Salt and pepper spring rolls with stirfried veg in sweet chilli and garlic sauce; chocolate pudding and ice cream

Straight to the food review, please!

Yesterday’s hospital trip was about as exhausting as I expected: although I didn’t have to walk into or around the hospital, thanks to Patient Transport pushing me and my wobbly legs around in a wheelchair, I did do a fair amount of walking around the waiting room, and waiting for an unspecified amount of time in an unfamiliar place is tiring anyway.

As usual, tired muscles mean increased nerve pain, for reasons I don’t understand, and I woke earlier than I would have liked from dreams of sharp-clawed creatures climbing over my feet and legs. (My brain is very creative when it comes to dreaming up scenarios to explain the neuro pain.) My plan was to spend the day doing not very much, but with caring responsibilities that was never going to be entirely possible, so today I did next week’s meal plan and placed the associated grocery order on the basis that that is at least kinda fun.

I also had a video call with the person who will be overseeing my ship-related volunteering, with my kindle propped up on my childhood teddy bear and held in place with an out-of-shot finger, because nothing says professionalism like a stuffed toy device holder.

Of course no matter how tired or in pain I am, dinner has to be cooked, and on nights like this I am truly grateful for frozen convenience foods like:

• Salt and pepper spring rolls (Iceland): nicely crunchy outsides, with a mildly peppery filling of small pieces of chicken and bean sprouts. Like most Iceland stuff, they’re not spectacular, but they’re decent, and excellent value (£1.75 for a box of 8 at the time of writing).
• Stirfry vegetables (Iceland): I know I’ve reviewed this before, but tonight I risked a higher heat in our (only) frying pan, and it helped – the water from the freezing process evaporated more quickly so the veg actually fried rather than stewing, vastly improving the taste and texture.
• Chilli and garlic sauce (Blue Dragon): not a lot of chilli or garlic, but a nice enough flavour. I was a little wary of the chilli level for mum’s sake, so only used half of the sachet. Mum might have appreciated it more if I hadn’t forgotten that I had left the half-full sachet on the counter, ready to be knocked over and spill its contents as mum did the washing up. Oops. 😬
• Chocolate sponge pudding (Harry’s brand, from… you guessed, Iceland): an odd sort of size, too much for one person but not really enough for two, so we bulked it out with a generous quantity of caramel ice cream. The chocolate sponge was good: not dry, with a good chocolate flavour, and a decent amount of chocolatey sauce. Not bad with caramel ice cream, particularly as it was on special offer at just £1. [Apologies for the lack of photo: as often happens, I was halfway through eating when I remembered I should have taken a photo.]

Overall, the meal was a great success: apart from the huffing and puffing of the first few minutes (the spring rolls really hold their heat), the spring rolls and veg were wolfed down, and mum said “this is really good”, which is more than I generally get for my home-cooked meals. That’s a little sad for me, but well done Iceland.

So that’s today done: I still have a fair number of things I should have done, but with invisible people sticking needles in my hands and drumming with tiny mallets on my feet and ankles, paperwork will just have to wait. Goodnight, all.