eggplant – Page 3 – no counterspace

food list

food I have
Produce
~~3 bananas~~
~~1 small potato~~
orange juice
2 grapefruits
~~5 beets w/ greens~~
collard greens
1.5 small zucchinis of imminent doom
~~5 leeks~~
buncha scallions
2 red bell peppers
1 orange bell pepper
~~inner half of a bunch of lettuce~~
leftovers from a portabella fajita
~~almost 1pt of leftover baighan bartha (eggplant curry)~~

*no carrots, buy more *done*
*no hot peppers, buy more

Meat
~~1/2 a container of stock~~
~~5ish~~ 2ish ounces of pork slow-cooked with taco seasoning, orange juice, and stock (Mmmm!)

Meals planning
Thursday, June 26
going out for dinner

Friday, June 27
roast bell peppers (and zucchini?)
breakfast: Kenyan collard greens (buy a tomato) over a bagel with cream cheese
lunch: anyone want to meet for lunch?
dinner: ~~spicy tofu with beet greens~~

Saturday, June 28
breakfast: grapefruit – stop by produce truck and look for other sexy fruit
Start soup – clean leeks, cook them down with oil (set some aside with a lot of salt for snack food), add carrots. And then figure out what kind of soup you are going to make from that. (ETA: Apparently, this soup should also include beets)
dinner: salad. So I have this intricate salad planned, but it’s missing an ingredient or two. Here’s what I’m thinking – lettuce (natch), carrots, raw zucchini, taco pork, banana, scallions, and then I’ve made a salad dressing with balsamic, tamarind juice, honey, mustard. My mother thinks this could also use some mandarin oranges… and maybe I could go orange segments, but probably my grapefruit would be too overpowering. I think this also needs nuts. I’m thinking cashews, but I only have almonds, walnuts, and pecans – and I don’t see buying a whole container of cashews just for 1 Tablespoon worth. But it needs a salty, doesn’t it? *Done – cashews were a tasty addition*

Sunday, June 29
take bagels to my parents
eat dinner at Legal’s (I think I’ll go to the wood-grilled wild salmon)
give mother – argh – I was just looking at something the morning and reminding myself to take it this weekend. Oh, and the heavy cream.
get from mother – books to repair, leftovers
return bras to Lane Bryant
stop by Whole Foods on way home (if still open) and see if they have more conditioner and 1lb of spring mix for a reasonable price

Monday, June 30
breakfast: bagel w/ roasted pepper cream cheese
make rice for baighan bartha, and put up portions for lunch.
dinner: quesadillas – use up portabella leftovers, some of the leeks, the last of the roasted bell peppers, and the last of the collard greens.

Tuesday, July 1
dentist appointment at 11am
therefore, have to do weight watchers meeting at 12:30, rather than 11:30
therefore, request medical time from work.
breakfast: mango from fruit truck
dinner: ~~something with beets. And 1 potato (if it survives that long). Ooo… maybe I should put those in the soup. Are there any soup recipes with beets that are not borscht?~~

Wednesday, July 2
time for a dinner out

Thursday, July 3
dinner plans in

Friday, July 4
D&D

Eggplant for dinner

I had some amazing eggplant in garlic sauce from a local chinese restaurant, and I have been hankering to have it again ever since.

So I bought an eggplant.

I did not, however, get around to buying garlic sauce.

So when faced with the dilemma of making something else for dinner or pulling some crazy recipe out of my ass, what do you think I did?

Well, okay, I first checked for recipes in my chinese cookbook, but it only had two eggplant recipes: one required a larger steaming apparatus than I have and the other included pork and sake, neither of which I had on hand (all the pork is frozen).

So… Here’s what I did:

