The eggplant was from a dear friend’s garden. It was a surprise trade when i brought her chicken eggs. I do love eggplant!!! The oat bread was made with orange blossom honey and peanut butter and began a sweet bread craving that i chased until i was out of flour. The onion medallions were an ingenious accident. I had been baking carrots and had extra room on the cookie sheet so i cut up some onion rounds and filled the space with them. I drizzled them with olive oil and salt and popped them into the oven. The onions cooked quicker than the carrots so when i pulled them out they were crisp and appeared burnt. I thought i’d wasted them until i took a bite. The inside had turned to a creamy, sticky caramelized onion goo while the top was a crunchy, slightly salty layer of charred onion, like a chip. It was so good i vowed never to do onions any other way! The persimmons were given to me by the friend who gave me the eggplant. She picked them off her tree and had a whole bucketful. I set them up there to ripen and checked them every day. If i was patient, when one of the little treasures ripened, i could eat it with a spoon and it would be like eating heavenly orange sugar. If i was impatient and couldn’t wait, it was a mouthful of chalk. My mother bought me some organic bananas, which i froze. Oranges were the only fruit i had in the house so i began combining an orange with a frozen banana and making smoothies. The flavor combination actually wasn’t that bad…a little tangy, a little sweet.