, thankfully no sex noises but plenty of moaning and groaning from Paul who was too hot, too cold, too boxed in, too far away, too fast, too furious, blah blah. I put my headphones in and stopped paying attention. We drove back the next morning and that was the caravan holiday done.

You know what? I bloody loved it. Even though literally nothing happened, literally, yeah, literally, it was a fun, relaxing weekend break. Yes, the park was super expensive for everything when you’re there but hey, there was a Tesco only fifteen minutes away, we were just too lazy to bother going. They nickel-and-dime you on everything but then, if you’re only paying £9.50 for a night, can you really complain? The caravan was spotlessly clean and very nicely put together and it destroyed my snobby preconceptions of caravan living, which was everything would smell of foist, other people’s jizz and chip-fat. No, I couldn’t smell any chip fat. Yes, there were plenty of your ‘stereotypical’ Sun readers wandering around and I did at times fear for my life but for the most part, it was lovely. There’s something just so romantic about trying desperately to scrub taramasalata out of a cream carpet on a rainy Sunday evening.

Would I go again? No, not to the same park, because why shit in the same toilet twice? I know, I paint such a pretty picture with my words. But the park itself, from the facilities to every single member of staff I met, was charming. Berwick was about as exciting as listening to the dial tone but hey, it’s a coastal town, not Benidorm. Thank god. Because can you imagine us two in Benidorm? Funny you should say that…

All done!

Let’s get to the asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata, shall we? Now look here. If you don’t like goat cheese, don’t use it. Not a fan of asparagus and the resultant piss that smells like something has died in your bladder? Understandable. Bacon get right on your boobs? Of course. Just swap them out for whatever you want. That’s the joy here – you can use anything! You will, however, need an oven-proof pan if you have one, it’ll just make life easier.

This made enough for 8 large slices. Oh and the ingredients are very fast and loose – feel free to change the quantities.


asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata

asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata

to make an asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata, you’ll need:

  • about 500g of small new potatoes, cut into little cubes – not an exact science, you’re not making a Lego set, calm your tits
  • roughly 250g of asparagus – chopped into 1cm chunks – we had fancy black asparagus from Tesco because we’re just so damned fine
  • two large red onions, chopped finely
  • a few rashers of bacon, or chopped ham if you prefer, grilled off and diced up
  • 40g of soft goat cheese (1 x HEA)
  • 40g of lighter mature cheese (1 x HEA)
  • 7 or 8 eggs

Looking for a decent frying pan but not super expensive? A pan like this will serve you well!

to make an asparagus, goat cheese and bacon frittata, you should:

  • boil your cubes of potato and asparagus for about five minutes, just to take the bite off
  • meanwhile, fry off your onion and cooked bacon in a few sprays of olive oil until softened
  • pop the bacon, onion, asparagus and potato in a bowl with the goat cheese cut up into chunks
  • beat the eggs together with a good pinch of salt and black pepper and about half the grated cheese –
  • mix in with everything else, give it a good stir, then slop it all into the pan, sprinkling the rest of the cheese on top
  • you want to cook it for about 10 minutes or so on a medium heat just so the egg starts to firm up
  • whack it under the grill for about five to ten minutes – keep an eye on it, you want it to firm up, you’re not cremating the bugger
  • allow to cool, slice, and enjoy!

Eee I know, we do spoil you. Want yet more recipes? MORE?

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Enjoy!

