Jambalaya with king prawns
A very brief post tonight, I’m afraid, as I’m ridiculously tired. Mum had to do an at home medical test – purely routine, and one she’s done before – but anxiety kicked in and she talked it over and over, taking out the test kit and putting it away again multiple times, before eventually settling on the problem of how to post it back as she now can’t drive to the post office as the fixation point for her anxiety1.
I remembered there being a post box on the corner of our road, and mum seemed to agree but wouldn’t go out to find it alone. So I suddenly decided I fancied a walk in the early spring sunshine and asked mum to go with me, and out into the outdoor world we went.
After a while (about 50 yards, maybe), I had to stop, but by then mum was happy to go on alone so I sat on someone’s garden wall – having first checked that the drive was empty and the house owners presumably absent – while she walked on, the postbox I was thinking of not being where I thought it was.
As always, that short amount of walking wore me out, and did the same to mum, apparently, given that we’ve spent the last hour in a recurring loop of
“What day is it?”
“Monday”
“What day is [favourite tv programme] on?”
“Saturday.”
“So why isn’t [favourite programme] on?
“Because it’s not Saturday today.”
“Oh. What day is it today, then?”
which was nearly as tedious to type out as it was to experience, although of course I only had to type it once, whereas the conversation went round in many, many circles. Mum has now gone to bed, and I suspect I will follow in the very near future, despite how much I enjoy these quiet end-of-day hours.
After that, and a few other things that made this a tough day that I will probably be writing about over the coming days, I probably should have opted for a ping meal of some sort for dinner, but the kitchen is my happy place so a-cooking I went.
The meal was actually pretty simple – it was another Simply Cook meal, and the clue’s in the company name – but involved a bit of veg chopping, sautéing (in one of my new pans: it’s a bit lightweight and seems unnervingly close to tipping over at times, but is overall a pretty good pan, particularly at the price paid (£11 for three)), and stabbing small plastic pots with a knife because the pull tab had come off in my hand, again.
It was worth the effort, though: the end result was flavoursome, with just enough heat to be a pleasant background note (I used only a small amount of the Cajun spice mix to make sure it stayed that way, for mum’s sake), and mum said she liked it when I asked. (Which makes this a one Mum-chelin star meal: two stars is when she says something us good without being asked, and three is when she asks me to make the same thing again.)
It was so good I forgot to take a photo, so please enjoy the headline photo of a pot of mini daffodils outside mum’s house: for admiring not eating purposes, obviously.
And so, with an abruptness I can only apologise for, to the end of this post and then to bed. Apologies for any and all typos: I’m too tired to proofread before posting
- Even after the resolution of the post box issue, mum kept complaining that she couldn’t drive and had to walk, until I (very mildly) snapped that at least she can walk, to which she replied that it’s amazing she can walk so easily after spending so much of the winter indoors. Which isn’t exactly what I meant, but it’s probably no bad thing my momentary bitterness went unnoticed. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 