Tag Archives: vegetarian

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October 13, 2015

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budget, classics, lunch, one-pot, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, soup, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

no fussin’ tomato soup

Watching old episodes of 999 instead of doing what I’m supposed to do tonight, and I love this classic bit of British understatement. A chap who was a passenger in a stunt plane had a calamity when, at 10,000ft, during a loop-de-loop, his chair worked loose and he FELL OUT OF THE PLANE. He survived, and the show cut to him talking to camera where he says ‘I realised something had gone wrong when I wasn’t in the plane anymore’. You think?! Jeesus. If that was me you’d have been able to spot me across three countries as my carcass, and the stream of faeces where I’d shit myself, fell to Earth.

A friend in our facebook group pointed out something today – we’ve been going for OVER A YEAR. We started this blog on September 20, 2014 – quick, go back and look at our lack of humour and earnest WE WILL LOSE WEIGHT THIS TIME prose. The first post is right here. Looking at the blog stats, we’ve published 250 posts and I’ve had over 2,000,000 views – that’s averaging over 5,000 views a day, and recently, it’s been sitting around the 7,000 – 8,000 mark. We’ve got twenty two thousand followers on Facebook, 7,000 or so in our group and over 3,800 folks who have actually signed up to let me enter their inbox on a daily basis. If the average post is around 1,000 words which is what I am for, that means I’ve sat here and typed out 250,000 or so words about us two fat buggers who don’t really do anything at all. 

To me, that is absolute fucking insanity. I’ll tell you why. 

We never see anything through. Our house is a shrine to unfinished projects, passing interests and enthusiastic but ultimately pointless endeavours which have bubbled away to nothing – for example, we have:

  • a £200 GPS receiver which we bought to go geocaching and then put in a drawer when we realised we didn’t have the batteries for it – never been used;
  • ten disco caches – essentially kooky little containers that we were going to hide all over Newcastle…and didn’t;
  • a second computer which we bought to help us enter competitions faster when we were going through our comping phase;
  • a £450 stand mixer when I was going through my ‘baking’ phase (although to be fair, I’d love to bake, it just makes me too fat);
  • two wonderful pairs of walking boots which still have the tags on;
  • see above, but with wellies;
  • see above, but with trainers, gym kit, a gym bag;
  • a scrapbook which contains two Metro tickets and a receipt for M&Ms;
  • a year long contract with David Lloyd which we used for a month – though in our defence we quickly grew tired of pipe-cleaner men strutting around the place looking at themselves in the mirror;
  • a pair of brand new bikes;
  • jigsaws, after Paul saw a nice one in a dentist’s reception and thought he’d give it a go;
  • a full suite of decent DIY equipment, which we studiously ignore…

…and so on. We started the blog with the aim of rattling off a few recipes and giving me an outlet to practice my writing (I used to have another blog about health anxiety called shake, rattle and droll, a title I was so proud of it was almost a shame to cast off my health anxiety and thus stop using it), and here we are a year later with over 200 recipes and lovely folk all around the UK, and indeed outside the UK, sending us lovely messages and reading about Paul’s helmet on facebook. It’s a mad world. 

Anyway, the reason for all this babble is just to say – thank you. Seriously. I’d write and chuckle away to myself even if no bugger in the world read what I wrote but the fact that so many do really cheers my butter-filled heart. I might come across as a brassy, bolshy, confident tart on here but I’m actually quite shy. Put me in a lift with strangers and I’d prefer to stick my finger in the exposed wiring than make ‘polite conversation’. So each comment, each like, each share, each thank you – that makes it worthwhile. OH GOD I’M WELLING UP.

to make syn-free tomato soup:

  • as many ripe and squishy tomatoes as you can get – go to a market at the end of the day and you can pick up crates of the buggers for next to nowt;
  • one strong onion;
  • one small potato;
  • two cloves of garlic

And that’s it! All you need to do is to slice the onion, fry it in a little oil, add the cubed potato and grated garlic and then chop up all the tomatoes and throw them in a pan. You don’t need to add stock, the tomatoes will have enough liquid in (if they are ripe) to make a soup – and leave to cook low and slow for as long as you can. Better it takes four hours on a low heat than one hour on a hot ring. Haha, ring. Just keep an eye on it. When it comes to serving, just blend it with a stick blender and if you’re boring or you don’t like your poo to look like a sesame bun, sieve it to get rid of the seeds and skin. By adding nothing but simple things, it tastes so much nicer. 

