Gammon and Parsley Sauce

One of the things I find difficult to convey to people is that when you have memory difficulties, it isn't just “forgetting things” that is the problem- it's sometimes plain “not thinking of things in the first place”. This particularly happens when there are a number of stages to a set task like, for instance, cooking a meal.

My advice if you're in the same mental boat as me: read the instructions from beginning to end before you go to the shop. You'll notice that not every cookbook author thinks through what they're instructing. In their book The Hairy Dieters, Si King and Dave Myers serve their gammon with potatoes- a staple part of most healthy meals- but as they didn't include it in the ingredients list, I didn't write it down. They mention veg right at the end of the recipe, so I bunged on some frozen veg, meaning I had to turn the heat right down on the gammon and simmer it for a ridiculously long time.

The recipe serves 4, but as I was eating alone I figured I could half that and eat it over 2 days. That didn't happen. I halved it and mullered the lot, drowning the gammon in sauce.

The recipe recommends serving with fresh parsley. Tesco's parsley comes in a packet that I knew I wouldn't get through, so I bought a pot of the dried herb and sprinkled that on. Probably not as healthy.

I'd recommend not being a tight bastard and not buying value gammon from Tesco. You'll just end up cutting off the stringy fat. You get what you pay for.

After all that, though, the meat and the sauce tasted quite nice.