Weekend of Celebration!

After having had a busy week full of computer work, I decided to boycott my computer and celebrate other people's achievements...as well as my own...my meeting went well and I am set to move forward with my research!!!!

It was my friend Alessandra's 28th b-day on Friday. She threw herself a party and cooked amazing Italian food! We celebrated until the wee hours of the morning. : )

Saturday, we celebrated out friend Roberto (from Mexico) who just got his Canadian Citizenship! Way to Go Roberto!! So we had an afternoon celebration with his family of 4 and friends! Thank goodness they have little ones and we left relatively early (10:30 ish). We were pooped from our night of carousing on Friday! We came home a snuggled up to an episode of The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey (my x-mas gift to Diego!).

Sunday, the sun was out and we were well rested and decided to head out into the wilderness! We went to hike the Salt Marsh Trail in Cole Harbour, NS. It was sooo cold! It was amazing to see the ocean frozen over along the shoreline!

Although dressed for the weather, it was cold enough to chase us back to the car after an hour.

This week in my organic veg box I received an eggplant. I have never really cooked eggplant outside of ratatouille before...so Alessandra invited me over to learn an Italian recipe that resembles a lasagna, except you use eggplant instead of noodles. It was delicious.

Here is what she taught me.

Wash two medium sized eggplants and slice into rounds. Spread them our on the cutting board and sprinkle with salt. This gets rid of any bitterness. Then to prepare the tomato sauce, get a medium sized sauce pan and fry a large chopped onion in a generous amount of olive oil. Take a large can of organic whole tomatoes and blend until smooth in the blender. Pour the tomatoes into the sauce pan with the onions once they are beginning to brown. Add three pinches of salt and two of baking soda. This removes the really acid taste of the tomatoes, it works better than adding some sugar. While the sauce is cooking, cut thin strips of soft mozzarellla cheese (we used 340g Silani brand mozza) and grate some parmesan (200g of fresh grated). Once the flavour of the baking soda has faded away the sauce is ready. First take a large glass baking dish (or any dish you use to make lasagna) and drizzle the bottom with olive oil. Add a layer of slightly overlapping eggplant to form a bed and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Laddle on some sauce, we used 2 laddle-fuls per layer, then divide your cheese into 3 portions. Each layer of cheese doe not have to cover all of the eggplant and sauce, the chees will melt throughout. Repeat until you have finished the three layers. You can more cheese to the top layer if you like a thick cap on top. We put the same amount in all layers and it covered it all just fine. Bake at 425F for 40 min or until the eggplant is soft. Serve with a salad and some lovely red wine!! Delicious!!

Hope you all had a great Monday! : >