Odds, Ends, Aubergine

Food waste averting cookery, with bonus fresh harvested greens - in December!

Every so often, I impress myself with my cooking. Every so often, I prove to be rather resourceful. Once in a blue moon, I delight myself by doing both. And so it was that this post-dinner dish came to be.

My leftover lunch quinoa-kale-carrot soup turned out to be not quite filling enough for dinner (though it, too, was quite tasty). So what's a girl with languishing Chinese eggplant going 10 days unbagged and unrefrigerated, with the stem end starting to go brown, supposed to do? Cook it - browning end and all, cubed. In some oil and salt, tossed quickly, lidded to steam itself. Sauce - what sauce? A leftover ketchup container from fries that accompanied a takeout mushroom burger consumed 3 weekends ago + one pouch of sauce for vegetarian egg rolls that goes perpetually unused and saved because I don't like it with the egg rolls --> mixed, container rinsed with some water, dump in and toss with eggplant. Lid again. Needs some freshness and color, some garnish... Ooh, ooh! The scallion root ends planted outside last Spring were still surprisingly green and sprightly upon last inspection, considering the frigid mid-December of it all. Grab knife, go out into the darkness of the Jardin, cut some of the taller scallion leaves - trust that NYC rain and precip have done all the washing necessary (hope there are no heavy metal traces in said precip). Back inside; kill flame under eggplant. Slice scallion greens, dish eggplant, sprinkle scallions over eggplant.

Photograph. Consume. No spoiling produce, leftover condiment, nor  frost-endangered, homegrown, vivacious-for-now allium shall go wasted in these parts! And it was all pretty tasty. Go figure!

And, even better, I made some headway in the goal of resuming preparing relatively healthy, home cooked meals - for both lunch AND dinner. After an evening of decent sleep, entirely in my bed (without the usual interlude of a sofa sleep). And that's not all! I even got in some exercise, outside, with a quick walk in the park at lunch! Not major accomplishments. But, baby steps back to normalcy.