Gnocchi with tomato, bacon, and sweetcorn

So, yeah. I’m pretty convinced the source of mum’s stomach pain is an intolerance to lactose.

Having not had anything containing lactose yesterday evening, mum woke this morning free from pain for the first time in several weeks. While I am of course delighted to see mum’s pain end, I had forgotten that mum, when well, is very much a morning person, and insists on chatting and showing me things on her phone before I have had my first, essential caffeine infusion of the day. 😫

Thank you to everyone who suggested the possibility of a dietary cause for mum’s pain: please accept this 🏅as a token of my gratitude. I probably should have thought of this myself, as I have problems with dairy products too, but I didn’t. It’s at times like these that I’m most glad of this little online community. Thank you all, whether you comment or not.

There’s already been a bit of complaining about there being ‘nothing to eat’, by which of course mum meant “I want ice cream but I can’t have it”, but hopefully today’s delivery of various dairy-free tasty things will cheer her up. The fact that her favourite chocolate contains no milk and is therefore not off the menu is a great relief to both of us.

Our new cleaner started today, and both mum and I liked her a great deal. Her visit did, however, send mum into a tizzy about changing the covers on her bed. I don’t quite understand how her mind was working – and of course neither did mum, really – but she was very concerned about what would happen when her bed sheet was put into the washing machine. What would she sleep on?

The concept of there being more than one sheet was totally beyond her capacity to grasp. It’s these moments that leave me most bewildered by mum’s new cognitively-impaired way of thinking; I can see that The Thing is bothering her, but I’m not able to understand what The Thing is, let alone how to fix it. We both end up confused and frustrated by our inability to communicate, and The Thing goes unfixed.

Dinner was a change to my planned meal, inspired by the cleaner helping me clear out the fridge and dispose of half a dozen half-used bottles of cooking ingredients. I knew that, if I didn’t use what was left of the passata from last week’s fish stew, it would go the same way, so my gnocchi frittata (an idea I saw online and still really want to try) became gnocchi with sauce.

The sauce I concocted was pretty good if I say so myself: combining the slightly sour passata with the sweetness of sweetcorn and the saltiness of bacon worked really well. I’ll have the rest for lunch tomorrow, as I forgot to order any bread. 🤦‍♂️

Ooh, maybe I could place an online order with my beloved Graces Bakery to make up for my mistake?

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OK, exhaustion is kicking in and I’m almost down to stream of consciousness, so I’ll stop there. See you tomorrow, peeps.