Little Dishes #16

 

Trying to get my groove back, I made myself some Chinese food: Bok choy and mushroom stir fry (recipe from Omnivore's Cookbook), garlic eggplant (recipe also from Omnivore's Cookbook), brown rice with scallions, tomato-"egg" stir fry (recipe from JUST), and some bulgogi-style seitan strips with more scallions.

Bulgogi is not Chinese. But it's very mild and it doesn't clash here, and I can only do what I can do. I wanted to focus my energies on cooking veggies for this meal. So, with apologies for the inauthenticity of it all, this is Chinese-ish, perhaps?

Mostly, I wanted eggplant. I was pretty well desperate for eggplant. I do not know what that was about, but if you crave a vegetable, I see no reason not to give in unless you're allergic. (I am not a medical doctor, of course. This is not medical advice.) I doubled the recipe but not the oil; that makes a difference, and it's a bit less amazing and more just good that way. Also, I could only get the standard squat purple eggplants at my store, since they were out of the long Asian kind. So that also makes a difference. It was still good, though.

I've been using avocado oil lately, and then I learned that avocado oil probably isn't avocado oil, typically; this is exasperating. This will require more research; I appreciate any tips you have for getting real oils since oil seems to be an ingredient that is always turning up "not actually that" in reporting.

Anyway, I gave myself what I needed, and it was good. And maybe I'll have the energy to cook next week, too, or maybe not, but somehow or other I'll feed myself.

That's a promise I make to both you and to me. No matter how awful things get, I will eat.

On the day you see this, it will be the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I'm surrounded by new students, none of whom were born when they happened. Time passes. Things change. Hopefully, these kids will make the world better. I can't answer for the crimes of my own generation, though they ask questions that make me realize they are looking for someone to answer for them. I wonder what they'll do with their generational trauma, and I hope they'll do better things with theirs than my generation seems to have done with ours.

Meanwhile, I eat Chinese food.