Toulouse-style sausages, Mediterranean vegetables with giant couscous and saffron aioli; mixed berry crumble and custard

After a second night in a row of waking at 1am in enough pain to fumble by mobile screen-light to dose myself with Oramorph, which dulls the pain enough for a few hours of restless sleep full of dreams of things gnawing and clawing at my feet and hands, I’m feeling tired, and when I’m tired I get grumpy. That grumpiness has left me struggling for tolerance for mum’s little foibles, like insisting I abandon my cup of coffee to help her change the bed¹, then complaining that I’m letting my coffee get cold. 🙄

I’m even less tolerant of my own failings, like dropping my lunchtime plate so that the crumbs from the bread roll I had been eating scattered themselves across the floor and into another of my cups of coffee. It hasn’t been a good day to be a cup of coffee in Pineapple Land.

A quick dinner review, before the latest dose of Oramorph and the soporific sound of rain on the windows sends me into a hopefully undisturbed sleep:

Sausages, from Tesco: nice sausages, meaty and garlicky, although the red wine and smoked bacon promised on the label were conspicuous by their absence. They took longer than I expected to cook, and remained fairly pale and soft even when finally done. I enjoyed them; I don’t what mum thought of them – she doesn’t generally like sausages so, at her request, I pan-fried a salmon fillet for her, and she then decided she wanted sausages after all. After another 🙄 moment, I decided to be pleased that at least she has something for lunch tomorrow.

Mediterranean vegetables and giant couscous, from Merchant Gourmet: super-easy – pour the frozen mix into a pan and heat until bubbling – and really quite tasty. If you’ve never had giant couscous, it’s (unsurprisingly, as it’s made pretty much the same way) like small pasta, but with a chewier texture that I find rather pleasing.

(The saffron aioli was left over from dinner two nights ago, when I made it by mixing the saffron spice mix in with jarred mayo, so I won’t review it again and will just note that 48 hours in the fridge turned it from yellow to YELLOW – it was practically luminous.)

For dessert was my latest attempt at fruit crumble: the fruit was about perfect for me, but slightly too sour for mum, while the crumble mix melted into the fruit rather too much instead of remaining as a discrete layer. I’m not quite sure where I’m going wrong – too much butter to flour, maybe? – but between mum and me we cleared the lot, and I’m greatly enjoying experimenting so there are no losers here.

Except for the oven glove, of which I dipped the edge in the fruit juices, much to mum’s disapproval: hopefully the mark will come out in the wash, as otherwise I will be forced to resort to hiding the evidence at the back of the cupboard, behind the three other pairs, where it will, with luck, disappear from mum’s memory. If my grumpiness goes the same way then I will be pleased; if it takes the pain with it I will be really pleased.

1. As always when using that phrase, I can hear my dad responding “what are you changing it into – a frog?” 🐸 ↩︎