Don't Be An Eggplant Hater

Don't be a hater, they are pretty nice, versatile little vegetables.
Yes I put googly eyes on vegetables....

Who needs Mr. Potato Head...

The above eggplant is obviously a mutant, eggplants are quite lovely looking vegetables-

Though they are a part of the shady nightshade vegetable family (but so are tomatoes and potatoes),  their health benefits are abundant, most notably the antioxidant content in the skin and dietary fiber content.

I admit, I did not eat eggplant myself before I was married.  My husband influenced me to cook with it because he loved eggplant parmesan.  His love for this dish led to us growing it ourselves and then I had no choice but learn to do other things with it.  True and gripping story, I know.

This year has been a good year for eggplant to say the least.  So far we have harvested around 63 eggplants.  I have kept up with the poundage as well so we can compare what that would equal if we would have bought that amount.  (Spoiler alert: I have kept the poundage amounts of everything we have harvested to see how much money growing your own food can save you, blog post about that sometime this fall).

Here is what I have done with the eggplants-

• Roasted with pasta
• Sliced thin, rolled and stuffed with ricotta (good substitution for pasta)
• Grilled with herbs, as a side dish
• Baba ghanoush (roasted eggplant dip, froze many small containers for wraps and such)
• Moussaka (like a greek lasagna, I was surprised that I liked this.  everyone else did as well)
• Eggplant Parmesan
• Roasted with other veggies in balsamic vinegar for wraps (good with hummus)
• Stacks (including tomato, portobello mushroom caps, mozzarella cheese and herb oil)
• Vegetable Lasagna (like regular lasagna with some extra veggies layered in.  my friend Stephanie generously made us one using our eggplant, it was REALLY good)
• Ratatouille (not just a movie, an amazingly delicious French Provencal vegetable stew)

Still planning to try (because there are a ton left in the garden):

• Other varieties of Vegetable Lasagna (freezes well)
• Chop and freeze (as a filler for vegetable soups, stews and chilli.  heard this works well)
• Eggplant pizza

Any other suggestions?

Photo compliments from The Phoenix

Back to Ratatouille.... we watched it one night as a family.  Such a cute movie-

My hope was it would make the kids more excited to try and eat this new dish (it was everyone's first time eating it).  And it worked!  They liked it!  We all loved it!

Notice the empty bowl-

It was a lovely looking dish when assembling.  I used The Harvest Eating cookbook's recipe-

So thats my current mommy rant.  As Daniel Tiger sings to a catchy jingle, "you should try new foods 'cause they might taste go-od."  Sigh, I might need to get out more.