When life gives you eggplant...

Thanksgiving night brought with it not only turkey sandwiches and the broth for tomorrow's turkey soup, but also the first major cold front of the season.  The cold air reached down into the upper 20's (F) and this was the end of Sue's summer vegetable garden.

Garland is not blessed with the easy loam and fertile earth that yields the cornucopia of summer flavors.  A bountiful harvest takes more than a mere application of the watering can and a judicious eye on the lookout for pernicious pest and wanton weeds that would spoil a gardener's delight - No, this here is hardscrabble gardening.  The so called soil is blackland prairie, a black paste that cleaves to the spade when wet, and an impervious hard-pan deck which wreaks havoc and harm on most gardening trinkets sold in stores as gardening tools.  There is no middle ground for gardening in this ground.  Either the expansive clays are sun-baked and cracked or thick and sticky gumbo. God love her, every year she wants a garden and since the expulsion from Eden's garden, God curse her;
       "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of 
      your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  By
     the sweat of your brow you will eat your food."  Genesis 3:17-19 

If you are going to commit seed to the earth, you want to see germination, you want results!  Damn the flooding rains, the withering heat and all infestations of opportunistic weeds, caterpillars and evil weevils! Produce flower and fruit - I will you!  Now experience has taught that there is a correlation between variety of seed planted and the amount of gardener's heartbreak come summer.  For good results, the tried and true will produce: Japanese eggplant, okra, Asian cucumber, tomatoes and bell peppers (red & green).

After toiling among the thistles and pouring her sweat into the small garden patch, Sue extracts her harvest and brings it to the supper table.  And like the offering of Cain, Inga and Grant sneer and reject the eggplant, the okra, the cucumber and even the peppers from their mother's garden.

Sue says, If life gives you eggplant...(and okra, tomatoes & bell peppers) - make ratatouille.

[Ratatouille pairs well with turkey sandwiches and soup]