Last night's dinner

While I would not call it a failure, I wouldn't call it a complete success, but there were successful elements.

*balls (chicken variety) stuffed with shitake mushrooms and tomatoes. I modified my basic *ball recipe and tried tossing a chunk of tomato in the center. The end result was a tasty meatball filled with stewed tomato and mushroom. Stewed tomatoes rate very low on my list of tasty things. The rest of the meatball was great, though; the fermented black bean paste gave it a great savory flavor, and the sriracha gave it the perfect amount of kick.

Fauxtatoes: 3/4 head of cauliflower steamed and mashed with pepper, 2tbs of parmesan cheese and 2 tbs of nutritional yeast (not as nasty as it sounds - adds great umame!)

The success: eggplant crackers!! VERY thin sliced egglplant, sprayed w/ cooking spray, coated w/ garlic and onion powder, baked for 25 minutes and broiled for 5. YUM!