Eggplant Love

First of all, let me say that the only time I'd ever eaten eggplant before I came to this school was at my grandma's house, and as much as I love Grandma, she has a tendency to do massive amounts of very bland cooking. You can't blame her; I'm from a huge Polish/Irish Catholic family, and she is the mother of ten, so you know when the kids were growing up it made total sense to make a giant pot of spaghetti or a huge tuna casserole. My dad has horror stories about the cupboard stocked with boxes of evaporated milk and the endless cans of VanDeCamp's Pork'n Beans. So anyway, not to bash on Grandma, but the eggplant - it was disgusting.
Later on I had some eggplant tempura at a Japanese restaurant and it was so much more delicious, but I thought of it as an exception to the rule that eggplant is a soggy, squishy vegetable with way too many picky seeds.

And then, THEN... I came to the U of C, and they invite speakers to the Div. School each Wednesday and serve these phenomenal vegetarian lunches that my friends and I go to together. About 3 weeks ago they had the most delicious soup I've ever tasted. AND IT WAS MADE OUT OF EGGPLANT! So now I think I am in love. Perhaps I am too easily converted, but if a bunch of students, grad students who, like me, are probably used to whipping up a lovely meal of rice-a-roni or mac and cheese or tomato soup from a can*, could make such FANTASTIC soup out of a bulbous purple vegetable, I'm willing to give the eggplant another chance.
Which is perhaps why I picked up the Noro Silk Garden and made an Eggplant Blossom scarf to go with my suspiciously eggplant-colored wool winter coat. This eggplant stuff is a slippery slope. Just note how many times the word "eggplant" has come up in this entry. Anyway, here are the scarf and the specs:
Eggplant Blossom
2 skeins Noro Silk Garden, Color #34
25 sts on size 13 needles, knit in seed stitch
Started 11/1, finished 11/3 while watching ER - there was a cute baby CHIMP on ER!!!! So happy :)

*Please allow me to hold onto the illusion that other people are just as lazy about cooking as I am, because finding out that grad students have enough time to cook gourmet meals in the midst of all the reading and writing would make me feel very guilty (I told you I'm Catholic, right?!). :)
----------------------------------------------------------
Ooh and I just joined my second ever Knit-Along (because Socktoberfest was such a great experience!), and I'll be making some very Sweet Mary Janes (picture in sidebar) along with Jennifer of Piddleloop and some other new friends. You should sign up, too!