J

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January 8, 2017

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two chubby club sandwiches

The recipe for two chubby club sandwiches is coming, but first, oh god…

I swear, on my nana’s little blue dolphin ornament, if I read one more bloody word about these ASDA Slimzone meals, I’m going to burst into flame. And I’m severely obese, I’ll go up like a fucking chip pan fire hurled into a swimming pool. What a ruddy hoo-hah! You’d think ASDA were adding lard to the country’s water supply the way people are foaming and revolting. I’ve seen so many armchair lawyers stating that SW will sue (for what?) and it’s false advertising (it isn’t) and ‘ASDA should be ashamed’ – pfft! If ASDA launched a new ice-cream tomorrow that had zero syns all these naysayers would be thundering down the aisles before you could say ‘but please, a bit of restraint’. I said the same when Slimming World launched their ready-meals in Iceland: they are there if you need them. Frankly, having tried each one, I wouldn’t feed them to a rabid dog to distract him from chewing on my throat, but that’s just me. Wait and see what SW syn them at and then plan them into your diet accordingly. It’s that simple. It isn’t the End of Days. Competition is good. We know the SW diet works and this just gives us more choice. Things could have been handled better on all sides but it is what it is and I encourage each and all to stop crashing their gashes over it.

Fuck me, we need a palate cleanser now, don’t we? Well, the good news is: it’s Paul’s birthday. Yes, the French to my Saunders, the Canestan to my cystitis, the Myra to my Ian, has turned 31. Years, not stone, just to be clear. He still looks young and fresh-faced to me, though: those crinkling wrinkles around his eyes are the result for laughing so hard at all my many jokes and witty observations, I’m sure, either that or I’m not putting enough lube on when I’m round the back doing delivering the milk. To celebrate, I’m posting a rare picture of him in his true form.

I LEFT MY IRON AWN

I LEFT MY IRON AWN

Just stunning!

Before I get to the meat of the story, I want to tell you what I bought him: a box of silliness. Paul is impossible to buy for because a) we buy what we want during the year and b) the rules this year were no food, clothes, smelly stuff, books, DVDs, days out or anything flash. I was tempted to fart in a box and wrap that up but I didn’t want to be mean. So instead I bought a lovely box from John Lewis and filled it with nonsense like a large horn, a tiny suitcase, sweets and other flim-flam. He loved it. To get to his present though he had to solve the giant treasure hunt that I’d set up for him because I’m a vexing sod. At least I kept this one to the house, unlike the first hunt I ever did.

That was a bloody corker. We used to live in the centre of Newcastle so I made the clues start around our flat and then fan out across the city. Want some ideas that I used? I wrote a clue in giant letters over the walls of our airing cupboard in UV paint, meaning he had to shut himself into the cupboard so it was pitch black and then use the little UV light on his keyring to find the clue. I froze a tiny clue the size of a match in a giant block of ice in the freezer. I wrote a clue on the bottom of a tin of peaches and put it back on the shelves in the co-op. My favourite though? I sealed a clue in a test-tube, corked it off, tied a ridiculously long length of fishing wire to the test-tube, tied that to the pillars on the quayside and then threw the tube in the water. His clue? ‘Go fishing’. Mahaha! Similarly, I stuck a clue to a helium balloon and then tied it with a 30m piece of fishing line to the railing on our balcony with the clue “Up”.

It took him three weeks to finish but we got there in the end. Anyway, back to now.

We celebrated the way we always do – spent the morning in bed farting and snoring then went out for the day. I told Paul that we could do anything he wanted to do for his birthday – he chose to go to a coal museum. Not quite the going down a shaft that I had in mind for the day, but hey, lady’s choice.

It actually wasn’t bad at all. See, Northumberland is very much a mining county, though far less so now. The earth underfoot was more pockmarked and scarred than a teenage boy’s face. The place where I live was a mining village until Margaret Thatcher came in and started being a slut. There’s more to it than that I’m sure but this isn’t the right place for political discussion. Anyway, we have a museum dedicated to coal mining not a kick off the arse from us, so away we went. Here’s an unusual thing: we weren’t robbed blind for entry and it was interesting, thoughtfully put together and maintained well. Good work Woodhorn!

We had the place to ourselves save for a braying foursome of hoorayers in Hunters Wellies who were loudly rah-rah-ing their way around the place. I inadvertently upset one of them when I told Paul to ‘hold back from the next exhibition as those toothy dickheads are still in there’, only for one of them to immediately appear in the doorway in front of me. I brazened it out and nothing was said. Listen, we were in a memorial to young lads who died in a pit explosion and they were carrying on like Jigsaw had just announced an Everything Must Go sale. Pfft.

