Progress...

One of the things that I do these days is to watch cooking shows on PBS (when I spot them).  My two most favorite are "Pati's Mexican Table" and "America's Test Kitchen."  On the latter, I watched them make Eggplant Involtini and immediately wanted to make it.

This is not a dish for a single person, since I knew it wouldn't keep well.  Fortunately, my best friend's folk were driving across the country and came to visit for a night.  At first I was rather nervous about trying an un-tried recipe with guests, but Bonnie is so sweet and kind I know a colossal failure would be okay.  There would be no shame.  After all, on one of her visits, I somehow got the Thai Honey Peanut Chicken so salty that it was literally inedible.  Even rinsing off the chicken did not salvage anything.  The chicken was completely salty, too!  SIGH.

I am so very proud of this dish!  And, truly, Eggplant Involtini is incredibly tasty to have as your meal.   It is roasted eggplant slices filled with a cheese mixture and finished atop a tomato sauce.  My can of tomatoes was a bit too small, so my sauce was a bit sparing, but tomato sauce is not my favorite things, so I gave my share to my guests!

I served it with sautéed asparagus and roasted broccoli.  My broccoli was more charred than roasted, but it still tasted good.  I would have preferred it in the oven less time, but I messed up with the timing of working through all the steps of the dish.  What I learned most from making Eggplant Involtini because this is definitely a dish that works best when you do all the prep first and then slowly work through the cooking steps.

I also served salad and Peanut Butter Nutella Cheesecake Bars.  Mmmm.  The meal was a bonafide success and all were happy.  A week later, I am still a bit giddy.  After all, I think Eggplant Involtini is a top tier dish to have in your repertoire for guests.

Something that I have realized about cooking is that I had a totally inadequate kitchen.  By that I mean I needed more equipment and more ingredients.  One piece of equipment that I recently bought is a set of mixing bowls.

I have been using the glass bowl from a silver chafing dish until now.  I found this set at Walmart, 10 bowls for $15.97.  I find that to be a good deal.  The largest four are what I would consider mixing bowls and the other six more of prep bowls.  Having a wider bowl selection has definitely made cooking easier.  For example, with this recipe, I used the second to largest bowl for the tomatoes, the fourth largest for the cheese mixture, and then the smaller bowls for things like onions and garlic.  The bowls are Anchor Hocking and nest well.  They also fit into the space where I had that one chafing dish bowl.

Today, I discovered a recipe for Lemon Thins.  I went NUTS and wanted to make it IMMEDIATELY because who doesn't love lemon thins???  However, I did not have one of the ingredients.  Sometimes, I feel like all I do is track down ingredients!   This time, I need to find lemon extract.  SIGH.  But I do know the effort will be worth it.  If nothing else, this is the one area in my life that shows clear progress, rather than inexorable decline.