The Great Apple Mint Harvest: Part Two (with eggplant)

As you may have read earlier, I recently harvested a lot of Apple Mint, and made a Rosemary Mint & Honey lip balm ( and indeed from a later batch I discovered that the correct ratio is really 3 parts oil to 1 part wax, with small amounts of extra softeners added.) Here is my perfected recipe, which will yield 100 tubes of balm:

• 8 oz filtered beeswax, grated
• 24 oz grapeseed, sweet almond, olive oil (or any other pure, food grade oil)
• 2 T honey
• 1/2 t pure Vitamin E oil
• 1 oz cocoa butter
• 8 drops Rosemary essential oil
• 8 drops Peppermint extract

melt all in a slow cooker, adding the scents at the end, and pour into tubes!

Due to our warm spell, the pruned Apple Mint has a good amount of new growth - enough so that I can make my favorite eggplant recipe! This combination is very reminiscent of an appetizer that we served at a restaurant I used to work at in Richmond, Vermont, which is sadly no longer open. However, the actual recipe comes from what I thought was the Dean and Deluca cookbook, but I can't find it in there anywhere! It used to be in there. The warm salad on top of toasted crusty bread with hummus is totally addictive. You can trick any naysayer into eating eggplant this way, and you should because naysayers actually stop the world from spinning a little,  and are therefore dangerous to the rest of us.

Warm Eggplant Mint Salad

• 2 medium eggplant, sliced 1/4 inch thick
  
• 1 large onion, sliced
  
• 1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes (I use fire roasted by Muir Glen)
  
• handful chopped or torn mint
  
• balsamic vinegar
  
• olive oil
• salt

Preheat the oven to 375 or start a medium hot grill. To slice the eggplant, trim the top and the bottom so that the eggplant rests flat on your cutting board, and then trim off and discard two opposing sides before making your 1/4 inch slices. Now you only have a thin piece of skin around the edge of your slices. Toss the sliced eggplant with some oil and salt until they are coated, and then either grill or roast on a cookie sheet until the eggplant is cooked, but not so soft that it can't hold it's 'slice' shape (about 10 minutes.) Chop up and place in a bowl. Meanwhile, strain the tomatoes in a colander, and squeeze a bit of the excess juice out. Saute the sliced onion in oil over medium heat, adding the tomatoes after about 4 or 5 minutes. Stir for 2 minutes, and add the eggplant. After the mixture is combined, add a few dashes of balsamic until everything smells really good to you. Return mixture to the eggplant bowl and toss with the torn mint.