Stirfried green veg with fried rice

This morning I woke to find mum up and about: she greeted me with an emotional “you’re finally here!”, as she does pretty much every morning.

If it’s an attempt to make me feel bad about needing so much sleep then it works, but I generally stagger to bed every night in the stage of exhaustion when everything feels slightly unreal, so the sleep will be as long as it will be.

A short while later, mum informed me that she had a stomach ache. My heart sank, as I really thought I’d cracked it with the lactose thing, and mum had had nothing with milk in it for at least 24 hours but was still in pain. Then I spotted the empty yoghurt pot on the draining board.

Mum said “but it’s not milk.”

I said “but what’s yoghurt made from?”

Mum said “…oh.”

So the lactose issue remains my top guess of the cause of the stomach pains. It doesn’t seem to have solved the other problem mum has with feeling tired and wobbly: I’ve suggested it might be dehydration but mum insists she’s drinking plenty, so maybe she’s low on iron or something. I’ve suggested vitamin tablets and she agreed to try them, but I suspect there will be more complaining when I add another tablet to her roster.

This afternoon we tried our first lactose-free alternative, a mango and passionfruit coconut yoghurt from The Coconut Collab. It tasted of fruity yoghurt, but only when you got a little bit of mango did you get any specific flavour beyond general ‘fruit’. The mouthfeel was a little claggy, but otherwise I thought it was a decent substitute for real yoghurt.

Mum was somewhat unimpressed – it didn’t hold a candle to her usual lemon curd yoghurt – so I suspect I’ll end up eating the rest of it and the search for an alternative for mum goes on. The problem I’m having is that most alternative yoghurt stocked by Tesco are flavoured with either strawberry or vanilla, neither of which mum likes. I might have to try another supermarket, or order direct from a maker.

As always, I’ll let you know.

Dinner was a simple stirfry of pak choi, asparagus, and green beans with sauce from a packet, and rice with bacon, egg, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I now remember how much I love fried rice, and will have to remember that mum’s not as keen (although she ate hers tonight without complaint).

So that’s it for today. I’m off to flop on the bed and eat chocolate from my newly delivered box of sweet snacky things. See you tomorrow, all.