Double Crunch prawns with vegetable stirfry

Today has, on the whole, been a good one: I finally met mum’s (and now my) next-door neighbour, who I have previously only waved hello to in person, and she’s very nice. Mum has been sharper and more together than she has been for some time, remembering that a certain tv programme was one we had seen before, and recognising this evening’s carer as someone she previously met. And mum’s remaining cat, Star, permitted me to be her servant and let her inside from the cold outdoors, which sounds like an obvious thing for a cat to do, but for the past dozen or so years she has instead fled in apparent terror if she found me on the other side of an opening door.

She paid me back by deciding to sit down and eat her supper just as I was about to dish up ours and, as she is a finicky feline who often worries mum by refusing to eat, I hesitated to disturb her and instead sat on my perching stool and watched our stirfry turning slowly to overcooked mush.

A stirfry which unexpectedly resulted in me trying something entirely new: wood ear mushrooms, which are popular in China and South Korea where they are sometimes called “tree jellyfish” because the “slippery, gelatinous, crunchy texture” of the mushroom is apparently similar to that of edible species of jellyfish.

Having never tried jellyfish, I can’t confirm or deny the similarity, but wood ear mushrooms have been on my “want to try” list for some time. I must admit I wasn’t expecting to try them for the first time from a bag of frozen veg from Iceland, so much so that I had to look up the ingredients online to make sure the brown strips in my dinner were what I thought they were.

Unsurprisingly the bits of mushroom didn’t taste of much mixed in with everything else, and under the soy / sesame oil / sweet chilli / garlic sauce I poured over the veg, adding flavour but also unwanted and unneeded extra liquid to a pot of veg that was less stirfried and more lightly simmered in its own liquid. There was a definite crunch to the pieces of mushroom, though, which somehow survived a freezing and cooking process which reduced all the other veg in the mix to the same indistinguishable soggy texture. I will continue to be keen to try these mushrooms in a more appropriate Chinese / South Korean setting (culinarily rather than geographically, sadly).

The prawns, despite being boldly named “Double Crunch”, were more “half crunch, maybe”, as mum joked (and the fact she can make jokes like that is extremely comforting, as too many times recently jokes have resulted in baffled silence, and making jokes was out of the question).

And there I will stop, as the painkillers I took for both my nerve pain and the continuing pain from my damaged intercostal muscle are sending me to sleep. And yes, I said yesterday that that was getting better, but that was before I walked into the living room last night without turning on the light, because I know this room like the back of my hand and why would I need light to walk six steps into it? Of course, I walked straight into the side of the sofa and jarred every muscle on the affected side of my body, so now I’m back to trying not to breathe too deeply as it hurts.

I think the only thing that will soothe the pain is not painkillers but something sweet and comforting and… I’m off to get a mince pie, OK?