Take Out and Southern Cookin'

Dinner here lately has been thrown together very quickly, between Ryan working and me working plus outside duties our food has unfortunately been focusing on whatever is fast...

That's today’s world though, huh?

One night I brought home a Vegan Pizza from Whole Foods. It had a whole wheat crust, tomato sauce and then lots of spinach, artichokes, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Yum-O! At home I put some pepperonis on Ryan's half. With all those veggies, who needs cheese?

Last night we went out as soon as I got home for burgers. I found a local spot nearby that does tasty bar food and DELICOUS veggie burgers, who woulda thunk it? It's the Melrose for all you Nashvillians. No cheese of course, but add avocado and I'm a happy woman.

Tonight, however, I feel the need to put the pot on the stove and the spatula to work! I cleaned the kitchen first, only to mess it up again. My goal was to use what we've already got either in the garden, the fridge, or the pantry, so I chopped up some veggies, started some basmati brown rice, and am now patiently waiting for my summer vegetable Southern style pot of stew to be ready.

I used all the Okra we'd harvested over the past few days and more of those heirloom tomatoes as the base. I was trying to go with Stewed Okra and Tomatoes...then I branched off a bit, I threw in a pretty yellow pepper from the backyard and some jalapenos. To top it off I added a favorite of mine, eggplant.

I truly believe I was predestined to love eggplants. In Italian they are called "melanzane" which is extremely similar to the root of my name "Melanie" which means dark one--Not dark as in evil spirits, but dark as in tan (which I am not, ha!).

I love eggplant everything, and will be SO excited when the eggplants from our garden are ready.

Until later--- many smiles.