Thursday, 9/18/25

 Dinner with Jennie and David; bread, cheeses, tomatoes, nuts. Had a nice time visiting with them and came home and polished off the apple fritters.

Wednesday, 9/17/25

 Over the weekend I chopped up an eggplant and threw it in the Dutch oven along with a lot of garlic and the rest of the cherry tomatoes that were in the fridge, looking a little sad. Cooked it down to a tasty but unattractive sludge; we tossed this with pasta shells and cubes of feta for a quick and tasty dinner. Good warm or cold.

Tuesday, 9/16/25

 Since we bought the giant crazy box of meat from Aldi, I needed a recipe to use up pork chops. Enter Pork Chops with Carrot and Habanero-Honey Glaze. Well, jalapeno honey, anyway. This was pretty good, but I wish I had made more carrots and more glaze, and brined the pork chops (they were a little too tough for me). Good flavors and I would make this again, possibly with chicken.

Monday, 9/15/25

 Leftover pizza, as the fridge is too full to add anything else. I put some pickled peppers on mine to good effect.

Sunday, 9/14/25

 Another farm dinner; smaller group but good food. Ate some potato salad, more eggplant, basbousa and a really good tomato-mozzarella salad. The tomatoes were slow roasted in some way, and I wish I had cornered whoever brought them and demanded the recipe. Jason made pita to go with some kofta that his farm pal Iman made.

Saturday, 9/13/25

 In a moment of weakness, I agreed to bread and fry all the eggplants Jason brought home. Panko and flour were everywhere, he was out on the porch frying for seemingly hours...I think in total I breaded 75 slices of eggplant? Ridiculous. And we ate maybe 7? I guess it will be worth it to have them in the freezer in the coming months. I also made apple fritters (a Serious Eats recipe that was probably needlessly complex) with a little maple glaze. Delicious but lacking in crunch. I would try another recipe but we still have a bunch of those leftover, too. And who knows when we will be able to even look at the deep fryer again.

Friday, 9/12/25

 Pizza night, but our Margherita pizza with grilled eggplant was only...fine. Not sure why. Maybe it is because Jason only reluctantly uses fresh mozzarella on a pizza and his resentment seeps into the dough? Personally, I thought it needed more tomatoes. He is afraid of a soggy pizza; he's not wrong but that is kind of how a Neapolitan pie turns out.