Everything Eggplant

           Wow, we seem to have the most beautiful eggplants in our markets this fall!

To select an eggplant, I look for one that is lighter, rather than heavier, for its size. I like a shiny, dark purple coat with as few blemishes as possible. To check for freshness, I look for a greenish stem near the top of the eggplant.

In the late summer and early fall, I put eggplant on the grill. Just spraying slices of the eggplant on both sides with a little bit of Pam Cooking Spray, keeps the eggplant from sticking to my grill. We eat the eggplant right from the grill, but the skin. I never peel my eggplant as love the deep purple color of the skin!

When I want to have a softer, edible purple skin, I prefer to gently broil the eggplant. I place slices cut to about 1/8" on a baking sheet and broil for a few minutes on each side. I only put a bit of cooking spray on the bottom of the sheet or broiler pan, to keep the slices from sticking. One must be careful as once the eggplant slices begin to turn a bit of brown, they can broil to the overdone stage almost instantly. Some say to only broil the eggplant on one side, but I prefer to broil the slices on both sides.

I make lots of homemade pizza as my husband loves it. However, since he is "sensitive" to cheese, I make cheese-less pizza's for him, or refrain from putting cheese on his side of the pizza.

A medium sized eggplant, cut into 1/8", round slices, filled up my homemade pizza very nicely. The slices were broiled as described above, then placed over the sauce on the pizza. The skin of the eggplant in this case was very soft and easy to chew after baking!

                                                                     
It is easy to see the eggplant slices in the areas of the pizza where there is no cheese. We love any kind of fresh sweet pepper and onions on our pizza too, as they complement the eggplant well. I always microwave the diced or sliced peppers and onions, just to the soft state, before placing on the pizza, as we don't like raw onion on our pizza and prefer the peppers soft too.

                                                                     
We like lots of toppings on our pizza, over our mostly whole wheat crust, the recipe for which is earlier in this blog. I doubled the recipe to make a 9" X 11" inch square pizza and the very large round pizza above.

I generally pre-bake the crust for 8-10 minutes on a high temperature, such as 4025-450 F. A secret to keep the crust from getting soggy, is to put cheese as the very first topping on pre-baked, homemade pizza dough, but because my husband is "sensitive" to cheese, I can no longer use that secret trick.

I have discovered that microwaving the vegetable toppings, such as onions and peppers, helps to get rid of some of the veggie juice that would otherwise make my pizza soggy!

I never bake in the summer, but it is October 9 2012, and am glad to turn on my oven in these cooler days of fall in Cleveland, Ohio!

Summer Salads

We love summer pasta salads as they are easy to make and take along. For picnics, concerts in the park and an easy meal, pasta salads can be made ahead and are great for "assemble your own salad".

For those following a gluten-free diet, substituting a gluten-free pasta product is great too!

Holden Arboretum has a Tuesday supper time concert series. I made this pasta salad to pack in our cooler, added some cherries for dessert and my husbands favorite picnic drink, orange lemonade, made with a ratio of 1:1 of orange juice and real lemonade.

Everyone including my 94 year young Mom enjoyed the orange, lemonade.


My sister brought some yummy Greek butter cookies to nibble on during the concert!

For a most generous serving of pasta salad for the four of us, I cooked about 1/2 pound pasta, gluten free pasta may be used, 3 small chicken tenders and a generous helping of peas. I chopped up our favorite fresh vegetables including a whole red pepper, sweet orange and yellow peppers, 1/2 of a medium sized cucumber (I remove the seeds), about two tablespoons of sweet onion and a garden fresh tomato.

Before placing the pasta with the cut up onion, tomato, cucumber and peppers in a quart container, I added Italian and Asian Toasted Light Sesame salad dressing, a bit more than one would normally put on a salad as the peas and other fresh vegetables are added later to each plate, according to each person's preferences. Any of your favorite salad dressing would work!

I kept the chicken cooled in a baggie, separate from the cooked pasta, peppers, cucumber and onion included in the quart container, thus making the meal appropriate for a vegan. For those that love vegetables, I included a baggy of sliced radishes and more sliced cucumbers in our little cooler. Olives, celery, carrots are also welcome additions to pasta salad. I include hard boiled eggs too for those like Mom that love an egg at a picnic.

To serve, I assemble each person's favorite veggies with the basic pasta and chopped vegetable dressed entree, adding the chicken, peas and radishes (if desired) on top of the salad. Serves 4-5.

The great thing about this meal is that the quart container fits easily in our middle-sized Playmate cooler and the other items in baggies fit nicely around the container. The entire meal, paper plates and utensils fit in the cooler, only the orange lemonade was not in the cooler.

A trick to making the orange lemonade is adding ice cubes instead of all the water required to make orange juice and lemonade from frozen concentrate. Adding a bit less water than needed and adding extra ice keeps the drink from thinning too much from the melted ice cubes. The ice cubes also keep the drink cold for the evening.

We had a great time with our family at the concert in the garden!