We spent twenty minutes listening to two local old men describing their old mining roles, with me translating for Paul what they were saying as by God the Geordie accent was strong. I felt like the wee woman signing away in the corner of the telly during the night only I was mouthing ‘ROAD’ (ruuuurd) and ‘JOB’ (juuurb) and ‘BIT OF A POOR SPORT’ (haway y’fuckin’ radgie fucka) and ‘PRIME MINISTER MARAGARET THATCHER’ (eeee worra fuckin’ wuuurky ticket). He still looked bemused. I got my money’s worth out of the facilities by spending fifteen minutes sobbing and clutching my belly in the lavatories (we’d ordered Indian takeaway the night before, and by god was I seeing it again today) and then we made our way back to the car to head home.

Well, not quite. We spotted a little ramshackle narrow-guage railway just by the car park and, as luck would have it, a little train was just chugging its way into the station. There was no throng of people waiting to board so we thought why not and, after buying a ticket for a return (£2: can’t get vexed) journey, we climbed aboard. I saw the driver look at us and wince and well, they didn’t need to make such a big show of coupling another engine to the back of the train, you know? I jest.

Well – if I was reviewing this on TripAdvisor – I’d file it under ‘God bless them, they tried’. I’m sure it was meant for children, not two twenty-stone blokes with hairy arses and bad attitudes, but there’s only so much fun to be had from spluttering your way half a mile around a lake in the rain.

Oh, look, I’m being mean. It was exactly what you’d expect a £2 train ride to be, and I’m being churlish to moan about it. Good on them for a) not making it all tatty and themed and b) not ripping people off. Give it a go! The driver enjoyed it so much he had to tell all of his friends, which explained why he was looking at his phone the whole way. We crested a hill and saw that our destination was the other side of the lake where a Brewer’s Fayre pub awaited. Brewer’s Fayre is bad enough but on a Sunday? I’d have enjoyed it more if the train had derailed into the lake. We stayed on-board and made our way back through the forest, this time waving gaily at all the little children who the train was clearly designed for. We tried to Facebook Live the whole experience but Paul forgot to press record, so that’s that.

As we approached the car park for the second time I asked Paul what he fancied next and he said a club sandwich. He knows how to party, our kid. Anyway, knowing that ice-queen Margaret Brambles wouldn’t give a shiny shite whether it was his birthday or not, I set about trying to make a decent syn-free version, and here we are. As I’m a huge fan of word-play, I’ve called it two chubby clubs because it makes TWO FAT CLUB SANDWICHES! I know, right? I should be on the telly! Let’s do this. The recipe below is for one big sandwich, scale up as appropriate.

two chubby club sandwiches

two chubby club sandwiches

to make two chubby club sandwiches, you’ll need:

  • bread of your choice – we used seeded bread because it’s Paul’s birthday and we don’t care, but to keep it SW friendly you’ll need to use three slices of Kingsmill Wholemeal Crusts Away bread as your HEB
  • one big fat juicy tomato
  • three bacon medallions with the fat cut off
  • nice green lettuce
  • one bouncy and juicy chicken breast
  • one large egg
  • greek yoghurt (get the 0% fat version, keep it syn free)
  • any kind of hot sauce – optional – we used sriracha which is half a syn per tablespoon – we actually should have synned that I suppose, but it makes enough ‘sauce’ for two sandwiches, so quarter of a syn? Up to you!

