Thai red prawn curry and rice

I love my mother, obviously, but one thing that drives me up the wall is that she can’t react positively to anything I tell her. In the early days of this blog, when kind Pineapples were sending me care packages, for example, I told her all about it and her reaction was “that sounds dangerous – please be careful”.

Today, while mum was at her choir practice¹, I had a long² and surprisingly productive conversation with my mortgage company, where I have tentatively agreed to surrender my flat on the mainland, meaning that they will arrange for it to be cleared, sell the contents and the flat, and send me any money left over after the mortgage is redeemed and the clearance fees paid. They will even arrange for any possessions I want to keep to be sent to me, although with no guarantee that everything I want will be saved, so the person I spoke to said I should get the things myself if I possibly could.

I was really relieved to have a possible solution to my flat and money problems, and that the mortgage company had been so helpful, and told mum about it when she came home. Her response: “that sounds expensive”. Which is probably true, but I was hoping for a more positive response to something that left me almost crying with relief that one of my main problems might have a solution.

Not long after that it was time for me to cook dinner, which tonight was another Simply Cook box recipe. I have had the Thai red curry before and enjoyed it: it has a good coconutty, spice-fragrant flavour to it, but is inauthentically mild enough that I thought mum might enjoy it too, and I was really looking forward to sharing it with her.

Unfortunately what transpired was a demonstration in culinary form of Murphy’s law, starting with the rediscovery of the fact we only have one saucepan, so I would have to find out if it’s possible to boil rice in a frying pan. The answer is yes, but you have to keep a close eye on it so it doesn’t boil dry and start to burn. Keeping one eye on that meant I had only one eye spare for the saucepan, allowing it to get hotter than I intended so the frozen chopped onion I added to the hot oil didn’t so much splutter as explode up at me. I reflexively jerked away my hand, containing the bag of onion bits, from the sunflower oil volcano, scattering the bits across the hob, counter, and floor. While I was struggling to pick them up – small, slippery bits of onion not being the easiest things to catch even without the problems I have with lack of sensation and dexterity – the onions that landed in the pan were merrily turning a distinct shade of caramelised.

I would like to say things improved from there, but they didn’t really: the little pots of spice pastes from the Simply Cook box defied my weak grip so I had to stab them open with a knife and try to scrape the paste from the pot and its half-severed lid without getting it all over my hands. I partly succeeded with the first part, and not at all with the second.

The tin of coconut milk didn’t have a ring pull, and I haven’t yet remembered to acquire a proper can opener, so I had to ask mum to open it for me, by which time the spice pastes that I had managed to get into the saucepan were also the wrong side of thoroughly cooked.

Miraculously, the end result wasn’t bad at all, although following the recipe to add the entire tin of coconut milk left me with far too much very thin sauce. The sauce didn’t taste burnt, much to my relief, and there was no complaint from mum about the spice level as she ate her portion, leaving only some rice on the side of her bowl. It didn’t live up to my memory of how good it was last time I had it, but I don’t think I can blame that on anyone but myself.

After all that I wasn’t going to do a pudding, so mum and I got out our respective pots of eating your feelings ice cream – coffee for mum (of course) and caramel “fully loaded” (caramel ice cream, salted caramel sauce, and caramel-filled chocolate cups (mini Rolos)) for me – and dug in.

And that’s another day done. They just seem to fly past atm, without anything much to show at the end of each one. Much like this review, really.

1. I think it went well, but mum didn’t talk much about it when she got home, instead going straight into worry mode about getting to church on Sunday. ↩︎
2. Long enough that my planned ship research session got no further than reading the introductory guide and background information, so I’ve got no interesting ship-related info to share yet. ↩︎