Days 12&13 of the Fruit/Veg Challenge: Beets and Napa Cabbage

My wife and I took some time to go out on a date night so I didn't slavishly update the blog, but never fear I am not defeated in my quest. Once again beets were up against another veggie, but this time I'm picking them over spinach since I'm sure I'll have spinach quite a few more times. We went out to a Greek restaurant in South Bend called Alexander's Grill. For our appetizer we got cold marinated beets and sadly they didn't have the wow factor like the cooked beets we had last week from Apple Valley. They were a little short on flavor but were still enjoyable, again they just didn't amaze us. I also had a classic Greek dish: spanikopita, spinach and feta with lemon juice cooked in filo.

This afternoon my wife made a wonderful Napa cabbage salad with an apple vinegar, ramen noodles, and roasted sesame seeds and almonds. I had three small bowls and loved it! The sesame seeds and almonds put a yummy crispy and sweet salad over the top. I'm so blessed with some of the things she makes.

Day 5 of 62: My Fruit/Veg of the Day is Eggplant

We had to go out for a late lunch today and decided to stop at the deli at Apple Valley. It's an option I enjoy because the store doesn't sell meat at all to my knowledge and the deli seperates vegan offerings from vegetarian ones. I am not vegan but I like having the choices which are usually at least a little healthier. We went with a vegan rice dish, some vegan spinich dip and pita bread, cooked beets and an eggplant curry. Well, that seems like a lot of food but don't worry we only ate a reasonable portion. I'm saved the rest for later which turned out to be a blessing since my attempt to stop at the drive-through restaurant fifteen minutes before work was clearly not happening with six or seven cars waiting.

So my choices to claim for the day were spinach dip, which I used too sparingly to really say I'd had a serving of spinach; eggplant or beets. Both of the dishes were quite good and I'm picking eggplant because the eggplant often takes a bit of preparation and they seem to have beets available more often than eggplant.

The curry had eggplant, potatoes, some bell peppers and a small amount of Fri-Chik (which made it the one non-vegan thing I ate today). It was a light curry with a bit of sweetness to it. My wife said she wished it had a stronger curry flavor but they probably have to go easy to keep their less adventurous customers happy.

Here are some interesting facts from Wikipedia about eggplant. The plant originated in India (making eggplant curry quite appropriate), comes from nightshade plants, and is botanically classified as a berry. It is also related to tobacco and contains trace amounts of nicotene. Don't worry though, it would take 20 pounds of eggplant to get the nicotine contained in one cigarette. One last bit of trivia: my grandmother tried every way she could think of to sneak eggplant into my father's diet and it continues to be one of his least favorite foods to this very day.

Eggplant contains histamines and may cause some symptoms to people who get hay fever. I wonder if that's why I had to sneeze a few times while we were eating it.