Creamy spinach pasta bake with salad; butterscotch Angel Delight
Today’s review starts with good news: I have a bed to go home to!
I appreciate that needs some context, so I will explain that, since I moved in with mum in April, I had been sleeping on her sofa bed. It was designed as a guest bed for occasional use, not to be slept on every night but, with both mum’s and my health deteriorating, replacing it with something more permanent came a long way down my list of priorities.
Then all of this [gestures vaguely] happened, and the OT informed me that I couldn’t return home until I had a suitable bed; the sofa bed was out of the question as I need things to be at a certain height1 in order to get up from them, and that felt like sleeping practically on the floor already.
Cue mild panic from me, as we don’t have another bed, I don’t have money to buy one, and mum has the money but has forgotten how to access it (activating her Lasting Power of Attorney so I can do such things for her is high on that priority list for when I’m home, but that doesn’t help me now). The OT gave me a number of ideas for where to look, but it seemed to come down to hoping that someone would be willing to give away, and deliver, a bed for nothing.
After a couple of sleepless nights2 I mentioned my problem to mum, to explain why I couldn’t yet return home, and was overheard by the family friend who was visiting her at the time. (If you’re wondering how someone overhears that from a phone call, Mum should wear hearing aids but refuses, so has the volume on her phone turned up so high the people next door can probably hear both ends of every conversation.)
To cut a long story marginally shorter (aka get to the point, will you?!), never underestimate the efficiency of church ladies. Within 48 hours a bed was found, dismantled, moved to mum’s house, reassembled, and made up with clean bedding so she could make a video call to show me. It’s the lesson in the title of this post, and it’s one I seem to need to learn over and over again.
I was therefore feeling pretty OK with the world when lunch was served, to the point that I wouldn’t have complained if it was the usual small portion. (Well, that and that I ate far too much yesterday, and particularly too much dairy, and paid the price every lactose intolerant person is unpleasantly familiar with.)
As you can see from the headline image, though, it wasn’t a small portion but a small mountain of what was described on the menu as “Creamy Spinach Pasta Bake”. There wasn’t a lot of spinach (although given how it shrinks when cooked it may well have started off as the Island’s entire crop for the year), and honestly not a lot of flavour beyond ‘creamy’, but it was warm, and so soft I could have eaten it with a spoon, and just exactly what I want to eat on a miserable December day. I asked for salad with it, instead of the green beans on the menu, and what I got was, as always, fresh and crunchy and delicious (once I had removed and thrown away the celery, anyway).
The first week I was here I had banana Angel Delight and hated it, and mentioned in my review that I always liked the butterscotch flavour best as a kid, and wondered if I still would.
And lo! An Angel of Delight came down, and butterscotch did abound!
Let me take you on a quick journey (don’t worry, you don’t have to get up) to roughly experience what I did:
Mouthful one: “Nope, way too artificial-tasting3, just like the banana one. What did I ever see in this stuff?
Actually, wait: is it just that it’s really sweet? Let me try…
Mouthful two: it tastes slightly burnt. No, that’s a sort of caramel flavour… or indeed butterscotch. Idiot. 🤦♂️ It’s got those little lumps where some of the powder hasn’t fully dissolved, just like when I used to enjoy it.
Mouthful three: yep, I still like this stuff.
I ended up running a finger around the inside of the bowl, so you can tell I really liked it!
Scores:
- Pasta bake: 8/10 – nothing really special, but the perfect bit of comfort food on a manky day.
- Salad: 8/10 – a decent bit of salad once the celery had been filed in the appropriate receptacle.
- Angel Delight: 8/10 – and not just because it means I don’t have to use a calculator to work out the overall score!
- Overall score: 8/10.
So very good, if once again a bit high in those pesky dairy products. I would say I’m cutting down from now on, but there’s cheese and onion quiche for the supper special tonight and I’m not turning that down.
Sorry, body, you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to feel better. 😬
- The length of your lower leg plus two to three inches is apparently the easiest height to stand up from. Don’t ask me why: one of those weird evolutionary things, I guess. ↩︎
- Metaphorically speaking, anyway: I haven’t yet got the hang of fatigue management so am generally exhausted and sleep through the night when I get to bed. ↩︎
- In the extremely unlikely event that anyone from the manufacturers of Angel Delight ever read this, please note that I’m not claiming you use artificial flavours – I know you don’t – only that the perfectly natural banana flavour tasted artificial to me. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 