Easy Eggplant, Vegan Potato Salad, Carrot Ginger Oatmeal Cookies

I'm having some eggplant for dinner tonight. I probably already lost some of you with that first sentence. I think eggplant has a bad reputation. We aren't programmed to eat purple food much less something growing out of the ground that sounds like it might taste or look like an egg. Yikes!

Eggplant is low in saturated fat and cholesterol. It is also a good source of Vitamin K, thiamine, vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese, and a very good source of dietary fiber. It also has only 33 calories in a cup cooked. Raw, it has only 20 calories per cup.

A friend of mine gave me a great recipe last week. She had never tried eggplant, but became a big fan after preparing it this way. This is an easy dish to prepare and by alternating the ingredients in the eggplant slices, there are different flavors in each bite. My husband doesn't like eggplant, he doesn't mind it raw in a salad, but I will probably be eating the whole dish I made. I am not disappointed about that. I used one and a half large eggplants. I use the fourth half for our salad this week.

Easy Baked Eggplant

It looks really pretty before being roasted. That is a head of garlic in the pan. I threw it in to roast at the same time. I squeeze out the garlic paste and use as a garlic spread.

After roasting - At the end of the process a topping with Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and oregano is added to the top and lightly browned.

I am also enjoying some vegan potato salad. The sunshine Saturday got me to thinking about eating outdoors. So I made some traditional outdoor food.

 This is a vegan version of deli potato salad. Not too much different than most people make. I used red potatoes, diced red onion, celery, a diced red bell pepper, garlic, chopped parsley, a tablespoon of spicy deli mustard, sweet pickle relish, 2 oz flax seed oil, 1 oz garlic chili fax seed oil, and Celtic sea salt to taste. This salad has a nice fresh taste to it. Since there is no mayo or eggs, it travels well too.

I made some Carrot Ginger Oat cookies this weekend too. I thought I would look on my own blog to see how easy it was to get a recipe. I found a nice vegan cookie recipe on the 101 Cookbooks Link, Carrot Ginger Oat Cookies. I had decided to make it and realized that I'd seen that recipe before somewhere. I already had a recipe very similar to this one except mine uses maple syrup and bananas as sweetener and thickener and a tablespoon of fresh ginger and some fresh ground cardamom. I also mixed up my flours, I used WW pastry flour, oat flour, and some Teff flour. It's a very small grain, the smallest on the planet. It is very high in dietary fiber, iron, and provides protein and calcium. It's very similar to quinoa or millet. I put the grains in a coffee grinder to make the flour. Bob's Red Mill sells it. I am not sure if they have the flour, but they do have the grain. I omitted the nuts and used dried cranberries instead of raisins. They are very light and cake-like. They didn't photograph too well, in my opinion. But, they are good, low fat, high fiber, and dairy free.

Carrot Ginger Oat Cookies and Almond Milk with fresh ground nutmeg