You can get bacon and chicken from our massive Musclefood deal, just saying. Click here and relax, it’ll open in a new window. Plus the chicken isn’t full of water and nonsense and the bacon medallions cook well! Come on, let the Cubs fill your box once and for all!

to make two chubby club sandwiches, you should:

  • way really, it’s just a case of assembling your sandwich – I included a picture above so you can see what I mean, but here’s what is on each slice – read the recipe through first and then get everything on the go at once
  • make up some sauce by combining greek yoghurt with the hot sauce – or you know, syn some mayonnaise like a normal folk
  • toast your bread and keep it to one side
  • spread some sauce on one slice and top with freshly cut tomatoes
  • grill your bacon and put it on top of the lettuce and a bit of sauce on the second slice
  • you’re BACON me crazy, right?
  • boil up your egg and mush it up in a bowl with a tiny bit of greek yoghurt and lots of black pepper
  • for the chicken, I butterfly the breast (cut through horizontally most of the way through but don’t go all the way, baby – then fry it off in a good non-stick pan but instead of using oil, use lemon juice – make sure it doesn’t stick though. If you’re feeling all classy then you could use a griddle pan, hark at you
  • assemble

We served ours with chips because we’re fat and can handle all the carbs. You can leave stuff out if you don’t like it, add stuff in – it’s a veritable hokey-cokey of sandwiches.

Looking for more snacks? Sandwiches? Drink? Food? Click on the buttons and gorge yourself silly on our words!

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I’m sure you’ll all join in wishing Fattychops a happy birthday!

J

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October 12, 2016

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droptober recipe #12: oompa poompa one-pot

Just a recipe post for oompa poompa one-pot tonight folks because your poor writer has hurt his arm – I say I, no, Paul decided that what I needed was for him to lie on my arm all night long. Paul’s a big guy and whilst I’ve got strong arms, it really bloody hurts. Don’t worry, I took the liberty of pulling out a couple of individual bum hairs of his to make up for the pain. Oh I’m a stinker. Plus, Bake-Off. I’ve got a nice article queued up for tomorrow so no need to shit the bed just yet.

I’m calling this oompa-poompa-one-pot because Christ almighty, you’ll be oompa-poomparing all night long. It involves sauerkraut, a sort of pickled cabbage, and although that might sound disgusting and you might shriek into your hands at the very thought, it actually adds a lovely note of flavour. Leave it out if you want – you’ll still be shouting ‘…HOLD ON MR BROWN, WE’RE SENDING HELP’ long into the night. This makes two big bowls of loveliness.

oompa poompa one pot

to make oompa poompa one-pot you will need:

  • 6 sausages (the sausages in our Big Meaty Package are perfect!) (3 syns)
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 large carrot, slices and halved
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp pepper
  • ½ tsp oregano
  • 500ml chicken stock
  • 200g basmati rice
  • 1 tomato, chopped
  • 450g sauerkraut

to make oompa-poompa one-pot you should:

  • heat a large casserole dish over a medium-high heat, spray in some oil (use this – it’s cheaper and better than Frylight!) and cook the sausages until done – then remove from the pan, leave to cool a bit and slice into discs)
  • in the same pan, add a little more oil and then the onion, garlic and carrot and cook until softened
  • add the salt, pepper and oregano to the pan and give it a stir
  • next, add the stock, rice and chopped tomato to the pan and give another stir
  • cover and cook over a low heat until the liquid has evaporated and the rice is cooked – about 10-12 minutes or so
  • remove from the heat and stir in the sauerkraut, allowing it to heat through and bubble off some of the vinegar in it
  • serve and enjoy immediately!

Looking for more recipes? We give you more, don’t worry: click the buttons!

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Thanks all!

J

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August 8, 2016

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cubby’s chocolate orange overnight oats

Right, before we get to the recipe for chocolate orange overnight oats, I have to inform you that our Musclefood discount week is back – we don’t get told in advance of these but apparently, because we’re selling so well, they can give us a discount of 10% on both our boxes for five days only. I don’t normally throw the advert in right from the off but well, if you need meat, it’s a good deal and it’s a limited offer! Click either deal below and you’re good to go. I promise that we’ll be a smidge more subtle with the ads on the rest of the week – it’s the only advertising we do though and it keeps the lights on at Cubs Towers, so…

FREEZER FILLER: 5kg (24/26) of big fat chicken breasts, 2kg (5 portions of 400g) less than 5% fat mince, 700g of bacon, 800g of extra lean diced beef and free standard delivery – use TCCFREEZER at checkout – £45 delivered!

