Lemon prawn and greens orzotto; accidentally curried carrot cake

Trigger warning: self-harm, and some dodgy attempts at philosophy.

Several people have asked / suggested that mum might have a dietary intolerance of some sort, and I’m increasingly suspecting y’all might be right.

This morning mum woke up in pain, which eased after a while so she had her standard breakfast of crunchy nut cornflakes and nutty muesli with milk. Ten minutes or so later, she went back to bed with dreadful stomach pain.

When she got up again, I suggested it might be lactose, i.e. milk, that’s causing the pain and maybe we should try cutting it out of her diet for a while to see if that helps. Mum huffed “it won’t help” and went back to bed again.

A little later again, while I was playing through the same day in The Sims for the third time as the game kept freezing¹, mum emerged again and, of her own volition, told me that she thought I might be right to consider a dietary source of her pain.

She then went and ate a jam and cream doughnut from the fridge and again, within minutes, she was doubled up with pain.

We have therefore agreed that, for the next few days, we’ll eat as little dairy as possible², and see where that takes us. It required a minor rewrite of the coming week’s meal plan, but it will be worth it if it reduces mum’s pain, even if our agreement is already getting twisted into “you won’t let me eat ice cream”. Sigh – the things we do for the people we love.

With all this on my mind, I decided to indulge in my favoured form of stress relief and bake a cake. Only once everything was mixed together, the tin put in the oven, and the tidying up begun did I discover that, instead of mixed spice, I had put a couple of heaped teaspoons of garam masala (curry spice) in my cake.

It would be an understatement to say that I was unimpressed with my idiocy. I self-harmed quietly but efficiently (if that’s not a weird word to use), and was on the brink of throwing the lot away in disgust – who would want to eat curried cake? – when mum stopped me and suggested we leave it to bake and see how it turned out.

I’m glad I listened, as it turned out not to be carrot curry cake but a decently-spiced carrot cake. It’s sadly without cream cheese frosting, because of the aforementioned dairy exclusion, but it’s very good all the same.

Dinner was another orzotto, because now I’ve discovered it I’m mildly obsessed. Sliced leeks and a courgette were softened in oil (not butter), then I added some lemon and herb mix and some defrosted frozen prawns, then the cooked orzo and a splash of the cooking water. Mum declared it “nice” and ate a bowlful with some enthusiasm.

She hasn’t had any carrot cake because she wants ice cream and I “won’t let her have any”, so she’s going to pointedly go without dessert altogether. The next few days without dairy could be very long. Please wish us all the luck in discovering no corollary between dairy foods and stomach pain, because it will make things more complicated in the short term (if it’s not dairy, what is it?) but considerably easier in the long term.

And don’t hesitate to put curry spice in carrot cake: it works. 🤷‍♂️

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1. Which made me wonder: what if deja vu is us going through the same day again because the universe froze the first time through? 😧 (I may need to get out more, I agree!) ↩︎
2. I’m including myself in the experiment because it seems very mean to sit down and eat a bowl of ice cream when mum can’t have any. ↩︎