New Friends

August 9th, 2009 | Posted by Alison in Dinner Time

Hello. Meet my lunch.

Simple Sandwich

A delectable vegetable sandwich on scrumptious toasted Ezekiel seven grain bread with a smattering of homemade two-day-old guacamole, freshly sliced tomatoes and store bought, hand washed fresh from the fridge romaine lettuce.

Side View

My sandwich has a friend I’d like you to meet too.

A mumbo jumbo plate of steamed cauliflower, shredded carrots and zucchini steamed in only the finest tap water this side of the Mississippi, topped with the Parmesaniest cheese this side of Wegmans.

Plate O'Veggies

Hey. Kid. Get your fingers out of my food. I’m trying to do introductions here.

Get Your Fingers Out of My Food

Now that you’ve met my friends, let me tell you about my favorite colors, Green and Black. With a bite missing.

G&B

Next I need to tell you about a miracle. No, not the PB Cookie Larabar that I snacked on today. (Although it is a miracle I finally found this flavor.) The miracle that is bulk nut butters found at my local food coop. Today’s “Mystery Butter”? Mixed raw and roasted almond butter for 1.99 a pound.

PB Cookie

Yes, that’s right. That’s not a typo. A DOLLAR NINETY NINE A POUND. Apparently there are “some people” who only want raw AB or only roasted AB, thus a mix of the two is less desirable. Lucky for me I am not “some people”.

And finally, a recipe to share with you this evening.

Eggplant Parmesean A LA Alison

2 medium eggplants
Salt
Tomato sauce, prepared as desired
Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesan cheese

Step 1: Pre heat oven to 350

Step 2: Slice eggplant into 1/2 in slices. Place on cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt to remove bitterness. Basically, make your eggplant sweat like it just ran around the block.

Salted Eggplant

Step 3: Meanwhile, get started on your sauce if you’re gonna make it yourself. If you’re going to dump it out of a jar, move on to Step 4.

Optional Step 3a: I prefer to make my own sauce, and I start by sauteing onions, garlic and mushrooms in a little EVOO.

Saute Mushrooms and Onions

Step 4: After about 30 minutes, rinse salted eggplant and bake for about 5 minutes. (You did pre-heat the oven, right?) Flip and bake for another 5 minutes.

Roasted Eggplant

If you’re making your own sauce, keep working on it while the egg plant is doing it’s sweating, rinsing and baking thing.

After my mushrooms and onions are soft, I added a can of 15 oz diced tomatoes, a 4 oz can of tomato paste, a little water, dried oregano, basil, S&P.

The Sauce

Step 5: Shred your mozzarella.

shredded mozz

In 9 x 13 inch pan, spread a thin *layer of tomato sauce. Top with a layer of eggplant. Sauce. Mozz. Parm. Repeat once more from *.

Ready for the oven.

Ready for the oven

Ready for my mouth.

Ready for my mouth

And this concludes my strangest post of the week.


Please know that links to Amazon are affiliate links. It doesnโ€™t change the price you pay, but if you buy something from Amazon after following one of the links in my posts, I earn a percentage based commission from Amazon as a part of their affiliate program. This is one of the ways I generate revenue from the posts that I write here. I promise that I only link to items that I truly endorse. You donโ€™t ever have to buy anything, but if you do, thank you for supporting the site and the work I do here.


You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 Both comments and pings are currently closed.

17 Responses

  • janetha says:

    i enjoyed the post, pleased to meet your food. that eggplant parm looks great!

  • Jane/you-know-who says:

    In my nightly dreams I meet the elusive *Peanut Butter Cookie Larabar*. Until your pic I wondered if it was real or an urban myth.

  • SHE-FIT says:

    WOW! All your food looks great. I love the pic of your little girl about to touch your food… lol

  • Christina says:

    wow you wrote me a nice, long comment! gracias for the congratulations on my race! it was alot of fun- i was completely exhausted at the end though haha. and im glad im so close with my sisters- many of my friends arent as close with theirs but they are my best friends. we do fight alot though- things arent ALWAYS so peachy haha. next time i go home im going to try out my dads juicer (he has this one: http://www.appliancist.com/breville-juicer.jpg). what is your favorite combo so i can try it out and avoid the “greeny” taste? what kind of headband did you find?! i really want to look into relaxing treatments or something but im really nervous to haha and thanks for your kind words regarding finding “the one”- makes me feel better- it really does :)

    oh and that “eggplant parm” looks great. ive been thinking of preparing eggplant like this sometime this week actually. and this just makes me want to make that even more ๐Ÿ˜› have a great night alison!

  • Christina says:

    i just realized that the link doesnt work- its a breville juicer if you were at all interested ahha

  • nice to meet your favorite colors! lol. Well, green + black = black, I suppose, in the form of chocolate!
    LOVE the eggplant parm with all that cheese action!

  • Ashley says:

    Seriously, when are you going to cook for me?!

  • It was very nice to meet all your food! ๐Ÿ˜‰ Your eggplant Parmesan looks amazing!

    Oh, and you reminded me that I still have some unopened, Green & Black’s Dark 85% somewhere… Well, I don’t think it’ll be unopened for long.. Gotta run!

  • Green & Black Dark Chocolate is amazing!! I loved meeting your sandwich on that amazing plate!! I kind of wanted to eat the plate instead of the sandwich!

  • AZLinda says:

    Green and Black dark chocolate? Ok, what am I missing?? LOL!

    Thanks so much for sharing that recipe….gonna be making that one for sure. Looks so good!

    I love Max’s hat….so precious ๐Ÿ˜€

  • Cindy says:

    GAWD that eggplant Parm..looks GREAT
    SO making that this week! I am in the mood for some pasta less pasta Italiano style!

    you eat like I eat! my husbands just found MY stash of Green and black for the office and gave me grief over it….where’s MINE?

    HA
    you’re Giradelli (sp) is in the cupboard….hands OFF my green and Black BRO

    (like any good wifey, I left him a bar)

  • A says:

    The eggplant looks delish!!! Also, word of the day:

    “Parmesaniest.”

    Pass it on!

    -A

  • Tay says:

    Dang cheap almond butter!! Lucky duck you. And that eggplant dish? Yummmm.

  • You have such a fun vocabulary in this post. Did you perhaps have too much coffee this morning? Seriously, that eggplant parm looks fab. I just made spaghetti tonight and have lots of leftover sauce. Thanks for the inspiration for tomorrow night’s dinner. Now I know why mine was always mushy. I’ll try the salt sweat.

  • I just made this for our dinner tonight. Easy. My son enjoyed it so much he had 2 large helpings. Even my daughter who takes awhile to warm to new foods ate a good amount.

  • Pingback: The Nanny « a sparkle a day