Chinese-style chicken, stirfried veg, soy and ginger rice

Last night there was “nothing on” tv – by mum’s standards, that is – so I got to watch the first half of the World Cup match between France and Senegal. France weren’t playing particularly well, and at half time a studio full of pundits spent many words explaining exactly what was going wrong.

Bear in mind that mum really doesn’t like football much, so her watching the match with me was a nice surprise in the first place. An even bigger surprise was when she summed up the French team’s problem far more succinctly than any of the experts: “they need to meet up more – they keep kicking the ball at no-one”. Which was, in fact, exactly what they were doing.

If anyone wants to hire mum as a football tactician, she seems to have a natural skill for it.

Today mum has been exceptionally clingy: I am writing this sitting on the edge of my bed, as my phone needs charging, and mum is standing over me watching videos on her phone. I told her that I will be back as soon as I finish writing but, as has been the case all day, she wants to be in the same room.

I’m not entirely sure why she wants to share a room with me, as she only seems interested in poking fun at me and squashing even the mildest hint that I might have a life that doesn’t involve her.

For dinner tonight I cooked some pre-marinated Chinese-style chicken, stirfried a pack of baby corn (mum’s favourite veg) and mangetout, heated through some microwave rice, and called mum to eat. She came into the kitchen, served herself some of everything, then said not to expect her to eat much as she didn’t think she would like it.

She then actually tried the food, and said it was delicious and the chicken has “a really good flavour”. I thought it mostly tasted of chicken, but as long as mum’s happy then that’s good enough for me.

She then served herself the last of the tiramisu, then asked if there was nothing I wanted. I thought that was a slightly silly question: I ordered so much sweet stuff we should still be having trouble fitting it in the fridge.

Then I opened the fridge and found it wasn’t a silly question after all: of all the sweet things I ordered, all there was left from mum’s insatiable scrounging for sugar was a single pot of chocolate mousse. The one that had been knocked over and slightly squashed, at that.

I am so glad that mum doesn’t like blueberries, so at least I can eat those over the next couple of days and not feel quite so aggrieved that I so rarely get any of the good stuff. Yay for fruit. 🫤