Spring cleaning

I fully admit that I am one of those people who can't stand other people's messes but have a blind eye to my own, but my room has become so bad that I had to do something about it. And I guess even the prior statement isn't entirely accurate. I just don't have a problem with messiness in my personal space--my car and room, to be exact. But anyway, I had piles and piles of clothes everywhere, and it had become extremely hazardous to move at all in there. It took me over an hour just to put the majority of the clothes on hangers! By doing that and a little bit of recycling, my room is quite miraculously clear for the most part. Other than the clothes, the other mess is the reading material that is scattered everywhere, but that was a 5 minute job to make three piles: magazines, library books, and my own books. Obviously my room needs vacuuming and a good dusting, but it's not nearly so overwhelming anymore, and no one is going to break an ankle when entering, which is always a good thing. I guess I just have to force myself to do it after work this week. I know it's an excuse, but it really is hard to clean my room at night. I think once Jim's schedule changes, I'll have a lot more free time for myself and can keep up on those things better. The big problem I have now is sorting through all of my clothes and forking over hundreds of dollars to my dry cleaner's.

Anyway, tonight I made a Rachael Ray recipe: Mediterranean Eggplant Steaks and Orzo Salad and Walnuts, Oregano and Tomatoes. I ran to Whole Foods after I finished teaching piano and picked up eggplant, red bell peppers, and grape tomatoes. I also raided Jim's house for flat leaf parsley, leftover hummus (Bobby Flay's recipe), and oregano. Jim accompanied me to the Walnut Creek area for the Whole Foods run, as well as for returning some stuff to Nordstrom and a quick DQ snack.

Jim and I split a small Kit Kat blizzard, which ended up being huge. They overloaded the cup and it was probably closer to a regular sized one, which was a good thing because the Walnut Creek DQ is pretty pricey. It was $3.80 for our small blizzard. It was pretty good, although I have yet to find a blizzard flavor that bests their mint oreo. Anyway, Kit Kat is one of those candy bars that isn't nearly as good as my childhood memories say it is, but they are pretty good nevertheless. Kit Kat was a tie for my absolute favorite candy as a kid, along with Crunch. Neither one is nearly as exciting these days, but Crunch is still pretty good to me.

There was this Asian couple with their two kids sitting at the table next to ours. First the little boy dropped his ice cream and started bawling uncontrollably. He had a complete meltdown and was inconsolable. Then something happened to his big sister and she began to freak out, crying even louder than her little brother had been. And all I could think about was how if this is how children behave when you take them out for a treat, why bother? Shoot, if I wanted to make my kids scream about food, it might as well be for beets and brussel sprouts.

I think I am obsessed with Whole Foods. There is so much cool stuff there that I could spend hours wandering up and down the aisles, reading labels, and just exploring. And Jim likes it, too. It's probably the best place in this area to buy meat, and their booze section is equally impressive. On my end, they have tons of vegetarian and vegan products, and you'd be surprised at how reasonably priced a lot of their offerings are.

Anyway, after I got home, I started cooking immediately. I sliced and salted the eggplant lengthwise. The eggplant I bought was pretty big, so it made 5 decent sized "steaks." The George Foreman was only big enough for me to grill one steak at a time, so grilling them off took a while at about 5-6 minutes each. I brushed each one lightly with EVOO before placing them on.

While the eggplant steaks grilled, I also roasted a red bell pepper by placing it under the broiler for 15 minutes, turning it over once. After that, I put it in a paper bag and let the steam peel the skin for me before dicing it up, along with a couple cloves of garlic. I also defrosted and wrung out a box of frozen spinach.

I sauteed the spinach, bell pepper, ang garlic together for a couple of minutes, choosing to omit the olives because I don't like 'em. Then I assembled the steaks by topping each with a few forkfuls of the spinach, spreading Bobby's hummus across the spinach, and then sprinkling a mixture of bread crumbs, EVOO, and parsley over the stacks. Then I baked the steaks at 400 degrees for 5 minutes, and voila! The eggplant steaks were done.

For the orzo salad, I cooked off some orzo and toasted some walnuts. I didn't really measure anything for this salad, tossing the orzo together with EVOO, cut up grape tomtatoes, lemon juice, lemon zest, feta cheese, and the toasted walnuts, which I chopped up.

The end result was a pretty good meal. I really, really enjoyed it, and because I used the EVOO sparingly, I don't think it was horribly bad for me, either. The hummus was surprisingly mild, and while it added a lot of nice flavor, wasn't overwhelming in the least. The salad was really fresh and had a ton of different flavors and textures. I think I found a keeper!