Enjoy! Tomorrow (hopefully) I’ll type up more Corsica shenanigans, though as I say that a little alarm is ringing to suggest there’s something I’m supposed to be doing tomorrow night too. Hmm.

J

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October 12, 2015

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

quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes and garlic

Didn’t get to sleep until 4am this morning. Was woken by Shaddapa Your Face at 7am. Brief entry. But you’ll note that we are still to let you down with our recipe-a-day. Proud of that one! 

Tonight’s recipe was something we’d seen somewhere, written down, then completely forgotten about until a bag of quinoa cheerfully fell out of the cupboard. Quinoa is one of those things that looks awful (to me) but tastes fine. Give this a go – it’s comforting and piss-easy to make.

quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes and garlic

to make quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes, you’ll need:

  • 250g quinoa
  • 1.1 litres vegetable stock
  • 90g reduced-fat feta cheese (2x HEA)
  • 300g cherry tomatoes
  • 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 10g mint leaves, chopped to bits
  • salt

then to make quinoa porridge with roasted tomatoes, you should:

  • place the quinoa in a saucepan, add the stock and bring to the boil
  • reduce the heat to medium and cook gently for about 25 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally until it reaches a porridge-like consistency
  • fold in the feta chunks like a kind, careful lover
  • add the tomatoes into a hot oiled pan and cook for about five minutes, stirring once or twice so the sides become charred
  • add the garlic slices and cook for about 30 seconds, stirring frequently so it doesn’t burn
  • transfer the tomatoes and garlic into a bowl, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp of salt and some black pepper
  • chop the mint and fold through tomatoes immediately before serving
  • spoon the porridge into a bowl, and top with the tomatoes

Easy. Yeah, it’s a bit ‘my husband works in the city and I’ve got an etsy page selling bunting made from spider dreams and melancholy’ but it’s worth it.

J

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August 16, 2015

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budget, burgers, fakeaways, lunch, pulses and grains, recipe card, syn free, vegetarian

black bean and quinoa burgers

I managed to make a tit of myself today in a garden centre, and not just because I’m a 30 year old lad who’ll actively choose to go to a garden centre on a Sunday afternoon. What can I say, I like the variety – where else can you go and buy a new connector for a hosepipe, a double DVD box set of Das Boot and Last of the Summer Wine and a white chocolate florentine? Years ago I would have rather ran a power-sander over the tip of my cock than schlep around sniffing flowers and Yankee Candles, but I’m getting old now.

Can we take a moment to discuss Yankee Candles? Now, and this will come as no surprise to anyone, I don’t mind a scented candle, but can someone explain to me how they come up with the names for their ‘scents’? Red Raspberry I can understand, but who decides what a ‘Wedding Day’ smells like (disappointing sausage rolls and regretful sex?) or indeed, what the hell ‘New Born’ is? To me a ‘New Born’ candle should smell like placenta, chyme and the crushing realisation you’ll never have your life to yourself again, but the good folk at Yankee  Candle seem to think it smells like a urinal cake. Ah well.

We were there trying to find some suitable garden furniture for the new patio we’ve had built in the back garden. This is proving tricky in itself. All we want is a decent hardwood table and chairs. There’s no point in getting anything that needs to be brought in over the winter because we’re simply far too lazy and it’ll just to be left to rot. We had three pairs of boxer shorts hanging on our rotary drier all though Christmas last year because we kept meaning to bring them in. It was only when a particularly strong January wind blew one pair  onto next door’s greenhouse roof that we took action.

