Okay, weirdest fact of today. Baba Ganoush is slang for “spoiled daddy” (as in you spoil him when you make this amazing food for him) What the actual strangeness?!

Don’t believe me? Just feast your eyes on this, or ask your very own search engine and fact check that shizzel for yourself.

So, if you want to spoil your daddy (sugar or otherwise), or even just yourself – because hell, we all deserve to be spoiled with good food – then this dish is for you!

Let’s check in with where we’re at with the cooking challenge.
COOK ALL THE RECIPES FROM BRAVE NEW MEAL COOK BOOK WITHIN A YEAR.
8 recipes down, and 116 to go, with 323 days left.

Fuck a rooster – how will I make it when it’s a recipe every 3 days and I’ve slacked off over Christmas?! FUUUUUUUCK. I need to get into that kitchen ASAP!

*freaks out a little, then decides to calm the fuck down*
Fuck it, let future-me deal with that shit, while now-me gets tipsy.

Let’s begin.

Baba Ganoush

This DELICIOUS recipe can be found on page 84 of your manual for life…I mean your Brave New Meal cookbook. (These cookbooks should totally be our instruction manuals though, I mean they cover all the basics….vegetables, how to cook, how to be healthy…and you know, booze.)

I roasted the grimace-wanna-be in the oven, then scooped him out and threw him in the blender.
This dish is great for just doing itself in the background (sounds super rude, but it’s really not)

What I mean is, it can just roast away while you do other stuff, no concentration is needed. Or it can ride shot-gun* in the oven with some other shit you’re making at the same time for your dinner or whatever.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve been DAAAAAAAYMN busy since getting back to work after the Christmas break. The first few days are hellish, aren’t they? You’ve been staying up late, eating all the junk food, sleeping in late all through December, and suddenly it’s January and you’re expected to get up early to do things like adulting and parenting. Eugh. Gross.
The first two days were Bring Your Zombie To Work Day for sure (We like to call them BYZTWD for short – it just rolls off the tongue). We were all half-dead looking, and grunting at each other through a coffee fuelled haze.

So I’ve been running at break-neck-speed trying to get everything done, and catch up on shit I missed while off work, and try to slam my body into a normal routine that fits into the “socially accepted” norms. (angry, exaggerated air quotes) Why am I angry? Because it means I can’t just sit around in pyjamas all day long eating leftovers anymore.

I have literally been running from work to take my cat to the vet, to pick up my son, to run to an interview, to hurry home and cook dinner. No breaks, no time to sit.

And when I say running I don’t mean metaphorical running. I mean the kind of running where you are ACTUALLY running. And not for sport either. I’m talking the kind of running where you can’t breathe, and you feel old, and you realise you don’t work out enough. The kind of running that makes you double over in a coughing fit reminiscent of an 80 year old chain-smoker. The kind of running that makes you sweat and feel like you might be *THIS* close to dying. (my fingers are very close together, just as a reference point.)

So forgive me.
Because you know what? Sometimes, just sometimes, there isn’t time to pimp stuff up and beautify it. Sometimes you just don’t have the GOD DAMNED TIME to stop and grab a photo from the perfect angle on the perfect plate.
Sometimes the harsh truth is you’re eating a so-called “lunch” at a desk where it consists of whatever you could find in the fridge at the last minute. Where there are piles of dishes in the sink that are screaming your name and you just keep crunching on your nacho chips hoping to drown out the sounds. And that is what happened on this day.

BUT, all things considered this was the best desk-lunch I’d had in a looooong time. This baba ganoush is just so good. Almost as good as this other one that Bad Manners/Thug Kitchen have got on their blog. Similar yes, but not the same. (why don’t you make both and see which tinkles your bells the most?)

It was smooth, with little chunky bits, and just so fucking more-ish that I kept eating and eating. I’m no fan of the eggplant usually but this isn’t even eggplant. This is something else all together. Something that will make you feel like a spoiled daddy. (whatever the hell that means)

* not to be mistaken for ‘shit-gun’ which is when you aim your bare-bottom baby at strangers after they’ve eaten brusselsprouts, cock their chubby little baby legs at an angle, and then press down on their tummy – almost like when you play a bagpipe – only to watch havoc ensue when they release a full load on said stranger’s clean white shirt. (I like the dark orange colours and diarrhoea greens that you sometimes get. It can be a real tie-dye affair.)