Vietnamese clay-pot haddock with sticky jasmine rice and pan-fried green beans; chocolate cake and biscoff ice cream

I’m going to have to start doing things as I’m finding myself with less and less to write about with every passing day. The highlight of my day was the arrival of this ⬇️

I asked mum to leave the Wispa Gold bars for me as they’re my favourite, but gave her free rein over anything else in the box, knowing she would take anything that took her fancy anyway and at least this way I can pretend I have some control over it. The box is currently sitting on my bed, as it’s the only place in the room I have space to put it. Where it’s going to go when I need to sleep is tbc.

This afternoon mum went out for a walk with a friend this afternoon, leaving me home alone to do whatever I liked without interruption, a rare pleasure indeed. I picked up a book – well, a kindle with an electronic copy of a book on it, all my real books having been surrendered along with my flat – and settled down to rea…

📱Buzzzzz. Buzzzz…

• A**** M***** calling…

“Did I bring my phone with me? I can’t find it in my bag.”

“Ermm… I think so?”

“That’s OK, then. See you later.

📱

…d. I got a fair way into my book before mum came home, tired enough that we’ve had some very weird conversations since, including my least favourite about how to tell the time on the kitchen clock¹. I must admit that mum’s description of the time she needs to be ready for church on Sunday as “nine sixty” had me hiding a smile, while conceding that she wasn’t actually wrong.

Dinner was one of the last of the Simply Cook recipes, Vietnamese clay-pot haddock (meant to be cod but mum doesn’t like it and would prefer salmon, which I can’t stand²: haddock is a compromise we can both live with). I tried a bit of the spice mix before adding it and went “whoa! 🥵”, so I only added about half of it: the end result wasn’t too spicy for mum, or too sweet for me (I had to open a new packet of sugar for the small amount the recipe called for, and I ended up with a bit more than I intended or needed), but it wasn’t special enough for either of us to want it again.

Then we had discounted chocolate cake, from my box of chocolate-y wonders, with some Haagen-Dazs (or however you spell that ice cream brand) caramel, biscuit, and cream ice cream (“with Lotus Biscoff biscuits!”) which is almost too sweet even for me, but does have bits of biscuit which are still crunchy: how do they do that?

And that concludes another day, and another post that managed to be longer than I intended even while I proclaim I have nothing to write about. Oh well. 🤷‍♂️

See you tomorrow, all.

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1. I suggested that she look at her phone for the time instead and she looked at me as if I had gone mad, so I quickly abandoned that idea! ↩︎
2. Unless it’s smoked, when I can happily eat a whole one, given enough good bread, butter, and black pepper to accompany it. ↩︎