Last week, my daughter was sick and home from school so I grabbed the DVD 'Ratatouille' so she had something to watch. Which perked her culinary interests, and yesterday, we made ratatouille - there are hundreds of different variations, but somewhere, I read that the trick is to brown each vegetable in olive oil separately, then mix together and bake the whole thing for a while. So eggplant, zucchini, lots of red and green pepper, onion, garlic, all browned in oil, which took a couple of hours. I poured some garden tomato sauce over the lot, baked it, and it was wonderful.

1 big eggplant, peeled and 1" cubed
10 x 6" zucchini, cut into 1/2 " slices
2 red peppers, 2 green peppers, cut into 1" dice
2 garden onions, sliced into rounds,
3 cloves grated garden garlic,
qt canned garden tomatoes.

Brown at least one side of everything in really good olive oil, salt to taste. Put browned pieces in large oven proof dish, pour qt tomato over it, bake at 350 for half an hour. We served it with brown rice.

When I do this again, I'm going to use two frying pans, cut the time in half.

Well, this is one of my favorite veggie recipes. But Im not sure it qualifies as "healthy" with the inclusion of cream & butter. But Im a rebel, so here it goes:

Blackberry Creek Farm Eggplant

1 med eggplant (my mother and I both prefer to use the white eggplants)
3 leaves of fresh marjoram or ¼ tsp dried whole marjoram
¼ c chopped onion
2 Tbls butter or margarine
1/3 c snipped parsley
¼ c butter or margarine, melted
1 c soft bread crumbs
¼ c light cream
¼ c parmesan cheese

Pare, slice and dice eggplant (about 4 4 1/2 cups). Add eggplant to small amount of boiling salted water to which you have added the marjoram. Cook covered 8 to 10 minutes. Drain well.

Cook onion in 2 Tbls butter until tender, but not brown. Add eggplant along with parsley.

Combine melted butter & crumbs. In a greased 8" pie plate, arrange a layer of eggplant mixture, then a layer of crumbs, repeat. Pour cream over top; sprinkled with cheese. Bake at 375 for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serves 4 (thats what the recipe says but Steve and I usually eat all of this in one sitting. I suppose because of the butter and cream youre meant to have small portions, but its soooo good, its hard to limit yourself. So if youre making this for a family, double or triple the recipe.

Now a healthy recipe coincidentally also eggplant, and not so much a recipe as something we tried this summer and loved.

Basically I took eggplant and zucchini from the garden, peeled the eggplant and sliced both. Then I put them in a roasting pan with garlic, rosemary, olive oil and S&P. Outside of the recipe above, this is the best thing we did this summer with eggplant.

And finally, this isnt much of a recipe, but for anyone who likes to make tacos at home, I highly recommend this:

Slice some onion thinly. Put it in a bowl and cover with equal amounts vinegar and water. Crumble oregano over the top. I just love these onions on a taco!

Here is mine, healthy and yummy:
roasted root veggies
using baby beets, small, white, mild turnips, baby dragon carrots, radishes, a bulb or two of garlic, separated into individual cloves and peeled, and sometimes teeny, tiny potatoes
parboil potatoes if using, about five minutes in boiling water
cut all veggies into thirds, fourths or whatever fractions work to make all the segments the same size
place on a baking sheet
sprinkle with olive oil (not too much!)
dash of sea salt and pepper
roast until tender and slightly browned
eat along with grains, like a side of rice pilaf or couscous or quinoa

I like to admire the veggies as they look so cute and sparkly...

I was in the supermarket this afternoon and was a little surprised to see how many older women were there apparently shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. These ladies all looked highly competent and I realized that they are shouldering the responsibility of bringing food memories to their family tables. It's no wonder that they look like they know what they are doing - they probably have made many of these dishes for decades.

We will go off down memory lane soon but I'm something of a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. Yesterday, my cousin (an older woman in her 70s) made a dish of mashed carrots, potatoes, and caramelized onions. It was the first time I've had this and I'm inspired to share.

She said that the recipe came from a Middle Eastern refugee who worked for her. I found a similar recipe from the UK on the 'net. I'll just change it a bit to make it more like what I had yesterday (internet recipe has cheese) but you can see the original linked below:

12 oz carrots
12 oz potatoes
1 tsp salt
1 oz butter
1 large Spanish onion, peeled and sliced into thin wedges

1. Peel the carrots and cut them into small chunks. Peel the potatoes and cut them into large chunks.
2. Cook the vegetables separately. Boil until the carrots and potatoes are tender then drain well.
3. Melt the butter in a large frying pan and cook the onion over a medium heat until soft and golden brown.
4. Mash the carrots with the potatoes leaving the mash quite rough.
5. Serve the mash with a spoonful of caramelized onions on top.

Very good!

digitS'

Mine is a lot like jclepine's

Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, brussel sprouts, baby bella mushrooms and onions, cut in bite size pieces, tossed with a mixture of olive oil, salt & pepper, garlic, rosemary, thyme and balsamic vinegar. Dot with butter. Roast at 400-425 until tender.

You need to add the brussel sprouts, mushrooms and onions about 15 minutes after the root veggies have been in the oven so they'll all be done at the same time. Really good with chicken covered with balsamic, olive oil and rosemary and top with sliced onion and bake (or grill, but it will flare and will have to do the onions separate). Can you tell we like balsamic around here?

