Vegetable casserole with cheese dumplings

Monday is bin day, which should be very simple now as our bins are collected and replaced for us, and all we need to do is put out the food waste bin on Sunday evening. But mum had a panic, decided she couldn’t do it, and that she would leave it until this morning.

Of course, come this morning, she felt no more able to fulfill the intimidating task of moving a plastic box six feet from inside to outside the house (anxiety makes the weirdest things seem difficult), so she woke me up to do it. But my left contact lens decided to be stubborn and refuse to go in my eye, and the bin lorry was getting closer, so mum gave up on me and moved the box herself.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed my crutches, and headed for the front door to give mum some moral support, only to find her cheerfully heading back inside and back to bed. I figured that, as I was up, I might as well stay up, and treated myself to the last Graces apple doughnut for breakfast, knowing mum would never remember there even was a second one. (Naughty, I know, but there have to be some upsides to my situation!)

Later in the morning, a couple of guts from the council arrived to bring me a bed handle, so I don’t keep falling out of bed, a ‘Helping Hand’ grabber, and a cushion for my massively uncomfortable orthopedic chair. The cushion really does help with comfort, but seems to have been manufactured by a company that started out making whoopee cushions. 💨 😳

The rest of the day has been dominated, as usual, by mum feeling unwell and subsequently being even more than usually negative: at one point, I came very close to asking her if there’s anyone or anything that doesn’t “drive [her] nuts”. Somehow I resisted the temptation.

Just as we were settling down to watch Lingo (“it’s an ‘R’ [repeat]. That drives me nuts”), my phone rang with an unknown number, which turned out to be the optical assistant calling to ask if she could deliver our new glasses, as she was heading our way. That was no problem, and mum said she liked the person, “but she’s so loud. Would drive me nuts after a while”.

For dinner I cooked something mum used to make when my sister and I were young: a vegetable casserole made with tinned soup and fresh veg¹ and topped with dumplings. (The original recipe included bone-in chicken legs, but they got the cut when my sister turned vegetarian aged around 10 or 11.)

I added some grated cheese to the dumplings, as I had an open packet of grated grana padano, and I thought they were delicious. Mum ate all her casserole and most of a dumpling without comment which, on a complain-y day like today, 100% counts as a win.

Tomorrow, our friendly local paramedic will be paying us a visit to review the headache diary I’ve been keeping for mum, and will hopefully be able to transform that data into a plan to treat the headaches. I really, really hope he has some ideas, because both mum and I are suffering as things are.

And, with that, goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow, probably.

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1. In this case a packet of ready-prepared casserole veg from Tesco, the label of which noted it was “ideal for casseroles”. Well, yes. 🤷‍♂️ ↩︎