Bitten

Holy smokes, did I have a rough night of sleep last night. Usually I fall asleep very easily and sleep well, but last night I tossed and turned. I had a couple of bad mosquito bites on my ankle that were just driving me crazy!

When I got up this morning, I realized it's no surprise that I was so uncomfortable. We weren't talking about a couple of mosquito bites...we were talking about over 20! ON ONE LEG!!

If they weren't all located on my lower legs, I would be convinced I had chicken pox (again). But I vividly recall being bitten while standing in the parking lot after running club on Wednesday. I didn't expect it to be this bad because, like I said, we were in a parking lot. Not in a grassy field. Not next to a big puddle of stagnant water. And it was only 10 minutes of so.

Needless to say, I'm paying for it now. Work was nearly unbearable. Whenever something (like my pants) brushes against one of the bites, it itches like crazy. Everyone is lucky that I kept my pants on all day.

I stopped by the store to pick up some Benadryl cream and the makings for this soup.

When I saw it on Eat, Live, Run a few weeks ago, I knew I had to try it. You see, I don't have a great relationship with eggplant. I didn't grow up eating it, so it's still kind of a mystery to me.

Unless it's been breaded, fried, and topped with copious amounts of gooey cheese, I haven't been too fond of it. Probably because every other time I've had it, it was served to me as big, cold, mushy, tasteless lumps. Wow, that was way harsh.

However, I want to like eggplant. I just knew it would take the perfect recipe to get me on board.

And I finally found one I wanted to try!

I like that this recipe calls for roasting the eggplant and the red bell pepper - it gave the soup a wonderful smokiness.

And can I just confirm that you really do learn something new every day? I've roasted peppers hundreds of times, but I still got some great tips from Angela's post today. I like how she suggested flattening the peppers. This helps them get more evenly roasted because everything is the same distance from the heat source.

But I especially liked the tip of roasting them on foil. Not only did this keep the pan clean, but the foil was easily folded into a little pouch to help steam the skins off. I usually transfer them to a paper bag or a bowl covered in plastic wrap to steam, and this was so much easier!

So, how did I like the soup? It was good! Especially with lots of lemon juice and hot sauce.

I made mine a little thick and kept thinking it'd be good with pita or pita chips. I suppose it seemed more like a dip than a soup. Which is fine, I love dip. But I'd probably thin it out or leave some chunks if I were to make it as a soup again.

I enjoyed it from my new bowl. I bought it to replace the one I broke the other day.

And now the pups and I are going to put our feet up and watch a movie. I found a new Will Ferrell movie at the Red Box called Everything Must Go. Have you heard of it? I hadn't!

Happy weekend!