a few dinners + a trip to the glacier

It has been one long busy week especially with daddy gone.This was our dinner the night before Daddy got home. Fast food. A veggie burger. Really, it was that or drive 25 miles to our favorite pizza place and this was just way more economical. (Although, they do make a mean cheese-less pizza!) Eli loved the "burger", raved about it! Emma tells me she prefers the bocca burgers from Costco. One of the few items she can eat there when they have their sample tables set up.Ohh baby! Let me tell ya about this one! Eggplants must be a tricky item to ship here. They are over priced and often to soft, dented, or bruised w/ moldy tops. Ewww, hardly ever worth buying. But, on that rare occasion that they are fresh looking and even on sale.. Yea! this was the case. The asparagus was on sale too. And we all LOVE asparagus! Any way.. this is Baked breaded eggplant from the Venturesome Vegetarian (it's a beautiful vegan cookbook). It is very reminiscent of eggplant parmesan w/o the cheese and well, baked not fried. The eggplant is dredged in pureed silken tofu and then bread crumbs and baked. I topped it w/ some spaghetti sauce I had in the freezer. This was Daddy's welcome home dinner! I didn't take a picture but, the next day for lunch we had the baked eggplant in a pita w/ sauteed onions, green pepper some sauce and a slice of veganrella, a truly PERFECT combo!
This dinner was also awesome. But, it took me all day to prepare. I again made Bryanna's "chicken" curry filling as I did here. This time I used it to make "egg rolls". For the adults I also added shredded cabbage and carrots. The kids I added some mashed sweet potatoes. The won tons here are filled w/ mashed sweet potatoes, then baked. I was going to try and bake the egg rolls too, but really after putting so many hours into the prep I really wanted them done right. Honey was happy to hear that!
Quinoa and Black Beans (a repeat ). To this recipe I add a can of fire roasted tomatoes and a can of green chili's. I also serve it over a bed of shredded romaine lettuce. Delicious, kid friendly and a one pot full of protein wonder! On Friday I volunteered to go on a preschool field trip to the glacier. Good times. A global warming side note..I grew up here and have watched this glacier shrinking myself. I moved away for about fifteen years and was quite stunned when I came back and saw it again. I should dig up and scan some of my old photos from 25 years ago when the glacier use to come to about where the waterfall is in the above photo. There was a trail along the right side of the lake and I remember we would be walking right next to the glacier and could reach out and touch it.



I just googled Mendenhall glacier and found this pic (want to see it high resolution?) on a noaa site from 1981. Crazy huh? that rock point in front of the glacier is where the we took the above photos from.