BBQ BOX: 5kg (24/26) of big fat chicken breasts, two Irish rump steaks, 350g of bacon, 6 half-syn sausages, twelve giant half-syn meatballs, 400g diced turkeys, two juicy one syn burgers, two bbq chicken steaks, free delivery, season and 400g seasoned drumsticks (syn-free when skin removed) – use TCCSUMMER at checkout – £45 delivered!

Remember, you can choose the day you want it delivered and order well in advance – place an order now for a couple of weeks time and they’ll only take the payment once the meat is dispatched! Right, that’s enough of that.

You know what really boils my piss? Being told my opinion is invalid because I’m ‘young’. For a start, let’s be frank, given my diet, years of smoking and tendency to mainline gin after a hard day at work, I’m probably comfortably into the dotage of my life. I’m about two doddery steps away from putting a tartan blanket over my legs and calling it a day. I mean, I’ve already mentioned that I enjoy The Archers, but did you know I’ve also developed a tic of making proper old man noises when I get up from a chair? The noise isn’t just air escaping from my blubber, either, it’s a proper ‘ooooooof’. There’s no hope. So I’m certainly not ‘young’.

The reason I mention all of this is due to yet another facebook argument I’ve been having with the elders of the town where I live. I joined a facebook group full of people discussing the current events around our town and it is absolutely awash with bloody moaners. I live in a great place but seemingly every Tom, Dickhead and Harry who would previously moan to their wives behind the net curtains has joined to put in their thoughts. It’s full of people looking at their shoes and feeling sorry for themselves because ‘our town doesn’t get this’ and ‘that town gets that and we get nothing’. If there was an emoji of someone twisting a cloth cap between their hands with watery, sad eyes, it’s all you’d see on this group. I can’t stand it. Despite my constant moaning on here, I’m a pretty chipper person and certainly a firm believer in making do with what you’ve got.

So, naturally, I end up bickering. I point out that we’re unlikely to get a leisure centre of our own given there’s one within four miles of us in each compass direction, but that’s not good enough. I explain that we don’t have a swimming pool because there’s bloody five within a ten minute drive – that’s me being unreasonable. I mentioned that another town near us pays a tonne more council tax, has more residents and thus, has a tennis court, and you’d think I’d shat on their Wiltshire Farm Foods blended lasagne. I’ll have a discussion back and forth with anyone and I’m always unfailingly polite, even if I did get a stern lecture of swearing from one of the crinklies when I used the word bloody. But they always play the trump card: ‘you’re young, you don’t understand’.

Paul tells me that my retaliation of: ‘you’re old, you’ll be dead soon enough and you can’t get a coffin down a water-slide’ is churlish at best. I agree, so I merely think it to myself. But see it really does vex me that my opinion is apparently worth less because I’m ‘young’. I may be young, but I own my own house, I’ve worked since I was 16, I’m sensible and eloquent and I try my best not to fart in committee meetings. My opinion is as valid as someone who can’t type for their bottom lip hitting the keyboard.

Manners between the old and the young seem to be a very one-way street. We hear a lot about how rude kids are and how badly treated old folk are (and I hasten to add – anyone who is rude to an old person is an arsehole, absolutely) but never the other way around. I’ve had plenty of experiences with old folk pushing into queues with that resolute cats-arse-lips-face that says don’t fuck with me, I’ve got razor sharp shards of glacier mints in my winceyette cardigan.

I’ve been sworn at by old ladies during bingo. When I worked at BT in the complaints department, it was the elderly who had the most entitled, brusque manners. I was told by someone to stick my ‘1471 up my arse’ when I had the temerity to tell her it cost money to press 5 and call back. Charming! I hold doors open only to be met with glazed eyes, a stern look and zero thanks. Hell, I’ve stopped my car in the street to let some whiskery-chinned charmer cross the road with her zimmer without the threat of being turned into lavender jam, only for her to shuffle over the road like an Edinburgh Woollen Mill sponsored snail without so much as a shaky nod of thanks in my direction. Bah.