There’s no point in getting anything plastic either, because it looks absolutely awful, and you just know the very second our arse touches the seat it’ll splinter into individual atoms with a loud enough crack to blow the windows in over the road and rattan isn’t going to work either because it’ll give too much under our weight and end up looking like a knackered shopping bag after three or four lazy Sundays.

So yes: hardwood, oak preferably. The garden centre didn’t cater for such a ridiculous notion as decent garden furniture but it did have a very comfortable little fabric sun-lounger on show. Of course, me being me, I had to have a go, and I poured myself in like one might tip a jelly out of a mould. It was grand, save for the fact that, thanks to my weight, the fabric pretty much ensconced me like a venus-fly-trap and it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get back out unassisted. Bearing in mind it was fairly busy and Paul was busy in the candles bit trying to figure out what the fuck ‘A Child’s Wish’ smells like, I had to free myself using only my own steam, especially as I couldn’t swing my legs out as the crotch on the jeans I was wearing had split a few weeks ago and I wasn’t entirely confident I was wearing underwear that wouldn’t have shown my balls to the world.

So – turns out the easiest way is simply to swing to one side and tip the whole lounger over until I was wearing it on my back like a turtle and then throw it off. The whole process was over in less than ten seconds but my face was burning so brightly that I’m surprised Paul’s ‘Felching Remains’ Yankle Candle didn’t set itself away and take out his nosehair. We left immediately, hurtling out of the entrance hiding our faces like a disgraced politician entering court. So that was that.

I’ll need to crack on with the recipe now as the rest of the evening is going to be spent pulling up the god-awful carpet that haunts this house in anticipation of our fabulous new carpet that arrives tomorrow. I genuinely can’t wait. Words cannot describe how god-awful the current one is, it’s no wonder the previous occupant chose to die on the toilet in the bathroom rather than face-down in this shag, you’d never find a body.

So, black bean and quinoa burgers then…

black bean and quinoa burgers

to make the black bean and quinoa burgers you need (makes six burgers):

  • 1 tin of black eyed beans (drained) (Tesco, 55p)
  • 65g quinoa (£2.35 for 300g in Tesco, so I’m calling 50p)
  • ½ red onion (7p)
  • ½ wholemeal roll, made into breadcrumbs (use one from a pack of six and the remainder of the six to put your burgers (65p)
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced (10p from the bulb you’ve been using for the rest of the recipes)
  • 50ml of lime juice (you can buy a 250ml bottle for 85 – 17p used)
  • 1 egg, whisked
  • ½ tsp cumin (if you’ve got it)
  • ½ tsp chilli flakes (if you’ve got it)
  • ¼ tsp black pepper (if you’ve got it)

34p a burger!

to make the black bean and quinoa burgers , you should:

  • add the quinoa and 250ml water to a small saucepan and cook over a medium heat for about fifteen minutes (or until nearly all the water is absorbed)
  • meanwhile, add a tsp of oil to a frying pan over a medium heat and gently sweat the chopped onion until softened
  • in a large bowl, mix together the quinoa, onion and black beans, egg, breadcrumbs, garlic, lime juice and seasonings
  • mix by hand, gently mashing the beans with your hands slightly
  • when mixed, divide the portion into six and shape into burgers – if it feels a little wet you can add more breadcrumbs (though watch the syns!)
  • heat a large pan over a medium-high heat and add one tbsp of olive oil or squirt your frylight like a boss
  • cook the burgers for about 4 minutes each side
  • assemble!

Syn-free as long as you HEB the breadbun. Up to you if you think half a bun between six for the breadcrumbs is worth synning but we’re talking half a syn at most.

to gussy it up:

  • de-vegetarian the meal – make it with chicken, bacon and dashed hopes
  • add rocket
  • add a range of tomatoes

to cheapen it further:

  • the spices add flavour, but you can make do with a bit of salt and pepper
  • hmmm…

Enjoy!

