Special Hamburgers

A friend recently convinced me to try a food co-op, Bountiful Baskets . That means I had to leave my house dressed somewhat decently and be at a park before 8:15am on a Saturday. Whew. I did make it and I wasn't even late! :) As I was lugging my 100lbs of fruits and veggies (OK, maybe more like 20lbs) back to my car, I took a quick inventory - some bananas, squash (yea!), cantaloupe, grapes, eggplant . . . EGGPLANT?!?! Okay, the only reason why I knew what it was was because I have read the baby book about colors and eggplant is on the purple page - and that was because they couldn't think of any more purple items to put on the purple page. What am I going to do with an eggplant?

I decided that it was better to use it right away, then if we didn't like it, we would know. So, I pulled out a trusted cookbook, and found their sole eggplant recipe and decided to give it a shot. I placed the eggplant patties - or "special hamburgers" to our unsuspecting kids to diguise that it might be some funky, wierd vegetable - with some trepidation on the table and we dug in - isn't it beautiful alongside the plums and lettuce that were also in the basket?

So, how did it fair? I ate 1 pattie - it was pretty good and that's saying something for someone who doesn't like anything to distrube her palate. My husband ate 2, Emma ate 1 1/2 and Austin, well Austin ate like I starve him. For lunch he ate 2 1/2 and dinner he had 2 more - that is 5 1/2 patties in a day! So, where can I buy more eggplant?