Vegetable pasta bake; raspberry yoghurt; mini doughnuts

NB: nothing is actually past (or pasta) the point of no return: I just thought of the pun then couldn’t think of any better title for this post.

---

Another long day of repeating things over and over again (“What’s that bird with the orange pointy bit called?” “A blackbird.” Two minutes later: “what’s that black bird called again?”); I know mum isn’t doing it on purpose, and try my best to not sound exasperated, but it does get very tedious after a few hours.

There was also the slightly awkward moment (for me, anyway), when mum asked tonight’s carer what she does for a job, having apparently in the moment lost track of the fact these nice people¹ don’t come here after dark to do the washing up just for fun. The carer, having presumably come across this issue before, handled it with quiet aplomb and talked about her work without pointing out the obvious.

[Mum and I have just had another one of those circular conversations, this time about about how to change the channel to BBC4 to watch the snooker, where the repeated confusion between Channel 4, BBC4, and the 4 button on the remote control quickly reached farce levels. Having finally found it, mum has now decided she’s too tired to watch much more (we’ve got the snooker on to fill the time before Beat the Chasers comes on at 9) and she’s probably going to go to bed shortly. At least I won’t now easily forget that it’s channel 9 on our tv.]

And so, with my usual smooth segway, to tonight’s dinner, which was the veg pasta bake that is a particular favourite of mum’s: roasted Mediterranean veg (from a bag from the freezer these days), pasta sauce (from a jar), and cooked pasta, topped with mature cheddar and a rosemary cracker crumb (a few crackers left over from the ones I bought to go with cheese over Christmas, now too stale to eat but still crunchy enough to crumble over the pasta²).

It tasted the same as it always does, of tomatoes and garlic and cheese, which for me is exactly what is wanted from comfort food like pasta bake. Mum cleared her bowl with silent enthusiasm, which is always a joy and a relief.

It was followed by a raspberry yoghurt, the last of a flavour multipack from Yeo Valley which have, to a yoghurt, been too sour to be really enjoyable, although my pre-illness self, with no discernible sweet tooth, would probably have loved them. This was actually the best of the bunch³ imo, being not too sour but still with full raspberry flavour.

Then, for the required hit of post-dinner sugar, mini jam doughnuts from Iceland, which you just take out of the freezer and leave to defrost. Mum liked them more than I did, but they are doughnutty enough to pass muster, if a bit too tough to be as good as the real thing. At the price (about £2 – £3 a box, but acquired under a buy two get one free deal so functionally less than that), and for something you can just keep in the freezer until needed, I would hesitantly recommend them – maybe a 6.5 / 10 on my semi-abandoned rating scale.

And so to quizzing, or to sleep, whichever comes earlier, at least for mum, who is already rapidly approaching being pasta her bedtime. Which might have been a more accurate title for this post, but it’s farfalle too late to change it now, so I orzo stop making a fusilli and put down my penne for the night.

---

1. And they are uniformly nice, although one is so exuberant in nature that mum and I, as natural introverts, both breathe a quiet sigh of relief when she leaves, while assuring each other that we both like her and appreciate how efficiently she works, but she’s just so loud. ↩︎
2. Where they pretty much instantly dissolved into the pasta sauce, but the idea was sound. ↩︎
3. Not that raspberries come in bunches, mind you. ↩︎