Whoopass' Proper Nice Food Blog

As someone whose diet largely consists of takeaways, microwave meals & emergency packet snacks from inside my handbag, I feel somewhat of a fraud writing a food blog but my style of “cooking” is a recent talking point. Observe.

I get easily confused by small things like zest Vs rind & I never know which pan things should correctly be cooked in, yet somehow I still manage to dazzle my diners with my creative knack for whipping up strangely tasty concoctions from the dregs of my fridge.

Well, I say “diners”, I obviously mean myself, the lovely lardy ladies at Fat Club who listen to the menu behind this week’s weight loss/gain & the friends who read my Facebook moans (hi, Melanie off of the wrestlings!) as I never have any actual human people to dine with, but that doesn’t make my bodge job recipes any less edible.

This odd style of cooking I have is a combination of me being frugal enough to put my leftovers to good use, thrifty enough to use up the contents of my cupboards before re-stocking it, determined enough to cook “healthily” without having to live on rabbit food & greedy enough to eat any ol’ shite.

It mostly occurs on those weeks just before payday when my remaining pennies can’t even muster up a pint of milk or when I feel strong enough to stick to my Slimming World Food Optimising plan yet not strong enough to face grilled chicken & steamed brown rice for every meal.  So, they’re generally very cheap & cheerful meals that often make plenty more than a couple of servings so get put into Tupperware boxes & frozen to be defrosted as emergency supplies on those “can’t be arsed” days. Everyone’s a winner!

One of my better, more satisfying, less “I had to do this because I was too skint for anything else” recipes is a Slimming World friendly rehash of my favourite Frankie & Benny’s pasta dish, the Philly Steak Bake. The original is full of everything that makes the life of a dieter a living hell but it’s just too much of the noms no disregard from my diet for the rest of my life. Introducing my lower Syn (that’s Fat Club talk for naughty food), lower cost, bodge job version:

 

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Whoopass’ Proper Nice Cheesy Steak & Pasta Gubbins
13 Syns on Slimming World Extra Easy for the whole thing but generally makes about three Dani sized servings/four normal servings, so is roughly 3 Syns per serving

 

• Extra lean beef strips/cubes/bits/hunks (usually from my freezer after being purchased from Tesco’s bargain bin the day before their Best Before & frozen as soon as I got home) – Syn free
• Dried pasta (not arsed about it being brown – pasta is pasta, just calm down!) – Syn free

• A packet of dried cheese sauce mix made up with skimmed milk (because I’m no Nigella... Although I do have norks as good as she does, thanks) – Colemans mix is usually 7 Syns for the whole sauce when made up with your 350ml Healthy Extra A of skimmed milk, making the milk Syn free
• Sliced red onion, mushrooms & peppers  – Syn free on Slimming World & any other plan because it’s just veg, duh

• Fuckloads of ground black pepper & a few more herby spicy bits when I’m feeling exotic – Syn free

• Some proper cheese (to make it even cheesier & naughtier feeling) – 40g of reduced fat cheddar is 6 Syns but I just throw on as much/little as it takes to make it look cheesy enough, so might be a few more/less than 6. Who cares though, I mean, really? You’re eating meat and pasta and cheese already!
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Nobody needs weights/measurements/cooking methods/timings because I’d like to think that we all know how to cook a bit of pasta but I will advise that the extra cheese is put on top of the bake once everything else is cooked & then put under the grill for a short time to make it look at bit less Slimming World-y/more Frankie & Benny’s-y.

...Ta-dah! It’s a simple enough dish to make & doesn’t taste a million miles away from the proper Frankie & Benny’s version despite being only a fraction of the cost & oh so many less Syns. And, as it’s only really just a simple pasta bake, it can be easily adapted with different sauces or meats or can be bulked up with more/different veg to make the dish stretch further in less of a bigfatfatty way.

Or, if your kitchen is free of all of those “normal” ingredients & you really have just been left with the dregs of your cupboards til you get paid on Friday (...& treat yourself a takeaway for tea to celebrate payday. No? Just me? Fair Enough!), you need my soup recipe.

I make soup fairly often & have a freezer full of batches of various different kinds of the stuff but I’ve never made the same concoction twice. This is mostly because; 1) I don’t write down what I use & 2) I throw in literally anything that is leftover or about to pass its Best Before date.

I call them “soups” because they mostly are just chunky vegetable soups with a tomatoe-y base but they sometimes work better as a casserole over meat & potatoes or thrown into a pot with some meat to make a stew or chucked on top of some pasta or rice as some strange pasta bake-y thing. Yep, one experimental kitchen whore right here.

And although many of the ingredients sound vile together & would never, ever been used together ever again in the same dish ever, they always seem to work really well together & make for a really tasty chunky soup/casserole/stew/pasta sauce. Just have a little faith!

 

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Whoopass’ Proper Nice Mostly Vegetable Soup
Syn free on Slimming World Extra Easy & serves at least a billion but is freezable so you might wanna stock up on Tupperware & make room in your freezer. They don’t call me Tupperware Hoarder Risebury for nowt y’know.

• Broth mix of various dried pulses out of a mixed supermarket bag (left to soak overnight)
• Tinned chopped tomatoes 

• Baked beans
• Carrot
 
• Red & green peppers
 
• Leek
 
• Crushed garlic
 
• Mixed herbs
 
• Ground black pepper
 
• Smoked paprika (because it’s the jar on my spice rack with the most left but seems to go nicely in anything I decide to throw it into)

Then, depending on what else is kicking about, I add any/all of the following:
Parsnip
Cauliflower
Mushroom
Sweetcorn
Turnip
Courgette
Tinned mixed veg
Tinned peas
Fresh chilli (usually more dried/powdered spices are used with this & it’s gooood!)

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While I encourage you to whip up your own Make Do chunky soup based on my recipe, I accept no responsibility for any excess wind that may or may not occur as a result of the many different beans & lentils & pulses in the broth mix. The taste & the ease of making the soup totally outweigh the farting if you’re not used to eating that kind of gubbins but your arse is your own problem, love.

 

Or, in fear of blowing yourself a new arsehole, you could bypass the pulses & dodgy sounding vegetable combination altogether & simply use whatever else you have in your fridge. Just don’t be afraid to be creative because, for me, it has paid off for the noms.

I rarely enjoy eating anything that requires more effort than opening a packet, putting something on a tray & shoving it in the oven but this kind of creative cooking is surprisingly fun and can help save money & Slimming World Syns too.

Give the standard recipe books a rest for a while & give my style of cooking a whirl. Go on, I dare you...!