First things first….
Lunch!
I couldn’t come up with anywhere good to go for lunch, so I dished out the chickpea stew I had been meaning to serve as tonight’s dinner (I made it yesterday during the afternoon cooking frenzy). Funny how it’s so much less work to cook four things at once.
Yep, rough life – home-cooked lunch on the balcony.
Ingredients
- About 1 C cooked chickpeas
- Garlic (1-3 cloves, as you like it)
- Olive oil
- Eggplant (1 medium)
- 2-4 medium tomatoes (canned, fresh, whatever; if you’re using fresh, you’ll also need to add some tomato juice, stock, or water)
- Other veggies (I added some anaheim peppers from the farmer’s market)
- Salt, marjoram, turmeric, cumin, and black pepper (or whatever you like)
Procedure
- Heat the olive oil in a saucepan on medium heat. Chop the garlic; sauté until fragrant.
- Slice the eggplant and add it to the pan.
- If you’re adding other firm veggies (carrots, onions, peppers), add them after 1-2 minutes. Otherwise, just heat the eggplant until it begins to soften.
- Add the tomatoes and tomato juice.
- Stir in the spices.
- Stir in the chickpeas.
- Bring to a boil.
- Cover; reduce heat and simmer for at least 25 minutes. Best served the next day, but tasty straight off the stove as well.
It’s got a good mediterranean feel. I served it today with bread for WB and half a brown rice tortilla for me. This batch made enough for two big lunches with 1/2 serving left over.
I also made lunch dessert:
Organic raspberry yogurt with lime-raspberry-watermelon-agave sauce (straight outta the blender) and a sprinkling of flax for WB
Plain organic (Nancy’s, yay!) yogurt with agave, lime and flax for me.
Strange – could be a smudge on my lens, but it does look like a lime shortbread cookie found its way into my yogurt.
But now the fun part -
Dinner!
We went for my fay-ay-ayvorite tacos. I swear we keep this place in business!
And then for froyo:
XFYC!
(eXtreme FroYo Close-up)
And then to Starbucks, where I got a solo macchiato:
And then to see (500) Days of Summer, which was adorable. If someone had screened it when I was in film school, I might have said it was parts were too slow or too reliant on the soundtrack, and some of the acting was nondescript; for a theatrical release, I think it was a solid 4/5.
I was set to be cynical and hard-hearted about it for some reason (film school comes to mind), but…they really hit the nail on the head. Or they followed us for the first year of our relationship? Not sure. But…like, to the last drop. It was good. Except I’m not marrying anyone else, bwahaha.
I don’t think.
I mean, there’s no ring.
Anyway.
It’s hard to get cynical when evenings look like this.
