We are in the home stretch in the studio with one more week until tech. We have been working very hard, and I've been hitting the vending machines more often than I'd like to admit, so this week I decided to up my snack game with a couple of serious heavy hitters. This caponata from Smitten Kitchen, in particular, is the heaviest of hitters, and if this doesn't keep me from dropping my cash into the vending machine, nothing will. (And it's okay if I keep visiting the vending machine, if it comes to that... whatever it takes for the show to go on!)

Planning!

My only real question was, do I eat the caponata with a spoon (real talk), or also prep some kind of delivery device? Honestly, I thought about using my leftover corn tortillas to make chips before I decided to apply those to breakfast tacos. But a delivery device did keep sounding like the grownup choice, so I picked up some pitas to make pita chips... so much cheaper than bagged pita chips, and so easy!

One other quick note: I actually prefer salt-packed capers, which the recipe calls for explicitly. But what I had in the fridge was pickled capers, so I rolled with those.

Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...

Groceries I had on hand...

• olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• onion
• celery
• tomato paste
• white wine vinegar
• golden raisins
• capers
• sugar
• pine nuts

Groceries I had to buy...

• eggplant (2.26lb @ $1.49/lb = $3.37)
• green olives ($1.79)
• pita bread ($1.49)

Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $6.65

Total monies spent for each of these 6 snacks....

$1.10 per snack... (cheaper than the vending machine!)

Cooking!

This caponata was the most time consuming dish I made all week, but it is so worth it, layering in the flavors, and then cooking it all down. In order to keep track of the olive oil (and also not waste it), I measured out 4 tbsp of olive oil for each of the two batches of eggplant. It's just enough to fry them up nicely without waste. Then, I laid down a fresh layer of 2 tbsp of olive oil when it came time for the aromatics. Also, I did go for the less sweet version that Deb suggests in her recipe.... I am a vinegar lover!

And the time-expense counterpoint is the pita chips, which are brilliantly easy: slice them up, spray them with cooking spray, season them with salt, and into the oven for 10 minutes at 375F. Seriously!

I licked all the spoons after I packed this away: sweet, salty, tart, eggplanty goodness coming at me all week!