Harvest Monday August 1

This week was moderately productive, but mostly with summer standbys, tomatoes and squash. I am waiting for my Sunset's Red Horizon tomatoes to ripen. They are enormous, but still green. I decided to let a couple squash fruits to mature so that I can save seed (ok, they got to big to pick and I didn't cut them off), so suddenly my squash vines are not producing any new fruits. Male flowers, but no female ones. Hopefully they won't give up on me completely.

The exciting harvest for the week: the first eggplants! These came from seedlings I bought at OSH, a variety called Kyoto. It produces small fruits on lovely purple-veined leaves.

Hunting up eggplant recipes, since I am a newbie to the vegetable, I found eggplant fries. I followed the recipe loosely.

Flour, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, seasoned salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

Skin the eggplants, then slice into fry-shapes, according to your preferences. I like thin fries.

Toss with the flour mixture. This is important - too little flour coating and the fries will end up shriveled and limp. If I did this again, I might go with the traditional egg-and-flour coating. Still, if you get a nice thick coat, they do come out crispy and then you don't have to worry about the egg at all.

Into the oil! (We really shouldn't have a deep fryer. We eat enough bad things without it. But fried food sure is good.)

These were the first fries out, with not enough flour on them. They are all wimpy looking and were not crisp and delicious. Later ones were better but my fingers were too greasy for the camera. Eggplant fries are not as crisp or sturdy as potato fries. They do, however, have lovely creamy centers, since the eggplant inside gets soft and lucious. It was fun for an experiment, but I probably will use my eggplants for something else (healthier) in the future.

This week's harvest

1 lb 12 oz tomatoes
1 lb 3 oz squash
13 oz eggplant