Perhaps I was spoiled, I don’t know. My own dear nana was a proper nana – she baked scones and played her television so loud that you could solve the Countdown Conundrum on the drive over to see her. She used to take such a large intake of breath when I mouthed the word ‘vacuum’ at Paul that I’m surprised she didn’t get the bends. We used to go over for an hour or so to hear who had died in the village (which she always spoke of with barely hidden relish, the auld ghoul), how she was getting on never taking her tablets (100% record) and to fix all the incorrect answers in her Puzzler.

I do find myself thinking of her a lot in summer, weirdly. It’s been over a year since she died (that entry makes me feel sad, so I don’t read it) and Paul and I are always laughing about things she’d come out with. The reason I think of her in summer is because, despite the glorious sunshine and thirty degree heat, you’d walk into her living room and she’d have her coal fire blazing away, with the rug in front of it always just on the cusp of catching alight. She’d complain she was cold despite us being able to hear the bacon frying in the fridge. Funny what you remember. She’d never shoot your opinion down and always listened. I say listened, she couldn’t hear a bloody thing, so the polite nodding and murmurs of assent were probably just a touch of Parkinsons.

Eee, I’d give anything to have her back.

Anyway, come on, I wasn’t meaning to end on a miserable note. She was always laughing and she’d have loved this blog, despite not being able to understand what the hell I was going on about when I explained the Internet. She thought it consisted purely of people making telephone calls to each other and stealing money. Which I mean it does, but there’s also a lot of pornography too. Tsk.

Right, chocolate orange overnight oats then. Overnight oats tend to be a succession of dry oats, boring yoghurt and disappointment. You’d get more joy eating a bag of asbestos. So don’t do it! We’ve done so many good ones:

Would you believe we’ve even done a savoury full English Breakfast overnight oats? We have! Right here! A few syns, yes, but better than another bloody Hifi bar.

chocolate orange overnight oats

to make cubby’s chocolate orange overnight oats, you’ll need:

  • 40g of Quaker or store-brand oats – we use Quaker because we like them
  • 50g of mandarin segments in juice – 1 syn
  • Muller chocolate orange with dark chocolate sprinkles (syn free)
  • 10g of milk chocolate chips – it’s 6 syns for 25g, so I said it was 2.5 syns for 10g – easy!

to make cubby’s chocolate orange overnight oats, you should:

  • layer the ingredients as above
  • once you’ve taken a photo or showed it off, mix it all up and leave it overnight
  • actually, I like to eat it straight away but the oats don’t soften – this can make your stomach sore, so exercise caution
  • if you’re feeling like a proper slut, pour a little orange juice from the tin into the oats…extra orangey and doesn’t add too many syns

Delicious! Now, if you want more breakfast ideas or overnight oats recipes, click on the buttons below!

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Cheers!

J

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August 3, 2016

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

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stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken

Here for the stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken and don’t want any of my nonsense ruining it? I know right? Well tough titty. If it’s any consolation, I don’t have a lot to say so I’m not going to keep you long, but I do want to fill you in on something exciting.

We have decided we are going to have a new theme on the blog next year: holidays. We love going away, but saving money means that we’re being sensible and not going away. Which is a shame, but we did have six holidays in ten months so really, restrain yourselves. I don’t want to end up with one of those vagina necks from being in the sun too much anyway. So, despite me being one literal click from booking Las Vegas for a December break just yesterday because I was bored at home, we’re being good.

