Flabbergasted

Around 430pm I received a text from my husband "is there any dinner planned?" - initially I was a little confused, so I called him; he repeated his question...I told him that I planned to make the eggplant; so he said what else; I said maybe some rice; he wanted to know what kind of rice and what else we were going to have.  I qualified my response saying that I didn't want to prepare a lot of food because there were some miscellaneous leftovers in the fridge.  He said ok. 

I wasn't sure why he posed the question; perhaps he wanted to save me the hassle and take us out to dinner; it certainly couldn't be because dinners are few and far between.  Whatever the reason, I had an overwhelming sense of pressure to prepare a decent meal and all I had to work with is eggplant. 

Generally I fry lightly battered eggplant - the kids love it and will eat it any time of the day.  I had envisioned frying the eggplant and making some rice & beans.  All of sudden, that seemed like a bad plan.  I thought about some sort of Thai fried rice but I didn't think I had the appropriate ingredients on hand.  I pulled an Asian cookbook off the shelf and looked up aubergine - everything seemed to involve more effort than I was willing to put forth. 

I mixed up a sauce similar to what I use for escebeche and then started chopping onions, garlic, ginger, and scallions.  I cut the eggplant into strips (kind of like french fries), fried them, removed from pan, sauteed the veggies, added crushed red pepper, then seitan, the sauce, corn starch, and then the eggplant.  We ate it topped with scallions over rice.  I think I used a little too much sauce, but everyone happily ate every bit. 

They say the sons of Adam can never be satisfied...they always want a little more.