Off my game

After a weekend away, and a long day of teaching and yoga, I decided to cook up some dishes in advance to save time later.  I had three eggplants saved up, but they were looking sad and wilty (who knew eggplant could wilt!?).  I was craving Indian, but couldn't find anything online that sounded tempting.  I turned to my favorite cookbook, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and found exactly what I wanted: Curried Coconut Eggplant with Potatoes.  Perfect, since I just got sweet potatoes, and the recipe also calls for tomatoes.  The only thing I didn't have was ginger, but knew that wouldn't matter too much.  What does matter, though, is that you don't burn the spices.  First I burned the mustard seeds I was supposed to be toasting.  Then the rest of the spices burned, including all my garlic.  I went forward, though, and stirred all the veggies & coconut milk into the charred mass.  We'll see how it turns out when I have it for dinner tomorrow, but I'm not too hopeful.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I managed to burn the frittata I made for the morning as well.  I hope my cooking skills recover by the time I get to the giant bag of hot peppers.  They were unlimited in this week's share, so I should have enough for pickling and a new batch of hot sauce.