However, next year, we’re doing ten holidays – to celebrate our ten years together (aw). Now, we’re not Rockafella, so these holidays aren’t going to be super glitzy and glam – the idea is that we have ten two-to-four day breaks away over the year, with a set budget for each one. Any money we don’t spend on one holiday can be rolled onto the next, do you see? I get a lot of comments from folks that our travelogues are hilarious, so hopefully this means even more of those. We’re trying to do different types of holiday too – so expect to see us in (possibly!) a proper roughing it camping style holiday, Amsterdam (good grief), possibly somewhere awful like Benidorm, a city break, a coach tour…we’re still mapping it all out – but it’s going to be fun!

I know what you’re thinking – set up a Paypal account and you lot will pay for us to travel the world. It’s tempting, but I’m just not that mercenary. But do us a favour, buy some bloody meat once and a while, if only to pay for the extra fat-seat that Paul needs on the plane. It’s called the cargo deck.

Speaking of meat…

Web

Right, let’s get to the chicken!

stuffed 'n' rolled crunchy chicken

to make stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken, you’ll need:

  • 4 chicken breasts
  • 8 tbsp quark
  • 50g panko (10 syns)
  • 1½ tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp celery salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ¼ tsp garlic salt
  • ¼ tsp garlic powder
  • ½ tsp onion powder
  • pinch of basil
  • pinch of oregano

Can’t get panko? No need to shit the bed, just whizz up a wholemeal breadbun into crumbs. THINK OF THE SYNS SAVING.

to make stuffed ‘n’ rolled crunchy chicken, you should:

  • preheat the oven to 200ºc and line a baking tray with tinfoil
  • in a bowl, mix together the panko, breadcrumbs, paprika, celery salt, black pepper, garlic salt, garlic owder, onion powder, basil and oregano – mix it well as some of the ingredients have a tendency to settle at the bottom of the bowl
  • cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise (like you’re opening out a book) so you’re left with 8 thin breasts – lay them out flat
  • dollop a tablespoon of quark onto the middle of each breast and roll up from one end – don’t worry if it isn’t neat or it oozes out – it won’t matter – and secure with a toothpick
  • drop each roll into the bowl mixture and sprinkle over the panko mix to get an even coating – it should stick quite easily but if it doesn’t just spray with bit of frylight
  • place each roll onto the baking tray and bake for 25 minutes
  • when done, gently pull out the toothpicks before serving

We served this with salsa – Doritos Hot Salsa is 1/2 syn for two tablespoons and you know what, life is too short to be chopping up a bloody salsa.

If you’re looking for more chicken recipes, click on the button below and drool on the carpet with wonder. From your top lips or otherwise.

poultrysmall

Cheers!

J

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August 2, 2016

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lunch, mince, poultry, quark, recipe card, speciality ingredients, syn free

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syn free sweet potato and turkey layered casserole

Turned up for the sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, that’s syn-free and awash with taste? Well, don’t hasten along just yet. A word please, but for once, I’ll make it a quick one.

How do people keep falling for Facebook scams? It’s beyond me. I get it, people are keen for a bargain and would snatch the skin off your face if it meant getting 25% discount at Aldi, but please, exercise just a modicum of common sense. Tesco aren’t giving away 500 gift-cards with £500 quid on them because they’ve turned 50. You can tell that because a) Tesco wouldn’t give away a quarter of a million quid via stay-at-home-mums on facebook ‘buy ‘n’ sell’ pages (the ‘n’ stands for not having THAT in my house because it’s fucking gopping) and b) Tesco wouldn’t give you the steam off its piss.

I only mention it because Alton Towers have had to issue a statement explicitly stating that they’re not running a promotion for five free tickets for each person who shares some crappy low-res and clearly photoshopped picture of a ticket. I just find it perplexing that people get suckered in by crap like that. Surely at some point during the ‘complete X surveys’ and ‘submit your Paypal account details here’ an alarm bell must ring, and presumably that bell is going to be bloody loud because it’s got no brain to muffle the sound? Pfft. If I was in charge of Alton Towers, I’d honour the crummy tickets and put all the people most vocal about it straight on The Smiler – and I’d put the work experience kid in front of the controls. I mean HONESTLY.

