Hello. Meet my lunch.

A delectable vegetable sandwich on scrumptious toasted Ezekiel seven grain bread with a smattering of homemade two-day-old guacamole, freshly sliced tomatoes and store bought, hand washed fresh from the fridge romaine lettuce.

My sandwich has a friend I’d like you to meet too.

A mumbo jumbo plate of steamed cauliflower, shredded carrots and zucchini steamed in only the finest tap water this side of the Mississippi, topped with the Parmesaniest cheese this side of Wegmans.

Hey. Kid. Get your fingers out of my food. I’m trying to do introductions here.

Now that you’ve met my friends, let me tell you about my favorite colors, Green and Black. With a bite missing.

Next I need to tell you about a miracle. No, not the PB Cookie Larabar that I snacked on today. (Although it is a miracle I finally found this flavor.) The miracle that is bulk nut butters found at my local food coop. Today’s “Mystery Butter”? Mixed raw and roasted almond butter for 1.99 a pound.

Yes, that’s right. That’s not a typo. A DOLLAR NINETY NINE A POUND. Apparently there are “some people” who only want raw AB or only roasted AB, thus a mix of the two is less desirable. Lucky for me I am not “some people”.

And finally, a recipe to share with you this evening.

Eggplant Parmesean A LA Alison

2 medium eggplants
Salt
Tomato sauce, prepared as desired
Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesan cheese

Step 1: Pre heat oven to 350

Step 2: Slice eggplant into 1/2 in slices. Place on cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt to remove bitterness. Basically, make your eggplant sweat like it just ran around the block.

Step 3: Meanwhile, get started on your sauce if you’re gonna make it yourself. If you’re going to dump it out of a jar, move on to Step 4.

Optional Step 3a: I prefer to make my own sauce, and I start by sauteing onions, garlic and mushrooms in a little EVOO.

Step 4: After about 30 minutes, rinse salted eggplant and bake for about 5 minutes. (You did pre-heat the oven, right?) Flip and bake for another 5 minutes.

If you’re making your own sauce, keep working on it while the egg plant is doing it’s sweating, rinsing and baking thing.

After my mushrooms and onions are soft, I added a can of 15 oz diced tomatoes, a 4 oz can of tomato paste, a little water, dried oregano, basil, S&P.

Step 5: Shred your mozzarella.

In 9 x 13 inch pan, spread a thin *layer of tomato sauce. Top with a layer of eggplant. Sauce. Mozz. Parm. Repeat once more from *.

Ready for the oven.

Ready for my mouth.

And this concludes my strangest post of the week.

• No related posts.

Thank you all for your congrats on the 5K yesterday, I’m very happy with how it went, especially considering when I ran that same race in 2007 my time was 27:something. It’s just a reminder to me that sticking with something eventually pays off. Dropping 35 lbs since then certainly didn’t hurt my time either.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to run or ride this morning, but when I noticed my legs were a little sore I figured I would ride and save running for Monday.

My pre-ride breakfast.

Hard core, straight off the cutting board, who-needs-a-plate, kiwi.

I love early morning rides on the weekend because there is practically no traffic. I just love how quiet the usual bustling streets can be when the rest of the world is home dreaming. I did pass a few runners this morning, I always love that too.

I rode 15.4 miles in 1 hour and 1 minute. Again.

Before I left for my ride I sliced up some banana and threw it in the freezer to use when I got home. I knew I’d be gone about an hour and that would get my bananas to the perfect level of frozen-ess. Frozen enough to be creamy and dreamy but not so frozen it would give my blender a coronary.

A little soy milk to help the blender do it’s blender thing and couple handfuls of spinach to help my breakfast do the iron, calcium, live enzyme and chlorophyll thing.

Creamy and dreamy? Yep and yep.

• No related posts.