Sequestration Meal #485

 

Here we have a generically Asian-style meal, rooted nowhere in particular, but it somehow goes well enough together for me to have put it all in one bowl: Chinese garlic eggplant, Korean spicy cucumber salad, my own Asian baby corn salad, some lemony pre-baked tofu, and rice. I am a typical Westerner, perhaps; I throw all sorts of stuff together that people in the places where the dishes originated probably wouldn't.

The eggplant recipe is from, ironically enough, Omnivore's Cookbook, although the recipe is vegan. I made it because a co-worker gave me a couple of home grown eggplants and I had to do something with them, but I didn't have enough tahini on hand for baba ghanoush. It's a good recipe, one I've made before, though I like it better with Chinese long eggplants. But beggars can't be choosers.

The Korean cucumber salad recipe is from Jeanette's Healthy Living. It helped me get through a little more of the gochujang I need to use up, and I loved it. I will definitely be making this again!

It was a pretty good day, overall; I saw a wolf tree on a hike I'd decided to take through a nearby woods, one those gems of the eastern American forest.

Giant, old trees that rule the forest, even though they're shorter than all the others. They used to be the only tree, and then the other trees grew up around them. When they were alone in a field, trees like this could grow out rather than up, because they didn't have to compete for sunlight.

Fall is magnificent and I intend to enjoy the heck out of it.