Back when I wrote about my searing eye pain, you all were very clear: go see a doctor — a different doctor — NOW. Doc Number Two said my eyes did show signs of dryness, but nothing that would warrant the level of pain I was having, and she suggested a better over-the-counter cream.

The next week, the pain grew to unbearable levels (not because of the new cream — I hadn’t started that yet) so I dialed up the new doc and together we mounted a multi-pronged approach to fixing my eyes: steroid drops, allergy meds, an eye mask, eye cream, and anti-inflammatory meds. The relief was almost immediate (probably thanks to the steroids?), and now my remedies have been streamlined to just the special, extra-thick and sodium-laced eye cream, and the eye mask.

Ah, sleep masks. When I put it on at night, it’s like pulling down the shades. Darkness — BOOM, I’m out.

Also, I have almost zero eye pain now. (Though sometimes, if the mask slips off at night, my eyes are sore when I wake up, so my hunch is that the fans in our room were drying out my eyes and the eye mask helps protect against the swirling, drying air.)

The Peanut Butter Falcon (Amazon Prime) is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. (And it’s new (2019) and I’d never heard of it, what the heck?) My older son discovered it and said we had to watch it. Like, immediately. We persuaded him to wait forty-eight hours until our Sunday family movie night, but afterward I told him he gets the award, hands-down, for best movie pick.

From the same makers (or whatever you call them) of Little Miss Sunshine (and I detected O Brother Where Art Thou vibes, too), The Peanut Butter Falcon is delightfully quirky, heartwarming, funny, and real — exactly the sort of movie I’d happily watch over and over again.

And I will.

A friend posted a photo of a cucumber salad on Facebook and I messaged her for the recipe. Since then, I’ve made it a bunch of times.

Reasons I like it:

*It uses a bunch of cucumbers.
*It easily absorbs other in-season veggies, like green peppers, red onions, and tomatoes.
*It’s a good make-ahead salad.
*It keeps well in the fridge so you can pull from it whenever you need a hit of veggies.
*It’s light, and tangy-sweet.
*It goes good with everything: beans and rice, mac and cheese, burgers, corn-on-the-cob, etc.

Tangy Cucumber Salad
Adapted from Roveen’s Facebook message.

for the veggies: 
cucumbers, peeled or unpeeled, and sliced thin
onion, sliced thin
peppers, any color, sliced thin (optional)
tomatoes, any kind, chopped (optional)

for the dressing, whisk together:
¾ cup water
¼ cup white sugar
¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
black pepper and salt

Pour the dressing over the veggies and press them down to submerge. Refrigerate, stirring once in a while. Before serving, let set briefly at room temp until the oil de-solidifies.

This podcast, On Female Rage (NYTimes), is powerful, and a must-listen. “This anger [is] … about necessity: what needs to boil us out of bed and billow our dresses, what needs to burn in our voices, glowing and fearsome, fully aware of its own heat.”

When a friend mentioned that she had the boxset of March, John Lewis’ series of three graphic novels detailing his life, I immediately asked to borrow them.

My younger son devoured them — when he was partway through the first, and on the same day that Lewis was lying in state in the U.S. Capitol, he piped up, “I sorta wish John Lewis was alive right now so I could write him a letter” — and the girls are reading them now.

They say they don’t like graphic novels but I’m making the books required reading.

I just finished the second one which focused on the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington. What stands out to me most is that the civil rights movement was such a process. I tend to see the movement as inevitable — a series of obvious steps that had to be taken to get from Point A to Point B — but it was anything but.

Rather, the movement was riddled with changed plans, mistakes, conflicting opinions, strong personalities, difficult decisions, life-threatening risk, negotiations, compromise, and set-backs.

Nothing about it was inevitable. Absolutely nothing.

My takeaways:
1. Change isn’t a given.
2. Uncertainty over how things will end is no excuse not to act.

My local grocery store finally started carrying champagne and sherry vinegars! (Also, they’ve gone from not wearing masks to posting an employee at the door to hand them out, hip-hip!)

I’ve been on the lookout for these vinegars for years, but, unwilling to go out of my way to track them down, I just slogged it out with the basics — apple cider, white, and balsamic — all the while knowing that a little vinegar upgrade might seriously improve my cooking. And now I get to find out! 

So far, I’m mostly just drinking (sipping) them straight and arm twisting family members into taking blind taste test. Which is actually quite entertaining. In fact, if you need a pandemic activity, I highly recommend pulling out all your vinegars and holding a tasting.

Pandemic Bonus: vinegar has antiviral properties and it beats drinking bleach anyday.

When a real-live interview is more hilarious than a late-night comedy show.

Watching Jonathan Swan deftly cut through the buffoonery is pure gold.

And to conclude, two things:
*This chilling Fresh Air interview with Stuart Stevens, a GOP strategist. Brace yourself.
*Kamala!

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (8.12.19), Mondays, riding paso fino, fresh peach pie, tomato bread pudding with caramelized onions and sausage, the Murch Collision of 2015, spaghetti with vodka cream tomato sauce, the quotidian (8.12.13), grilled trout with bacon.

One of the perks of having a child who works at a vegetable farm is that she brings home produce. Towards the end of the work day, my daughter will often call to see what I want and I’ll say, “Carrots, please, and two green peppers.” Or, “A couple of the red juice tomatoes, beets, and some red onions.” Or, “Nothing today, thanks.”

