They have odd green bits in them

Vegetable lasagne, salad, garlic bread; apple; millionaire’s shortbread (reviewed, finally!)

It’s a soggy old day here on the Isle of Wight, both outside and in.

Outside, because Storm Bert is currently dumping large quantities of windblown rain across the UK, and inside because I ventured to have a shower earlier today. Showering is another of those things I never thought much about before becoming disabled, but is now something that needs to be planned out and attempted only with appropriately trained assistance. Not too long ago, the thought of sitting, stark naked and dripping wet, on a chair as someone I met only a few days ago helped rinse shampoo from my hair would have been completely mortifying, but now it’s just a thing that happens if I want to be clean.

Humans are so wonderfully adaptable, aren’t we?

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Lunch today was a choice between mild chicken curry or vegetable lasagne; I had a feeling ‘mild’ curry would only ever be a disappointment to my spice-loving palate, so it had to be the lasagne.

The very first review I wrote on the Rate My Hospital Plate Facebook group was of the vegetable lasagne served at St Mary’s Hospital and it wasn’t complimentary: in fact the St Mary’s vegetable lasagne was, I think, the only meal I had there that fulfilled the stereotype of British hospital food by being completely inedible.

Today’s lasagne did have something in common with that travesty, and that was the – shall we say – unorthodox choice of veggies between the layers of pasta: carrots, peas, green beans, sweetcorn, and cubes of potato all met my enquiring fork.

It was, I think, a mixture of veg left over from other meals and frozen mixed veg: if I’m right, I will say that I am 100% in favour of reducing food waste by turning leftovers into something tasty. And I’m very pleased to note that that was one thing this lasagne definitely did not have in common with its St Mary’s counterpart – this one was perfectly edible, even good. The thick layer of cheese sauce and golden melted cheese on top helped considerably, I must say, but how can that ever be a bad thing?

Served with a side salad – still happily free of celery, thank you nice people in the kitchen – and a slice of garlic bread (oddly only cooked on one side, the mechanics of which escape me unless for some reason it was cooked under the grill?), it was a pretty decent lunch for a thoroughly manky¹ day.

I airily told the nice H², who delivered my lunch, that I didn’t want pudding as I had plenty of fruit. Which was true, and I did eat one of my apples (crunchy, tasty, juicy: Aldi do do good apples, I’m discovering), and it was just unfortunate timing that he returned as I was doing the somewhat overdue review of The Millionaire Baker’s Old Jamaica (rum and raisin) millionaire’s shortbread. By which I of course mean I had a mouthful of chocolate and caramel when he came to collect the dirty plate from my lunch. 😳

I will say at this point that I’m not generally a huge fan of chocolate, but these beauties may have converted me.

This one had a definite smell of rum when I unwrapped it, and the slab of dark chocolate covering it had whole raisins studded through it. The caramel centre layer was thick but still soft enough to ooze slightly, and the biscuit base had just enough saltiness that the whole thing wasn’t too overpoweringly sweet. (I mean, it WAS overpoweringly sweet, but that’s kind of the point. What I mean is that it wasn’t so sweet I couldn’t finish it and wish there was just one bite more.)

And so, with a fresh cup of coffee newly arrived (and been drunk, and replaced with another cup, because mum is struggling to remember how to operate her television so she can watch her beloved Strictly Come Dancing later, and I have spent literally hours on the phone this afternoon talking her through the process of turning on the telly and changing the channel)…

You know what, sod it: it’s been nearly two hours since I started writing this, I’ve spent so long on the phone – not that I mind – she’s my mum and of course I’m going to help – but I’ve completely lost my train of thought, and apparently my footnotes too, and… yeah, sod it, I cba to finish this properly now.

Sorry.

1. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “manky” can mean either dirty or inferior and useless, but I’ve only ever used it, or heard it used, to describe generally unpleasant things such as the weather outside the window behind me as I try to fix these stupid footnotes. ↩︎
2. I decided I’m going to refer to the care home staff by initial, to protect their privacy. Given how bad I am at remembering names, the initial I use may well not be one that goes with their name, so might be very private indeed! ↩︎