Sausage tray-bake; mince pies with ice cream

Today I did something that was, in hindsight, very foolish, and reminded mum that she has a medical appointment next week. Of course, as far as mum was concerned, this was something she didn’t know about, and why didn’t I tell her? Then we went through the “I don’t want to go” (that’s your choice, I can’t make you go), “why do I need to go?” (because this is at least the third time we’ve had this conversation), “I’m sorry, you wouldn’t have to do this if I wasn’t so stupid” (you are NOT stupid, just unwell), and finally “I think you’re right, I need to see someone, and I’ll try harder to be better”.

Unfortunately (in this one very limited sense), mum is having a good day today and won’t forget or let the subject drop, so I’m doing a lot of reassuring that “yes, that’s the right word” or “yes, that’s a normal thing to do” without inadvertently sounding patronising.

In all likelihood she will have forgotten the whole thing by tomorrow, and we’ll have exactly the same conversation again next Monday, so I really don’t know why I mentioned it at all knowing what would happen. I’ll blame it on the Oramorph I’ve had to resort to twice already today as I’m having the worst pain day I’ve had since coming home. I will therefore try and get through this review quickly before dose two fully kicks in and I gently float off to some other plane of existence¹.

Dinner was a deviation from my meal plan (swapping two days’ planned meals) necessitated by my pain and worryingly low spoon count, an easy meal that involved no more than putting stuff on a baking tray and baking it. The components were the triple cooked roast potatoes I was so dismissive of as part of my Christmas dinner but which I have become so fond of that I will almost certainly replace them when the bag finally becomes empty, honey mustard sausages from Tesco, and frozen Mediterranean style veg in basil oil, also from Tesco.

The whole lot sizzled away happily in the copious amounts of oil produced by the potatoes (I think the reason they’re so good is that they basically fry rather than roast), making a mess of the baking tray but turning out a rather delicious meal if I do say so myself. The sausages had a very subtle honey sweetness and mustard that was present more in its seeds than its flavour or heat. Mum doesn’t really like sausages but tolerates them on occasion as she knows I love them. She ate her serving and, having learned my lesson yesterday, I cooked enough for there to be leftovers so I can have a sausage sandwich for lunch tomorrow. There are, however, no leftover potatoes because I ate them, with enough salt that I have been gulping down water ever since to try and dilute my overwhelming thirst.

Then mum had a lemon curd yoghurt with a slightly bitter comment about it not being coffee ice cream, while I had two Iceland Luxury mince pies (nice flavour if a touch heavy on the candied lemon peel², a bit dry, not as nice as Iceland’s standard mince pies) with Madagascan vanilla ice cream.

And there I will stop as the Oramorph has kicked in, leading to the interesting discovery that floating on a cloud of morphine produces the required mental state to correctly deduce an answer to a sequence on Only Connect. Who would have guessed?

1. You may be able to tell by that unusually flowery turn of phrase that it’s already started to happen. ↩︎
2. Which doesn’t seem to trigger the same allergic response as other forms of citrus, perhaps because it’s there in far smaller quantities than its powerful taste suggests. ↩︎