And then there are the days she calls and says, “When you pick me up, bring the van.” Because the haul — all the unused produce that she’s allowed to just take — is so great that it won’t fit in the car.

It’s incredible really. The bins and crates spread across the picnic table, we marvel at our good fortune. And then I take what we’ll use and we share the rest with friends.

The day she brought home a bushel of eggplant, though, I wasn’t sure whether to gloat or cry.

I hadn’t grown up eating eggplant (my only eggplant-oriented memory is of my mother “secretly” dumping her plate of eggplant parmesan under the picnic table), and besides a one-time foray into baba ganoush (which we liked), I really didn’t know how to use it. Or rather, how to use it in ways that my family would find acceptable.

So I posted on Facebook: “Best recipes for eggplant. GO.”

And the recipes and suggestions came pouring in. Turns out, people really, really, really like their eggplant! I had no idea.

Since then, I’ve cooked eggplant a bunch of different ways:

Grilled: I dipped each slice of eggplant in a sauce of olive oil, chopped parsley and oregano, salt and pepper, and raw garlic and then grilled them until golden brown. I also applied the same treatment to thick slices of sweet pepper and red onion.

To eat, I made a veggie stack: a round of eggplant, feta, eggplant, mozzarella, onion, pepper, tomato, salt and pepper. Then I grilled a hamburger bun, slathered both top and bottom with mayo, and added the stack of grilled, cheesy veggies.

It was amazing.

(The rest of the family ate their slices of grilled eggplant plain and stuck beef burgers in the buns.)

Moussaka: The Greek equivalent of lasagna, moussaka is made by layering a) roasted (or grilled) eggplant, b) a meat sauce seasoned with oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, and paprika, c) sliced potatoes, and then d) topping the whole thing with a creamy mixture of feta, ricotta, and yogurt.

While my family liked the flavor, they reacted to the big slices of eggplant in the bottom layer so next time I’ll grill the eggplant, chop it into small pieces, and add it directly to the meat sauce.

Barbecued lentils and eggplant: I served this on buns like sloppy Joe’s — aka Sloppy Judy’s — but we all agreed we’d prefer it over rice. (Later I ate some of the leftovers spooned over a cheesy burger patty atop buttered sourdough toast, swoooooon.)

My favorite, though, was the black pepper tofu and eggplant, tofu being another food that I’ve hardly ever eaten and thought I mostly didn’t like.

Which is kind of funny, really: that the combination of the two most un-like-ly foods combined to create something utterly delectable is why cooking never ceases to intrigue and amaze me. Hit it just right and it’s pure magic.

This afternoon I’m getting more tofu so I can make it again. My family wasn’t keen on this dish (inexplicably, they’ve never really taken to Asian flavors), but I don’t even care.

I’ll be more than happy to eat this for days on end.

Black Pepper Tofu and Eggplant
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen (recipe recommendation from Anna via Facebook).

I got my tofu from our local co-op: the Wildwood brand.

Minced green onions would be a lovely and delicious garnish. Also, consider serving this with grilled onions and sweet peppers (ones that were dipped into herby, garlicky olive oil prior to grilling), as seen above.

A full half cup of soy sauce was too salty for my taste; thus the reason for subbing in with a bit of water.

This is one of those dishes that, while you can eat it immediately (and you will because it’s impossible to wait!), actually improves with time. After a day or two in the fridge, the flavors meld and intensify. Consider your menu planning accordingly.

I think I’m going to try oven roasting some extra eggplant and then freezing it so I can make this dish in the winter. Eggplant Experts: do you think it will work to roast, and then freeze, eggplant?

1 large eggplant (about 1 pound), trimmed and cut into cubes
14-16 ounces extra-firm tofu
1 tablespoon cornstarch
¼ cup neutral oil, like canola, divided
4 tablespoons butter
1 red or yellow onion (about 1 cup), cut in half lengthwise and then thinly sliced
½ cup thinly sliced sweet red pepper
5 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons finely minced ginger
soy sauce and water to equal ½ cup (I used 6 tablespoons soy sauce and 2 tablepoons water)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper, and maybe even more
salt

Set the tofu on a paper towel-lined plate. Put more paper towels on top. Let drain for 5-10 minutes, partway through replacing the wet paper towels with fresh and setting a second plate on top of the tofu since removing all the moisture helps the tofu fry better. Cut the tofu into cubes. Toss with the tablespoon of cornstarch and a bit of salt.

In a separate bowl, toss the chopped eggplant with a tablespoon of oil and a bit of salt.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and put a large,sided baking sheet in the oven. Once the oven is hot, remove the pan and coat the bottom with 3 tablespoons of oil. Tumble the eggplant onto one half of the pan and the tofu onto the other half. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes. Turn the pieces (try to get color on at least two sides of each piece, but it doesn’t have to be perfect) and roast for another 5-10 minutes.

For the sauce:
In a large saucepan, melt the butter. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, and sweet pepper. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook for 10-15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and beginning to caramelize. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and black pepper and simmer for several more minutes. Add the tofu and eggplant and cook for another couple minutes. Add more black pepper.

Serve hot over white rice. Pass the hot sauce.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (8.5.19), in the kitchen, the quotidian (8.6.18), Murch Mania 2017, knife in the eye, glazed lemon zucchini cake, cheesy herb pizza, the end, the quotidian (8.6.12), caramelized cherry tomatoes.