eggplant!

I attempted another yu-siang eggplant tonight. It didn't come out exactly like it does in restaurants, but it was still tasty. The whole point of the exercise was to use up an eggplant before tomorrow's farm deluge. I got most of the way through the prep work before realizing that the eggplant on hand was old and too tired to use. A quick call to Mr. P on his way home brought the promise of a new eggplant from the very place where, just an hour earlier, I had bought onions, mushrooms, and water chestnuts, and scallions.

I sauteed onions, mushrooms, and water chestnuts, then chopped the eggplant and added to the pan along with a secret sauce -- vinegar, water, sugar, soy sauce, evil hot Chinese chili bean sauce. Then I covered the pan and simmered for quite a while, stirring occasionally when the mood hit.

We served it over rice, and as I say, it was good -- enough so that I wanted seconds and may take the leftovers to work tomorrow.

We served it with a side salad -- the last of the poodle lettuce, scallions, avocado, cherry tomatoes, homemade mozzarella (but not made in this home), tomatillos, the last greenish-reddish pepper.

For dessert, we had the last of last week's watermelon, which wasn't as tasty as some melons have been. So I added some maple syrup and (ok, weird) salted toasted sunflower seeds. Not bad.