Eggplant Cravings

Hmm, where did this week go?! It’s been an awesome few days of catching up with lots of old friends in Manhattan and Westchester.

Last Sunday my trapeze friends had a huge reunion picnic. I hadn’t seen some of these people since over a year ago when my beloved indoor rig closed down.

I am so insanely grateful to have this wacky group of people in my life thanks to trapeze. As the baby of the group they have all acted as my big brothers, big sisters and mentors over the past 4 (!) years. Catching up with them was such a treat and it seems like everyone is doing incredibly well between new job opportunities, marriages and those of us that are going back to school. Who would’ve guessed I met some of my closest friends thanks to flying trapeze?

between the sparkly pants and our genuine laughter this picture warms my heart.
Definitely the perfect NYC afternoon with some of my favorite people.

On Monday I headed back to Westchester to visit the boy and ended up staying until Wednesday. I some how managed to keep myself occupied by visiting with a bunch of friends, running on the trails and going on a major shopping spree with my mama. I kept joking with her that I was “back to school shopping” and needed cute outfits for chem lecture!

Today I was back in the city and back to my usual 4:15am alarm for work, oof. All day I had been looking forward to the last class of my 10 week trapeze intensive but the weather gods had other plans for me. Sadly almost every single Thursday over the past 10 weeks has brought crummy weather. I ended up leaving the rig once I realized the rain wouldn’t be letting up and we were already 20 minutes into class time but stuck inside.

Cooler temperature and the light drizzle meant it was good running weather… and I kinda needed to run today in order to stay on my half marathon training schedule. The miles wore slow and I came home before my 3.5 miles were up feeling a bit defeated but seriously craving eggplant for some odd reason. Ever since having some heavenly baba ganoush yesterday I’ve been itching for some more eggplant. Earlier this week I received a some samples from Tasty Bite and have been looking forward to making round two of vegan chana masala. Today I decided to swap out zucchini for eggplant

The flavor was perfect– I sauteed the eggplants in olive oil with garlic… but for some reason the eggplants wanted to soak up allllll the olive oil instead of do its thang and cook. It was still tasty but a bit more oily than I would have preferred. Anyone have an suggestions for their favorite way they cook eggplant quickly so it can be added to a dish?

Even so I’m still looking forward to having eggplant channa masala leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I’ve never tried any of the other Tasty Bite products and I’m definitely curious to try all of them out. The one that definitely intrigues me the most is the vegan pad thai since I adore anything that’s peanuty.

I’m so excited for the boy to visit this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always excited when he visits me but we have an awesome weekend planned- seeing Mike Birbiglia do stand up, Love Labour’s Lost in the park, city streets and soaking up more summer in the city fun. Can’t wait!

what exciting plans do you have for the week?

How do you cook eggplant?