Breakfast for dinner tonight! I made chocolate toast — plant-based French toast with chocolate hemp milk — as well as home fries and, for my partner, scrambled eggs.
Not dinner, but for lunch I made individual eggplant parmesans using the first eggplant from our garden. It was so cute! It's a mini-eggplant, about half the size of a regular Italian style eggplant, and it was the perfect amount for 2 for lunch. The basil was from the garden, too.
I also picked shishito peppers and banana peppers today. So nice to have more than zucchini coming out now.
We've had a little reprieve from the heatwave these past two days** - it's still hotter than normal but not searing. I've turned on the oven for the first time in almost a month and I'm braising some beef in red wine. I'll make some lovely creamed mashed potatoes to go with it and stir up a cool cucumber and tomato salad. Can't wait - it seems like forever since we've eaten a full, hot meal here at home.
**Unfortunately, it's cooler because our area is heavy with smoke from forest fires to the west in BC. It's so dense it's blocking the hottest rays of the sun, which looks like a eerie red ball. Godspeed the thousands of fire-fighters that have been deployed and a hard, heavy rain that is so badly needed.
Santa Fe Chicken (rip-off of a dish that used to be on Tony Roma's menu back in the day), seasoned rice and coleslaw. I had an ice cream drumstick as an appetizer.
It's a lovely (not too hot and only moderately smoky) evening with a real picnic vibe. We had hotdogs, potato salad and watermelon, even though we didn't eat them outside.