Mediterranean veg pasta bake

Today we received the grocery order I placed online (slowly, and with much muttering about the slowness) with Tesco, but without the coffee ice cream which is mum’s favourite and the whole reason for me placing the order with this particular supermarket in the first place. I’m rather looking forward to the substitute pot of cookie dough ice cream they sent instead, but won’t have any tonight as I feel that may be a little too much like flaunting my gain in the face of mum’s loss.

I have anyway already had some dairy today, in the form of cheese on the top of the pasta bake I made for dinner. It’s the sort of thing I would have dismissed in the Before Days as being an easy meal that wasn’t real cooking, but which is now a genuine achievement which has left me blinking sleepily over my phone while writing this.

The ‘recipe’, such as it is, goes:

Pour a third of a bag of frozen Mediterranean style vegetables onto a baking tray and roast in the oven until cooked; be careful as the bits of veg are very variable in size so some bits burn while others are still raw, and charcoal isn’t a flavour that belongs in pasta bake imo.

While the veg is cooking, bring a pan of salted water to the boil then use it to cook some pasta. The amount of pasta required for two people is, as always, anyone’s guess.

When both are cooked, drain the pasta, add the cooked veg, and about half a jar of pasta sauce (Loyd Grossman tomato and roast garlic is much liked here); spoon into a baking dish, top with lots of mature cheddar and ground black pepper, and bake until the cheese melts and everything is bubbling gently.

At this point, anyone taking photos of their food for, say, a food blog, should take said photos. As you can tell from the lack of such a photo, though, I, as usual, completely forgot. 🤦‍♂️

The result, ‘real cooking’ or not, was very tasty; mum ate all of her portion and asked me to make it again, which is the highest award mum can give to food – a Mum-chelin Star, I have just now decided.

With that, I must sign off: the new series of The Masked Singer starts shortly and mum has been looking forward to it all day. I promised to watch it with her, which I think is why I have said “just let me finish this and I’ll be with you” at least half a dozen times in the 20 minutes I have spent writing this.

And now I’ve finished writing this and will go and be with her, and hope I can repeat my achievement from last series and identify who’s behind the mask of the eventual winner within 30 seconds of the start of his first performance. Not that I’m still smug about that or anything. 🤣