Eggplant Parmigiana and Broccoli Heads Appearing

The eggplant Parmigiana appeared in my kitchen after slaving over  

a hot stove making slow cooked spaghetti sauce, using up some hamburger mince that I had in the fridge and whatever else I could scrounge around the kitchen and garden. It turned out great but I’d sliced the eggplant and hadn’t done much else but salt it to remove any bitterness and then at the very last minute, well after the sauce was really tasty, I decided to make the Parmigiana. The thing was though that I lacked all of the ingredients, although I did locate most of them. But it was a fiddly job to tackle at the end of a long day and I made a giant mess doing it. Eventually I was ready to put it in the oven after flouring, egg washing and breading the slices and then frying them off on both sides to brown them. And what came out was even better than the spaghetti sauce that we had with pasta while the eggplant was baking away and bubbling with a variety of cheese, and had some of the tomato sauce under the aubergine pieces. Thrilled that I eventually located a sprig of my own freshly grown oregano underneath the all- encompassing lemon balm that covered it up, I used the last bits of it on the top of the Parmigiana, while we waited for it to cook. 

During the day while searching for the oregano that planted itself around the garden, I looked deeply down into the expanding girth of the broccoli leaves that now are at least 2 or 3 feet tall. And there in the center of each one is a developing head that also thrilled me no end. At last I didn’t feel so guilty knowing that the soil there is pretty thin and that the poor plants had to be covered with a wire surround to keep the chickens from eating the plants before they turned into vegetables. So these broccoli wonders grew through the narrow openings and have survived and even thrived despite all that. 

Finally it was time to take the piping hot dish out of the oven and I let John handle that task, having burned myself twice today already. Then I gave him one then two then three slices and some of the double cream and anchovy and grated Parmesan sauce. It only lacked the Fontina cheese. But there was mozzarella and my lovely spaghetti sauce I made earlier that had lots of flavor to add to the mix. John had already taken second helpings of pasta, after telling me that spaghetti is not his preferred meal. So he wasn’t very hungry. But he polished off those eggplant slices even faster than the pasta and didn’t leave a drop on his plate.

Yay me. I had fun doing this today even though it took a considerable amount of my dwindling energy and I pretty much made it up while I was doing it. And now I have tomorrow night’s dinner already prepared. What a gal.