Vegetable tagine with roasted pepper couscous

I woke up this morning with a Headache. It deserves the initial capital due to being the type that leaves you lying on your bed, arm over your eyes, swallowing repeatedly in the hope that the painkillers you took won’t make a sudden reappearance. To deepen my misery, my nose decided to gush with blood, sending me running to the bathroom with tissues clutched to my nose, trying to open my eyes just wide enough to see where I was going without opening them wide enough to worsen my splitting head. How I didn’t get blood everywhere I really don’t know, although a glance in the bathroom mirror showed that my face looked like I was an extra in a medical drama’s crisis of the week.

My headache finally eased (thanks to a dose of the morphine that’s meant for serious flares of neurological pain – don’t tell my doctors, please!) in time for the Tesco grocery delivery to arrive and for me to help mum put everything away¹. (“Everything” included a number of tubs of ice cream, but no chocolate brownie flavour – I do learn from experience, sometimes.)

After all that I was unsurprisingly not up for making the meal I had planned, which involved filo pastry, brie, apple chutney, and ginger cake (over two courses, not all on the same plate), so instead I made an apricot and coriander vegetable tagine with roasted vegetable couscous.

That sounds fancy, but it all came in packets and jars: half a bag of Tesco casserole mix (potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, and swede), two-thirds of a jar of Al’fez apricot and coriander tagine sauce, poured into a baking dish and put in the oven for an hour or so while I watched The Chase. The couscous was from a packet: just add hot water and leave for five minutes until it inflates.

The two together were really good, flavour-wise: the sauce wasn’t too sweet, as I had feared, with an undertone of fresh citrusy spice from the coriander seed and a gentle chilli heat that built up the more of it I ate. The veggies, particularly the potatoes, were on the undercooked side when served but, through the wonders of thermodynamics², they were about perfect by the end of the meal. The couscous was fluffy, savoury, and perfect with the sweet-spicy sauce and veg: so perfect, in fact, that I had seconds, having not had any lunch due to the Headache.

Then we had microwave jam sponges, with custard for me and coffee ice cream for mum, then I had a cup of decaff coffee and tried to pretend I couldn’t feel the Headache slipping back into the back of my mind.

So there I will end. See you tomorrow, everyone.

1. Headache aside, it’s a marvel to me that I can walk around, bend and straighten, stretch and reach, without any assistive devices except the occasional lean on a wall or sofa. Frustrated though I get at times with the restrictions imposed by my illness, I must admit I’m much better than I was even a month ago, and miles better than I was six months ago. ↩︎
2. Apologies to any scientists if I’ve used the word incorrectly. ↩︎