Text 13292, 145 rader
Skriven 2008-09-03 22:54:34 av Janis Kracht (1:261/38)
  Kommentar till text 13231 av Nancy Backus (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Eggplant Parmesan  was: cooking echo Picnic
===================================================
Hi Nancy,

[...]
>> but she's never done that to the kids or to me.. guess she's used to my
>> mis-steps.  Alex used to take her food out of her dish and feed it to
>> her baby-doll style.

> She lay on my feet a few times, but never came close to bowling me over,

That's good!

> although I had to step carefully over her a few times too...  :)

hehe.. know exactly what you mean there.. though I now generally make her move
instead of trying to cross over her haha.. she is a big dog (g).

[...]
>> about a year old, I heard this ungodly yelping in the back yard so I
>> ran out there.. Priscilla was SITTING on Toby, just letting him know
>> she was TOP dog ... I did make her let up on the poor guy :)

> (chuckle)  Guess she feels she should stay bigger than him, maybe...

That's what my son always figured it was.. I figured she was bored (g). But
you're probably right.. ;)

> Reminds me of a cute sequence with a couple of our cats...  We ended up
> adopting a stray male kitten, who was a terror to the older female cats
> we already had...  One of the girls handled it by just walking away from
> him when he started to bug her... but the other one took care of it by
> flopping down on him to make him stop in his tracks.  Comical enough to
> watch then... but the kicker came when the kitten got his full growth,
> and was then bigger than the female...  He had learned well... he went
> over to HER and flopped down on her!  Boy was she miffed then...!

That is so funny :) :)  I guess it's not so 'unheard of' in the animal kingdom
hehe..

>> Pricilla started eating everything in sight soon after she got
>> spayed.. The vet told me that getting her spayed would help with her

> And they do say that spayed females tend to put on the weight, too.

Yep.. it's sad really..

[...]
>> bed-springs..(g)), and after Midnight died, we couldn't take the chance
>> of disagreeing with him. Before that, I'd really thought about breeding
>> them, they were both such good looking labs..

> Too bad there wasn't some good way of keeping her from running loose on
> you, then...

It was a bad weekend.. Dad had died in Florida, and so we left my MIL there at
the house in Louisville with the dogs.  Matt was down there also but living
elsewhere.. There was a fence, but it was the wire type held up now and again
with long metal spikes or something.. wasn't a great fence like we have now. It
was very old as well.. We put this fence up when we bought the house here in
Windsor...  Well apparently Midnight decided to just jump on the fence and use
her weight to push it down until both dogs could escape.. our vet jokingly
called Midnight "Bertha" because she was such a solid dog..compared to
Priscilla, who if you can imagine it, at the time was the skinniest dog in
town.. but off they went, the two of them.. most likely late that night after
we left for the funeral. When we got back, Priscilla was just shaking
uncontrollably.. poor dog.. I got some tranquelizers from our vet and she did
ok after a few days of that.

>>> It was basically an Eggplant Parmesan, except that it had no parmesan
>> haha.. it never does :)  It's always mozzarella.

> Oh, ok...  I think maybe I knew that once...  ;)  I thought maybe a
> proper one might have parmesan cheese mixed in the breading or sprinkled
> on the top or something...  :)   I know that it usually (also) has
> plenty of mozzarella...  :)


The breading does have cheese mixed in with the breadcrumbs, but normally for
the stronger taste one might use locatelli romano.. wouldn't be horrid to use
parmesan :)

>> Yes, a simple sauce like the one I posted in my earlier message.  The
>> sauce 'isn't the thing' in this dish. It's the combination of the
>> eggplant which MUST be de-bittered, and the cheese and breadcrumbs.

> Hmmm.... I don't think that they did anything to the eggplant to
> de-bitter it...  I do remember in recipes for moussaka that one is
> supposed to lay it out after slicing with kosher salt sprinkled on it
> and weighted...  is that the sort of thing you are referring to?

Yes, exactly :) Then rinsed and patted dry.

> Or is it just the breading and pre-cooking that de-bitters it?

No, you have to use salt to get that out.

>> It's not 'because the eggplant has to be masked'.. hehe.. it has to
>> be prepared the right way, that's all.. and few people do it right.
>> It's like that with most Italian recipes.

> I suspect that that is one reason I'm not likely to do well with Italian
> (or lots of other) recipes... I really don't usually want to take the
> time and effort to do lots of steps...  I'll go for simpler stuff...

Eggplant Parmesan is a big job, for sure.. but most Italian cooking is really
simple fare compared to that recipe.  Don't be discouraged by one dish hehe :)

>>> Mexico... and drove an aging Peugeot named Jacqueline...  :)  And the
>> Ok, that makes some sense for the peppers :)

> Yes...  they didn't make claims for it being authentic... just being
> good... and that it really was!   Of course, I like eggplant of all
> sorts, in just about any way... as long as it's fixed well...

Same here.. one of my favorites is Asian eggplant as a side dish.. it's so
good.

[...]
>>> got an extra package of it just so there would be enough for snacking
>>> on.   (G)

>> Lol :)  Too much.. leave it to guys to buy enough to snack on :) :)

> Well, they knew their failings... (G)

Very true :)

[...]
>> Meanwhile, they were snacking on healthy things like cheese, and fruit,
>> etc. without the spagettios :)

> They could have left the spaghettios on their own, and not mixed them
> with everything else... then You'd've been happier about it, I bet.  ;)

Yes, though my mother would never buy them for any amount of money - I'd have
them at friend's houses though so I knew as a canned food, they were edible :)

> You could have had sides of cheese and fruit, etc along with them.  :)

That's what I said (laugh).. They were trying to help I guess :)

Take care,
Janis

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