Eggplant

I know it's been a few days since I've posted, but I've been out of town and super busy. However, I'm here and ready to inform you of my lastest findings.

Eggplant... I've always loved eggplant, but I recently determined that I should use eggplant more. While visiting some friends last weekend, I was worried to tell them that I was trying the whole vegetarian thing. I didn't want anyone to have to go out of their way to do anything extra special just to fit my needs... I'm not that type of person. However, they were so gracious enough to make a little something different for our meals.

The big meal was fajitas. Well, I'm very ok with grilling zucchini, squash, bell peppers and throwing in some black beans and corn in my fajita, but they sliced up some eggplant, grilled it and that was the basis for my fajita. It was surprisingly great! So that gave me an idea....

While searching through my new vegetarian cookbook. I came across a vegetarian lasagna. Well who doesn't just LOVE lasagna? Breezing through the list of ingredients, I thought in my head, I can totally make this dish 100 times better. The original recipe just called for eggplant, zucchini, mozzarella and parmesan cheese with some kind of weird sauce. Well, here's what I did differently...

What you'll need:

olive oil for brushing
1 eggplant, sliced
1 zucchini, sliced
1 yellow squash, sliced
1 orange bell pepper, sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced
fresh spinach
grated mozzarella cheese
grade parmesan cheese
1 can of tomato sauce
1 package of no pre-cook lasagna noodles
salt and pepper to taste
garlic powder
parsley and marjoram

What you do:
1.) Brush the bottom of a cassarole dish with olive oil. Place the sliced eggplant in the dish and broil it for about 8 minutes until golden brown.
2.) Meanwhile, sautee the sliced zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers and spinach. Add a little garlic powder, marjoram, and parsley.
3.) In a large casserole dish, layer lasagna, eggplant, sauteed veggies, a little tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. Repeat and top with lasagna, remaining tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.
4.) Bake in the oven on 400 degrees Farenheit for about 30-40 minutes.

I didn't get to take a picture, but I was pretty impressed with how it turned out!!

Enjoy!

Alison