>I’ve drank quite a bit of my smoothie, but this is my morning trifecta:
Coffee, water, Green smoothie. My smoothies are usually 15-20 ounces.
You know how there are some recipes that you go back to time and again? Even if it’s not weekly, or even monthly, there are recipes that I’ll remember and go back and cook again and again..then I’ll forget about them for seven or eight months. This weekend, I giant $2 eggplant was starting me in the face. I know this isn’t a good price for an eggplant, but it was a gorgeous, perfect, 2 lb beauty. And even though I have a tendency to sometimes let eggplant go bad before I cook it, I purchased this with the best intentions. Then I proceeded to scour cookbooks. I’m doing the Veganomicon Challenge currently, so I went there first. The moukassa sounded great, but super labor intensive for something I know my husband won’t touch. He hates eggplant anyways, but maybe one day I’ll have an excuse to make that eggplant moukassa with pinenut cream. Next, I went to appetite for reduction, thinking I’d use all two pounds of eggplant to make a metric fuckton (scientific measurement!) of eggplant bacon. Except that the thought of burning eggplant really scared me and I don’t have three baking sheets. So….I resorted to my favorite eggplant recipe from the fatfree vegan. As soon as I recalled this recipe, I wondered why I’d even looked for another way to use this eggplant. I LOVE Tunisian Vegetable Ragout with Quinoa from the FatFree Vegan. It is deeeelicious. I’ve never followed Susan’s recipe exactly, but that’s because I realllllllllly love to roast the eggplant and zucchini in cumin/garlic/smoked paprika before I start cooking. It just adds pow to the recipe and I love how eggplant kind of carmelizes in the oven. It also makes this recipe less…um…fat free. I am experimenting with low oil cooking, but I have a tendency to use my dutch oven for this, and dutch ovens don’t work well for fat free cooking. They’re designed to cook things in oil (at least that’s what the pamphlet that came with mine says, and things REALLY stick to it if I don’t use oil). So yeah…this recipe isn’t the healthiest when I make it. But that’s ok, it’s packed with vegetables and flavor, and that’s what I care about. Plus, a healthy dose of olive oil is good for me sometimes 🙂
As I mentioned, I did change up the recipe. I cooked my quinoa with garlic powder, cumin and not-beef broth. I roased the zucchini& eggplant with spices. I used actual curry paste in the ragout as well as the spices that were called for; and I used more oil, and I used more vegetable broth too.
Lacey Loves Food 