Isn't that the 2nd time Dafy has said, "Can you tell we like balsamic around here?" - in just about as many days?

Here's a recipe for Warm Chard Salad with Carrots and Balsamic Vinegar Dafy-inspired, I'm sure.
d'S'

I told you Digit that my memory is terrible...not enough fruits, veggies and fish. I even made a list (and checked it twice) of what I need to get done for thanksgiving in the next couple of days so I don't forget.

My name is Dafy and I'm a foodie (sort of) :-)

Thanks for the chard recipe Digit. I'm a new convert to chard, and in the last day I've learned two important things about it:

1) Apparently it can winter over!

2) the stalks are edible. I had been trimming them out, but thanks to that recipe, I know better!

If you think you like chard, you may want to try Perpetual Spinach. It could just be me, but I like it better . . .

It isn't a spinach but like chard, closely related to beets.

Ed Hume seed and T & M have it.

d'S'

Hmmm... that's interesting Digit. I looked a couple of other websites and saw one that said "Spinach Beet probably produces more fresh 'greens' per foot than any other vegetable." Of course that may just be the marketing guys talking. But I'm intrigued - most of my greens go to the dogs - and spinach doesn't really yield much for the space it takes.

I also noticed that most of the sites that came up were UK sites.

I'll still keep growing my chard though. I think it's such a pretty plant, besides being tasty!

I have another one, for sweet potato gnocchi, but not sure how healthy it is - especially with the maple, cinnamon, sage and browned butter. There's no balsamic in the recipe either :-)

We're going to have them on thanksgiving, so I made them for Sunday night, cooked a few (with the butter of course) to see how they are, and froze them so there would one less thing to do Thursday. They were so yummy. But definitely don't cook them 5-6 minutes or they'll turn to mush (guess how I know this). Just cook 'em until they float.

If you want to freeze them, shape the gnocchi, put on parchment paper on a sheet tray, loosely cover with plastic and freeze overnight. Then you can put them into a freezer bag and cook however many you want as directed.

Wow Dafy, another great recipe! We love sweet potatoes, Steve loves gnocchi, so I guess I'll have to make this one too!

Couple of questions - did you use real maple syrup, or the Aunt Jemima kind? And the recipe says "Roll the gnocchi over the tines of a fork". Is that to put little tine holes in them? (I've never made gnocchi before.)

Wanted to let you know how the Sunday pot pie turned out fine!

To an extent, I used Dafy's chicken & dumplings recipe with half roast beef, half chicken. Then I put in one good beef hotdog, diced . . . it almost turned out like my Brunswick stew, 'cept with peas instead of green beans.

Everything was cooked except the frozen peas before they went together. The gravy was prepared separately and there is where I went wrong. Not preparing it separately but NOT making enuf! One & one-half cups of broth-based gravy is not sufficient for a 9-inch pie!

I should have read Bonnie's recipe more carefully and noted how it used that quantity of broth AND a cup of half-n-half or milk! I know, I wasn't following Bonnies recipe but it was a pie (Dafy's wasn't) and I sure wasn't going with Lady & Sons' quart of cream + butter!

A better gravy would have had that half-n-half. I just used beef broth and corn starch with Mrs. Dash as it was.

I put in a small can of niblet corn just to make it truly my own success (or failure ;o) and baked it at 350 for 45 minutes. A bit dry, of course, but the combination works. You see, I'm a chip off the old block with the combinations - but unlike Dad, I'm a simple seasoner, it's the meat especially where I like combo's and then, it seems to me, I can use only a little but there's some complexity.

digitS'

Oh, and only a top pie crust . . . I'm a bit apprehensive about a soggy bottom . . . heck, with so little gravy . . .

I don't think this quite qualifies as a veggie recipe, but I added a huge amount of tomatoes to my stew today. My spouse knocked over my box of tomatoes - the last from the garden. Since they got all bruised, I cooked them up and put some in the stew.

Aliceg8, I used real maple syrup for this. Rolling over the tines of a fork makes it more tubular and puts in a slight groove to help hold the butter. I took a pic of the finished frozen gnocchi that I'll post later on tonight (I'm supposed to be working at the moment (-:) The fork should be upside down, roll with gentle pressure and let it fall off the end. It takes a few to get the hang of it, but taste is more important than looks IMO.

Oh, real maple syrup!! We drove back with two gigantic jugs of it from Darren's family's farm. Gee, we made ourselves almost sick with sugar the first few days we were back!!

I thought it would help to mention, digit, that to help with the pie crust, place it in the bottom third of the oven at about 450 or 475 for the first ten to fifteen minutes, then move it to the center and tone down the heat to about 350 or 375. It usually works for me...

Speaking of dough, we decided that we should have our holiday pie TODAY instead of tomorrow!! So, our cranberry-pear pie is baking as I write...

I know, I just whole heartedly and most assuredly know that he will walk to the market to pick up a pie tomorrow...I feel it in the air!

Actually, I'll probably make my favourite muffins since I don't like store bought baked goods...but there WILL be dessert tomorrow, oh, yes!

Back to the veggie topic, we picked up a big bag of crimini mushrooms from the market for 99 cents! We have been using them for everything and today, for lunch, we added them to our omelettes which already had onion, bell pepper and anaheim pepper! No veggies tonight, pie and pie alone!

Have fun all...

Jennifer

As promised - just a little late.

Sweet potato gnocchi
{{gwi:1228874}}