Eggplant Bacon & Collard Wraps

 I made some bacon this weekend, out of eggplant.  While watching my new friend, Desirée's, raw foods class she mentioned that she made bacon with eggplant.  I needed to know about that.  It wasn't hard to find a nice recipe online.  I used this one from Raw & Simple, but now that I've done it once, I can see endless variations.  I found it pretty good, but I think I may have overdone it a bit on the dash of cayenne.  At first when I took it out of the dehydrator, I found it a bit too spicy, but as it cooled the flavor mellowed a bit.  I like them.  You couldn't get this past a meat eater as a 'bacon' substitute, but I find this a great sweet/salty snack, the maple flavor combined with the smoked paprika give it that bacony kind of flavor.  I've planted nine eggplants in the garden.  Hopefully I'll have a lot to test out. I probably could have left it in the dehydrator a little longer.  They are a little leathery.  But, when I turned them over this morning, they were so delicate, the fan was blowing them off the tray so I took them out.  I'll like them though.  I must, I've been munching them all day.  I have to save a couple to share at work tomorrow. 

I served them with some of the cashew ricotta I made for the vegetable wraps this weekend, grated carrots, fresh mixed sprouts, and some fresh vegan herb foccacia bread. Kinda of a bacon, cheeze, and greens, sandwich.

The Collard Wraps

This combines some great recipes from the Vegan Fusion Cuisine cookbook: An Almond/Basil Paté, Cashew Ricotta Cheeze, with fresh avocado, grated carrots, a mixture of different sprouts, rolled in large fresh collard greens and served with a Cucumber mint sauce.  All of the herbs used in this dish were picked from our garden this morning.  They kind of resemble sushi rolls.

 Collard Wraps with Cucumber Mint Sauce

I've rolled enough of these to share with some friends and feed us for a couple meals.  

This was Scott's father's day dinner.  Afterwards we had some of the dairy free chocolate mousse, made with fresh ground almond butter. This time I used organic chocolate extract instead of a vanilla bean for a real chocolaty flavor.