Lunch: sandwiches and fruit; dinner: pasta with tomato sauce and salad, chocolate Christmas wreath
Apologies in advance for any and all typos in this post: my hands, and the rest of my body for that matter, have had the wobbles all day. Zelda the zimmer frame should really have made a reappearance but, being too proud and too much of an idiot, to use her where anyone can see me, I preferred to do my best Weeble1 impression and wobble around from doorframe to sofa to next doorframe without [reaches out to touch the nearest wooden object] falling down.
With mum out at church (just about, as she fell asleep and had to scramble when the family friend giving her a lift knocked on the door), I had the run (or wobble) of the house, which I used to do my physio exercises in private, then flop back down on the bed to play games on my phone.
(I’m signed up to one of those “play games for money” apps which advertise everywhere online, which is dangerous as I can justify to myself playing games for ages as “I’m earning money”. I am indeed earning money, but I am also spending ages playing games when I could / should be doing something more constructive.)
When my lunchtime carer arrived I dragged myself away from pondering all the words that can be made from the letters of the word ‘apple’, and weebled into the kitchen to make the first corned beef sandwich since I got home. I made sure it had a decent amount of filling, too, unlike some of the ones in the care home. I also used some of the tomato and garlic chutney from one of the gifts sent to me while I was in the home, which I like so much I will be buying more just as soon as I have money to buy things with. I also opened the box of grapes from yesterday’s grocery order, which means they’ll all be gone by tomorrow as neither mum nor I can resist fresh grapes.
A few hours later, mum mentioned that she was hungry, so I leapt (well, wobbled carefully) into action and made my first homemade dinner of the post-hospital era:
Yes, I successfully boiled pasta, drained it into a colander, put the empty pan back on the hob, realised I was missing something and went back for the pasta, added two thirds of a jar of ready-made pasta sauce (Loyd Grossman tomato and roasted garlic), stirred it all round, and dinner was served. OK, it was barely cooking, but it was good: I strongly recommend Loyd Grossman pasta sauces, fwiw.
After a dinner of pasta, mum said she was full, but rapidly agreed with me that there’s always room for chocolate when I suggested cutting into our only Christmas decoration: a chocolate Christmas wreath (bought from Iceland but made by a company called The Daily Bakery).
It doesn’t have good reviews online but for £2.50 it seemed worth a punt, and I’m glad I sneaked it into the order: outside is flaky and crisp, while the inside is soft and full of gooey chocolate with occasional bits of crunchy nuts. I really enjoyed it, enough that I may have sneaked a small extra piece while putting it away.
That’s the end of the food review, but as a quick addendum: today, after less than a week, I told the council reablement team to end the carer visits. As I successfully cooked pasta by myself, there isn’t much they can do for me, and having more people coming and going is unsettling mum, so that’s the end of that little experiment.
- If you don’t know what a Weeble is, Wikipedia will show you, with many pleas for money I am having to guiltily dismiss as I don’t have any money to give them. I remember playing with Weebles as a kid, but from the Wikipedia page I see they ceased production when I was still sleeping in a cot so they must have been secondhand ones. They still Weebled and wobbled quite satisfactorily as far as I recall, though. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 