Stuffed aubergine with garlic flatbread / pepper and tomato tart and salad

…aaand I’m back.

For those who don’t follow me on Facebook, or who missed the post, I ran out of one of my (many) prescription meds over the weekend and had two days of deeply unpleasant withdrawal effects before the new lot arrived in the post on Monday.

This morning I slept late enough that mum has been making jokes about it all day, severe insomnia being one of the withdrawal symptoms, and felt much better for it.

The rest of the day has been mostly about managing mum’s anxiety about the new cleaner coming tomorrow, me going out on Friday, her going to church on Sunday, and everything and nothing in between. This evening mum vowed that she will make a sincere effort to work on managing her anxiety, which would be good except I know that, by tomorrow morning, we’ll be back to “I’m not anxious, I’m ill”. Sigh.

[There was a brief diversion in the discovery that our inside freezer isn’t freezing very well anymore, and my Ben & Jerry’s ice cream had turned into milkshake. Cookie dough ice cream is delicious; cookie dough milkshake not so much, I’ve discovered. Buying a new freezer might have to be added to my already overwhelming to do list, as I’m not prepared to accept a £4 tub of deliciousness being spoiled on a regular basis.]

In related news, today I called the Memory Service who last week promised a callback within a day but from whom I have heard nothing since. There was no answer so I left a message requesting a call back, and have heard nothing further from that either. Sigh, again.

On the food front, yesterday’s dinner was a new vegan¹ ready meal from Tesco’s Root and Soul range, Roasted Stuffed Aubergine with a Smoked Paprika & Tomato Sauce.

The first problem was that the packaging process had put the plastic sachet of sauce, that has to be removed before cooking, under the aubergines. Note to Tesco: this isn’t helpful.

The second problem was that, even when fully cooked, the aubergine was tough enough to defy standard eating knives, and we sadly don’t have any steak knives. I felt that the smoky, paprika-y filling was tasty enough to be worth the effort, at least as a one-off. Mum disagreed, threw most of hers in the food waste bin, and had ice cream instead. Not one I’ll bother with again, I think.

Tonight’s dinner was meant to be a courgette and mozzarella tart, but I realised at lunchtime that I forgot to order courgettes (🤦‍♂️) so it became a pepper and mozzarella tart instead, using roasted peppers from a jar. It came out very nicely if I do say so myself, if I do say so I would add that it would benefit from the addition of something salty and strongly flavoured to give it some oomph: feta, olives, or anchovies all came to mind as options. Mum dislikes all of those, though, so I’ll have to think of something else before declaring it a proper recipe.

After dinner I went outside, just on the patio, to water a few plants that looked in need of hydration, and the new people in the house that backs on to ours were playing their music loud enough for all the neighbours to hear. This is very much Not Appreciated in this quiet, rural community, but I’m a city person and have fallen asleep to the backdrop of other people’s music countless times.

One of their tunes was an old favourite of mine that I haven’t heard in a long time (La Cienega by Ryan Adams, if you’re interested – lovely song). As the last strains of the guitar outro drifted over the fence, I shouted out “I love that song, thank you!” After a short, bewildered pause, someone called back “you’re welcome!”

There’s a nice bit of warm, fuzzy neighbourliness to end the day, and the post, on.

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1. According to the Tesco website, it’s labelled as suitable for vegetarians, but I can’t see anything in the ingredients list that might make it vegan-unfriendly, so idk. 🤷‍♂️ ↩︎