The Alter kids step out on the town—and some thoughts on eggplant

 

Lisa and Colin
date night

Jordan and Christian
American Cancer Society dinner

Megan in her new boots
No idea where she was going,
but she's ready for some dancing!

While my children were gallivanting, I was home with guests and an appetizer behind which there was a story. I had invited Teddy and Sue for dinner tonight. Teddy, is perhaps the only person I know who is really crazy about eggplant, so I promised to fix him my special Eggplant Parmesan—with the meat/cheese/tomato/eggplant mixture stuffed back into the eggplant shells. It’s showy and, in my opinion, delicious. We’d been talking about this a while, and I was looking forward to making it happen.

Yesterday, Jordan came home from the grocery with four tiny, baby eggplants, each about two fingers wide and about six inches in length. I fumed, I fussed—there was no way to stuff them, and they wouldn’t produce enough substance to adequately flavor the filling. I emailed, rescheduling the Parmesan dish but inviting them for happy hour and promising a nibble. Then is occurred to me that someone somewhere must cook with these tiny things, so I went online searching and came across directions for roasting, with an aside that you could scoop the meat out and serve like hummus or butter.

Following the directions I split the eggplants, salted them, drained them, rinsed them. Then brushed them with oil and roasted them, face down in the pan. Let them cool, scraped out the meat (not easy), added thyme, oregano, salt and pepper, and olive oil. And ended up with a lumpy mixture impossible to spread. So I hauled out my small food processor and gave it a whirl. Results: a spread I thought was okay, Sue said was good, and Teddy loved. I sent it home with him. I probably never will do all that again, but I’ll gladly give Teddy the recipe.

Several people told me this was a supply chain problem, and many shelves are bare at the stores. When I hear supply chain I think cargo ship, but realistically I suppose it has to do with the shortage of truck drivers. Toilet paper shortages or such I can see, but eggplant?

We touched on the subject of Coach Gary Patterson—I was wearing my TCU Friday purple—and Sue not unexpectedly agreed that he has really turned TCU and Fort Worth around, but she was philosophical about money talks, and it’s the way of the world, and twenty years is a long time for a coach. I remain indignant about the lack of respect and gratitude shown Coach P. by TCU, and it occurred to me that what the world needs is a lot less blasé acceptance of “the way things are” and a lot more righteous indignation. I for one will continue to fight for honesty, dignity, and openness in politics and schools and, yes, football, even though I never even watch a game.