Breakfast: scrambled eggs and bacon with toast; lunch: chicken chasseur, new potatoes, mixed veg; plum crumble and custard
Today has so far brought me a number of surprises, most of them welcome, at least one less so.
First: mum is now home! She cried with happiness when the Patient Transport team arrived to collect her from the Discharge Lounge (I was on the phone to her at the time, is how I know that), and, when I spoke to her just now, she sounded far more like her old self than she has done in weeks.
Second, this arrived: 👇
Thank you so much, Jennie: I am so, so grateful for your generosity and kindness. I will do a review of at least one of the flavours later. (Because promising that will stop me from diving straight in, which I really don’t need to do having just finished lunch!)
Third, the manager of the care home I am living in has been reading this blog. (Hi Emma! 👋) I can’t pretend I don’t feel a little awkward knowing this: not that I have said, or ever will say, anything in a posted review that I wouldn’t say to the face of anyone involved1 – it’s just that knowing y’all are out there reading this feels a little further removed than knowing that the person standing right beside me has been doing so. 😬
And finally, the less positive surprise: apparently my latest test results show that I don’t have the condition doctors thought I had, so it’s back to waiting for more test results to see if they can work out what I have got.
Anyway: food.
Wednesday is one of the two days of the week when a hot, cooked breakfast is available; after last night’s scant supper I unsurprisingly woke up feeling ravenous, and more than keen to get knife and fork on my scrambled eggs and toast. Due to a bit of note-taking confusion, the kitchen wasn’t sure if I had asked for bacon; I hadn’t, but will always accept bacon if it’s an option!
The eggs were good and a generous quantity, providing the protein I think my body is calling for with its late night stomach rumbles; the one rasher of bacon was a touch caramelised2 around the fat, but I don’t at all mind that, particularly as I hadn’t ordered bacon in the first place and was grateful the kitchen gave me some. I would have preferred two slices of toast, but didn’t need them, as what I had was more than sufficient to keep me going until lunch.
Which was chicken chasseur today, something I have only had once previously, at St Mary’s Hospital, where it was one of the very few bad meals I had during my stay: tough chicken in a watery, tasteless sauce with one lonely piece of mushroom, saved only from complete inedibility by the accompanying mashed potatoes.
This, on the other hand, was more like what I imagine the dish should be like: a thick, rich tomato sauce smelling of garlic and Mediterranean holidays, full of chunks of decently juicy chicken – still only one piece of mushroom, though, in an odd coincidence! Served with two herb-covered potatoes, to use to collect any excess sauce, and mixed veg from the freezer section. (No criticism: frozen veg is a handy staple that no kitchen can afford to be without, imo.)
Followed by plum crumble and custard, words which to me promise a warming autumnal treat.
It smelled promisingly autumnal – sweet-sour fruit and creamy vanilla from the custard – but didn’t (sorry) taste that great: the plums were OK, if a little lacking in flavour, but the crumble topping was more powdery than crumbly (as you can see on the right of the picture above), and oddly salty where it should have been sweet.
I ate it all, because I’m a 🐷 when it comes to puddings, but the custard was doing a lot of heavy lifting to get it down.
Scores:
- Breakfast: 8/10.
- Lunch: 8/10 for the main course, 5/10 for the pudding, so overall 6.5/10.
Now I’m off to try putting hot sauce on my feet to see if it helps with my chronic pain. OK, it’s capsaicin cream, but capsaicin is what makes chillies hot so it’s more or less the same thing. Sort of.
Is it pineapple sponge today? 