J

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July 2, 2015

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pulses and grains, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

bulgur wheat salad with superfree veg

Just a quick post tonight because, frankly, we’re pooped. James started screeching at half-one this morning about a plinky-plonky noise coming from the guttering and a bright light (it was either the thunderstorm outside or he was having a stroke) and I just couldn’t settle after that. To be fair, normally it’s me who keeps us awake with my excessive flatus or the fact I can’t sleep without pouring half of my fat over James like the world’s sweatiest blanket. He loves it.

So – just a quick ‘un and tonight it’s a rather nice summer delight – lots of bright colours and perfect for the hot weather. It’s also very filling and piss easy to make. Not going to lie, this only came about because the packet of bulgur wheat left over from the other week kept falling out of the cupboard and we were too lazy to transfer it into a Kilner jar.

This salad would be handy to take in for a working lunch (if you’re a working girl) (haha) as it keeps the flavour very well indeed, but, I think it would be best served alongside something with a bit of sauce – why not use it to mop up that “delicious” Slimming World curry that Iceland do? Anyway.

Here’s what to do:


bulgur wheat superfree

you’ll need this

  • 340g bulgur wheat (or quinoa if you’re a ponce, but we can’t get away with quinoa since James said they look like tiny bleached bumholes)
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
  • 1″ piece of ginger, peeled and grated
  • 1 carrot, chopped into tiny cubes
  • 1 red/orange pepper, chopped
  • handful of frozen peas
  • 100g mushrooms, chopped
  • salt

and you’ll need to do this:

  • rinse the bulgur wheat (or quinoa) in a sieve and add to a pan of cold water
  • bring to a boil, chuck in either a veg stock cube or a chicken stock cube, then cover and reduce the heat and simmer for fifteen minutes (or until cooked)
  • in a separate pan gently cook the chopped onion in a little oil over a medium heat until slightly golden
  • add the ginger and stir gently for about thirty seconds
  • add the chopped mushroom to the pan and cook until softened
  • add the peas and carrots along with a pinch of salt, stirring frequently
  • add the peppers to the pan and continue to stir
  • once everything has softened add the drained bulgur wheat (or quinoa) and mix well
  • serve with some mint to garnish

Enjoy!

P

 

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June 19, 2015

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fakeaways, indian, recipe card, syn free, taster ideas, vegetarian

don’t light a match, it’s egg curry time!

Yep.

Egg curry. Curry, boiled eggs and sweated-down onions and garlic.

You can rather guess the effect it’s had on the both of us, can’t you? Yep. A colossal, vile, dramatic rise in the amount, pungency and volume of our after-dinner hints.

Every time I field a benchwarmer, I’m taking another layer of skin off my buttocks. I’m raw, I’m not kidding, and each time Paul steams his knickers I feel my face tighten. It’s awful – quite genuinely the worst smell that’s ever barrelled out of us. Now I’m no prude, I love a good taint-stainer, and other people’s seam-splitters make me howl, but this is too much, even for me. We can barely type for gagging and even the cat has been licking his own chutney-locker for twenty minutes just to give his nose a break. I’ve never seen a cat cry until tonight.

Listen, I’ve talked about puckered-chuckles before and I’m not going to go into too much depth here, but everyone – I don’t care how hoity-toity and prim you are – has been proud of one of their farts before. My favourite? I once broke wind on the London Eye, in the height of summer, in a full capsule. Imagine that, the heat blaring down, everyone panicking but being terribly polite about the whole affair. In my defence, I didn’t think it would smell and I was more preoccupied with making sure it wasn’t a full-on cheek-rattler that I didn’t think about the consequences. I bet there’s still fingernails scratched into the emergency exit of capsule 19. 

