Adventures with eggplant

This week I ventured into completely unknown territory.  I cooked.  Even beyond cooking, I cooked with vegetables.  As astounding as that is, I cooked something with eggplant.  I, on some crazy notion, decided to make Eggplant Parmesan.  Lately we have been overrun with fresh produce. It seems that everyone thinks we need their extra vegetables whether it is zucchini from a birthday party, sweet corn from work, green beans from a church lady, or cucumbers from Sunday School class.  This would be a delightful circumstance if you liked vegetables or knew how to cook with vegetables-- I fall into neither category, however I hate to be wasteful so I can't let these vegetables go to waste.  The ironic part is that we only had one eggplant so I had to go buy two more to have enough for the recipe.  Also, on my commute lately I have been listening to the book Julie and Julia which is about a gal who blogs about her experience cooking through all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. (It seems like every time I watch this movie or read the book I end up cooking and blogging about it as well  Conquering the Kitchen) This may have provided just enough inspiration for me to try 1 new recipe, but not over 500.  The evening I was slated to make this dish, I got out of work early which was nice to have some extra time and drove home in eager anticipation.  I started in peeling the eggplants.  I was frankly quite surprised by what is inside an eggplant.  I'm not sure what I was expecting- possible a yolk or something or it to be hollow.  It was neither.  After slicing it I had to sweat the eggplant, by this time I was probably perspiring as well.  Next was breading the slices and toasting them in the oven.   And then I finally got to put it all together, cover it with a ton of cheese, and finally bake it.  Surprisingly it turned out to be pretty tasty, which is good since we have a whole 9x13 pan of it which is quite a bit for 2 people.  It basically tastes like lasagna.  Next time I will just make lasagna because it probably takes less time.  All told this took almost two hours which seems like an eternity for someone who usually just cooks everything in less than 15 minutes.  But it was a success, so I might as well stop while I am head with cooking using vegetables.  Omnia Vincit Amor. 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Eggplant-Parmesan-II/