Day One-No Offense Julia Child but....

I was reading Julie and Julia on the train on the way to work this morning.  I got to the chapter where she is going to make a beef dish and needed a cow's thigh bone to extract the marrow.  I gagged.  She had her brother, husband, and friend all searching New York for a butcher with a thigh bone.   How in the world can some actually extract marrow from a bone and then EAT it?  

Remember your pre-vegan days?  I hated to cook.  I made my parents (and then my husband) take meat off the bone before I'd eat it.  I couldn't eat read meat until it was black all the way through and watch out if I found something colorful in my chicken.  I am so glad those days are over.  Now, I make something other than over cooked vegetables and pasta with processed cheese (gross, I know), while my husband cooked some meat that I'd take a nibble of as long as I didn't see it prepared.

So tonight, I made: Soft Poppy-Seed Polenta and Tomato and Roasted Eggplant Stew.  That was good.  I did a couple of things wrong:  I unthinkingly used a spoon instead of a whisk to make the polenta, so there were lumps.  I also used some left over seitan broth from the other night in place of vegetable broth.  The taste was great, but it turned out kind of brownish.     

The stew was fantastic!  I sliced the eggplant too thin, so I cut down on the roasting time.  The flavors of this stew were just perfect.  Roasted eggplant, red peppers and garlic with tomato and chickpeas.  This is definitely a "make again" dish, as my friend Lisa would say.  Although, it is really more suited for fall or winter (and not hot, humid Chicago summer).

So, this dish isn't the most photogenic, but don't hold it against the poor stew.  It was really yummy.  

What's the lesson tonight?  Probably to remember to use the whisk with polenta-and if presentation matters, skip the seitan broth.