Line a jelly roll sheet (baking sheet with 4 raised sides) with aluminum foil. Stab your eggplant a few times so it doesn’t explode.
- Put the eggplant on the sheet, and pop it into the oven – on broil. Turn the eggplant occasionally so that the skin chars evenly (just like roasting a bell pepper).
- When it is almost finished, turn off the oven and walk away. I suggest watching an episode of Stargate: Atlantis.
- When cool, lift the eggplant away from all of the liquid that has oozed out. You aren’t saving this liquid – it’s all bitter and nasty. Hold by the stem, and just peel off strips of skin until it all starts to fall apart on you. Then transfer to a surface and peel the rest. At this point, I tip the worst of the liquid down the sink and then just bundle up all of the peel and sticky foil and toss it. (and if you are lucky, the pan is still clean.) And then cut half inch strips of eggplant across the grain and one or two lengthwise.
Random stuff I threw together to make the liquid bit:
- 1/4 cup chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon sambal olek (okay, so I totally sniffed at the sauce later and added another heaping teaspoon, but I hadn’t realized I was going to end up with a slow simmer cooking thing, and peppers build heat the longer you cook them – so it was a little too spicy for me. Therefore, just one teaspoon.)
- 1 teaspoon black vinegar
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon manischewitz wine (to sweeten, and because sherry seems popular in asian cooking and I don’t own any)
- 1 inch ginger, minced finely
- 2 large cloves of garlic, minced finely
- 3/4 teaspoon steak sauce (cause it seemed a bit thin)
- 1 teaspoon oyster sauce (because that was the real answer to the thin problem)
And now to the main event:
- Get 1/2 c asian short grain rice to boiling
- Immediately after you turn down the heat and set the rice to steaming, heat up some oil in a pan (I used about 4 teaspoons of olive oil, a sprinkle of chili oil, and a little bit of sesame oil).
- Throw in the eggplant and toss it around a bit so that it makes good friends with the oil (MMmmm – eggplants love oil).
- And then I added the liquid and turned the heat down low and left it (stirring occasionally) until the rice was finished.
And then it was pretty tasty.

food list

I had people over at my house this weekend, so now I have a weird set of food to figure out.

Produce
collard greens (possibly getting too old)
4 apples
potatoes
1 pomegranate
jalepeno peppers
lemons
1 aging lime
grape tomatoes
4 winter Roma tomatoes
innards of a roasted acorn squash

dairy
whole milk
tzatziki sauce
onion dip
sour cream (unopened, so that’ll keep)
scallion cream cheese
1/2 a round of goat cheese brie

meat
2 packages chicken breasts
chicken/duck stock
2 dozen eggs (they were cute little pullet eggs)

bread
homemade pita chips of awesome
leftover potato chips
peppermint oreos
crackers

miscellaneous
hummus
eggplant dip of awesome
tasty herbed mayonnaise
half an opened can of tahini
2 containers of indian stuff I can’t identify

Can I turn this stuff into food?
– So the eggplant dip – there’s a ~~lot~~ pint of it. It was a whole eggplant, roasted, and then pureed with spices. I don’t think I want to eat it as dip. So I have some cubes of roasted lamb in the freezer. And I was thinking egg noodles with that… but now I’m thinking mashed potatoes and shepherd’s pie. Possibly there should be mushrooms in that dish.

– Chicken breasts. With pomegranate? And lemon? If I roast chicken breasts with pomegranate in my white casserole dishes, will they stain? Is there anything else from this list that can go in that dish? Yes to a jalepeno pepper. No to tomatoes. Maybes to the apples, the acorn squash, and the collard greens.

– Hummus and/or tahini. Given that I will not be frying up falafel, what else is hummus good for? Right – pita chips.

– apples and goat cheese… salad?

– pesto risotto (using the stock!) with roasted grape tomatoes. I’d need to buy parmesan cheese.

– chicken raft

Tofu Shirataki

Food experiment: Tofu Shirataki

Yeah, so this was a total shot in the dark as to whether they would be edible, but they were both weird and on sale so they fit my standard requirements for a culinary adventure.

Shirataki noodles are made from a root (often translated on the packaging as yam) and – in this case – tofu. They are packaged wet, kind of like sauerkraut.

Because the packaging warned that they are often parboiled to get rid of the smell (other notes included “distinctive texture”), I drained the packaging liquid and set it to marinate in a spicy cooking sauce. Then, I fried it all up in a pan with eggplant and shredded cabbage.

Right after cooking – fairly tasty, but still not as sexy a texture as proper noodles… they ended up having an almost al dente texture. Maybe I should have parboiled, but I was more worried about the flavor.

After freezing – No. Just no. So the website has a warning not to freeze, but the packaging didn’t, and ew! It turned into thin strips of plastic, I swear! So I am picking those out and dropping them in my trash so I can eat the rest of the goody.

Food I need to cook tonight – or Why am I a lazyass?

Ziti with Roasted Eggplant and Ricotta Cheese
Uses up:

eggplant
2 cans of tomatoes
~~ziti~~ rotelle
ricotta

Mashed Potatoes
Uses up

potatoes
any miscellaneous dairy products
some chicken stock

Pesto Chicken
I just have a leg marinating in pesto that I need to cook so I can have random chicken pits in sandwiches or salads (or real food) throughout the week.

food that will still need to be dealt with
Produce
red bell peppers
cucumbers
zucchini

plums
nectarines
strawberries

meat
a huge honking pork roast (leftovers)
chicken stock
a cooked chicken leg