Failure. Big, Purple, FAILURE.

Being very lazy, the vegan did not post last week. For this she is truly, deeply sorry. For this she will atone. 

However, in her defense it was a very busy week, what with the usual laziness and then simply HAVING to finishing the first two books in the Twilight “saga”—vegetarian vampires anyone?  

Anyway. In the spirit of atonement, this week’s story is about failure. Awful, stinking failure. It’s about confession, and hardship, and heartbreak. Okay, well maybe not heartbreak. But definitely failure… 

You see, long, long ago—on Friday—and far, far away—in Chelsea—the Very Lazy Vegan got it in her head that she wanted to bake an eggplant. Why? Well, gentle reader, that is a very good question, one for which I have no answer. Maybe she was craving potassium, in anticipation of the banana epidemic. Maybe she was going through nicotine withdrawal. Either way, she was determined to Bake an Eggplant. 

After procuring her eggplant (I’ll spare you the details,) she set about getting acquainted with the object of her project. Baking, with onions, mushrooms and tofu in some red wine and olive oil provided her with an innocent enough start, although it took a little while (tip: if you try this at home, make the experience friendlier for your inner impatient vegan by covering your cover your pan with aluminum foil) and yeilded some very chewy, rather falvorless eggplant. 

Emboldened by her first "success" and still in possession of half an eggplant, she set her sights higher: a roasted eggplant/tofu soup—something like a liquidly babaganoosh. 

Rather than consulting a receipie, she decided to wing it. After all, what's so hard about roasting an eggplant? And that's all babaganoosh is anyway, right? 

Wrong.

In the spirit of atonement, and with the best interests of humanity at heart, I will now share with you the recipe for Eggplant Failure. May it never be repeated again. 

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped

.5 block of tofu

.5 large eggplant

.75 cans of sliced olives (oh! the bad ideas!)

olive oil spray

1tbs garlic powder

some water 

Begin (or, rather, please don’t begin,) by slicing your eggplant into thin pieces. layer them with as little overlap as possible in a baking pan. Spray with olive oil spray (just a few squirts, don’t get carried away,). Add a little bit of water, and all of the olives and garlic. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake for .5 hr. Get impatient. Take foil off, and broil, on high. 

While becoming impatient, combine tofu, .5 c water, and raw onion in blender. Blend until smooth.  

Once eggplant is cooked (not brown, just very, very soft,) remove from pan. Add eggplant and olives to the blender with tofu and onions, and mix. Mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. And ta daa! You have the most disgusting, eggplanty goo to ever ooze across the East Village.