Ready? Break!

My college is officially on spring break. So exciting!

But at the moment, I’m particularly thrilled, because I made dinner for the apartment tonight.

Not only did they love it…

it was vegan!

An eggplant bake, to be exact. I just told them I was making eggplant parmesean.

First-class kitchen organization, obviously!

I started off with this recipe, but ended up making some substitutions.

For one, we were out of marinara sauce. What to do?!

“What’s red, saucy, and in my kitchen already?”

Salsa!

See? Looks the same. And that’s all that counts, right? Hehe.

I also used boxed bread crumbs instead of almond flour, and lemon pepper spice instead of italian seasoning. Worked great!

However, the veggie course took a turn for the worse, due a misjudgment on my part of how oven-safe the pan was…

My bad.

They were salvaged, nonetheless.

I made up for it with another dish of roasted asparagus with goat cheese.

Ok, so the goat cheese detail wasn’t vegan. But the main dish was, and the roommates were shocked when I told them!

One of the guys even made a remark along the lines of, “If we let Erica cook every night, we’d be much healthier, cut down on our animal intake, save the environment….”

damn right you would!

I think it’s safe to say they enjoyed it.

And if I had actually used almonds instead of bread crumbs, it would have been gluten free!

Some good eatin’ was certainly called for, after some questionable food choices during these last days of class. Example?

Boxed mac n cheese at 3 AM.

But today, after sleeping until 11, handing in my final paper before noon, and sweating all my stress out in the gym…

Green monster in the sunshine. The way it should be.

Have a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day! Any fun plans?

I don’t drink beer, but I want a festive grasshopper!