Take the good (veggies) with the bad (veggies)
Monday, August 14th, 2006You know how I was talking about ordering that CSA basket from Plumgood Food? Well, it showed up Thursday and it was a bounty of vegetables. Something like 20-25 tomatoes, 20-25 okra, 8 ears of corn, 3 cucumbers, 3 leeks, 1 zucchini, 1 crookneck squash, 1 red bell pepper, 1 green bell pepper, 1 head of cabbage, 1 eggplant, and 1 cantaloupe. It barely fit into the fridge. And then I got overwhelmed by the idea of how to cook it all up and not waste any, so over the weekend we only ended up using, like, 2 ears of corn, 2 tomatoes, and the cantaloupe. I planned to make a big pot of ratatouille but it was always too much to think about.
Well, I’m home sick today but I had a little energy, so while I was taking a break from writing use cases, I started chopping some vegetables. And once I had the eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and okra chopped, I didn’t feel like going any farther. So I tossed them gradually into my big frying pan and sauteed them. The outcome is this:
I don’t think the picture does it justice. I tasted it a few times as I was finishing it up, and it’s amazing. I hardly added anything to it — just a healthy dollop of safflower oil at the beginning to get the juices goin’. It’s all veggie-flavor-power from there, baby.
And the bad news? After that little victory, I started to attack the tomatoes and found out they’re nearly all bad. Well, all the ones that the cats hadn’t already eaten since Thursday, that is.
Oh well. I have delicious eggplant stir-fry to enjoy for lunch for the next several days, and I’m happy.