Eggplant parmesan

We found a beautiful eggplant at the grocery store yesterday, so we decided to make our version of this  traditional italian dish.

The recipe is very simple and it was easy, so I thought I'd share it.

Here are the ingredients we used:

1 Large or 2 Med Eggplants
3 T milk
1 C bread crumbs
1 t garlic powder
1 t dried oregano
2 t dried parsley
1 t dried basil
4 C pasta sauce
3 egg whites
2 C shredded mozzarella
Olive oil

First we peeled the eggplant with a vegetable peeler.

Then sliced it into 1/2 inch (~1 cm) slices. 

We mixed together the bread crumbs, parsley, basil, oregano, garlic powder, and parmesan to use as breading. 

Then, we removed the yolks from three eggs, added 3 tablespoons of milk and whisked it really well. This is the egg wash.

Next, we lined a cookie sheet with tin foil and coated it with olive oil.

We lined it all up on the counter.

And started the breading process, starting with the egg wash...

...followed by the bread crumb mixture.

Then we just placed the breaded eggplants on the oiled foil.

We baked the breaded eggplant slices at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit) for a total of 20 minutes, flipping them halfway through (ten minutes per side). 

 You can use just about whatever kind of pasta sauce you like in this recipe. We made our own sauce out of a couple of cans of tomato sauce with some added ingredients.

Such as: hot pepper flakes,

 fresh chopped basil,

 and italian sausage.

We chopped up the sausages and cooked them before adding them to the sauce.

Once the breaded eggplants were done baking in the oven, we were ready to assemble the final dish.

We used a 3 quart (2.8 L) glass baking dish, oiled up with a little bit of canola oil. 

We layered the ingredients, starting with the eggplants, 

then the sauce, 

and half of the shredded mozzarella.

Followed by a second layer of eggplant, 

and sauce, and cheese.

Then we baked the whole thing for 20 minutes at 350 degrees (Fahrenheit).

And it was delicious!

Green Shake

So apparently green shakes are popular right now.

I don't know why people drink them, but we've been making one every day for a few months now.  They're pretty good and people say that they're good for you.

Anyway, here is the recipe that we use,

Ingredients:

about 2 cups (loosely packed) roughly chopped greens

1-1.5 cups of water

1 apple

1 pear

1 ripe banana

about 1.5 teaspoon frozen juice concentrate (any flavor 100% juice)

about 0.5 teaspoon spirulina powder

Optional additions:

frozen peas (thawed first)

carrot juice

celery

I start off with just the water in the blender.  Then I add the greens. In this example, I'm using kale, but any leafy green will do.  

Roughly chop them (2 inch pieces) so they'll fit in the blender.

We've used spinach, mustard greens, collard greens, watercress, chard, and turnip greens so far and they all were tasty. The key is to make sure you get the greens blended up really fine before you start adding the other ingredients. Otherwise, you'll end up with big chunks of kale in your shake. To do this, I use the "ice chop" setting on my blender and just whiz the water and the kale until it is as smooth as I can get it. The "ice chop" is nice because it is like the pulse button on some food processors and it allows you to turn the blades in short spurts to chop up the big chunks of greens. If you don't have a button like this on your blender try starting on the slowest speed you can and work your way up to faster speeds. 

It should look like this when you're done:

Use a rubber spatula to scrape the chunks down if they get stuck on the side.

Next you can add the fruit.  

You don't need to peel the apples and pears, just chop 'em up a bit.

Then add them a few pieces at a time while the blender is running if you can. Just don't add them all at once, it might overwhelm the motor and it'll take longer to get the consistency you want.

It should look something like this now:

Next we add spirulina powder.

Spirulina is something of an acquired taste so feel free to leave it out. 

Then we add frozen fruit juice concentrate (the 100% juice kind).  This is to sweeten it a little.  It isn't necessary but I find that it makes the spirulina a little more palatable. 

Blend it up a little to mix, and you're done!

They taste better if you drink them the same day that you make them, and within a few hours is best.

Green tomato salsa (no insects)

We found ourselves at the end of the summer with an overabundance of green tomatoes, so we decided to make green tomato salsa.

We based our recipe on this one, to make sure we had the acidity right, but we had to improvise a little here and there.

We started with green tomato puree that we made in the food processor.  We peeled the tomatoes first, then just whizzed them in the food processor and put them in the pot.

We had about 13 cups of tomato puree.
Next we took some cayenne peppers and some serrano peppers from our garden, and a handful of garlic cloves.

 We seeded the serranos and chopped the garlic.

Then, we chopped the peppers and put it all in the pot.  Then we added about this much chopped cilatntro,

 this much chopped onion,

 2 Tablespoons ground cumin (this ended up being too much cumin!),

 about a Tablespoon of oregano,

2 teaspoons of salt,

 2 teaspoons of black pepper,

and lime juice. We had to use one plastic lime-ful of lime juice from concentrate plus one and a half   real limes to get enough juice (1 cup).

Then, once it was all in the pot, we heated it to a simmer, let it simmer for about 30 minutes,

put it in our sanitized jars, lidded them, let them sit overnight to cool, and we were done!

Crinkly pizza

We invented a new style of pizza. Haven't really decided on a name yet, but the crinklecrust was the first one that came to mind. I'm not sure about the market appeal for that name though. Anyway, this is what happens when you roll out your crust to be bigger than your pizza stone and then force it to fit anyway.

The pizza tasted great by the way! Here's the crust recipe (for 2 pizzas): 3/4 cup warm water + 2 teaspoons yeast (mixed together first).  Then, add 3/4 cup warm water, 2 Tablespoons sugar, some salt, 2 Tablespoons olive oil, 4 cups flour:  mix, knead, let rise, roll out etc... Its a pretty typical dough recipe that makes a soft chewy crust, not a crispy crust, but pretty darn good if that's what you're looking for. Also, just for fun here is another crunchy segment.
I think its funny that most of these animals are shown eating foods that they probably would not choose (or at least not have access to) in nature.

Cinco de Mayo!

For a Cinco de Mayo party, we made these delicious chocolate-chile cupcakes with avocado-lime frosting.

The cupcakes were just a basic chocolate cake recipe from this cookbook (+cayenne pepper) and the frosting was a modified version of this recipe.