This wouldn’t have caused me so much ire if Alton Tower’s official status on Facebook wasn’t awash with people who immediately started twisting their gobs about how Alton Towers had a duty to provide free tickets as compensation. Com-pen-bloody-sation! Listen, you should get compensation if you have your legs blown off by faulty wiring or your eyes smacked from your skull from a falling crane, you don’t deserve compensation just because you got your juicebox in a froth thinking you’d get a free ticket because of some barely literate sharing on Facebook.

Anyway, the last time I went to Alton Towers I had a very reasonable time. Make of that what you will. I enjoyed waiting in the queues for a one minute ride, I loved looking at the delicate displays of litter and wasps and found the experience of applying for a loan just to buy a small fries and hotdog to be remarkably thrilling. I love theme parks but I’ve been utterly spoiled by spending a month in Florida, with the added bonus of not being the fattest person in the park.

My mind boggles.

Speaking of mind boggling, you need to give Stranger Things a go. It was recommended by a friend, who, to her credit, is normally fairly spot-on with her recommendations and tea-making. It’s sublime. Wonderfully shot, gorgeously scored, tightly plotted and just something so unusual on TV these days – a real rare treat. It’s on Netflix and I can’t, in turn, recommend it highly enough. Who knew Winona Ryder (Ryder? I barely knew her!) could act? She’s a revelation. Even the kids can act! How comes whenever we see children on UK television they’re always that unique breed of smug, breathy annoyances with a know-it-all attitude and a name like an old Victoria affliction. OH LITTLE DROPSY, DO COME ALONG, YOU’LL BE LATE FOR YOUR MANDARIN CLASS. That kind of shite.

If it helps sweeten the deal, there’s a policeman in there with a strong jaw and a mean attitude, so at least you’re guaranteed a bit of rain at Fort Bushy.

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Eh?

Let’s get to the bloody casserole, eh, before I give you a nosebleed.

Look, it doesn’t look great, but it’s a good way of getting some speed veg in, it freezes well and you know, you could do worse!

sweet potato and turkey layered casserole

to make sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, you’ll need:

  • 2 large sweet potatoes
  • 500g turkey mince (or use beef mince, and yeah, you’ll get plenty in our box below)
  • 250g bacon medallions (you’ll get some in any of our musclefood deals!)
  • 1 cauliflower, cut into florets
  • 50ml almond milk (this works out at less than 1/3rd of a syn – I didn’t count it but you can if you like)
  • 4 tbsp quark
  • 1 onion, finely diced
  • 150g mushrooms, chopped
  • salt
  • pepper

to make sweet potato and turkey layered casserole, you should:

  • begin by peeling the sweet potatoes and cut into chunks, and add to a pan of boiling water, cook until tender and drain
  • in another pan meanwhile, cook the bacon under a hot grill until crispy – when done, remove from the under the grill and set aside
  • great – now preheat the oven to 180 degrees
  • cook the cauliflower florets in a pan of boiling water, for about 7 minutes (or until tender)
  • over a sink, drain the cauliflower and put into a food processor (or blender)
  • completely blend with half of the almond milk, a load of black pepper and half of the quark – blend until smooth and set aside
  • kindly do exactly the same with the sweet potato, but add parmesan if you want rather than peppers
  • in a large frying pan, add a little oil and cook the turkey mince
  • now, once the mince starts to brown, add the onions and mushrooms to the pan and keep stirring every now and again
  • mainly a job of layering now – in a large ovenproof dish (pyrex is best!) spoon half of the mince mixture and spread out to a thin layer
  • yes, add all of the cauliflower mix and spread out, then add the remaining meat mixture followed by the sweet potato
  • bake in the oven for 30 minutes
  • usually, we chop or crumble the bacon into little pieces and spread over the dish when cooked
  • masses of casserole for everyone – serve!

Looking for even more recipes? Good lord woman, steady on, you’ll snap it off. Click the buttons below for even more!

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Hope that left you satisfied and smiling.

J