My trip plans this morning changed due to weather, so I had time to go to my weigh-in. While waiting and waiting and waiting to weigh in, one of the staff invited us to a cooking class. We decided to give it a shot. We made Parmesan chicken and baked apples. They were fabulous. After class we weighed in and went to run errands. I realized I was hitting my five hour mark for eating. Fortunately, we had purchased some meal replacement bars. We munched on one of those before going to get materials to make invites for my sister's graduation. I was really happy that the bar happened to taste just like coffee cake. Yum! Anyway, the funny thing about meal replacement bars is they usually replace a starch and protein. Leaving a person in need of some veggies!
When we got home, my husband expressed his thought that if it was a meal replacement bar, no veggies should need to be consumed. I was still hungry and decided to prepare the eggplant. Besides, the hubby wasn't going to try it anyway. I washed my egg plant, brushed both sides of my George Foreman grill with extra virgin olive oil, and sliced the egg plant. I brushed more olive oil on one side of each egg plant and started to season. Rather than make a full eggplant in one flavor, I thought it would be nice to try three flavors. I rubbed on some basil from a tube on four eggplant slices. Those four slices filled my George Foreman. While those were grilling, I put curry powder on both sides of two other pieces and Cajun seasoning on the remaining two pieces. When the basil eggplant came out, I put the other four slices in. This was a little more than a serving (I measure a serving as 8 oz. raw).
The basil eggplant was OK. It was sort of earthy tasting. Not bad, but certainly not anything I would make again. The curry eggplant was much better. The pieces without very many seeds seemed almost creamy when cooked. Just very soft. I decided I didn't care for the skin and peeled it off most of the pieces. Finally, I tried the Cajun seasoned eggplant. It was by far the best. I enjoyed the vegetable. I am not sure it is a food I will add to my weekly menu, but it does have more potential than I originally imagined. Next I might try breading it, lightly of course.
Any good eggplant recipes out there? Does anyone even eat it? It was a fun vegetable experiment. Oh and the best part, my 8 oz. of eggplant came in at 72 calories. Eggplant is also a good source of Vitamin K. Surprisingly, there is a fair amount of sodium in eggplant. Anyway, fun veggie to play with, but not one to expect if you come over for dinner!
