Garden Update: Eggplant

My veggie garden has been yielding a lot of produce lately: tomatoes, squash, cayennes, banana peppers, and eggplant. The canteloupe and corn have sort of been a bust, and the cucumber vine died after it gave me two decent cucumbers.

Lately, the big producers have been the eggplant. I sent my other half in to the office today with three of them to give his business partner, who loves them. We do too, but after making stuffed baked eggplant (sort of my own twist on the recipe from the 1950s Fannie Farmer's cookbook, adding ground beef and cayenne), eggplant disk "pizzas," eggplant parmesan, and ratatouille, we can afford to give a few away. There are plenty more that could be picked any time within the next week, before they get so big that the skin becomes tough.

Oddly enough, I've always made ratatouille without consulting a recipe, but when out of curiosity, I checked Tyler Florence's recipe for it on the Food Network site, I was flabbergasted. My recipe is virtually identical to his, except that I don't use anchovy, and I don't sprinkle it with balsamic vinegar at the end. Heck, I even cook the veggie components in the same order he does! So . . . I've been doing it right all these years. Who knew?

I'm afraid I have no pictures of any of my eggplant dishes. One, it didn't occur to me to take any. Two, by the time eggplant gets cooked, it takes on a rather unappealing grayish-brown color, anyway.