Vegan Gluten-Free Eggplant Parmesan

I brightened up the end of my 2020 by frying up some vegan and gluten-free eggplant parmesan using super-fine almond flour to replace the flour/panko and ener-G egg replacer to replace the egg.  I mixed some nutritional yeast and pepper in the almond flour for flavor.  For the marinara sauce, I just used my homemade sauce.  For the parmesan on top, I substituted more nutritional yeast (which does not taste like parmesan, but is something I like) for most, but I used a bit of Follow Your Heart refrigerated vegan parmesan shreds that I had available for the last few.  I fried the dredged eggplants in olive oil.  I prepared the slices beforehand by putting them in a strainer, salting them, and letting them sit for over an hour--I believe this is called 'sweating' the eggplants, and removing the brownish liquid that comes out is supposed to make the eggplant less bitter.

I was a bit dubious about the almond flour since I don't always think it substitutes well for flour/bread, but in this case I was really pleased with it.  I'd definitely make this again.

I used two eggplants, and it took a really long time to fry it all up because I had to clean the pan after every four or five slices I cooked to prevent accumulating burned bits all over.  But I definitely enjoyed the results.  And it made *a lot* of eggplant parmesan.

Fact is Stranger Than Fiction

There's so many times that I read the news and historical accounts of various events and people and it's just like...you really can't make up anything more outlandish than reality, can you?  I mean, you can't even put a lot of this stuff in fiction unless you want your stories to sound garishly excessive and unrealistic.