Eggplant Stacks

We have been doing a different type of grocery shopping in the past few months. We usually do a massive grocery store journey once a month or so, then supplement fresh fruits and veggies as needed. However, we haven't made the pilgrimage to the grocery store for a giant trip in a long time. As such, we are, about once a month, down to a jar of pickles, bottles of beer, condiments and a carton of three eggs, with a few things left in the pantry. This makes me get pretty creative with meals, like I'm playing Iron Chef: Cupboard Remnants.

Hmm, I think I'd like to see that show. It'd be way more like real life. You know, because everyone I know makes trout ice cream on a regular basis.

We lucked out with this meal, because at least we had some fresh ingredients. The eggplant is left over from our camping trip last weekend because we did not use it, and the squash we also picked up last weekend at the Newport Farmers' Market. The basil came from my garden!, and everything else was hiding in the fridge door or needed to be used up.

For the eggplant stacks, I cut the eggplant into rounds (after peeling it. I hate the texture of eggplant skin. It's just icky) and roasted it, along with rounds of an adorable round yellow squash. Of course, they were first dressed with olive oil, garlic and good ol' S&P.

Here is the sandwich I made for Cookie Monster. Notice that it's on a hamburger bun. Yep, you guessed it: left over from camping! I think a hamburger bun sandwich made an appearance in Cookie Monster's lunch four times this week, and he had a hot dog bun sandwich at least once. I'll be damned if I throw food away! (And, to be fair, a hamburger bun sandwich made its way into my lunch too!)

I bought a rotisserie chicken right before we left, thinking it would be good for camping, but we didn't end up taking it with us. So, we have a lot of chicken left over, hence the copious amounts of Cookie Monster chicken sandwiches.

This one has chicken, chipotle marinade sauce and bleu cheese on (yep! you guessed it!) a hamburger bun. After a short stay in a hot oven, it was quite delectable-looking.

I sliced up a tomato to go into the eggplant stacks and had a little leftover, so into Cookie Monster's sandwich it went. We also had some avocado needing to be used (are you sensing a pattern here?), so into the sandwich that went, too.

And here we have my eggplant stack with squash. Cookie Monster does not like squash (good! more for me!), so he didn't have any in his stack. I alternated eggplant slices, squash slices, basil leaves and tomatoes until I had a lovely little pile, like this. Drizzled with just a bit of balsamic vinegar, it was scrumptious.


And I didn't even put it on a hamburger bun.