Paul disagrees though, stating that my best pump was early on morning as I dozed in bed and he got ready for work. He asked me a question and in my slumber I let loose the loudest, squeakiest arse-moo he’d ever heard, to the point where I woke myself up thinking it was the bedside alarm. He had to get back into bed for laughing so hard and he still chuckles about it now. We’re a classy pair.

Here, my favourite old fart joke. It probably only makes sense if you’re of an era when Emmerdale used to be Emmerdale Farm and Jimmy Saville was just a cheeky tinker.

 A bloke goes into a bar and asks for a pint of bitter with a head on it. He gets one from the barman, and then asks him to keep an eye on the pint whilst he nips to the bog. Barman agrees.

Bloke comes back from the netty only to find the pint is still there but the head is missing.

“What happened to the head on my pint?!” he asks the barman, to which the barman replies, “well, see that large athletic looking lady over there? While you were in the gents she came over and farted on your pint and blew the head off it“.

“Right” says the angry customer, “I’m going to have a word with her!”.

He storms over to the lady and asks, “Excuse me, fart in my Whitbread?“

and she says…wait for it wait for it…

…..

….

…

..

.

“No I’m Tessa Sanderson”

Tessa Sanderson right?!

 

 

Oh screw you. Here’s your stinking recipe!

syn free sw egg curry

This serves four.

We served it with saag aloo from a previous recipe (opens in a new window) and boring old rice. This is a great way of getting a load of superfree into your mush. So…

to make egg curry, you’ll need:

  • 6 hard boiled eggs (shell removed)
  • 2 medium onions 
  • 3 medium tomatoes
  • 1 tsp grated ginger
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 green chilli (sliced)
  • handful of coriander leaves (chopped)
  • 2½ tsp ground coriander
  • ½ tsp tumeric
  • ½ tsp paprika
  • ½ tsp garam masala
  • ½ ground cumin
  • salt

For the love of God, buy one of these. YES IT’S A MICROPLANE GRATER but you can do your garlic and ginger so quick. Plus Parmesan and lemon. Hell you could even try getting your feet sorted out with it, which is handy if your feet look like a drought relief map. 

to make egg curry, you’ll need to do this:

  • finely chop the onions
  • spray a large saucepan with Frylight OR a drop or two of oil and place over a medium heat
  • gently fry the onions for about 5 minutes or until translucent and golden
  • add the crushed garlic, ginger and sliced chili to the pan and stir it like a piece of playground gossip
  • chop the tomatoes roughly, add to the pan and stir well
  • cook for about five minutes, until the mixture is quite mushy
  • meanwhile, in a small bowl mix together the corianer, turmeric, paprika, garam masala and cumin powder with two tablespoons of water until smooth, you want it looking like an Orlistat side-effect
  • add the spice mixture to the pan and mix well
  • add the chopped coriander leaves to the pan and continue to cook the mixture for another three minutes or so 
  • add 325ml water to the pan, cover and cook for fifteen minutes, or until it’s really thickened up
  • meanwhile, boil six eggs for 10 minutes. peel under running water
  • remove the curry from the heat and stir well 
  • slice the eggs in half and place in the curry.

Look, this isn’t the most razzmatazz of recipes, but it’s fun and unusual. That’s what Slimming Would should be about. SHOULD.

Now excuse me, I have to go FART LIKE A BREWERY HORSE.

PRAY FOR JAMES

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June 14, 2015

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bacon, fakeaways, greek, lunch, persian, pork, pulses and grains, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free, taster ideas

rainbow bulgur wheat salad with bacon and feta

Very quick post tonight as I’m going to work (hooray) to do overtime (hooray) and we’ve still got all of our boring, humdrum Sunday chores to do – such as watching Judge Rinder, playing Trivial Pursuit and ignoring our ironing. Slight moment of excitement when a police van came tearing into the cul-de-sac before, displaying a flagrant disregard for the neighbourhood SLOW CHILDREN sign, which I’ve always thought was a very apt description of the snotty-faced little life-leeches that occasionally visit. Of course everyone was immediately up out of their armchair peering through their nets to see what the deal was. Tsk. So nosy. I of course had to take that moment to immediately nip into the back garden and try to listen in hang out the washing. I didn’t hear anything and no-one was arrested.

