Chef Sandy cooks Eggplant Parmesan

Hullo, Chef Sandy here. If you are following this blog regularly, you know that a few days ago I showed you our beautiful eggplant growing in the greenhouse. Well... today we harvested it and are ready to make something delicious.

(Belated Drool Alert for all Vegetarians)

It is a beautiful eggplant... it seems a shame to eat it but... such is the life of plants.

Today we are going to make Eggplant Parmesan. We have used this recipe before and it is super duper yummy.

And this from two humans who never liked eggplant (that was before they tried it of course)...

Right, first you need some olive oil and crushed garlic...

Then you slice the eggplant into 1/4 inch slides...

And then you peel it...

Why do you peel it? Apparently the peel is bitter...

You paint the slices on both sides with the olive oil/garlic mix and put in the oven for 15 minutes... or so.

While that was baking, Dr. Sandy was called in to bandage a sliced finger. This is why little bears do not cut vegetables... right? So humans are the ones who get cut up... right? As you can see, the bandage isn't doing much sooo...

So we put another bandaid on top... there we go... This is field triage you know... no time for something fancy!

Grate some mozza cheese and slice a tomato...

 Then some fresh basil. This is key... you can use dried basil but it never tastes as good...

 There are our eggplant slices... mmm... You take them and start layering them into a pyrex... with parmesan and basil and tomatoes and mozza and more eggplant and more mozza...

Bake it again...

And voila... eggplant parmesan. This batch was sooooo good!!! The humans scored it 10/10. Last time it was 9/10 so we figure the fresh basil put it over the top.

Chef Sandy signing off. Thanks for joining us on today's show!

Another Garden Update

Hullo again. Wow, time flies! I have been a beary busy bear of late... Today we are taking another look at the garden, because it has moved along quite a bit.

We have some squash that we planted in mid-summer, a bit later than normal but... it's taken off!

And somewhere in here... under all these leaves.

We have a big squash. We think it's a Pink Squash... or maybe a French Pink... or something.

There's another one growing back there...

We planted some late scarlet runner beans in August and they've been going gang-busters too.

The humming birds love these!

And on the other side of the runner beans... we have some bush beans.

They were a mix pack of purple, yellow and green. They are doing well too.

We did try some zucchini early in the season but it has been beary slow... there is one little zucchini... Not sure if it will get bigger or not. Our overnight temperatures are getting close to freezing... brr!

Our tomatoes in the greenhouse were crappy so we tore them out and put some of our potted tomatoes in there... they've done quite well but are reaching the end of their life too.

And cucumbers... well... they've done really well! These are lemon cucumbers... and they were much later than the long English but... we have several of them.

And now... drum roll please... our piece-de-resistance... an Eggplant!!! Yes!!! An actual, normal sized, lovely purple eggplant. Only one mind you... despite dozens of flowers but... it's a beautiful one.

Isn't it cute?

 Basil... well... it did OK. We are still digging basil pesto out of the freezer from last year so we didn't go hog wild over basil this year.

The broccoli... still producing like wild and we can't keep up. so we are letting it go to flower. If you look closely, you can see bees munching down on the flowers!

Still lots of beets...

And carrots and scallions...

But... finally... we are here to dig out the potato box. We tried potatoes in here as well as in a regular bed. The potatoes in here didn't seem to do all that well...

Let's dig it out and see what we got.

Are you ready?

Yup... that's it! Five German Butterfly potatoes and two tiny, itsy bitsy read potatoes. You have to look really hard to spot those.

I don't know about the potato box next year... Maybe we should plant zucchini in there instead!

Broccoli coming out of our Ears

Well... this year we thought we'd plant some broccoli, just to see how it did. Six seedlings grew into monster plants! We picked the big main heads and then they put out sideshoots...

And we cut those... and then the sideshoots put out sideshoots...

We couldn't keep on top of them all and some ended up going to flower. Which is not bad because the bees LOVE broccoli/cabbage flowers.

But still... we've got broccoli coming out of our ears.

Turns out Mama is the only one who eats broccoli... soooo... we needed a new solution.

First... we chop up the heads into florets and small pieces...

Can you guess what we're making?

It's Cream of Broccoli Soup! Mmmm... stick to your ribs soup... Let's see... we are making it without a tonne of cream, so first we need to make a roo. Umm... I know about Winnie the Pooh and Roo? So not sure about this.

Butter... onions... ohhhhh... we're making a roux!!

Then we added flour and stirred vigorously... and then added some turkey broth that was in the freezer.

Then we added the broccoli and let it burble away for a while.

That's not too hard, is it? Mama was a little skittish with the roux but it all turned out.

Hey... it's starting to look good.

Then we ran it through the blender in batches (with a tea towel on the top opening)...

And voila... Put it back in the pot, heat it up, add a little bit of cream (we used half and half) and...

We are done! That was pretty darn easy and now our freezer has several containers of soup. Which is always a good thing. Chef Sandy signing off.

A Chair Fit for a Bear

Hullo... have you ever noticed that humans really don't attend to stuffie comfort all that much? The humans here have these nice Adirondack chairs... two of them.

 But is there a chair for me? No...

And if I do manage to steal some chair time... it's not really the right size. Or the right shape. Sort of the reverse of Goldilocks and her bed issue. This is Sandy and his chair issue.

But... the other day we went garage sale-ing and...

I found the Perfect Bear Chair!!! It is seriously perfect.

It's right size...

It's the right shape.

It's the right colour.

I love it!! I just had to be patient (not my strong suit)... but now I can sit in the yard, soak up some sun and sip my honey mead!