thanksgiving around here this year meant cooking something we don’t often get the time to cook: eggplant.

tom does such a fantastic job with this dish, that we don’t even bother ordering it at restaurants anymore. it’s never as good. but we only make it once or twice a year, so it is special, and we pig out on it.

he always makes a few extra so that while we are getting them ready for the oven to bake (after a quick fry):

we get to snack on a few while they are still super crispy and with just a little sauce and/or cold mozzarella cheese:

i can’t quite explain how fun this step is. somehow this stage of the eggplant dish tastes different than the final product even though the ingredients are the same. it’s sort of like a sneak preview of the formal meal to come. (which was, by the way, delicious)

i also made an apple pie from scratch, even the pie crust. it, too, is tasty. but it is also ugly, so there will be no pie pictures this time.