Upon my return, Paul pointed out that I’d dashed into the back garden in such a rate of knots that I was still wearing my Spongebob Squarepants onesie from ASDA, plus it was drizzling so not exactly outside drying weather – hardly the most subtle of moves. Ah well. I’m too fat to be subtle. Here’s today’s recipe – it tasted amazing considering it’s such a simple mix of ingredients. It would package up nicely for an office lunch so why not make double and take a few extra portions in throughout the week? Urgh I sound like Delia Smith or something. Don’t worry, I awkwardly shoehorn in a reference to ejaculate in the recipe, so we’re alright.

You could easily omit the bacon  from this salad recipe and go veggie. But I mean, we’re not animals here.

rainbow salad

you’ll be needing these:

  • 4 large sweet potatoes, cut into small 1cm cubes
  • a couple of drops of olive oil
  • 3 tsp of paprika
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of cumin seeds
  • 250g of bulgur wheat (substitute couscous if you prefer)
  • Zest of one lime
  • 1 tin of red kidney beans
  • handful of chopped coriander, but feel free to leave this out if like me you think it tastes of soapy balls
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • a bunch of spring onions – cut up the green part as well as the white
  • 6 bacon medallions
  • 65g of reduced fat feta (cut into tiny cubes)

and you’ll need to do this:

  • preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius
  • in a bowl mix together the potato cubes, 2 tsp paprika, cumin seeds and salt with a drop of olive oil (or Frylight if you prefer) and toss (the potatoes) until the potatoes are evenly coated
  • spread the potato cubes out onto a foil-lined baking tray in one layer and bake for twenty minutes – turning halfway
  • meanwhile, heat a large saucepan over a medium heat
  • add a teaspoon of olive oil (or Frylight, if you prefer) and add the bulgur wheat
  • leave for a few minutes, stirring regularly until it starts to crackle just very slightly
  • add the lime zest and lime juice and 500ml water
  • bring to the boil and add a little salt to your taste
  • reduce the heat and cover the pan so the mixture simmers for about twenty minutes or until it’s cooked through
  • chuck your bacon medallions under the grill to cook, then slice into little strips
  • cut your feta into tiny cubes
  • drain the kidney beans and rinse well under running water, getting rid of all that gunky kidney-bean pre-cum you always get from tinned pulses
  • place the beans in a bowl and sprinkle with a teaspoon of paprika – mix until well coated
  • add the cooked sweet potato, sliced spring onions and bulgur wheat to the bowl and mix.
  • To put this all more succinctly: cook everything that needs to be cooked, prepare everything that needs to be chopped, mix in a bloody big bowl and you’re done.
  • We dressed this with a quick dressing made from natural yoghurt, minced garlic and lime juice – but actually, it stands on its own very easily.

J

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June 13, 2015

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

chive vinegar – a syn-free flavourful dressing

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

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

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

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

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

chive vinegar

you’ll be needing these:

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

and you’ll need to do this:

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

Enjoy!

 

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June 12, 2015

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

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

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

red lentil dahl

to make red lentil dahl, you’ll need:

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

to make red lentil dahl, you should:

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

Enjoy!

J

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May 17, 2015

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

easy mint chocolate chip smoothie

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

TWEAK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mint chocolate chip smoothies

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

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

to make mint chocolate chip smoothie, you should:

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

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

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

J

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May 14, 2015

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

rocket, pea and mint salad

Want to know something embarrassing?

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

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

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

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

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

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And of course, the Bjorn Again:

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Aaah. Oh young James. You poor bastard. 

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

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

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

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you should:

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

A simple, elegant evening meal. Yum!

J