Mediterranean pasta; ginger cake and cream

Apologies for the lack of post yesterday: once again my GP and pharmacy, between them, left me without one of my painkillers so I had to get a taxi down to the pharmacy in the village to collect an emergency prescription. While I was there I made the “long” trek (about 40 yards, if that) to the neighbouring mini supermarket to buy something essential¹, then back to the taxi, and then home to try and be sociable with a friend of mum’s who popped round to visit while I was out.

After that I was exhausted and in quite a lot of pain, so I of course decided to cook a curry – from a Simply Cook kit, but still probably more effort than I should have put in after wearing myself out. The curry was nice enough, but very rich and not, imo, good enough to be worth the additional effort over just using a jar of sauce.

Today has been a difficult day, too: I woke up feeling scarcely less tired than when I went to sleep, and mum is having one of those days where her anxiety over going to church tomorrow morning clashes with her forgetting how to read a clock face, leaving me repeatedly explaining big hands and little hands, and suppressing the desire to cry.

So I decided to make myself feel better by making a cake, but did so a bit lazily by using a bag of cake mix. It’s from the bakery / flour millers Wright’s, and involves simply adding oil and water to the dry mix, stirring it together, and shoving it in the oven. Unfortunately it took longer than expected to cook so, after a while, I had to take it out while the veg for the pasta roasted, then put the cake back in once the veg was done, so we didn’t end up with onion flavoured cake, or ginger cake flavoured veg, neither of which sound particularly tasty.

[I’m writing this, as usual, sitting in front of the television; mum said “shall we watch Britain’s Got Talent?”, then within two minutes, “I probably won’t watch this – it drives me mad”. I suggested we watch something else, but she turned down the offer because “I’ve got nothing better to do”, so now I don’t know if she likes the programme or not. 🤷‍♂️]

The pasta is super-simple to do: just a tray of Mediterranean veg roasted in the oven, cooked pasta, and a jar of tomato and garlic pasta sauce stirred together. It’s not fancy, but it’s tasty, and there’s enough left for me to have for lunch tomorrow, too.

So that’s today done, and not long until I can go to bed, eat my cookies, play games on my phone, and enjoy that oh-so-short period of the day when I don’t have to explain what a “nine-thirty” is and how to read it on a clock, again. See you tomorrow, all.

1. Sainsbury’s chocolate and salted caramel cookies, since you ask: from the bakery counter and utterly delicious. Do try them if you happen to spot them, and thank me later. ↩︎