Vegetable crumble

I’ll keep this very short as it’s late and I’m expecting to be woken up early tomorrow, as mum has had a really good day and is determined she will go to church tomorrow. From previous experience, that means a wake up call for me at zero dark hundred, in the form of a knock on the door and a semi-wailed “I don’t want to go!”

Mum has been so much better today that she has been able to recognise when anxiety strikes and take measures to stop it escalating, but I have a suspicion that that will go out of the window if/when she wakes up in the early hours of the morning. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

With mum in relatively good spirits, I managed to get quite a lot done today. I finished writing the first chapter of my novel, paid the window cleaner, informed the DVLA that mum’s car is out of use, put together a meal plan and ordered the associated groceries, and worked out what was going to be for dinner tonight more than five minutes before I started cooking.

What I cooked was very much in the style that my father taught me, by which I mean starting with a basic idea and then throwing things in the pan until it tastes good. For that reason I can’t give you a proper recipe: I know there were onions and peppers, and a tin of tomatoes, and various seasonings, then a savoury crumble topping of flour, butter, flaked almonds, some grana padano (what was left in the bag), I think some salt and pepper, and maybe dried herbs too?

Then crumble on top of veg, and into the oven until golden-ish on top. Mum didn’t bother hiding her scepticism, saying just “it looks a bit dry”, but her portion steadily disappeared in between her anxiety-fueled fidgets around the house, and was finally finished with a “well, that was very tasty”.

It might have got the coveted third Mum-chelin star (“please can we have this again?”) if I hadn’t already admitted that I wouldn’t have the first idea how to recreate it!

Now I’m going to finish the piece of shortbread mum earlier took one bite of then decided her stomach couldn’t handle it and so offered to me, drink my hot Ribena, and listen to the wind whooshing around, before laying down to sleep with the hope of not being awake earlier than the sparrows tomorrow morning.