Linguini alla Nerano
NB: the headline photo has a watermark saying it contains AI generated content. All this is is the bottom left-hand corner of the photo where I used AI photo editing to remove a foot1 which crept into shot. Nothing sinister, I assure you!
Today was meant to be a ‘doing nothing’ day, but I was startled awake2 earlier than I would have preferred by my phone ringing (or at least playing a jolly little tune) right by my ear. It was a rep from a local charity who would be helping me put out an advert for a PA, aka someone to keep mum company in my stead.
Being freshly awakened, I was in no mental state to discuss our needs, so I promised to call her back and went back to sleep.
For about ten minutes, until a knock on the door heralded the arrival of a new batch of mum’s meds. Which prompted mum to tell me how much her stomach hurts, so I did her morning meds, then finally managed to get back to sleep.
A short-ish while later, I woke up, crept to the kitchen to get some breakfast, and discovered that the punnet of strawberries delivered on Tuesday afternoon had already turned into fluffy strawberry sludge. So it was onto Messenger to chat to a member of Tesco customer service, who creditably gave us our money back.
Then it was on the phone to sort out the ad for a PA, punctuated every few minutes by mum apologising for “being a pain”. 😢
This afternoon I had a nice Messenger chat with one of mum’s oldest friends, who I’ve known since I was at school but who mum now says she barely knows. (😢 again.)
Then I decided to make a classic Italian pasta dish that I found a recipe for online: pasta alla Nerano. It’s a southern Italian dish made with fried courgette, cheese, and basil, which sounded simple but turned out to be a right faff which involved multiple pans, a blender, and pretty much every cooking utensil we own. The end result was very bland – the linguini, cooked in well-salted water, was the most flavourful part – and definitely wasn’t worth the hassle or mess.
Talking of which: I’ll leave this here as I promised mum I would clean the hob as the frying courgettes spat oil all over it, and a promise is a promise even if I would prefer to just go and lie on my bed and eat chocolate.
Is it pineapple sponge today? 